In a method for interactive voice recognition, a word spoken by a user is analyzed. If no definite assignment to a word of a predetermined vocabulary is possible, the word is assigned a number of possible words from the vocabulary. For each word of the preselection of words, a decisive letter that makes the word distinguishable from the other words of the preselection of words is determined. The user is prompted to say the decisive letter for the word being sought. The word being sought is ascertained by voice recognition of the decisive letter.