Datasets:

SilencioNetwork
/

amharic-speech

Speakers: 57M+ (32M native, 25M+ L2)
Official language: Ethiopia (federal working language)
Geographic spread: Ethiopia (primarily central/northern regions)
Ge'ez script: Unique abugida writing system (syllabic alphabet)
Linguistic family: Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) - related to Arabic, Hebrew, Tigrinya
Cultural significance: Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, Ethiopian literature, music
Digital presence: Growing on social media, YouTube, Ethiopian tech ecosystem

Target Applications

This dataset is designed for:

Amharic ASR systems - Speech recognition for 57M+ speakers
Voice assistants - Ethiopian tech startups, mobile banking
TTS for Amharic - Text-to-speech with authentic Ethiopian pronunciation
Language learning apps - Pronunciation training for Amharic learners
Content moderation - Social media platforms operating in Ethiopia
Transcription services - Ethiopian media, podcasts, YouTube content
Government services - Voice-enabled public services in Ethiopia

Dataset Structure

amharic-speech/
└── data/
    ├── audio/              # 51 WAV files
    └── metadata.csv        # Speaker metadata & transcripts

Data Splits

Amharic (Ethiopia)

Files: 51 recordings
Dialect: Primarily Addis Ababa (standard Amharic)
Context: Natural spontaneous speech
Use case: General-purpose Amharic ASR, Ethiopian voice AI

Languages Sampled in This Dataset ✅

51 audio samples available for immediate download:

Amharic: 51 files (~23 minutes)

Full OTS Inventory Available 📊

This sample represents <0.19% of Silencio's complete Amharic speech inventory.

Amharic by Country:

Ethiopia: 1,058 hours, 102,378 recordings
American Samoa: 7 hours, 623 recordings
Faroe Islands: 3 hours, 653 recordings
Angola: 2 hours, 311 recordings
United States: 2 hours, 260 recordings
Algeria: 2 hours, 233 recordings
Albania: 2 hours, 83 recordings
Honduras: 1 hour, 234 recordings
+ 15 more countries (diaspora communities)

Total: 1,081+ hours across 105,000+ recordings

Contact us for access: sofia@silencioai.com

Key Features

✅ Native speakers - Authentic Ethiopian Amharic (Addis Ababa)
✅ Natural speech - Real conversational Amharic, not scripted
✅ Standard dialect - Addis Ababa variant (widely understood)
✅ Diverse topics - Daily life, opinions, technology, culture
✅ High audio quality - 48 kHz WAV format
✅ Rich metadata - Gender, dialect, emotions, transcriptions in Ge'ez script
✅ Ethical data collection - Consent-based, privacy-preserving

Use Cases

1. Amharic Speech Recognition

Build ASR systems for the 57M+ Amharic-speaking market in Ethiopia.

2. Voice Banking & Fintech

Power voice-enabled mobile banking in Ethiopia (M-BIRR, HelloCash, CBE Birr).

3. Amharic TTS

Train text-to-speech models with authentic Ethiopian Amharic pronunciation.

4. Content Moderation

Build speech detection for Ethiopian social media platforms and YouTube.

5. Government Services

Enable voice-based public services in Ethiopia (health, education, agriculture).

6. Voice Assistants

Develop Amharic-language voice assistants for Ethiopia's growing smartphone market.

Loading the Dataset

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load full Amharic dataset
dataset = load_dataset("SilencioNetwork/amharic-speech")

# Access samples
for sample in dataset['train']:
    audio = sample['audio']
    transcript = sample['transcript']
    dialect = sample['dialect']
    print(f"Transcript: {transcript}")
    print(f"Dialect: {dialect}")

Sample Metadata

Each recording includes:

file_name: Audio file path
id: Unique recording ID
gender: Speaker gender
location: Speaker location
mother_tongue: Native language (Amharic)
dialect: Regional variant (Ethiopia - Addis Ababa)
duration: Recording length (seconds)
emotions: Emotion labels (happy, excited, focused, relaxed, etc.)
language: Amharic
type_of_script: free_speech (spontaneous, unscripted)
transcript: Whisper-generated transcription (Ge'ez script)
script: Original prompt (question asked in Amharic)

Amharic Speech Characteristics

This dataset captures authentic Amharic speech features:

Ge'ez script phonology: Ejective consonants (ጠ, ቀ, ጨ), labialized consonants
Semitic features: Triconsonantal root system (like Arabic/Hebrew)
Complex morphology: Rich verb conjugation, case marking
Tone/stress: Stress-accent patterns
Natural prosody: Authentic rhythm, intonation
Real-world audio: Mobile recordings, natural environments

Market Context

Ethiopian Tech & Economy

57M+ Amharic speakers - Ethiopia's lingua franca
Ethiopia: 120M population (Africa's 2nd most populous), 25M+ internet users
Smartphone penetration: 45% and growing rapidly
Digital payments: Mobile money growing 40%+ annually
Tech ecosystem: Addis Ababa emerging as East African tech hub
YouTube: Ethiopian content exploding (music, news, education)

Why Amharic Matters

Underrepresented in AI: <0.01% of speech datasets despite 57M+ speakers
National language: Ethiopia's federal working language (government, education, media)
Ancient script: Ge'ez alphabet (one of Africa's oldest writing systems)
Growing digital economy: E-commerce, fintech, edtech booming in Ethiopia
Large youth population: 70% under 30 = massive smartphone adoption potential

Ge'ez Script

Amharic uses the Ge'ez script (also called Ethiopic script):

Abugida: Each character represents a consonant+vowel combination
7 vowel orders: ሀ ሁ ሂ ሃ ሄ ህ ሆ (ha, hu, hi, ha, he, hi, ho)
33 base consonants × 7 vowel orders = 231+ characters
Unique to Ethiopia/Eritrea: Used for Amharic, Tigrinya, Ge'ez (liturgical)
Left-to-right: Unlike Arabic/Hebrew (though same Semitic family)

ASR/TTS systems need to handle this unique script for written transcription.

Ethical Considerations

All data was collected with explicit informed consent from native Amharic speakers. Recordings contain general conversational topics only - no sensitive personal information.

Comparison to Other Datasets

Dataset	Language	Hours	Speakers	Natural?
LibriSpeech	English	1,000	2,484	❌ Read speech
Common Voice	Amharic	~20	Few	⚠️ Read sentences
Silencio Amharic	Amharic	1,081+	4,500+	✅ Spontaneous

This is the largest natural Amharic speech dataset available.

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research or commercial product, please cite:

@dataset{silencio_amharic_speech_2026,
  title={Amharic Speech Dataset},
  author={Silencio Network},
  year={2026},
  publisher={HuggingFace},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/SilencioNetwork/amharic-speech}
}

Related Datasets

African Languages Speech - 6 African languages (Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Amharic, Nigerian English)
Complete Voice AI Speech Dataset - 39 language/accent variants
Indian Languages Speech - 9 Indian languages
Yoruba Speech - 50 Yoruba samples

License

CC BY-NC 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)

✅ Free for research and non-commercial use
❌ Commercial use requires licensing (contact us)

About Silencio

Silencio is a voice AI data sourcing company with 2M+ contributors across 180+ countries. We provide scaled sourcing of real-world audio and speech data for AI labs, robotics companies, and enterprises building voice AI products.

🌐 silencioai.com
📧 sofia@silencioai.com

Tags: amharic, አማርኛ, ethiopian languages, east africa, ethiopia, geez script, ethiopic script, semitic languages, african languages, low-resource languages, speech recognition, asr, tts, voice ai, natural speech, spontaneous speech, ethiopian speech, addis ababa

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