The New Siri Can Help Find “La casa de mi abuelita”

Written by Al Borde News Thursday, 21 June 2012 10:33

 

 

There are a lot of exciting enhancements to the iOS 6, over 200 of them to be exact. On Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, some of those enhancements were previewed. Among them are the integration of Yelp ratings to sort restaurant and theater search results, and Apple working with Facebook to easily post comments from third party apps, similar to what can now be done with Twitter. But perhaps one of the most exciting, for Spanish speakers at least, is the addition of the Spanish language to Siris’ vocabulary.

When Siri was first introduced last year as an iPhone 4S app that can assist in making calls, answer questions and make recommendations, it was all that was needed to convert non-Apple users over to the bitten-apple side. English (U.S.), French, German and Japanese speakers were able to perform actions by delegating requests to the cellular personal assistant. Now, with the recently announced enhancements, Apple will add Canadian French and English, Cantonese, Italian, French, German, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish to Siri’s vocab.

So calling “la casa de mi abuelita” (my grandma’s house) or “en donde queda Tacos Don Chente” (find the nearest Tacos Don Chente) would more than likely no longer get confused for “how about a web search for Jimena dissimulate” or “I can search the web for Indonda Canticles Enchanted”.

But according to Don Alonso Castro, a Costa Rica native and founder of iPhoneti.co, a journal that is part of the Ticoblogger platform, Siri’s Spanish is not yet fully developed to adapt to the varieties of Spanish language. Castro, who is one of the testers of the beta version of iOS 6, states that Siri “gets a bit confused when trying to discern between “correos” and “mensajes”, as in email and text messages”.  This is typical when going from the Spanish spoken in one country to another, not to mention the pronounciation, grammar and vocabulary used in specific areas. For now, three types of Spanish are available in the beta version. In Castro’s opinion, the Mexican Spanish option might be the best to use, in Costa Rica at least.

We hope the findings of Castro and other iOS Developer Program members are put to the test by Apple before releasing iOS 6, which is scheduled to be available to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users this fall as a free software update.

Other iOS 6 enhancements are the improvements to the Maps app, a new app called Passbook, Facebook integration, changes to phone calls and FaceTime, and improvements to Mail, Safari, and Photo Stream.

Preview iOS 6 here.

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