19. Speech recognition apparatus for speaker independent and/or language independent speech recognition comprising: a plurality of speech recognition means operating in parallel, wherein: each speech recognition engine is configured with different acoustic models; and only one acoustic model for silence or noise is used in all speech recognition engines; means for determining the best scoring speech recognition hypothesis for each speech recognition means and the best overall score; and pruning means for pruning of speech recognition hypotheses of the speech recognition means based on the best overall score.
19. Speech recognition apparatus for speaker independent and/or language independent speech recognition comprising: a plurality of speech recognition means operating in parallel, wherein: each speech recognition engine is configured with different acoustic models; and only one acoustic model for silence or noise is used in all speech recognition engines; means for determining the best scoring speech recognition hypothesis for each speech recognition means and the best overall score; and pruning means for pruning of speech recognition hypotheses of the speech recognition means based on the best overall score. 22. Speech recognition apparatus of claim 19 , comprising a task manager for assigning speech recognition means to application programs and determining the application program which corresponds to the speech recognition means with the best scoring speech recognition hypothesis.