Language and voice support for the Speech service

The following tables summarize language support for speech to text, text to speech, pronunciation assessment, speech translation, speaker recognition, and additional service features.

You can also get a list of locales and voices supported for each specific region or endpoint through the Speech SDK, Speech to text REST API, Speech to text REST API for short audio and Text to speech REST API.

Supported languages

Language support varies by Speech service functionality.

Note

See Speech Containers and Embedded Speech separately for their supported languages.

Choose a Speech feature

The table in this section summarizes the locales supported for Speech to text. See the table footnotes for more details.

Additional remarks for Speech to text locales are included in the Custom Speech section below.

Tip

Try out the Real-time Speech to text tool without having to use any code.

Locale (BCP-47) Language Custom Speech support
af-ZA Afrikaans (South Africa) Plain text
am-ET Amharic (Ethiopia) Plain text
ar-AE Arabic (United Arab Emirates) Plain text
ar-BH Arabic (Bahrain) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ar-DZ Arabic (Algeria) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ar-EG Arabic (Egypt) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ar-IL Arabic (Israel) Plain text
ar-IQ Arabic (Iraq) Plain text
ar-JO Arabic (Jordan) Plain text
ar-KW Arabic (Kuwait) Plain text
ar-LB Arabic (Lebanon) Plain text
ar-LY Arabic (Libya) Plain text
ar-MA Arabic (Morocco) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ar-OM Arabic (Oman) Plain text
ar-PS Arabic (Palestinian Authority) Plain text
ar-QA Arabic (Qatar) Plain text
ar-SA Arabic (Saudi Arabia) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ar-SY Arabic (Syria) Plain text
ar-TN Arabic (Tunisia) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ar-YE Arabic (Yemen) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
az-AZ Azerbaijani (Latin, Azerbaijan) Plain text
bg-BG Bulgarian (Bulgaria) Plain text
bn-IN Bengali (India) Plain text
bs-BA Bosnian (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Plain text
ca-ES Catalan Plain text

Pronunciation
cs-CZ Czech (Czechia) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
cy-GB Welsh (United Kingdom) Plain text
da-DK Danish (Denmark) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
de-AT German (Austria) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
de-CH German (Switzerland) Plain text

Pronunciation
de-DE German (Germany) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
el-GR Greek (Greece) Plain text
en-AU English (Australia) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
en-CA English (Canada) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
en-GB English (United Kingdom) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
en-GH English (Ghana) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
en-HK English (Hong Kong SAR) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
en-IE English (Ireland) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
en-IN English (India) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
en-KE English (Kenya) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
en-NG English (Nigeria) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
en-NZ English (New Zealand) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
en-PH English (Philippines) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
en-SG English (Singapore) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
en-TZ English (Tanzania) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
en-US English (United States) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
en-ZA English (South Africa) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Audio

Plain text

Pronunciation
es-AR Spanish (Argentina) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-BO Spanish (Bolivia) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-CL Spanish (Chile) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-CO Spanish (Colombia) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-CR Spanish (Costa Rica) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-CU Spanish (Cuba) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-DO Spanish (Dominican Republic) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-EC Spanish (Ecuador) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-ES Spanish (Spain) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
es-GQ Spanish (Equatorial Guinea) Plain text

Structured text
es-GT Spanish (Guatemala) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-HN Spanish (Honduras) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-MX Spanish (Mexico) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
es-NI Spanish (Nicaragua) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-PA Spanish (Panama) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-PE Spanish (Peru) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-PR Spanish (Puerto Rico) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-PY Spanish (Paraguay) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-SV Spanish (El Salvador) Plain text

Pronunciation
es-US1 Spanish (United States) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-UY Spanish (Uruguay) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
es-VE Spanish (Venezuela) Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation
et-EE Estonian (Estonia) Plain text

Pronunciation
eu-ES Basque Plain text
fa-IR Persian (Iran) Plain text
fi-FI Finnish (Finland) Plain text

