Telugu voice typing in your browser

How Telugu comes out of the recogniser

With Telugu (India) selected, the browser asks its speech service for te-IN: Google's in Chrome, Microsoft's Azure service in Edge. What comes back is ordinary Unicode Telugu script, the same text a Telugu keyboard produces, so it can go straight into a chat, an email or a form. There is only one Telugu entry in the dropdown, and it is the right one wherever you live; Google's speech services list no other Telugu locale.

Telugu speech takes English nouns and puts Telugu endings on them: ఆఫీసుకి is office with -కి (to), and బస్సులో is bus with -లో (in). With Telugu selected the recogniser is listening for Telugu, so a word like that will usually come back entirely in Telugu script, English root included. Where the English word ends in a consonant, Telugu text spells the join two ways: ఫోన్లో, with the letters fused into a conjunct, or ఫోన్‌లో, with the virama kept visible by an invisible zero-width non-joiner. Both mean on the phone and both are correct, but to a computer they are different text, so if Find cannot locate a word you can plainly see, retype it the way the rest of your document spells it. For a sentence that must stay in English, such as an email address or a street name, dictate it with English (India) selected and switch back afterwards.

Telugu has its own digits, ౦ to ౯, but modern Telugu text, the news included, almost always uses 0 to 9. Whether a number you say arrives as digits or as a word such as ఆరు (six) is the recogniser's choice and can change from phrase to phrase, so check times, amounts and phone numbers. Telugu digits, if you want them, have to be typed.

Word breaks may also differ from how you type. Telugu joins words readily, and some pairs are written both joined and apart, such as ఈరోజు and ఈ రోజు (today); the recogniser picks one, and neither is a mistake. Settle on one form for a document and fix the others in a single pass.

Book Telugu, spoken Telugu and what the recogniser writes

A little over a century ago, Telugu prose was written in grānthikam (గ్రాంథికం), a formal register heavy with Sanskrit vocabulary and classical grammar, found in books rather than heard in speech. Where a modern writer puts రాజు సభకు వచ్చాడు (the king came to the assembly), grānthika prose had రాజు సభకు విచ్చేసెను, and nouns kept the old -ము ending, as in పుస్తకము for today's పుస్తకం (book). From the 1910s the linguist Gidugu Venkata Ramamurthy campaigned for schools and writers to use vyāvahārikam (వ్యావహారికం), the educated spoken language, instead. Modern Telugu newspapers, textbooks and websites are written in that modern standard, and his birthday, 29 August, is celebrated as Telugu Language Day.

That history is why dictation suits modern Telugu and not the older style. Expect present-day spellings from the recogniser, పుస్తకం rather than పుస్తకము, so a grānthika passage, a padyam (పద్యం) or a quotation from classical literature is better typed than dictated.

The modern standard is not quite how most people talk either. Standard written Telugu is usually traced to the educated speech of the coastal Andhra districts; Telangana speech, especially around Hyderabad, carries more Persian and Urdu vocabulary, and Rayalaseema and Uttarandhra speech have words and forms of their own. Everyone contracts in casual speech, too: వస్తా for వస్తాను (I'll come). The recogniser tends to write the form it hears, and te-IN is one setting for all of these varieties, so for anything official, such as a letter to a government office, say the full standard forms. For a message to family, talk as you normally do and expect a little tidying.

Full stops, not dandas: punctuating Telugu

Modern Telugu is punctuated with the same marks as English: the full stop, comma, question mark, exclamation mark and quotation marks. The danda (।), the upright stroke that ends sentences in several other Indian scripts, is not part of everyday Telugu; the Unicode Standard describes the danda and double danda in Telugu as used mainly in religious texts. A Telugu news report or Wikipedia article ends its sentences with a plain full stop, and so should your message.

This page does not add punctuation in Telugu. Its spoken commands, such as saying comma or full stop, are English words matched against English results, so they are switched off whenever a non-English language is selected. Dictate a paragraph, press Stop dictating, then read it through and type a full stop wherever a thought ended; the sample above shows the usual pattern, a comma between the two halves and a full stop at the end. If you would rather say the marks aloud, Windows 11 voice typing, covered below, accepts spoken Telugu punctuation.

Telugu keyboards for fixing a transcript

Windows, macOS and iOS type Telugu with nothing extra installed, and on Android Google's free Gboard keyboard does it. There are two ways to type. InScript, the Government of India standard layout, puts Telugu letters directly on the keys, so you build a conjunct such as క్ష from క, the virama ్ and ష. Phonetic or transliteration input lets you type a word as it sounds in English letters and pick the Telugu spelling from suggestions. If you already chat in Telugu written in English letters, phonetic input is the faster one to pick up.

