arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language · · 3 min read

Bulbul: A Dataset for Dialectal Arabic Speech Recognition

Mirrored from arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

Computer Science > Computation and Language

arXiv:2608.21950 (cs)
[Submitted on 22 Aug 2026]

Title:Bulbul: A Dataset for Dialectal Arabic Speech Recognition

View a PDF of the paper titled Bulbul: A Dataset for Dialectal Arabic Speech Recognition, by Ahmed Ashraf and 32 other authors
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Arabic automatic speech recognition (ASR) faces unique challenges due to diglossia, extensive regional dialect variation, and limited speech resources. Existing speech datasets often focus on single dialects or large-scale broadcast/web data, leading to trade-offs between linguistic diversity and annotation quality. We present BULBUL, a multi-dialect Arabic ASR dataset collected from 275 speakers in 11 Arab countries. BULBUL includes structured dialect and sub-dialect coverage, as well as recordings of classical Arabic and modern standard Arabic spoken by participants in their native dialectal accents to support accent-aware modeling. The quality of the recordings was ensured through a two-level human verification process. We further benchmark a range of recent ASR systems, establishing strong baselines for modern dialectal and accented Arabic ASR.
Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.21950 [cs.CL]
  (or arXiv:2608.21950v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.21950
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Ahmed Ashraf [view email]
[v1] Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:27:12 UTC (3,174 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

Current browse context:

cs.CL
< prev   |   next >
Change to browse by:

References & Citations

Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

loading...
Data provided by:

Bookmark

BibSonomy Reddit
Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Discussion (0)

Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.

Sign in →

No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.

More from arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language