Win10 keeps trying installing "English (US) Speech Recognition" and fails

Since a few days Windows 10 constantly nags me with an error message "Something happened, and we couldn't install a feature".

By clicking on the error message I am brought to Manage Optional Features. The History lists several failed attempts to install English (US) Speech Recognition. The install fails with error 0x80070422 (terse as usual, thanks Microsoft).

Hence the questions:

• Why is Windows 10 trying to install this component? I haven't asked for it and it will be of little use to me.
• What does the error mean (i.e. Why the install fails)?
• How do I tell Windows to give up?

Error 0x80070422 was caused by the Windows Update service being disabled. I've reenabled the service and this feature now installs correctly.