Urdu Voice Typing

In casual conversation Urdu and Hindi are close to the same language. What separates them on the page is the script — and dictation here requests ur-PK, so you get Perso-Arabic characters regardless.

The divergence is in formal vocabulary. Urdu reaches for Persian and Arabic words where Hindi reaches for Sanskrit ones, and the gap widens the more formal the writing. A recogniser transcribing a formal sentence has to choose, and it can choose the register you did not want — correct script, wrong word. That is the thing to read for, and it is invisible if you are only checking spelling.

Urdu is traditionally set in nastaliq, where words slope down from right to left. This page loads a nastaliq font so what you see matches what Urdu should look like.

After a copy-paste, the appearance is whatever the receiving app has available. Somewhere without a nastaliq font will render the identical characters in naskh — flatter, more Arabic in feel. Nothing has changed in the text; only the typeface has.

ٹ ڈ ڑ — the retroflexes, marked with a small ط above — plus ں for final nasalisation and ے for the final e. None of these exist in Arabic and only some in Persian.

They are also where dictation slips. A word that reads as nearly right often has a plain ت where a ٹ belongs. Worth a specific pass.

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 Urdu speech support will not respond to the button.