Automatic language identification/verification system

DETAILED DESCRIPTION A Language Identification/Verification System is disclosed comprising a means for processing spoken text into frames of speech and a means for detecting and extracting speech features from the frames of speech, which in combination operate to identify phonetic speech elements, matching means for comparing the phonetic speech features with stored referenced phonetic speech features and establishing a match score for the comparison proportional to a degree of similarity between the phonetic speech features and the stored reference phonetic speech features, and decision means for identifying input speech to the system as corresponding to one of a plurality of languages, whereby the language identification for the input speech is established on the basis of a comparison of the match score with at least one predetermined threshold score associated with one of the plurality of languages.