Conversational speech · اردو
Urdu 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 Urdu, where shares most phonology with hindi but adds perso-arabic phonemes (/q/, /x/, /ɣ/, /z/, /f/) that many speakers merge.
- Language
- Urdu (ur-IN)
- Dialects covered
- 5
- Typical programme
- 250-1,000 hours
- Cities
- Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi
What changes when the language is Urdu
The service specification stays constant across languages; the linguistics do not. For Urdu, three things drive the design of a conversational speech programme.
- Shares most phonology with Hindi but adds Perso-Arabic phonemes (/q/, /x/, /ɣ/, /z/, /f/) that many speakers merge
- Dialect spread: Dakhini (Hyderabad), Lucknawi, Dehlvi, Bihari Urdu
- Spoken Urdu and spoken Hindi are largely mutually intelligible; the distinction is mainly lexical and orthographic. Decide up front whether transcription is in Nastaliq, Devanagari, or both.
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 |
Urdu cohort design
Fix the script decision before fielding; retro-transcribing a Nastaliq dataset into Devanagari after delivery costs as much as the original transcription pass.
| Dimension | Typical split | Why it matters for Urdu |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Urdu forms that younger urban speakers have lost |
| Region | Uttar Pradesh / Telangana / Bihar 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
Urdu-specific quality rules
- Right-to-left Nastaliq tooling errors and diacritic loss
- Merged phonemes transcribed by sound rather than by etymology, or vice versa, inconsistently
- Dakhini forms replaced with standard Urdu
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 Urdu conversational speech engagement: 250 hours from 500 speakers, 50/50 gender, ages 18-45, spread across Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi, 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 Urdu specifically, and Dakhini in particular, are absent from public data dominated by Pakistani Urdu broadcast speech.
Frequently asked
How much does Urdu conversational speech cost?
Priced per delivered hour or unit against a written spec. The cost drivers for Urdu are dialect spread, demographic narrowness and recording condition, in that order.
Which Urdu dialects are included?
By default Dakhini (Hyderabad), Lucknawi, Dehlvi, Bihari Urdu and others, tagged per speaker. You can also commission a single-dialect corpus if you are targeting one region.
Can you deliver Urdu 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 Urdu programme take?
4-7 weeks for 100-300 hours in one language.
Request a Urdu conversational speech quote
Hours, speakers, dialects, deadline. Send what you have.