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A Look at the Number of Languages Popular Voice Assistant Services Support (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Contrary to popular Anglocentric belief, English isn't the world's most-spoken language by total number of native speakers -- nor is it the second. In fact, the West Germanic tongues rank third on the list, followed by Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, and Russian. (Mandarin and Spanish are first and second, respectively.) Surprisingly, Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana recognize only a relatively narrow slice of these.
Google Assistant: With the addition of more than 20 new languages in January, the Google Assistant took the crown among voice assistants in terms of the number of tongues it understands. It's now conversant in 30 languages in 80 countries, up from 8 languages and 14 countries in 2017.
Apple's Siri: Apple's Siri, which until January had Google Assistant beat in terms of sheer breadth of supported languages, comes in a close second. Currently, it supports 21 languages in 36 countries and dozens of dialects for Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Microsoft's Cortana: Cortana, which made its debut at Microsoft's Build developer conference in April 2013 and later came to Windows 10, headphones, smart speakers, Android, iOS, Xbox One, and even Alexa via a collaboration with Amazon, might not support as many languages as Google Assistant and Siri. Still, it has come a long way in six years.
Amazon's Alexa: Alexa might be available on over 150 products in 41 countries, but it understands the fewest languages of any voice assistant: English (Australia, Canada, India, UK, and US), French (Canada, France), German, Japanese (Japan), and Spanish (Mexico, Spain).
Samsung's Bixby: Samsung's Bixby -- the assistant built into the Seoul, South Korea company's flagship and midrange Galaxy smartphone series and forthcoming Galaxy Home smart speaker -- is available in 200 markets globally but only supports a handful of languages in those countries: English, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Korean, and Spanish.
Google Assistant: With the addition of more than 20 new languages in January, the Google Assistant took the crown among voice assistants in terms of the number of tongues it understands. It's now conversant in 30 languages in 80 countries, up from 8 languages and 14 countries in 2017.
Apple's Siri: Apple's Siri, which until January had Google Assistant beat in terms of sheer breadth of supported languages, comes in a close second. Currently, it supports 21 languages in 36 countries and dozens of dialects for Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Microsoft's Cortana: Cortana, which made its debut at Microsoft's Build developer conference in April 2013 and later came to Windows 10, headphones, smart speakers, Android, iOS, Xbox One, and even Alexa via a collaboration with Amazon, might not support as many languages as Google Assistant and Siri. Still, it has come a long way in six years.
Amazon's Alexa: Alexa might be available on over 150 products in 41 countries, but it understands the fewest languages of any voice assistant: English (Australia, Canada, India, UK, and US), French (Canada, France), German, Japanese (Japan), and Spanish (Mexico, Spain).
Samsung's Bixby: Samsung's Bixby -- the assistant built into the Seoul, South Korea company's flagship and midrange Galaxy smartphone series and forthcoming Galaxy Home smart speaker -- is available in 200 markets globally but only supports a handful of languages in those countries: English, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Korean, and Spanish.
"A Look at How Many Languages You Can Conveniently Submit Yourself to Corporate Surveillance in"
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Since October 2018 Alexa supports Italian language ad well.
Contrary to popular Anglocentric belief, English isn't the world's most-spoken language by total number of native speakers
Correct, it simply has the most speakers, period.
It's worth pointing out that English is the second most spoken language in the world and arguably the most widely spoken language since the only one with more speakers is Mandarin Chinese which is predominantly only spoken in one country that has a less-than-open market. It is also the language of three of the G7 countries.
These are probably more relevant facts than the total number of native speakers if you are making money by selling a product. This is undoubtedly why French, German, Italian and Japanese, which are the languages of the other G7 members, also feature prominantly. Given that the current state of voice recognition is that it doesn't work very well for supported languages it is hardly surprising that it has not been rolled out beyond those languages with the largest and most accessible economies.
Interesting that Alexa supports English in the U.K. (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, etc.), but not the Irish Republic.
"Samsung's Bixby: Samsung's Bixby [...] only supports a handful of languages in those countries: English, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Korean, and Spanish."
AFAIK, until recently, Bixby (the voice assistant) did not understand German, French, Italian or Spanish. This was quite a letdown for us european customers. Has this changed recently ?
Zero!
^
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
Don't worry you aren't missing anything, I would argue it also doesn't understand English. But I like most people have turned the fucking thing off on my phone, Bixby and the Bixby button are by far the worst pieces of shit Samsung has foisted on its userbase.
English is the language of winners.
The rest are the languages of developing world slime that don't have $2c to rub together, so no-one cares.
My company looked at expanding into India but decided against it as there's no money there.
yeah, yeah..before you start crapping on about GDP blah blah..again, who cares ?
They shit in the streets !
and is the language you code in (statements and commands of any mainstream language are english)
Some of us (and not all of those are cats) do code in Perl, you insensitive clod !
(Now switching the keyboard back into punctuation mode, I've got some work to do).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The article speaks about *assistants*. Things supposed to be helping non-technical people (even if we /.ers know that the real purpose is to monetize private information).
Most of the people would probably prefer use their everyday language in which they the most fluent when speaking to their accessory, not a secondary language that they have some knowledge of (because it's a popular one in lots of fields) but that they don't use frequently every day.
That's even what the /. summary attempts to point out, yes some knowledge of English is frequent, but what people actually speak in everyday is completely different.
If Google, Apple and co want to have a chunk of the giant juicy Chinese market, they better sell a service that can be use in language that these people are fluent in (Mandarin. Cantonese, etc.) not some language that some fraction of the population had some lessons of back when they were teens, and never had any actually real-world experience of and have barely uttered a single word there of.
