Conversational speech · தமிழ்
Tamil 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 Tamil, where extreme diglossia: written tamil and spoken tamil differ so much that read-speech corpora are near-useless for conversational asr.
- Language
- Tamil (ta-IN)
- Dialects covered
- 6
- Typical programme
- 500-2,000 hours
- Cities
- Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai
What changes when the language is Tamil
The service specification stays constant across languages; the linguistics do not. For Tamil, three things drive the design of a conversational speech programme.
- Extreme diglossia: written Tamil and spoken Tamil differ so much that read-speech corpora are near-useless for conversational ASR
- Dialect spread: Chennai (Madras Bashai), Kongu (Coimbatore), Madurai, Nellai (Tirunelveli)
- Tanglish is the default urban register. Technology, finance, and workplace vocabulary is largely English embedded in Tamil syntax.
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 |
Tamil cohort design
Recruit by district rather than by city alone; Chennai-only cohorts produce models that degrade sharply in the south and west of the state.
| Dimension | Typical split | Why it matters for Tamil |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Tamil forms that younger urban speakers have lost |
| Region | Tamil Nadu / Puducherry / parts of Karnataka and Kerala and others | Dialect spread across 6 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
Tamil-specific quality rules
- Transcribers normalising spoken Tamil into literary Tamil, destroying the acoustic-text alignment
- ழ / ள / ல confusion
- Inconsistent handling of English insertions: Tamil script transliteration vs Latin script must be fixed in the guide
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 Tamil conversational speech engagement: 500 hours from 1,000 speakers, 50/50 gender, ages 18-45, spread across Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, 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
Almost all public Tamil audio is literary read speech from news or scripture. Genuine colloquial Tamil, especially southern and Kongu varieties, is the single biggest gap for anyone building Tamil voice products.
Frequently asked
How much does Tamil conversational speech cost?
Priced per delivered hour or unit against a written spec. The cost drivers for Tamil are dialect spread, demographic narrowness and recording condition, in that order.
Which Tamil dialects are included?
By default Chennai (Madras Bashai), Kongu (Coimbatore), Madurai, Nellai (Tirunelveli) and others, tagged per speaker. You can also commission a single-dialect corpus if you are targeting one region.
Can you deliver Tamil 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 Tamil programme take?
4-7 weeks for 100-300 hours in one language.
Request a Tamil conversational speech quote
Hours, speakers, dialects, deadline. Send what you have.