Can Siri Be Bilingual?

When we discuss the most advanced virtual assistants, the list is incomplete without Siri. Although Siri can understand several different languages, users often find it struggling when it comes to two different languages at the same time. So, that begs the question, can Siri be bilingual?

No, Siri cannot be bilingual. Siri can speak multiple languages, but it cannot understand these languages at the same time. For instance, if you were to speak Spanish while your Siri was set to English, Siri would probably be focused on the English pronunciation.

So, let’s take the discussion further and try to see how Siri deals with multiple languages as the personal voice assistant market is only destined to turn bigger in the future.

Using Siri as a Bilingual Voice Assistant

As mentioned earlier, Siri can speak and understand multiple languages individually, but if you were to use them all at the same time, it would simply fail to recognize them.

For example, if you use Siri on your iPhone and speak English names, Siri won’t have a problem pronouncing them either.

Also read: Can Siri carry on a conversation?

However, if you were to call your friend “Miguel”, it won’t be able to recognize the name. It wouldn’t do so even if you were to pronounce the name correctly in Spanish. There is no workaround for this problem at the moment, which could be frustrating for the users.

However, you can set the pronunciation for specific names. Check out how here!

Siri and different accents

Another problem with the bilingual situation is that Siri struggles to understand certain languages due to differences in accents. As a result, users prefer only using the basic features and are not able to make full use of the assistant.

On the other hand, it should be kept in mind that teaching language and speech recognition is difficult. The primary reason behind this is the position of the words along with the suffixes and prefixes, based on which the computer bases its data to recognize your commands.

And on top of that, there are idioms, regional dialects, and many other factors that you have to program into the voice assistant for it to recognize just a single language. In simple words, different languages have different structures, which makes speech recognition difficult for voice assistants.

Learn more about how AI voice recognition works here.

Using Multiple Languages to Speak to Siri in India

Siri has made significant improvements when it comes to speaking Indian languages. Today, you can get directions, call someone or play music using English mixed with Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, etc. All you need to do is set the language Siri uses to “English (India)”. Then, ask something.

Also read: Can Siri detect languages?

If you want to make a call, you can say, “Mom ko call karo” or if you need to get home, you can say, “Mujhey ghar le chalo”. At the same time, you can use other Indian languages to give commands to Siri, such as “Coimbatore vaanilai enna”.

Concluding thoughts on whether Siri can be bilingual

In the end, it is a fact that Siri has a hard time with multiple languages at once. However, that will not remain the same. The developers are working to improve speech recognition, which means Siri will become better when it comes to dealing with different languages in the future. However, until then, users will have to make use of what is available.