Neural Networking for Dummies

So I want to write neural network that would process N-symbol words.

Should I provide 26 symbol neurons for each letter position, so that they give 1.0 for their matching letter? Should I duplicate position for each recognized words? I.e. vocabulary of 1000 N-sized words would require 1000*N*26.

>>13
The concept of a formant or any other sound is a quite abstract concept and i seriously doubt it could be understood without knowing a language beforehand (you may not realize it but our language it's our means to think abstractly and sound is an abstraction, those who don't learn a human language to age of ~6y.o. or so will be half-sapient forever, see feral children)