LINGUIST List 22.3904 Thu Oct 06 2011 Media: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not? Editor for this issue: Brent Woo <bwoolinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Brent Woo , iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not? Message 1: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not? Date: 06-Oct-2011 From: Brent Woo <bwoolinguistlist.org> Subject: iPhone voice recognition Siri doesn't have Spanish: Why not? E-mail this message to a friend 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) Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 06-Oct-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.