22.3904, Media: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not?

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-3904. Thu Oct 06 2011. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 22.3904, Media: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not?

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1)
Date: 06-Oct-2011
From: Brent Woo [bwoo at linguistlist.org]
Subject: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not?


-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:17:43
From: Brent Woo [bwoo at linguistlist.org]
Subject: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not?

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=22-3904.html&submissionid=4533604&topicid=21&msgnumber=1
 
Fox News reports that strangely the new iPhone speech recognition 
assistant, Siri, does not come with Spanish support, even though it has 
English, French, and German support. Siri, which is still in beta development 
stage, understands a range of commands that can be used to operate the 
phone.

Ariel Coro, founder of Tu tecnologia, reports that: "Spanish is a fairly difficult 
language to interpret for natural voice recognition since there are many 
variations which sound completely different to a voice recognition software."

Coro adds that Spanish support would likely require training the software, a 
capability not included in Siri at the moment. 

Although the confusion at Apple's neglect is understandable, since Spanish is 
not an insignificant language especially in the United States, the arguments 
in the article justifying it are questionable. Spanish is just as geographically 
widespread as English and French, and Apple went to the lengths to provide 
United Kingdom and Australian versions of the English software. 

Moreover, what are these "many variations" unique to Spanish that are so 
difficult for voice recognition software? Is it true that Spanish naturally difficult 
for software to interpret? 

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2011/10/05/apples-siri-
iphone-4s-app-can-speak-to-in-different-languages-but-not-in/?
test=faces#ixzz1a1IUp3gC 


Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)





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