1. A method for recognizing a spoken word in the presence of a voice message generated by a voice processing system, the voice processing system having a speech recognizer, comprising the steps of: (a) echo cancelling the voice message and any detected speech signal to produce a residual signal; (b) processing the residual signal to detect a first portion of the spoken word; (c) upon detection of the first portion of the spoken word, storing the portion of the residual signal including the first portion of the spoken word that has been most recently processed at the time of such detection, stopping echo cancelling of the voice message and any detected speech signal and initiating speech recognition of a second portion of the spoken word; (d) thereafter initiating speech recognition of the stored first portion of the spoken word; and (e) combining results of the speech recognition effected in steps (c) and (d) to determine the spoken word.