Regional speech from Groningen to Maastricht
Speakers from the Randstad, Brabant, Limburg and the northeast all write the same Dutch, but they do not sound the same. The soft g of Brabant and Limburg is no problem for the model. Neither is the Hague or Rotterdam accent on clear audio.
Dialects with their own vocabulary are harder. Gronings, Drents and Twents belong to the Low Saxon group and differ from standard Dutch in words and grammar. Limburgish is similar. With Dutch selected, those passages are written as rough standard Dutch, so plan to review them by ear. Older speakers in family recordings are more likely to use full dialect than younger ones.
Fast Randstad speech in a busy office or café can also lose short words. A phone close to the speaker in a quiet room helps more than anything you change afterwards.
Surinamese Dutch and the Dutch of speakers with Moroccan or Turkish roots are written in the same standard spelling. Street slang that mixes Sranan, Arabic or Turkish words into Dutch, common among younger speakers in the big cities, is where you can expect the most odd words. Check those lines if exact wording matters.
Frisian, English and other languages in the Netherlands
Frisian is an official language in Fryslân, but there is no Frisian option. With Dutch selected, Frisian speech comes out as distorted Dutch, and English or German settings do not help. For a recording mostly in Frisian, use the transcript only as a guide to timestamps and type the text.
English is the language of many master's programmes and international teams. A lecture taught in English should be run with English selected, even at a Dutch university. A team meeting that drifts into English when a colleague joins is best run as whichever language fills most of the time.
Turkish, Arabic, Polish and Papiamento are common in Dutch homes. Turkish, Arabic and Polish are options in the menu. Moroccan Darija comes out rougher than standard Arabic, and Tarifit and Papiamento have no option.
Auto-detect is in the menu, but a short Dutch clip can be taken for German or Afrikaans. Set the language yourself, and when a file changes language in long blocks, split it and upload each part with its own setting.
Typical recordings made in the Netherlands
Upload MP3, M4A, WAV or a video file, record in the browser, or paste a YouTube link. Audio is taken out of video automatically.
For council and works council meetings, a phone in the centre of the table works if people speak one at a time. Large lecture halls benefit from recording near the front or from the lecturer's microphone feed. Speakers who join a hybrid meeting through a laptop speaker usually come out weaker than the people in the room.
- Hoorcolleges and werkcolleges recorded for revision.
- Interviews for a scriptie or a research project, exported to Word.
- Meetings of an ondernemingsraad, medezeggenschapsraad or VvE, written up as notulen.
- Gemeenteraad sessions and local broadcasts posted online.
- Podcasts that need Dutch subtitles, and family recordings with grandparents.
Privacy note for the Netherlands
Dutch universities and employers often check AVG requirements before staff upload interviews. Files are never used to train AI models. Beyond that, this page makes no claim about data location or certification. If your privacy officer needs those, ask before uploading personal data, and consider pseudonymising names in the editor.
From transcript to notulen or subtitles
The player highlights each line as it plays. Click a line to hear it and correct it. Export TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT or CSV, with timestamps and speaker names on or off. Speaker labels are on paid plans or with a Minute Pack. For an English reading, use the Google Translate link or the AI prompt export with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.