AudioChinese dialects

Henan Dialect Speech Database

About this dataset

1. Product Overview

The Henan Dialect Speech Database contains a total of 450 hours of recordings. The recorded language is the Henan dialect, and the recordings were made in Henan Province, China. A total of 262 speakers were invited to record using their mobile phones in quiet environments. This database has undergone professional proofreading, achieving a word accuracy rate of over 96%, making it suitable for research in areas such as voiceprint recognition and speech recognition.

2. Recording Corpus

Transcription Results

The read‑aloud portion of this database consists of conversational texts, including everyday interactions such as greetings among friends and family, communication between colleagues, and customer service inquiries. Each speaker recorded a different number of texts, with the following distribution:

Number of Sentences · Number of Speakers · Percentage (100%)

0–500 · 141 · 53.82%

500–1,000 · 48 · 18.32%

1,000–1,500 · 34 · 12.98%

1,500–2,000 · 22 · 8.40%

2,000–2,500 · 6 · 3.05%

2,500–3,000 · 8 · 2.29%

3,000–5,000 · 3 · 1.15%

Corpus Processing

 De-identification: Removal of politically sensitive, personally private, pornographic, or violent content.  Removal of special symbols such as <, >, [, ], ~, /, \, =, except for numeric strings.  Exclusion of content containing languages other than Chinese and English.  Standardization of text format.

3. Speaker Information

Gender Distribution

The database includes a total of 262 speakers—35 males and 227 females.

Gender · Male · Female · Total

Percentage · 13.36% · 86.64% · 100%

Age Distribution

The age distribution of the speakers is as follows: A (18–25 years old); B (26–40 years old); C (41–50 years old); D (51+ years old). Age group percentages are shown below:

A · 18–25 years old · 172 · 65.65%

B · 26–40 years old · 73 · 27.86%

C · 41–50 years old · 16 · 6.11%

D · 51+ years old · 1 · 0.38%

Total · 262 · 100% ·

4. Data Recording

Recording Environment

A quiet indoor setting, free from echoes and other voices.

Recording Equipment

Common smartphones such as Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, etc., were used. Data was stored in 16 kHz, 16-bit WAV files.

Recording Method

For the read‑aloud portions, speakers recorded via a mobile app in a quiet room, reading naturally without rote memorization.

Recording Duration Distribution

Speakers randomly selected texts and read them aloud; individual recording durations ranged from at least one minute up to a maximum of 20 hours. Specific duration distributions are as follows:

Duration (seconds) · Number of Speakers · Percentage (100%)

0–5,000 · 157 · 59.92%

5,000–10,000 · 46 · 17.56%

10,000–15,000 · 32 · 12.21%

15,000–20,000 · 15 · 5.73%

20,000–25,000 · 8 · 3.05%

25,000–55,000 · 4 · 1.53%

5. Speech Data Transcription

Transcribers render spoken audio into written text, striving to ensure that the transcription accurately reflects the original pronunciation. General guidelines include:

The transcribed text must exactly match the spoken audio, with no extra words, missing words, or errors.
Numbers should be written in Chinese characters—for example, “one two three” rather than “123.” Be sure to distinguish between “one” and “yao,” and between “two” and “liang.”
English pronunciations in the audio should be rendered in corresponding Chinese characters or left in English. Specific cases include:

All letters or words in URLs should be capitalized—for example, “www” becomes “threeW dot A B C dot com.”
English words within the audio should be transcribed entirely in lowercase.
English letters within the audio should be transcribed entirely in uppercase.
Capitalized proper nouns—such as CEO, NBA—should remain capitalized without spaces.

The completeness of annotations must match the actual pronunciation; no omissions are permitted.
Except for traditional expressions (e.g., “one week,” “one year,” “the second day of the lunar month”), specialized terms (e.g., “ten years of sharpening a sword”), and vague phrases (e.g., “a hundred or so,” “three or four”), all other data should be expressed using Arabic numerals.

6. Data File Directory

Directory Structure

The directory tree structure is as follows:

│Data Directory Structure
└─DOC (Textual Description Files)
││├─content.txt (List of Transcribed Texts)
││├─spk-info.txt (Speaker Information Table)
└─SPEECHDATA (Audio Folder)
││├─H001 (Speaker ID)
│││├─H001W000001.wav (Audio File)