How do you dictate in German?

Dictating in German takes two settings and one check. Turn on Dictation and add a German language, then press the dictation shortcut in a text field and speak. The check is the one that matters: German dictation makes its most common mistakes on long compound words and on the capital letter that every noun takes, so read the first paragraph back before you rely on the rest.

Add German on a Mac in Keyboard settings

Dictation on a Mac is turned on from the Dictation section of Keyboard settings ¹. The language is set in the same place.

1. Open Keyboard settings and select Dictation.
2. Click Edit next to Languages, then select a German entry ². Apple's main Dictation list includes German (Austria), German (Germany) and German (Switzerland) ³. Pick the variant that matches the spelling you write.
3. Click in a text field and start dictation with your shortcut. If you have more than one dictation language, press the Globe key and choose German ⁴.

Apple's on-device Dictation list for the Mac names German (Switzerland) ⁵. If you need dictation without a connection, check that list on your own Mac for the variant you use.

Add German in Windows 11, which lists one German with no region

Windows keeps German as one voice typing entry, so you do not choose a country. To add it, select Start, then Settings, then Time & language, then Language & region ⁶. Choose Add a language and search for German. Windows then lists German as one language with no regional variant ⁷.

To start voice typing, press the Windows key and H on a hardware keyboard, with the cursor in a text box ⁸. Voice typing uses online recognition, so the PC must be connected to the internet ⁹.

Compound words and noun capitals are the errors to check

German joins words into long compounds. Milde and Köhn found that compounds unknown to the language model are quite frequent in German, because German is a very productive language ¹⁰. When the recognizer does not know a compound, the error is counted as at least two errors, so one spoken word can cost two mistakes ¹¹. That study used an open-source recognizer from 2018, so newer engines may do better. You still need to check.

The published figure for German comes from a read-speech test. Whisper large-v2 had a word error rate of 4.5 percent on German in the FLEURS benchmark ¹². Among the six European languages in our guide, only Italian and Portuguese score lower on that test ^{13 14}. A read sentence is easier than a dictated draft, so expect more errors in your own writing, and check how word error rate is measured.

Punctuation needs its own check. On a Mac, the spoken word Fragezeichen gives a question mark and Ausrufezeichen gives an exclamation mark ¹⁵. The question on German punctuation commands lists the rest.

It depends: Swiss German needs a separate check

If you speak Swiss German, Standard German dictation is the wrong test. Swiss German is a family of dialects, and Whisper large-v3, used without training on Swiss German, had a word error rate of 23.0 percent on the STT4SG-350 test set ¹⁶. The authors conclude that Whisper can be used for Swiss German without adaptation when the output you want is Standard German ¹⁷. Their result does not show that it writes dialect spelling. Choose German (Switzerland) where your list has it, and read the question on Swiss German speech recognition before you rely on it.

What to do before you rely on German dictation

1. Add the German variant you write in, not a general one, and confirm it in the list.
2. Dictate about 150 words on your own topic. Include a few long compound nouns, a list of nouns and a question.
3. Read the result aloud and mark each error: a compound split in two, a lowercase noun, or a wrong mark.
4. Fix the pattern you see most often, either by editing or by saying the punctuation command, then dictate a second sample on a different topic.

For the full guide, see speech to text in French, German, Russian and more. The overview of dictation languages, accents and voice translation covers the other languages. For the other large European languages, read the question on dictating in French and the question on voice typing in Russian.