A system and method for federated, context-sensitive, acoustic model refinement comprising a federated language model server and a plurality of edge devices. The federated language model server may comprise one or more machine learning models trained and developed centrally on the server, and distribute these one or more machine learning models to edge devices wherein they may be operated locally on the edge devices. The edge devices may gather or generate context data that can be used by a speech recognition engine, and the local language models contained therein, to develop adaptive, context-sensitive, user-specific language models. Periodically, the federated language model server may select a subset of edge devices from which to receive uploaded local model parameters, that may be aggregated to perform central model updates wherein the updated model parameters may then be sent back to edge devices in order to update the local model parameters.