• Windows 11: adding Telugu under Settings, Time & language, Language & region brings the Telugu INSCRIPT keyboard with it; Telugu Phonetic is a separate Add a keyboard step in Telugu's language options. The indicator in the system tray reads తె instead of ENG while either one is active. Microsoft's own worked example is తోట (garden): on Telugu Phonetic, type thota and press Enter; on INSCRIPT, press L for త, A for the ో sign and the comma key for ట.
• macOS: in System Settings, Keyboard, click Edit next to Input Sources, then the add button, and search for Telugu. Apple lists Telugu (InScript), Telugu (QWERTY) and Telugu (Transliteration); the last one turns Latin typing into Telugu suggestions.
• Android: Gboard's Telugu keyboard has a layout in Telugu script and a QWERTY transliteration layout, where you spell the word phonetically in English letters and Gboard writes it in Telugu. Add Telugu from Gboard's language settings.
• iPhone and iPad: add Telugu in Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, Add New Keyboard, and pick a layout: Transliteration to type Telugu in English letters, InScript, or Alphabetic. From iOS 18, on an iPhone 12 or later, Telugu can also be added to the English keyboard so you type both without switching.

Telugu dictation beyond this page: Windows, Android, Docs and Apple

Telugu sits in an odd spot. Windows 11 will take Telugu dictation and even Telugu punctuation commands, while Apple's dictation, built into every iPhone and Mac, does not offer Telugu at all. At the time of writing:

• Windows 11 voice typing: supported, and the only option covered here with Telugu punctuation commands. Microsoft lists పూర్ణ బిందువు or ఫుల్ స్టాప్ for a full stop, కామా for a comma, ప్రశ్నార్థకం for a question mark and కొత్త పేరా for a new line. Voice typing follows your input language, so switch to a Telugu keyboard with Windows key + Space, click into a text box and press Windows key + H. It runs on Microsoft's online speech service and needs a connection; the older Windows 10 dictation does not list Telugu.
• Gboard on Android: supported. Google added Telugu voice typing in 2017; tap the microphone on the keyboard with Telugu selected. Gboard's advanced voice typing, which punctuates automatically on Pixel phones, is available only in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, so Telugu punctuation is still typed by hand.
• Google Docs voice typing: not on Google's list. Google's help page for Docs voice typing does not include Telugu, so before you plan around it, open Tools, then Voice typing, in Chrome and check whether Telugu appears in the language menu. Google says voice commands, punctuation included, work only in English.
• Apple dictation on iPhone, iPad and Mac: not listed. Apple's feature availability pages include Hindi and Indian English for dictation, but not Telugu, so the microphone key on an Apple keyboard is not a route to Telugu text.

Speaking Telugu so fewer words need fixing

Most wrong words in Telugu dictation come down to a few sounds that decide the spelling, and to how long Telugu words are. These habits help more than speaking loudly:

• Hold long vowels long. Vowel length changes the word: పాలు is milk, పలు is several. Fast speech shortens vowels, and the recogniser then has to guess from context.
• Keep retroflex and dental sounds apart. పాట (song) and పాత (old) differ only in ట and త, and కళ (art) and కల (dream) only in ళ and ల. If one word keeps coming back wrong, slow down on that word rather than the whole sentence.
• Pause between phrases, not inside words. Suffixes make single Telugu words long, such as వచ్చేటప్పుడు (while coming), and a pause in the middle of one can split it into pieces.
• Read proper nouns before anything else. Names of people and villages, brand names and English technical terms are where any general recogniser slips.
• Get close to the microphone. A headset or a phone held near your mouth beats a laptop microphone across the room, and an air cooler running beside you adds a steady rush that masks the quieter consonants.

Telugu in brief

Telugu is a Dravidian language and the official language of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, with millions more speakers in neighbouring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. In the 2011 Census of India, about 81 million people, roughly 8.1 crore, gave it as their first language, the fourth-largest figure in the country after Hindi, Bengali and Marathi. The Government of India recognised it as a classical language in 2008.

Its script shares its ancestry with Kannada. Each consonant carries an inherent vowel, vowel signs attach to it, and a consonant cluster is usually written with a smaller form of the second letter tucked beneath the first, as in క్క or గ్గ. That is why a word can take more keystrokes on an InScript keyboard than it seems to have letters: క్క is three keys, క, the virama and క again.