The short answer
Dozens, on every plan. Tell the app which languages you speak in Settings, then just talk. It writes each language in its own script and punctuation, and you can mix languages in one sentence.
The languages it understands
The speech engine behind Perfect Dictation was trained on speech in close to a hundred languages. The ones people use it for most are:
| Region | Languages |
|---|---|
| Europe | English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Greek, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian |
| Asia | Thai, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Urdu |
| Middle East and Africa | Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Swahili, Afrikaans |
Accuracy is highest in the languages with the most recorded speech in the world, such as English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Smaller languages work too, but are more likely to need a few dictionary words for names and specialist terms.
Tell it which languages you speak
Open the app, go to Settings, and pick the languages you speak under Languages. This matters most for short clips. With only two or three words to go on, any speech engine can mistake one language for another that sounds similar. When it knows you only speak English and Thai, it never guesses Lao or Malay.
- Click the Perfect Dictation icon in the tray and open Settings.
- Under Languages, tick each language you dictate in.
- Close Settings. The choice takes effect on your next dictation and syncs to your other PCs.
Mixing languages in one sentence
Many people switch languages mid-sentence without thinking about it: an English sentence with a Thai name in it, or a Spanish message with English technical words. Perfect Dictation keeps each word in the language you said it in, so "Can you send the invoice to คุณสมชาย before Friday" comes out exactly like that, Thai script included.
Punctuation and spelling in each language
The clean-up follows each language's own rules: question marks and inverted question marks in Spanish, no spaces between words in Japanese and Chinese, the right quotation marks in French and German. In English you also choose British or American spelling.
Speaking one language and writing another
The Translate style writes your words in a different language from the one you speak. Speak English in your chat app and it can write Thai, ready to send. Pick the style for an app and choose the language it writes in. Names, numbers and anything in your dictionary stay exactly as they are.
This is useful for replying to customers or colleagues in their language, or for writing to family in a language you speak better than you type.
Accents
Your accent matters much less than you might expect. The engine has heard speech from all over the world, so a Scottish, Indian, Australian or Thai accent in English is normal to it. Speak at your usual pace rather than slowing down. See Does my accent matter? for more.
When a word comes out wrong
If one word keeps coming out wrong in a particular language, add it to the dictionary together with what it hears, for example "Siam (heard as Sam)". Two or three entries like that usually fix it for good. Here is how.
Related questions
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