Why the Azure Speech Service keeps recognizing English words even though I've set the language strictly to Arabic (ar-AE) in my configuration?”

Question

Why the Azure Speech Service keeps recognizing English words even though I've set the language strictly to Arabic (ar-AE) in my configuration?”

Sree 10

Hello,

I’m using the Azure Speech Service to transcribe audio entirely in Arabic, with the following setup:

Region: SwedenCentral
Language: ar-AE
Audio Source: Microphone
Azure Speech SDK: 1.42.0

Key details:

The recognition language is set to “ar-AE” (speechConfig.speechRecognitionLanguage = "ar-AE").
I’m not enabling multi-language detection or auto-detection anywhere. •
Network logs show “language=ar-AE,” yet if I speak English, it’s detected as English.
The environment has minimal background noise, and I’ve also tried prerecorded Arabic audio to rule out live microphone issues.

Questions:

Is “ar-AE” fully supported in the SwedenCentral region, or could it be falling back to English?
Are there any additional configuration steps needed to ensure purely Arabic (ar-AE) transcription?
Could my subscription token or region settings be defaulting to a different language?

I’d greatly appreciate any guidance or recommendations to ensure Azure Speech only recognizes Arabic.

Thank you!

Pavankumar Purilla 11,405 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-03-14T15:25:47.4033333+00:00

Hi Sree,
Did you get any chance to check the response. Thank you!

1 answer

Your answer

Pavankumar Purilla 11,405 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-03-14T15:25:47.4033333+00:00

Hi Sree,
Did you get any chance to check the response. Thank you!

Answer 1

Pavankumar Purilla 11,405 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi Sree,
It sounds like you're experiencing some issues with the Azure Speech Service.

Is “ar-AE” fully supported in the SwedenCentral region, or could it be falling back to English? The Azure Speech Service generally supports Arabic (ar-AE) across regions unless explicitly stated otherwise. However, it's possible that certain regional configurations might not be fully optimized for all languages. In your case, even though the SwedenCentral region likely supports Arabic, the service might be experiencing some fallback behavior or interference that causes it to recognize English words. This could be due to various factors, including audio quality or specific service optimizations for that region. To confirm, you can check the official Azure documentation for any specific notes on language support in the SwedenCentral region.

Are there any additional configuration steps needed to ensure purely Arabic (ar-AE) transcription?
You've already set the language to ar-AE, which is correct. Make sure that features like auto-detection are turned off, and your audio is clear and free from noise. Also, ensure you're using the latest version of the Azure Speech SDK.

Could my subscription token or region settings be defaulting to a different language?
It's unlikely that your subscription token or region settings are causing the issue, as they shouldn't override your explicit language choice. However, double-check that everything is correctly set up for the SwedenCentral region and that there are no default settings interfering with your configuration.
I hope this information helps.

Sree 10 Reputation points

2025-03-17T11:17:12.9066667+00:00

Hi Pavankumar Purilla,

I tried reproducing the issue with Azure AI Speech Studio's real-time speech-to-text, and the problem still exists. I tested various regions, including Sweden Central, Europe, and UAE North, with the same results.

Steps to reproduce: In Speech Studio, select Arabic (UAE) for real-time speech-to-text and speak in English—it gets detected.

Is it expected behaviour for English to be recognized when selecting other languages?

Thanks & Regards,

Sree
Pavankumar Purilla 11,405 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-03-17T17:36:05.17+00:00

Hi Sree,
It might be expected behavior for Azure Speech Service to recognize some English words even when the language is set to Arabic (ar-AE). Speech models are trained on diverse datasets and may still detect high-confidence words from other languages, especially English. This could happen due to phonetic similarities, common loanwords, or the model prioritizing transcription accuracy over strict language filtering. While there’s no direct way to force purely Arabic recognition, you can try using a "Custom Speech Model" or "post-processing filtering" to remove non-Arabic words.
Pavankumar Purilla 11,405 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-03-18T22:56:41.56+00:00

Hi Sree,
Just following up to see if you had a chance to review the above response. Thank you!
Sree 10 Reputation points

2025-03-19T11:49:06.1033333+00:00

Hi Pavankumar Purilla,

I want to clarify something important — the problem isn’t limited to words. The system detects entire sentences as if it's using English speech-to-text, even though it’s set to Arabic.

I can try the methods you suggested, but I’m particularly interested in the "post-processing filtering" approach you mentioned. I’ve tried searching for documentation on this but haven’t found any relevant information. Could you share more details on how to implement this filtering method?

Thanks,

Sree
Kaushik Das 0 Reputation points

2025-09-08T05:38:13.2933333+00:00
We have been facing the exact same issue, also for Arabic languages. At certain times, even clearly spoken Arabic is getting detected as English. This completely breaks one of our use-cases of the STT API.
We've tried these things out, on top of what has been suggested above, without any resolution:

Setting the recognition language to Arabic through SpeechConfig

Setting the list of auto-detected languages to only Arabic languages only

Setting the flag SpeechServiceConnection_AutoDetectSourceLanguages to False
Any help in getting this resolved is appreciated. If we know it cannot be done with Azure's API, we may need to try another one for our app.
Tsova, Yuliia 0 Reputation points

2025-11-27T17:09:41.7066667+00:00
We have a similar situation. The documentation says ‘fr-FR’ isn’t a bilingual model, but when I speak English, it recognizes not only individual English words but whole sentences. Are there any updates on this?

Region: CanadaCentral

Language: fr-FR

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Why the Azure Speech Service keeps recognizing English words even though I've set the language strictly to Arabic (ar-AE) in my configuration?”

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