1. A method of recognizing an unknown speaker as one of a plurality of speaker candidates from portions of speech of each of said speaker candidates and said unknown speaker comprising the steps of: converting digitized samples of said portions of speech of said speaker candidates into frames of speech, each frame representing a point in a preselected multi-dimensional speech space: generating a character set representative of said speech space comprising a plurality of characters selected from said frames of speech of all of said speaker candidates: generating a speaker model of each of each speaker candidates, said speaker model comprising a plurality of model characters selected from said character set and representative of an associated speaker's voice characteristics; converting digitized samples of said portions of speech of said unknown speaker into frames of speech; and comparing said frames of speech from said unknown speaker with said speaker models to determine which one of said speaker candidates has the greatest likelihood of being said unknown speaker.