Many of you reading this may think it is one of those moronically obvious iOS tips that is just a waste of everyone’s time. However, if like me, you have been using Siri since its unveiling in iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S, that may not be the case. Originally, Siri’s language and speaking accent were linked. This was pretty inconvenient for anyone looking for any variety because, if you changed your language, Siri would also listen for the same accent in return. Doing this would greatly reduce the accuracy of Siri, which was, well….
Times and features change in iOS, just like in everything else in life. Fast forward to today, and we now have the ability to change these two settings separately. This allows you to change Siri’s accent and gender based on your preference, rather than what language you need Siri to recognize. In iOS 11, just head to Settings-Siri & Search to check it out.
As you can see here, the Language and Siri Voice are now separated. Again, that means you have the choice of any accent that may be tied to your language. For an English speaker, like myself, that means a choice between Male and Female versions of American, Australian, and British accents.
Not bad. If you are running the iOS 12 beta, it gets even better. Apple has added Irish and South African accents for English to round things out a bit more.
Who knows? Maybe New Zealand, Scotland, and the Caribbean will show up at some point to finish things off.
As for languages, there are MANY to choose from. 
I included the screenshot above because it shows that there are more accents available for languages than for the voices that Siri speaks with. As you can see, Singapore, India, and Canada are added here, even though they don’t appear as voices. Siri currently supports 20 languages, with multiple forms of Chinese, Dutch, English (as seen above), French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Now if Siri could just understand each of these languages a little better. I know, I know- low blow. That’s also a different subject for a different day.
© jhrogersii for iPad Insight, 2018. |
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Post tags: ios 11, iOS 12, siri