# Dictating in another language

Set the language you speak, and understand why the words you teach Blabb belong to that language.

Blabb needs to know which language you are speaking before it can hear you properly. English is the
default.

Settings → **Writing style → Language**.

## Choosing a language

The list offers the languages the speech model can hear. The model Blabb ships with hears 14 of
them; the list in the app is the accurate one, so pick from what is in front of you rather than
from any list written down elsewhere.

It is one language at a time. Blabb does not switch mid-sentence, and it does not detect that you
have changed language on your own — if you dictate in a second language, change the setting first.

## Your saved words belong to a language

A word you teach Blabb belongs to the language you were dictating in when you taught it.

The reason is that a spelling which is right in one language is wrong in another. A correction you
made while speaking English should not fire while you are speaking German and reach for a word that
happens to sound similar. So the correction applies where you taught it and nowhere else.

The [saved words](/docs/cleanup-styles/saved-words/) list opens on your current language, because
that is the set actually in play. A filter lets you look at the others.

If you dictate in two languages regularly, expect to teach some words twice — once in each.

## What cleanup does with it

The cleanup styles work on the transcript in whatever language it is in — except the few the cleanup model does not cover, where Blabb types your words exactly as recognized and says so in Settings. The spoken layout
commands and the specialist vocabularies were built and tested in English, so treat their behaviour
in another language as unproven rather than promised.

## See also

- [Teach Blabb your words](/docs/cleanup-styles/saved-words/) — and why each word is language-bound.
- [When words come out wrong](/docs/accuracy/when-words-come-out-wrong/) — before blaming the
  language setting, check the microphone.