Sub-Saharan Africa · Latin / Ajami
Hausa Conversational Speech Dataset
Hausa conversational speech sourced to your specification — no inventory, no fixed listing. This page covers what is specifically hard about this pairing, and which fields your specification needs to pin down.
Why conversational speech in Hausa is its own problem
In natural Hausa conversation the transcript is the weak point: tone and vowel length are contrastive in speech but ordinary Boko orthography writes neither, so a plain transcript of a two-person conversation records both distinctions as absent. They are exactly what tone and prosody models need, and they cannot be reconstructed from the text after the fact. The convention for carrying tone and length has to be designed before the first conversation is recorded.
The field to pin down first: Whether tone and vowel length are annotated at all, and if so under which convention (a separate tone layer, or diacritics on the Boko text); the two conventions are not interchangeable within one batch.
At a glance
| Language | Hausa |
|---|---|
| Primary region | Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Writing system | Latin / Ajami |
| Category | Conversational Speech |
| Specification field to settle first | Whether tone and vowel length are annotated at all, and if so under which convention (a separate tone layer, or diacritics on the Boko text); the two conventions are not interchangeable within one batch. |
| Delivery | Sourced to order, pilot batch before the full run |
What conversational speech data is
Speech from natural conversation between two or more people, on open or semi-structured topics, used for conversational AI, voice assistants, and small talk models.
What buyers get wrong about it
Natural conversation is full of overlapping speech, interruptions, particles, and laughter. Whether to keep these "messy" parts is the first thing to lock down on a project like this.
The specification field that decides the quote
Whether overlapping speech is kept or split — the two outputs cannot be mixed in a single delivery batch.
The language side: what Hausa demands
Hausa is written in two scripts at once: Latin (Boko) dominates, while Arabic script (Ajami) is used in religious contexts. Running both in parallel means the script-to-speech mapping has to be defined separately for each.
What we can put in this delivery
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Read and conversational speech
Scripted recording for TTS, and unscripted conversation for recognition. Specified separately because they need different speaker pools.
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Transcription to your convention
Orthographic or phonetic, with the guideline written before production and shared with you for review.
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Speaker metadata
Age band, gender, region and dialect background per file, so you can slice the dataset rather than take it whole.
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Consent documentation
Signed speaker consent covering the intended use, plus collection methodology and the annotation guideline.
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Pilot batch
A small batch first, which you can reject. Misalignments surface after a few hours rather than at delivery.
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Delivery in your format
Audio format, sampling rate, segmentation length and metadata schema set to your pipeline's requirements.
What arrives in a delivery
| Component | What it is |
|---|---|
| Audio files | Format, sampling rate and segmentation length set to your pipeline. Named to a convention you specify. |
| Transcription | Orthographic or phonetic, produced under a guideline you review before production starts. |
| Speaker metadata | Age band, gender, region and dialect background per file, plus a speaker identifier so the dataset can be sliced. |
| Recording conditions | Environment, device and, where relevant, measured signal-to-noise ratio per file. |
| Annotation guideline | The document the annotators worked from, so you can reproduce the conventions on your own data. |
| Consent records | Signed speaker consent covering your intended use, with the transfer mechanism addressed where required. |
| Collection methodology | How speakers were recruited, screened and scheduled — the part that tells you how biased the pool is. |
| Quality report | Pilot outcome, re-work log, and the annotator agreement figures where the task supports measuring them. |
Questions we get about Hausa Conversational Speech
How many distinct speakers can you provide for Hausa Conversational Speech?
It depends on the specification and the timeline, and we will give a real number rather than a target. For this pairing, speaker recruitment is usually the step that sets the schedule. Whether tone and vowel length are annotated at all, and if so under which convention (a separate tone layer, or diacritics on the Boko text); the two conventions are not interchangeable within one batch.
Can you annotate to our own guideline instead of the default?
Yes, and for this pairing we would recommend it. In natural Hausa conversation the transcript is the weak point: tone and vowel length are contrastive in speech but ordinary Boko orthography writes neither, so a plain transcript of a two-person conversation records both distinctions as absent. That is exactly the kind of decision a default guideline leaves open, and it is where annotators diverge. Send us your guideline, or we will draft one and you can review it before production starts.
Do you offer a sample before we commit to a full run?
Yes. Select a free sample in the request form and describe what you need. A pilot batch is the cheapest way to establish whether the quality bar is reachable for Hausa Conversational Speech before committing to the full volume.
Is the data licensed or owned outright?
Licensing terms are set per project, so tell us how the model will be used and whether it will be distributed. Consent documentation travels with the data either way, and we do not handle medical or clinical data or recorded telephone calls.
Other datasets in Hausa
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Hausa Children Speech
Speech data from child speakers, grouped by age band, used for children's speech recognition and children's education products.
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Hausa Audiobook
Continuous long-form narration in audiobook style, steady in intonation and generous in duration, the main source material for high-quality TTS.
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Hausa Short Video Speech
Speech in the talking-head style of short video — fast, emotionally strong, colloquial — used for short video subtitles and content understanding.
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Hausa Live Stream Speech
Long-session spoken content from live streams — host monologue and responses to audience interaction — fast-paced and heavily improvised.
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Hausa Voice Assistant
Command and dialogue data for voice assistants, usually with intent annotation, covering the full chain from wake word to understanding to response.
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Hausa Elderly Voice
Speech data from elderly speakers, usually stratified by age band and health status, used for voice products built for older users.
Conversational Speech in other languages
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Tamil Conversational Speech
South Asia
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Telugu Conversational Speech
South Asia
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Malayalam Conversational Speech
South Asia
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Nepali Conversational Speech
South Asia
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Sinhala Conversational Speech
South Asia
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Bangla Conversational Speech
South Asia
Request Hausa Conversational Speech
Tell us the language, the hours, and what the data needs to look like. You will get a real number and a real timeline — not a range. If we cannot source it well, we will tell you that instead.
- Pilot batch before the full run, so problems surface early.
- Consent documentation delivered with the data.
- No medical or clinical data. No recorded telephone calls.