Abstract: System and methods for compressing (losslessly) n-gram language models for use in real-time decoding, whereby the size of the model is significantly reduced without increasing the decoding time of the recognizer. Lossless compression is achieved using various techniques. In one aspect, n-gram records of an N-gram language model are split into (i) a set of common history records that include subsets of n-tuple words having a common history and (ii) sets of hypothesis records that are associated with the common history records. The common history records are separated into a first group of common history records each having only one hypothesis record associated therewith and a second group of common history records each having more than one hypothesis record associated therewith.