PURPOSE: To obtain the result of recognition with high accuracy by having matching among plural types of weighting and giving the overall judgment to each matching.

CONSTITUTION: The sound signal is supplied to a feature extracting part 6 and converted into a series of feature vector. The inter-vector calculation and the cumulative distance calculation are carried out every frame through an inter-vector distance calculating part 8 and cumulative distance calculating parts 11W13. The final cumulative distance obtained by a weighting method is stored as soon as the input is over, and the contents of said distance are normalized and delivered to a deciding part 14. The part 14 uses the word corresponding to a standard pattern with which the weighting average is minimum as the result of recognition.