Deepgram Expands Nova-3 with 10 New Languages and Multilingual Keyterm Prompting

Deepgram continues to expand the reach of Nova-3 with support for 10 additional monolingual languages and a major update to Nova-3 Multilingual. This release strengthens Nova-3’s position as one of the most advanced enterprise ASR models available today, delivering accuracy, adaptability, and linguistic precision across diverse language families, scripts, and speech behaviors.

This update brings Nova-3 into regions that challenge traditional ASR systems: languages with tonal variation, morphological complexity, and multi-script writing systems. Nova-3 handles these differences natively, preserving low latency and enterprise-grade accuracy across both batch and streaming modes.

Nova-3 now supports 10 new monolingual languages across Southern Europe, the Baltics, and Southeast Asia, along with a major upgrade to multilingual accuracy through Keyterm Prompting.

Earlier Nova-3 expansions focused on widely spoken European and Asian languages. This update represents the next phase, expanding into languages with distinct phonetic structures, scripts, and grammatical systems.

Greek (el)Characterized by inflectional morphology and variable word stress. Nova-3 improves modeling of vowel alternations and compound forms.

Romanian (ro)A Romance language with Slavic influence and strong case inflection. Nova-3 delivers better handling of endings, stress patterns, and mid-word vowel shifts.

Slovak (sk)Complex consonant clusters and rich case systems make Slovak challenging for general ASR. Nova-3 improves recognition of grammatical gender and declension patterns.

Catalan (ca)A hybrid between Spanish and French with vowel reduction and multiple dialects. Nova-3 strengthens recognition in conversational and broadcast speech.

Lithuanian (lt)A Baltic language with free stress and pitch accent. Nova-3 improves accuracy for rich morphology and long compounds.

Latvian (lv)Features vowel length contrast and consonant palatalization. Nova-3 increases clarity and keyword recall at varied speaking speeds.

Estonian (et)Combines vowel harmony with a three-length quantity system. Nova-3 improves segmentation and prosodic modeling in real-time scenarios.

Flemish (nl-BE)The Belgian variant of Dutch with regional phonetic shifts. Nova-3 enhances accuracy for colloquial and broadcast environments.

Swiss German (de-CH)A regional variant with extensive dialectal diversity. Nova-3 adapts more effectively to high-variance speech patterns.

Malay (ms)Combines Austronesian roots with English and Arabic loanwords. Nova-3 improves accuracy in multilingual settings and conversational audio.

Nova-3 continues to deliver measurable accuracy improvements over Nova-2, reducing Word Error Rate (WER) across both batch and streaming transcription. These gains hold across languages that vary widely in morphology, phonetics, and script complexity.

A clear trend continues to emerge: streaming transcription often achieves the strongest relative WER reductions, reinforcing Nova-3’s suitability for real-time applications such as voice agents, live captioning, and AI telephony systems.

• All ten languages show accuracy gains in either batch or streaming modes, with many improving in both.
• Malay, Romanian, and Slovak show some of the largest relative WER reductions, with improvements exceeding 20 percent in several cases.
• Streaming models outperform batch in roughly half of the languages, supporting Nova-3’s strength in conversational and low-latency workflows.
• Languages with complex morphology or less-standardized orthography such as Lithuanian, Latvian, and Slovak show robust gains, indicating improved handling of case systems, inflection, and compound formation.
• Swiss German and Flemish deliver strong improvements despite dialectal variation, demonstrating Nova-3’s adaptability across regional speech patterns.

Nova-3 Multilingual now supports Multilingual Keyterm Prompting, allowing developers to pass up to 500 tokens (about 100 words) to improve recognition of brand names, technical terminology, and domain-specific vocabulary across multilingual audio.

Nova-3 can now prioritize these terms across all supported languages in a single request. This is especially valuable for global enterprises in finance, healthcare, retail, and customer support.

No retraining is required. Nova-3 adapts instantly when you provide a list of key terms.

Nova-3 continues to evolve as a unified speech recognition foundation for global products and workflows. Instead of applying one pattern to every language, Nova-3 adapts to each language’s structure whether it involves tones, inflections, or non-Latin alphabets.

For developers and enterprise teams, this means:

• Consistent performance across diverse global markets
• Improved recognition in both conversational and formal speech
• Lower latency and fewer transcription errors in multilingual environments
• Flexible customization with Keyterm Prompting for domain-specific accuracy

Switching to any of the newly supported languages is simple. Update your API request with the appropriate language code:

curl --request POST \
  --header "Authorization: Token YOUR_DEEPGRAM_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: audio/wav" \
  --data-binary @youraudio.wav \
  "https://api.deepgram.com/v1/listen?model=nova-3&language=el"

Supported language codes:

el, lt, lv, ms, sk, ca, et, nl-BE, de-CH, ro

To use multilingual Keyterm Prompting, pass your list of key terms through the keyterms parameter in your Nova-3 Multilingual request.

With 10 new languages and multilingual Keyterm Prompting now live, Nova-3 continues its progress toward full global coverage. Accuracy, adaptability, and real-time reliability continue to improve across language families, scripts, and acoustic environments.

The goal is clear: voice AI that works everywhere, for everyone. Accurate in fast speech, resilient in noisy environments, and adaptable to local dialects and cultural context.

Sign up free and unlock $200 in credits, enough to power over 750 hours of transcription or 200 hours of speech-to-text across Nova-3’s growing language suite. Explore details on our Models & Languages Overview page and experience Nova-3’s world-class adaptability for yourself.