15 languages and regional variations for Cortana voice assistant

Voice control. It’s hard enough to make in work in one language let alone multiple. Whilst English is ubiquitous, it’s often preferential to use your own language.

Microsoft may be attempting to cover 15 language and regional bases with the launch of Cortana. These are rumoured to be:

• Chinese – China
• Chinese – Hong Kong
• Chinese – Taiwan
• English – UK
• English – US
• English – India
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Polish
• Portuguese – Brazil
• Russian
• Spanish – Spain
• Spanish – Mexico

According to Wiki’s 2010 data and a few other sites, the top 10 languages by number of speakers are:

1. Mandarin (Covered)
2. Spanish (Covered)
3. English (Covered)
4. Hindi
5. Arabic
6. Portuguese (Covered -/+)
7. Bengali
8. Russian (Covered)
9. Japanese (Covered)
10. German (Covered)

That’s 7 out of the top 10 languages with a wait on Hindi/Arabic and Bengali support, plus regional variants for Mandarin and English. Whilst Hindi/Bengali are not yet mentioned, there is “Indian English“.  Outside of the ‘top 10’ include support for Italian and French.

Moreover, whilst English does have Indian English, UK English and US English, Microsoft also has to consider the regional variants within that subset. e.g. a “British” accent is actually at least 20 distinct and extremely different accents, with some folk from one area in the UK not able to understand another. I can guess there’s similar variants too within other languages. I think the current voice recognition in TellMe seems to work fine in the UK/US at least, right? I find it much better than my mac’s voice recognition.

Source: wpworld

Via: NeoWin

Category: Lumia, Nokia