System and method for automatic speech recognition

A system and method for automatic recognition of foreign speakers by performing analysis of a speech sample to produce a signal representative thereof and attempting to match the representative signal to one of a plurality of predetermined sounds to produce recognition; and determining whether a gap exists in a table of predetermined sounds in a predetermined language and, if a gap exists, substituting for matching a sound from a position in the table near the gap. This automatic substitution of known foreign pronunciation characteristics improves and modifies the output from standard, monolingual automatic speech recognition. There is no requirement to implement either adaptation or to impose additional manual modification of the baseform pool on the application developer. In addition, the danger of increased ambiguity is removed by introducing an explicit accent and/or language checker which queries known differences across accents.