How to Voice Type in Mixed Languages on Mac (Hinglish, Banglish, Spanglish)

You can voice type in two languages in the same sentence, but only with an app that was built for it. Apple's dictation, Google Docs voice typing and most other apps listen in one language at a time. If you say "kal meeting hai", the English word is dropped or replaced with the Hindi word that sounds closest. Lipo, our voice typing app for Mac, recognizes both languages in the sentence and then writes the result in the script of your main language, the way it would appear in print. You set your main language once and speak the way you normally do.

Linguists call this code-switching. It means mixing two languages in one sentence, for example Hindi with English words in it. We build Lipo, and this is the feature we care about most, because most of the people we built it for don't speak only one language at work.

Why do voice typing apps break on mixed languages?

The reason is that they were designed around a single setting called "language".

A speech to text model (the technology that turns spoken audio into written words) has to decide which sounds match which words. With one language, that is already a hard problem. If you tell it "the next sentence might be Hindi, might be English, and might switch four times," the number of possible answers becomes enormous. So most apps don't try. They take the language you set and interpret every sound as that language. When you say the English word "presentation" inside a Bangla sentence, the app looks for the closest Bangla word, and the result usually means nothing.

The models have improved. Newer multilingual models can recognize a language switch in the middle of a sentence, and the part of Lipo that turns speech into words does this. The step after recognition is still hard, and this is where most apps that claim "code-switching support" fail. How should the English word be written in Bengali or Devanagari script (the alphabets that Bangla and Hindi are written in)? Should "meetingটা" keep its Bangla suffix attached with no space? Is "ok" an English word, or has it become a Bangla word? These are questions about how people write, not about how the sounds are heard. A model only learns them if someone cared enough to teach it.

Which mixed languages does this apply to?

Any pair. These are some common examples:

• Hinglish (Hindi + English). "कल client के साथ meeting है।" It is probably the most widely spoken mixed language in the world.
• Banglish (Bangla + English). "Presentationটা ready করে রাখো।" Notice the Bangla suffix attached to the English word.
• Spanglish (Spanish + English). "Mándame el report antes del lunch." It is common in Texas, California, Florida and Puerto Rico.
• Taglish (Tagalog + English). "Na-send mo na ba yung file?" This is normal office speech in the Philippines.
• Arabizi / Arabic + English. "الـ deadline يوم الخميس." Arabic runs right to left and the English word inside it runs left to right, so the app must also place the text cursor correctly.
• We also hear about Urdu + English, Tamil + English, Malay + English, French + Arabic in North Africa, and German + English in Berlin tech offices.

If you speak one of these, you already know what goes wrong. You dictate a sentence, the app writes the one English word wrong, and you fix it by hand. After three sentences you go back to typing.

How to voice type in two languages with Lipo

There's no special "bilingual mode" to turn on. You set your main language and speak.

1. Install Lipo (macOS 15.2 or later) from uselipo.com. The 7-day trial is free, and no credit card is needed.
2. Under Dictation, then Language, pick the language you speak most of the sentence in. Hindi for Hinglish, Bangla for Banglish, Spanish for Spanglish. This tells Lipo which script to write in and which language's grammar to follow.
3. Click into any text field (any place where you can type) and hold the right Option key, the default shortcut key.
4. Speak the sentence exactly as you would say it to a coworker. Don't slow down for the English words or switch to an American accent. The model expects a Hindi-accented "meeting" inside a Hindi sentence.
5. Let go of the key. Lipo pastes the sentence in Devanagari, English words included, after removing the filler words (words like "um" and "uh" that people say while thinking).

What you said (Hinglish):

"हाँ तो, कल client के साथ meeting है, presentation... मतलब deck ready रखना।"

What Lipo pasted:

कल क्लाइंट के साथ मीटिंग है, डेक रेडी रखना।

What you said (Spanglish):

"Oye, mándame el report antes del lunch, eh, que tengo call con el cliente a la una."

What Lipo pasted:

Oye, mándame el report antes del lunch, que tengo call con el cliente a la una.

Notice that "presentation... मतलब deck" became just डेक. You changed your mind out loud, and Lipo kept your second choice. Lipo respects self-corrections like this. The Spanglish sentence stayed Spanglish, because Spanish and English share an alphabet, so nothing needed rewriting in another script.

Which script does the English word end up in?

The English word is written in the script of your dictation language. Lipo's rule is to write the sentence the way it would be printed.

For Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, Tamil and Arabic, Lipo first recognizes the English words as English, then writes them in the native script: मीटिंग, ক্লায়েন্ট, ڈیڈ لائن, ரிப்போர்ட், ديدلاين. This is transliteration: writing a word from one language in the letters of another. The sentence stays in one script and reads the way a newspaper or a formal email in that language reads. The transliteration itself is not the important part, because Apple's dictation transliterates too. The important part is that Lipo heard the word correctly as "client" first, so you get ক্লায়েন্ট and not a Bangla word that sounds similar.

If you want to keep a word in English letters, for example a product name, a technical term or a brand, add it to the custom dictionary spelled the way you want it. Lipo will then keep that spelling in every language.

For Spanish, French, German, Tagalog and other languages written in the Latin alphabet, there is no script question. The cleanup step (the second step that removes filler words, adds punctuation and fixes grammar) only has to get two things right: leave your English words as English instead of "correcting" them into the nearest Spanish word, and keep the accents where they belong.

