Sphinx4 - Using a custom dictionary

[Scheepers de Bruin]

Hi

I am using sphinx to do a verbal interface for an application with limited simple commands and no dictation capabilities, but it is way too slow and chows too much memory. I suspect this is because of the size of the vocabulary (63000+ words)

Using the edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.dictionary.FastDictionary I know you can create your own dictionary with this format:
ONE HH W AH N
TWO T UW
THREE TH R IY
FOUR F AO R
etc.

I did get it to start reading a dictionary file once, but encountered this exception:

Problem when loading Test: java.lang.Error: Error loading word: nementh
java.lang.Error: Error loading word: nementh
at edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.dictionary.FastDictionary.loadDictionary(FastDictionary.java:228)
at edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.dictionary.FastDictionary.allocate(FastDictionary.java:171)
at edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.language.grammar.Grammar.allocate(Grammar.java:159)
at edu.cmu.sphinx.linguist.flat.FlatLinguist.allocate(FlatLinguist.java:319)
at edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.search.SimpleBreadthFirstSearchManager.allocate(SimpleBreadthFirstSearchManager.java:602)
at edu.cmu.sphinx.decoder.Decoder.allocate(Decoder.java:109)
at edu.cmu.sphinx.recognizer.Recognizer.allocate(Recognizer.java:182)
at nementh.Test.main(Test.java:38)

NOW, due to unfortunate accident involving my toaster and a USB port, I have lost the configuration that got Sphinx to start reading the dictionary, and I've failed at getting it to do it again.

So I have two questions:
1) How does one specify a custom dictionary
2) Once that's accomplished, does this exception mean I am using incorrect phenomes to define words or what?

Thanks in advance!
[ February 17, 2006: Message edited by: Scheepers de Bruin ]