Bengaluru, Karnataka · ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada Speech Data Collection in Bengaluru
Urban Kannada under heavy multilingual contact; the strongest Indian English pool in the country. That makes Bengaluru a specific choice for Kannada collection, not an interchangeable one.
- City
- Bengaluru, Karnataka
- Language
- Kannada
- Script
- Kannada
Kannada as spoken in Bengaluru
Urban Kannada under heavy multilingual contact; the strongest Indian English pool in the country.
Bengaluru is a migration city: Kannada speech there is mixed with English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Native-only Kannada cohorts recruited in Bengaluru are hard to fill without screening for years of residence.
Recruitment here
Excellent for Indian English accent bands and technology-domain speakers; native Kannada requires residence screening.
Screen Bengaluru participants for native fluency and years of Karnataka residence; otherwise the cohort drifts towards second-language Kannada.
Studio setup
Two booths with far-field and device-distance rigs for wake-word capture.
Kannada quality rules
- Northern lexical items replaced with standard equivalents
- Inconsistent transliteration of English technical terms
- Sandhi in connected speech transcribed as separate words by some annotators and joined by others
Session types available
- Dialect-tagged spontaneous conversation across five zones
- Read prompts balanced for retroflex and geminate consonants
- Ride-hailing, delivery and fintech domain command sets
Building a balanced cohort
A Bengaluru-only cohort is appropriate when you are targeting this market specifically. For a general Kannada model, spread the cohort across Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad as well.
| Dimension | Typical split | Why it matters for Kannada |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Kannada forms that younger urban speakers have lost |
| Region | Karnataka / parts of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh 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 |
Frequently asked
Can you record Kannada in Bengaluru?
Yes. Two booths with far-field and device-distance rigs for wake-word capture.
Is Bengaluru Kannada representative?
For this market, yes. For a national model, no single city is: Screen Bengaluru participants for native fluency and years of Karnataka residence; otherwise the cohort drifts towards second-language Kannada.
How long does recruitment take?
One to two weeks for standard quotas; longer for narrow age, dialect or occupation requirements.
Collect Kannada in Bengaluru
Send hours, speakers and conditions.