Suffixes are the hardest case. Bangla and Hindi attach their suffixes directly to English words, so you get "presentationটা," "meetingवाला," "clientদের." Lipo writes those as one word, প্রেজেন্টেশনটা, with no space.

Can I translate a mixed sentence?

Yes, and this is where mixed-language dictation becomes very useful.

Turn on translation in Lipo's Translation tab, set the output language to English, and dictate your Hinglish or Banglish as usual. Lipo writes down the mix, cleans it, then translates the cleaned sentence into plain English. The English words you said are already English, so Lipo keeps them. It translates the Hindi or Bangla parts around them.

You said (Banglish, messy): "কালকে client এর সাথে meeting আছে, না না পরশু, আর ওই presentationটা... presentationটা ready করে রাখিস, boss দেখতে চাইসে।"

Lipo pasted (output English): The client meeting is the day after tomorrow. Have the presentation ready, the boss wants to see it.

The correction "কালকে, না না পরশু" became "the day after tomorrow." The dialect word "চাইসে" was understood as "wants." Nothing was translated word by word. Lipo understood the whole sentence first, then wrote it in English.

For many bilingual people this is the most important feature. In the language you grew up with, you can be precise, funny and polite. In your second language, you often sound plain and simple. With Lipo you speak the mix you actually think in, and the English keeps your tone.

Most people set this up with a separate translation shortcut key. One key gives them Banglish for the family group chat, and another key gives them English for the client. Our guide to how to dictate in one language and type in another explains the setup. Translation is included in every plan, and mixed-language dictation without translation is unlimited. Plans and prices are on the pricing page.

Do Wispr Flow, Willow Voice, Aqua Voice or superwhisper handle mixed languages?

Wispr Flow, Willow Voice, Aqua Voice and superwhisper all support dozens of languages, and all four have some form of auto-detect, which means the app guesses which language you are speaking. Auto-detect is not the same as code-switching, and their own documentation is clear about the difference.

The language counts also hide something. "100+ languages" is a list of vocabularies, not a promise of accuracy. When we tested these apps with mixed sentences in Bangla, Hindi and Arabic, English was excellent in all of them, and the other language in the sentence was where they failed. Lipo puts the same accuracy work into its less-spoken languages as into English, because a mixed sentence only comes out right if both languages in it are heard correctly.

Wispr Flow's help center says it "picks a language at the start of each dictation session and transcribes the whole segment in that language," and adds, "switch languages mid-sentence and Flow transcribes the entire segment in one language." That is an honest description of detection once per session, and it is the same design most apps use. It works if you speak Spanish in one message and English in the next. It doesn't work for "mándame el report antes del lunch." Lipo detects the language within the sentence, and it is the only one of the five that will then translate the mixed sentence into a single output language.

What about Apple dictation and Google Docs?

Apple's Mac dictation is single-language. You can add several dictation languages in settings, but it listens in one language at a time and does not switch in the middle of a sentence. In practice, English words inside a Hindi dictation are often heard as Hindi words. Bangla isn't supported at all.

Google Docs voice typing is also single-language. It works only inside a Google Doc in Chrome, and it adds no punctuation unless you say the punctuation out loud.

Gboard on Android is quite good at Hinglish and Banglish, which is why so many people already write mixed-language messages by talking into their phone. We're trying to give you the same thing on your computer, without the phone.

Tips that make a real difference

Speak in whole sentences. The cleanup step uses the whole sentence to decide which words belong to which language. Two-word pieces give it very little to work with.

You don't need to mark the switch. You don't need to pause before an English word or pronounce it differently. Talk normally.

Add names to the dictionary first. Personal names are the number one source of errors in every language. In a mixed sentence, a name can be written in the other script in a way you would never write it. Five minutes in the dictionary fixes most of this.

Use the built-in microphone or a wired headset rather than AirPods. Compressed audio loses the fine consonant detail that helps the model tell a Bangla word from a similar English word.

If a sentence comes out wrong in the same way every time, send it to us. Real mixed-language sentences from real users are exactly what improves this.

Frequently asked questions

Can voice typing handle two languages in one sentence?

Only some apps can. Apple dictation and Google Docs voice typing work in one language at a time. Lipo recognizes mixed sentences (Hinglish, Banglish, Spanglish, Taglish and others) and writes them in the script of your main language, the way they would appear in print.

How do I voice type Hinglish on a Mac?

Set Lipo's dictation language to Hindi and speak normally. The sentence comes out in Devanagari, with the English words recognized and written in Devanagari letters (मीटिंग, क्लाइंट), and the filler words removed.

How do I voice type Banglish on a Mac?

Set Lipo's dictation language to Bangla. English words like "meeting" or "client" are recognized and written in Bengali script (মিটিং, ক্লায়েন্ট), and Bangla suffixes are attached to them as one word. Apple dictation doesn't support Bangla at all.

Does Spanglish voice typing work?

Yes. Set Spanish as the dictation language and speak. Lipo keeps English words as English instead of changing them to the nearest Spanish word, and it keeps the Spanish accents.

Do I need to switch languages in settings each time?

No. Pick the language you speak for most of the sentence and leave it. Lipo recognizes the switches within the sentence.

Can I translate a Hinglish or Banglish sentence into English?

Yes. Turn on translation with English as the output. Lipo cleans the mixed sentence first, then translates it, so the English reads naturally. Translation is included in every plan.

Does Apple dictation support code-switching?

No. It listens in one language at a time, and English words inside a Hindi or Spanish sentence are often heard as the wrong word.