Smart assistants are one of the coolest creations of the last decade. An artificial intelligence device that can turn on lights, order food and inform you about the traffic situation – what’s not to like? It’s almost like Rosie from The Jetsons living in your house. Unless you possibly have a strong accent.
A 2018 Washington Post article titled “The Accent Gap” covers the issue well. If you have a “normal†accent, such as a neutral American accent, smart assistants will understand you easily. On the other hand, Alexa is less likely to understand someone who uses “y’all” regularly. It’s the same with any strong accent.
Fortunately, there are several ways to fix this problem. Smart assistants use machine learning to adapt and improve over time, so none of these solutions will help instantly. But they will improve your smart assistant’s response to voice commands.
Speak slowly
It sounds corny, but slow speech greatly affects how well your smart assistant can recognize and process your request.
Speaking slowly makes you more likely to pronounce words clearly, but it also gives the smart assistant time to process what you said. You can speak to your smart assistant in full sentences, but the machine looks for keywords that will suggest an answer based on a variety of factors.
If slow speech doesn’t work, try narrowing your query. For example, you can find out the current temperature and forecast by saying “Alexa, weather.” If you reduce what you say to a few words, your smart assistant can understand you better.
Avoid slang
Every region of the world has certain words and phrases that they use to describe common everyday things. For example, in the southern states of the United States, all types of carbonated drinks are commonly referred to as “Coca-Cola”. If you request any information about Coca-Cola from the smart assistant, information about the Coca-Cola company will be returned.
Be clear about your questions. Avoiding colloquial terms and using officially recognized vocabulary makes it less likely that your smart assistant will misunderstand you.
Find out if Your Smart Assistant offers your accent as an option
Smart assistants are trained and programmed to recognize a wide variety of speech patterns; in most cases, manufacturers include the types of accents they are most likely to hear under normal conditions.
Users reported that switching the language settings from English (US) to English (UK) resulted in better responses for users with a British accent.
Amazon Alexa offers an English accent for users with the following accents:
- Canadian
- Indian
- Spanish
- Mexican
- Italian
- Australian
- New Zealand
Google Home, by contrast, offers an English accent for the following media:
- Australia
- Canada
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Philippines
- Singapore
- Thailand
- United Kingdom
- United States
If you speak English with one of these accents, please switch your device to the appropriate language. Your smart assistant can understand you better.
Change the language
There is no reason why someone should speak English when using the smart assistant. Amazon Alexa and Google Home have multiple language options. If you find that your assistant does not understand your accent when speaking English, find out if your native language is right for you.
Spell Things Out
Some smart assistants (most notably Apple’s Siri) allow users to explain what they want. This function allows users, whom the system cannot understand otherwise, to request information.
While this is not an ideal solution, given the amount of time it takes to form words with enough letter spacing for a helper to recognize them, it is a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, none of today’s smart devices can recognize Anglo-Asian accents. Their main destinations are the United States and other English-speaking countries, but there is hope. Even the current versions of smart assistants are leaps and bounds better than the original versions, and they all have better language recognition than ever before.
Over time, smart assistants will become sophisticated enough to recognize any voice command, regardless of language or accent.
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