What is triphone?

A triphone (also known as a context-dependent phone) is a unit of speech sound that consists of three phonemes that occur together in a particular context. In other words, the sound produced by a triphone depends on the sounds that come before and after it.

For example, the sound "p" in the word "pat" is different from the sound "p" in the word "spin" because in the word "pat", the "p" is preceded by the sound "a" and followed by the sound "t", whereas in the word "spin", the "p" is preceded by the sound "s" and followed by the sound "i".

Triphones are an important concept in speech recognition systems, where they are used to model the variability in speech sounds that occurs due to differences in pronunciation, speaking rate, or other contextual factors. By using triphone models, speech recognition systems can achieve higher accuracy and better adaptation to different speakers and environments.