Pronunciation
fil-PH Filipino (Philippines) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
fr-BE French (Belgium) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
fr-CA1 French (Canada) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
fr-CH French (Switzerland) Plain text

Pronunciation
fr-FR French (France) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
ga-IE Irish (Ireland) Plain text

Pronunciation
gl-ES Galician Plain text
gu-IN Gujarati (India) Plain text
he-IL Hebrew (Israel) Plain text
hi-IN Hindi (India) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Phrase list
hr-HR Croatian (Croatia) Plain text

Pronunciation
hu-HU Hungarian (Hungary) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
hy-AM Armenian (Armenia) Plain text
id-ID Indonesian (Indonesia) Plain text

Pronunciation
is-IS Icelandic (Iceland) Plain text
it-CH Italian (Switzerland) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
it-IT Italian (Italy) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
ja-JP Japanese (Japan) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Phrase list
jv-ID Javanese (Latin, Indonesia) Plain text
ka-GE Georgian (Georgia) Plain text
kk-KZ Kazakh (Kazakhstan) Plain text
km-KH Khmer (Cambodia) Plain text
kn-IN Kannada (India) Plain text
ko-KR Korean (Korea) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Phrase list
lo-LA Lao (Laos) Plain text
lt-LT Lithuanian (Lithuania) Plain text

Pronunciation
lv-LV Latvian (Latvia) Plain text

Pronunciation
mk-MK Macedonian (North Macedonia) Plain text
ml-IN Malayalam (India) Plain text
mn-MN Mongolian (Mongolia) Plain text
mr-IN Marathi (India) Plain text
ms-MY Malay (Malaysia) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
mt-MT Maltese (Malta) Plain text
my-MM Burmese (Myanmar) Plain text
nb-NO Norwegian Bokmål (Norway) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ne-NP Nepali (Nepal) Plain text
nl-BE Dutch (Belgium) Plain text
nl-NL Dutch (Netherlands) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
pa-IN Punjabi (India) Audio + human-labeled transcript
pl-PL Polish (Poland) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
ps-AF Pashto (Afghanistan) Plain text
pt-BR Portuguese (Brazil) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Pronunciation

Phrase list
pt-PT Portuguese (Portugal) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
ro-RO Romanian (Romania) Plain text

Pronunciation
ru-RU Russian (Russia) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
si-LK Sinhala (Sri Lanka) Plain text
sk-SK Slovak (Slovakia) Plain text

Pronunciation
sl-SI Slovenian (Slovenia) Plain text

Pronunciation
so-SO Somali (Somalia) Plain text
sq-AL Albanian (Albania) Plain text
sr-RS Serbian (Cyrillic, Serbia) Plain text
sv-SE Swedish (Sweden) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Pronunciation
sw-KE Swahili (Kenya) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
sw-TZ Swahili (Tanzania) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
ta-IN Tamil (India) Plain text
te-IN Telugu (India) Plain text
th-TH Thai (Thailand) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
tr-TR Turkish (Türkiye) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text
uk-UA Ukrainian (Ukraine) Plain text
ur-IN Urdu (India) Audio + human-labeled transcript
uz-UZ Uzbek (Latin, Uzbekistan) Plain text
vi-VN Vietnamese (Vietnam) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
wuu-CN Chinese (Wu, Simplified) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
yue-CN Chinese (Cantonese, Simplified) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
zh-CN Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text

Structured text

Phrase list
zh-CN-shandong Chinese (Jilu Mandarin, Simplified) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
zh-CN-sichuan Chinese (Southwestern Mandarin, Simplified) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
zh-HK Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
zh-TW Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin, Traditional) Audio + human-labeled transcript

Plain text
zu-ZA Zulu (South Africa) Plain text

1 It is a bilingual model with support for the English language as well.

Custom Speech

To improve Speech to text recognition accuracy, customization is available for some languages and base models. Depending on the locale, you can upload audio + human-labeled transcripts, plain text, structured text, and pronunciation data. By default, plain text customization is supported for all available base models. To learn more about customization, see Custom Speech.

Next steps