12. A system including processor and memory for providing information in response to a question in one of a plurality of natural spoken languages, comprising: a microphone for detecting an utterance from a user; a plurality of small dictionaries each for respective one of the plurality of languages, each small dictionary including speech data for a selected few common words in the respective language; at least one speech recognition engine for recognizing the detected utterance, the at least one speech recognition engine using the plurality of small dictionaries to recognize words within the detected utterance; a language recognizer for selecting one of the plurality of languages as the language of the detected utterance based on a number of recognized words for each language from the small dictionaries; a plurality of large dictionaries for the plurality of languages usable by the at least one speech recognition engine for recognizing words within the detected utterance; retrieval means for retrieving the large dictionary for the selected language; and means for responding to the user in the selected language.
12. A system including processor and memory for providing information in response to a question in one of a plurality of natural spoken languages, comprising: a microphone for detecting an utterance from a user; a plurality of small dictionaries each for respective one of the plurality of languages, each small dictionary including speech data for a selected few common words in the respective language; at least one speech recognition engine for recognizing the detected utterance, the at least one speech recognition engine using the plurality of small dictionaries to recognize words within the detected utterance; a language recognizer for selecting one of the plurality of languages as the language of the detected utterance based on a number of recognized words for each language from the small dictionaries; a plurality of large dictionaries for the plurality of languages usable by the at least one speech recognition engine for recognizing words within the detected utterance; retrieval means for retrieving the large dictionary for the selected language; and means for responding to the user in the selected language. 14. The system as recited in claim 12 further comprising a speech recognition engine for each of the plurality of languages.