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Dear Aunt TUAW: Help Siri pronounce Dutch names

by Erica Sadun Oct 28th 2011 at 9:00AM

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I am a great fan of your articles on all Apple-related products.

I have a question for you about Siri. I am Dutch, live in Switzerland and work in a international company. How will this reflect on my Siri usage? Even with Voice Control I have a problem. My iPhone is setup in English (working language) but Dutch or Swiss/German names are not picked up well. So, did anyone try this out so far?

Thanks for an answer.

Your loving nephew,

Hester B.

Dear Hester,

Here's a quick answer, courtesy of the "Talking to Siri" eBook: You can enter phonetic names in the Contacts app. These help with both pronunciation and recognition.

Auntie created a contact for "Sergio Jones" in her address book, making sure to add a phonetic pronunciation field for the first name of "Ser hee yo" (Edit > Add field).

Sure enough, once added, Siri was able to interpret Auntie's request to "Call Ser hee yo" to the right contact.

The secret lies in using English-sounding phonemes. When Auntie pronounces Sergio correctly -- with rolled R, and the non-English-sounding "e" like "air" -- Siri will not pick it up. You need to English-ify the way you say it, so you better match what Siri expects.

Auntie's friend Sjoerd van Geffen regaled her this morning with hilarious stories about trying to make a C-64 pronounce the Dutch "eu" sound. For some names, Auntie is afraid, you're just going to have to sacrifice the proper vowels.

When talking to Siri with US-English set as your default language, you have to adapt the way you speak: unnaturally enunciated word endings, longer pauses between words than you're used to, and flatter English-y vowels. Try using "Choord" for "Sjoerd" and "Leak ah" for Lieke.

Your Mac offers a great way to build these up. Use the "say" command from the Terminal app's command line, e.g. "Say leak ah". Fortunately Siri is even a little better at the "sounds like" translations than "say" is.

Hugs,

Auntie T.



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Dear Aunt TUAW, I am a great fan of your articles on all Apple-related products. I have a question for you about Siri. I am Dutch,...
 

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7 Comments

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JonniKuest

Dear Aunt Tuaw,

So I use both iCloud and my work CardDAV accounts on my iPhone. My default Contacts account is the iCloud. Sometimes i forget this and create a work related contact card just using the phone app, or creating a new contact from a text. If it has been added to the iCloud group, and iOS 5 is supposed to enable wireless everything, how do i edit the contact & move someone from iCloud to my work CardDAV contacts group?
Also, I have some phonetic spellings in my Contact list already, and the phone seems to now sort them by the phonetic spelling rather than the spelling of the name. (e.g. I have my brother listed as AB, phonetically spelled Ay Bee, and instead of showing up at the top of the contacts list like he used to, he now shows up at the bottom of the A's). Just wondering if theres any setting i missed there.

Love your nephew,

jonni kuest

October 31 2011 at 3:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Roy

I've seen similar problems with English names and Dutch voice control. Alan becomes Ellen for example. Will be interesting to fool around with again probably, getting my 4S end of today.

October 31 2011 at 4:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fred De La Peña

I've found that entering a phonetic field for a name helped with the recognition but did nothing for pronunciation. In fact if I were to enter a value of Smith in the phonetic last name for a contact named Tom Brady, should Siri then pronounce the name as Tom Smith? it still pronounces it as Tom Brady.

October 28 2011 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Fred De La Peña's comment
JonniKuest

true. i've found it to usually still pronounce it incorrectly. but i honestly don't care how siri says the name, as long as it understands me when i say the name and actually calls the right person, unlike voice control where i used to have to repeat the same name, X for example, about 15 times and cancel about 8 incorrect calls. lol

October 31 2011 at 3:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Christopher Ray Mill

Why couldn't they make it possible for people – like speakers of most languages using the Latin alphabet, who will be familiar with standard IPA phonetic characters – to actually enter *real, exact* phonetic transcriptions for Siri, instead of ramshackle approximations using arbitrary English spelling approximations? That should be one of the easiest things to implement: exact IPA to sound pairings – no need for all the complexity of programming mappings between English spellings and pronunciations.

October 28 2011 at 1:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Robert Jan Schutten

Using "leakuh" for "Lieke" & "shoord" for "Sjoerd" sound way closer to the Dutch pronunciation. At least according to the say command on my mac :-)

October 28 2011 at 12:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
shippster

Can't you just tap the microphone when entering the phoenetic name and say it - then let Siri figure out the phenomes? That has worked for me. This areticle does not make it clear how eary that can be.
Maybe I am missing something and that won't work.

October 28 2011 at 12:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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