Conversational speech · বাংলা
Bengali Conversational Speech Data
Natural two-party and multi-party conversation recorded with separate channels per speaker, covering the overlaps, interruptions and turn-taking that scripted data never produces. This page covers how that works specifically for Bengali, where inherent vowel is realised as /ɔ/ or /o/, which breaks g2p rules copied from devanagari-based systems.
- Language
- Bengali (bn-IN)
- Dialects covered
- 5
- Typical programme
- 500-2,000 hours
- Cities
- Kolkata, Siliguri, Durgapur
What changes when the language is Bengali
The service specification stays constant across languages; the linguistics do not. For Bengali, three things drive the design of a conversational speech programme.
- Inherent vowel is realised as /ɔ/ or /o/, which breaks G2P rules copied from Devanagari-based systems
- Dialect spread: Kolkata standard (Rarhi), Sylheti-influenced, Rangpuri / North Bengal, Medinipuri
- Kolkata professional speech mixes English heavily; rural West Bengal much less. A single 'Bengali' dataset without register tags conflates two very different acoustic and lexical distributions.
Technical specification
| Parameter | Standard |
|---|---|
| Channels | One channel per speaker, time-aligned |
| Duration | 15-60 minutes per conversation |
| Topics | Scenario cards, free topics, or your domain scripts |
| Overlap | Preserved and tagged, never edited out |
| Metadata | Relationship between speakers, familiarity, topic, setting |
Bengali cohort design
Tag every speaker as Indian Bengali and record district of origin; mixing in Bangladeshi speech without tags is a common and costly dataset defect.
| Dimension | Typical split | Why it matters for Bengali |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | 50 / 50 | Pitch range differences change acoustic model behaviour; unbalanced cohorts bias recognition |
| Age | 18-25: 30%, 26-40: 40%, 41-60: 30% | Older speakers retain conservative Bengali forms that younger urban speakers have lost |
| Region | West Bengal / Tripura / Assam (Barak Valley) and others | Dialect spread across 5 recognised varieties |
| Education | Mixed, including below-graduate | Prompt-reading fluency correlates with education and skews prosody |
| Condition | Studio / quiet room / field | Match the noise profile of your deployment |
Process
- Scenario design so conversations stay on-domain without becoming scripted
- Speaker pairing by familiarity level as specified
- Multi-channel recording with per-speaker isolation
- Diarisation-ready packaging
- Verbatim transcription with speaker turns and overlap tags
Bengali-specific quality rules
- Three sibilant characters chosen inconsistently for the same sound
- Bangladeshi vs Indian Bengali orthographic conventions mixed within one dataset
- Verb conjugation register (cholit vs sadhu) normalised by transcribers
Conversations are checked for naturalness, not just audio quality. Sessions that drift into reading are rejected.
Deliverables
- Per-speaker channels plus mixed reference
- Turn-level transcripts
- Overlap and backchannel tags
- Conversation metadata
Worked example
A representative Bengali conversational speech engagement: 500 hours from 1,000 speakers, 50/50 gender, ages 18-45, spread across Kolkata, Siliguri, Durgapur, recorded to the specification above and delivered in WAV with a per-utterance manifest.
Timeline: 4-7 weeks for 100-300 hours in one language.
Where this data is missing today
Indian Bengali is under-collected relative to Bangladeshi Bengali, and North Bengal and Tripura varieties are almost entirely missing.
Frequently asked
How much does Bengali conversational speech cost?
Priced per delivered hour or unit against a written spec. The cost drivers for Bengali are dialect spread, demographic narrowness and recording condition, in that order.
Which Bengali dialects are included?
By default Kolkata standard (Rarhi), Sylheti-influenced, Rangpuri / North Bengal, Medinipuri and others, tagged per speaker. You can also commission a single-dialect corpus if you are targeting one region.
Can you deliver Bengali data in our format?
Yes. Per-speaker channels plus mixed reference is the default, but naming, schema and directory structure follow your pipeline.
How long does a Bengali programme take?
4-7 weeks for 100-300 hours in one language.
Request a Bengali conversational speech quote
Hours, speakers, dialects, deadline. Send what you have.