The apparent easiness with which humans learn their native language during the first years of life, is intriguing. Not only do young children readily soak up any of the thousands of possible human languages, but they also learn to understand a huge variety of radically different pronunciations – mum and dad, the neighbours, the fisherman at the street corner, people speaking other dialects, stuttering infants, and toothless grandparents. To date, there is no machine capable of this level of speech recognition
