Windows 10: Cannot get speech recognition to work.

This has nothing to do with Cortana. That actually works just fine. I'm talking about the basic speech recognition software built into Windows 10. I've been working on and off with this for over a month now and still cannot get it to work. I have the microphone icon pinned to my toolbar now to make it easier to attempt to get it to work, but every time I try to load it I receive a "Speech recognition is not supported in the current language" error pop-up box. I find that to be really strange as my region is set to United States and language to English (US) for Cortana and under Settings>Time & Language>Speech. I really need to get this to work! How do I fix this?

Before asking I always do a search, but did not see the link you posted. Many were really old posts so I was looking for newer ones. As I mentioned in my intial post, Speech is set to English (US) and Region is set to United States.

After I posted I did discover this much. While the link I've pinned to my toolbar doesn't wish to work, if I scroll through all my programs down to Windows Ease of Access and load Speech Recognition that way it works, but every I try to pin it to my tool bar the new link doesn't.

Been super busy, but I did want to do a follow up. I managed to get Windows Speech Recognition working with the app I want to use it on. Problem now becomes, how to make it "smarter". For example while dictating a business name and address, I had issues with it not understanding the name need the first letter capitalized. I also had issues with other things like it wanting to insert "to" or "two" when dictating a phone number.

Can anyone give me a review of Dragon Naturally Speaking?

I've used both the built-in Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) and Dragon NatuallySpeaking (DNS).

IMO DNS is a much more polished product and its dedicated training mode is very useful (which helps build its recognition database - your user profile - fairly quickly). However, you pay for the privilege, especially if you need scripting support (only available in Pro versions, not Home or Premium).

It can take nearly a fortnight or more of regular use before DNS has adapted itself to your speech patterns for recognition accuracy to reach into the 80-90% region. (Don't believe the hype - you have to have perfect diction to get 99% recognition accuracy... after a lot of practice.)

WSR, by comparison, feels like yet another MS technology where the company just lost interest in developing it. It does work... but you need to perservere with using it as it builds its recognition database for it to work well. It also means a lot of 'correct that' and 'what can I say' to become proficient. In my experience it can take WSR three weeks or more of regular use before WSR has adapted itself to your speech pattern for recognition accuracy to reach into the 75-85% region.

Hope this helps...