Nuance just added support for Aussie accents and idioms, and expanded its SDK so local devs can add voice features in their iOS and Android apps. That’s pretty cool, but I wonder if this now means that Aussies won’t be left speechless in iOS 5 and the next iPhone. Here’s why.
Though Nuance-driven voice control isn’t in Apple’s current iOS 5 beta, there are leaked screenshots, and it’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll also see an enhanced voice ‘assistant’ based on tech Apple scored when it acquired Siri.
We don’t know if the ‘assistant’ will be over and above general voice control, but there is some speculation that if it is a stand-alone feature, it will be an iPhone 5 exclusive. Either way, Apple is clearly working with Nuance behind the scenes, and Nuance adding Australian English is good news for us.
Meanwhile, what’s been your experience with the Aussie accent and Android / Google’s voice control? I’ve heard mixed reports over the last year or so. Good to see that Nuance’s SDK was released for Android, too.
TSH
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 12:25 PMWent travelling and was told that Aussies are hard to understand because we talk fast by cutting words short and merging syllables. This view was generally held by British, American and non-native English speakers (Peruvian, Argentinean and Bolivian, to be exact)
Knowing this, I’m not surprised that machines have trouble with our accent!
EckyThump
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 12:42 PMHell, most of the time I can’t understand what Aussi’s are saying, specially Boguns, and I’ve been here nearly 50 years!! Mind you, listening to my own accent on a recording, makes me cringe too! #}
Daniel
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 1:02 PMMy Fiance’s HTC Sensation seems to work really well with Google’s speech recognition. Unfortunately when set to Australian English you can’t do much but changing the input voice language to US English opens up all the extra functionality such as texting and emailing with voice. This still seems to work really well and only sometimes do we have issues when she says things like “call mum” which the phone interprets as “call mom” which doesn’t match her contact on the phone. Otherwise it’s great!
Guy Redman
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 2:47 PMSimilarly, Avast! needs a broad Australian accent for their virus scan voice alerts.
The one they have listed as Aussie sounds more like a New Zealander.
Anyone out there with a good broad AUTHENTIC Aussie accent might like to look at….
http://www.avast.com/audio
Julia would be great, but she’s a bit busy at present.
EckyThump
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 3:14 PMHeh, there’s Australian and then there’s Ostoilien…. I think the PM comes under the second… #]
Dan
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 3:12 PMI had a lot of trouble with the built in voice recognition on Froyo, to the extent that I learned to speak in an American accent for the few times I used it.
But I installed the FlexT9 swipe keyboard, which comes with Dragon voice recognition software built in. That does a surprisingly great job for transcribing voice, although the Google voice actions still use the existing Android engine.
Ginny
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 4:10 PMI’m surprised that these things don’t like Aussie accents and here’s why. I speak with a thick-enough soft-north-eastern European accent and my Android/Google Voice utilizing devices give me little trouble.
Rahux
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 6:29 PMI’m using nuances T9 Flex Australian keyboard on Android and it’s ridiculously accurate. Weirdly (and sadly) enough, it’s more accurate than their desktop version for me.
Peter
Friday, July 29, 2011 at 8:37 PMOnly a few issues on Android, don’t use the feature much to be honest. The Tomtom Via 160 and 180, while being otherwise good GPS units absolutely fail understanding Australian English.