Hi Ash, 

sorry for the delay in responding but I only just now heard that there was a comment on this episode. It looks from the error message as if you need to install the "build-essential"  package and also the "gnome-common"  package (for autoconf). That's not to say that blather will necessarily do what you need it to do (it can't do dictation)  but this should help you get past those error messages at least. 