Punjabi Voice Typing

Punjabi is written two ways by two populations. In Indian Punjab it is Gurmukhi, the script on this page. In Pakistani Punjab it is Shahmukhi, a Perso-Arabic script that looks nothing like it. The spoken language is largely the same; the writing systems are unrelated in appearance.

Dictation here requests pa-IN and returns Gurmukhi. There is no setting that produces Shahmukhi, so if that is what you need, this is not the tool — and it is better to know that in the first paragraph than after dictating a page.

Punjabi carries lexical tone, which is unusual for an Indo-Aryan language and almost invisible if you are used to reading Hindi. There are no tone marks. Instead the historically voiced-aspirate letters — ਘ ਝ ਢ ਧ ਭ — signal it.

For dictation this means tone is not something the recogniser transcribes directly. It identifies a word and writes that word’s spelling, tone letter included. When it mishears, those letters are exactly where the error shows up — so they repay a targeted look rather than a general reread.

ਂ and ੰ mark nasalisation that is light in ordinary speech and easy for a recogniser to drop. In writing they are not optional — they distinguish words — so dictated Punjabi tends to come back slightly under-nasalised.

Because the omission is systematic rather than random, scanning for it is quick and catches most of what needs fixing.

The microphone is your browser’s. On Chrome and Edge the audio is sent to the browser vendor’s speech service and text comes back; WorldTyping is never in that path and never receives audio. The text stays in your browser, saved locally so a reload does not lose your draft.

That is also why dictation needs an internet connection, and why a browser without Punjabi speech support will not respond to the button.