Disclosed is a highly accurate oriental language, such as Chinese, input method and device for a small-sized electronic device with few keypads and/or a small amount of memory, such as a PDA, mobile phone, electronic dictionary, and electronic watch, in an adverse environment. It is achieved by uttering each multi-syllable Chinese character into isolated tonal syllables in which the vowels and consonants of the isolated tonal syllables are separated by automatic speech recognition while pressing one of the specifically designed keypads for example, a keystroke that contains a first phoneme of a syllable (consonant or vowel) to further resolve the ambiguity derived from the acoustic realization of pin-yin pronunciations (sub-word units), for example, consonant, in the adverse environment. Pressing the second or third pin-yin pronunciation of a syllable is necessary if ambiguity still exists. The keypad design is in a data-driven manner that the ratio of similarity of phonemes within each keypad is minimized and the ratio of similarity of pin-yin pronunciations between keys is maximized.
Hybrid keypad/speech recognition technique for oriental characters in adverse environments