Imagine if your assistant could only speak Spanish / German / French / whatever other language you learned in high school and never spoke again. Would you be as eager to use it ?
That's why "native speaker" is much more relevant in the specific contact of TFA rather than "has some knowledge of English".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Alexa speaks Italian since October 2018.
Read the summary very carefully. The ONLY company that doesn't get a list or a number of languages is Microsoft. How come?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Many of these assistants are, potentially, spying on you via "smart" speakers. There is a pretty good idea floating around called Alias:
https://github.com/bjoernkarma...
To goal is the get control back from your smart assistants.
The percentage of folks who think English is the top native language on Earth is almost certainly much smaller than the percentage of people who believe they know better than "dumb rednecks" that it isn't.
How about this: English is probably the most widely-spoken language among people who have flush toilets and electricity. People who don't have these things probably have limited use for a smart phone, so ensuring that Siri, Cortana and Clippy speak the language of people who squat by the roadside to pinch a loaf isn't much of a priority.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Given that it's trivial for the average German to ensure not even another native speaker from another dialect group understands a single word they say, I highly doubt that Siri manages to speak all the hundreds of dialects available.
Try it. Learn German. Learn it really well. Then go into some small Bavarian town and ask some old person for directions. Then wonder whether you learned the right language or whether you're in the wrong country.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What a shame that the fastest growing language is not an option in any of this assistants.
I don't know ANYBODY or any friend that has a "Voice Assistant" at home.
Are people in US so stupid to buy anything that is mass advertised? If it was something useful I would understand, but those? Get out of here.
Western companies are generally excluded from the Chinese market by The Great Firewall and state sanctioned discrimination. So, there is probably little incentive to spend precious resources Chinese consumers.
A) There are plenty of western companies doing business in China quite successfully. I've been there and seen them first hand. That said the Chinese government definitely favors the home team so to speak but perhaps not to the degree you've been led to believe. Doing business in China is challenging but not impossible for foreign companies.
B) There is LOTS of incentive to spend resources on Chinese customers. The sheer size of the market ensures that. The question is how much opportunity they are afforded to go after those customers.
Furthermore the differences in English dialects are very small compared to e.g. Chinese and Arabic. So it may be a stretch to compare the numbers directly and furthermore not taking purchasing power into account.
I'm not familiar with Arabic dialects but spoken Mandarin may as well be a different language between different parts of the country. Chinese is a tonal language which makes local dialects really hard to understand in some cases. WAY worse than just an English speaker with a thick local dialect. Imagine that having a US Southern accent instead of a US Midwest accent and that actually changed the meaning of words and you get a crude idea idea of the problem. I've been to China with native speakers and going from Shanghai to Chengdu our translators had a really hard time understanding what was being said. The written language is consistent but the spoken language could almost be considered dozens of related but different languages.
Interestingly in some cases it was easier for our translators to speak to each other in English than to try to understand each other in Mandarin because of the regional tonal differences.
I don't know anyone who believes that. What people believe is it is the most widespread language because it is the international language and non-native speakers often learn it as a second language (Chinese has more speakers, but they're almost all Chinese natives).
Google's speech recognition is excellent. It supports multiple languages at the same time
It has trouble understanding my English and I am English. French and German is just as bad but there it could be my non-native accent.
It might just be my British accent, but I discovered by accident that if I say "my legs ache" fast as one word, it triggers Alexa every single time. Try it out... see if you can trigger her with "my legs ache" too! :)
First time it happened I was feeling bad, and was telling my wife a list of maladies: "my legs ache, I have a fever and my head hurts"... Alexa, unprompted said rather ominously... "Goodbye".
Looked back and saw in the logs the entry and was able to track "My Legs Ache" as what prompted her... can't remember what she was saying Goodbye to, what she thought I said.
Ever since that day, I only ever prompt Alexa by saying "My Legs Ache", I never say her name anymore.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's 2019, just support English, Chinese and maybe Russian.
You've got that right.
I was particularly annoyed that in order to disable the Bixby button, I had to sign up for a Samsung account to get far enough into the app to turn it off in its settings. Even now it still pops up for reasons I haven't figured out.
Eliminating Bixby entirely is the number one reason I'm interested in rooting my phone. It's also the number one reason I'm interested in a non-Samsung phone for my next phone if my employer makes that an option.
The simple fact is that the more languages you support, especially in the early stages of development, the more expensive your support bill is. From a business perspective, unless you want to be tied to particular markets, it clearly makes good sense to start with languages that huge numbers of people speak as at least a second language, rather than trying to pick off the native languages first - and that certainly includes English. Get a degree of market penetration and THEN expand into native languages.
Citation needed for anglocentric belief assertion....asshole
Now hold on. There are several Chinese dialects that are reasonably independent of Mandarin. While China's understandably trying to consolidate it's possible that Mandarin's still second for most Chinese if you want to be like that.
... because, you know everybody can. (There are so many of these videos on YouTube, I suspect people are intentionally teaching their birds to do this. Or faking the videos: can't lip-read a beak.)
Straw. No one believed English is the most spoken.
As someone who speaks English as a second language I prefer English as the language of my devices. Why? Because the way Western tech companies translate their UI to the target language is quite simply atrocious, far more difficult than saying, "Go to cnn-dot-com". For my country, Google uses a form of literary language only spoken in school, as if the one's who made the interface studied all the grammar books they could find, and forgot that real people rarely spoke the way they do in text books!
Going to have to wait for a non-internet connected device that's open source. Oh? That doesn't mesh with these companies business model? Then YOU are the product, and they're making you pay for the privilege of letting them sell you.