Anyone notice siri no longer recognizes common foreign idoms anymore? Either in TTS or Ask Siri… The only concrete example I have is recognizing “Croque Monsieur” since my love for hot ham sandwiches has spanned the ages… but I feel like there’s something more nefarious at work here.
It feels like used to be able to ask for a info about random foreign words and it would at least trigger a web search for something phonetically similar, which would often get me the translation I was after. But lately* the TTS engine is militantly transforming everything into English. Obviously this is more subtle and open to other interpretations, but for example I just asked her what “hikikomori” were which got interpreted as “Hickam Morty,” with top hits for the show Rick and Morty.
Noice :-) I’m going to have to work on my pronunciation then 😳
Based on what little I know of Japanese, the first syllable isn’t supposed to rhyme with ‘Rick’, but should rhyme with ‘weak’.
Most eastern languages are very particular about vowel sounds which is what might be throwing Siri off. I think English probably stands out among other languages for playing fast and loose with how vowels are pronounced. Results in some unique challenges for sure.
I’m honestly very impressed with the speech recognition. I played with dragon dictate years ago when it needed “about 2 weeks” worth of training to achieve 98% accuracy.
Thanks for the tips. I think I’m going to see if I can get it to work — with a little practice.