Siri goes cosmopolitan

Maybe Siri has always been cosmopolitan, but I just recently found out that the wise Siri not only knows all, but knows it in various languages as well.  In case you haven't met her, Siri is the virtual, personal, digital assistant available on Apple devices.

My family is the proud owner of a latest generation iPad (a present from my technology-talented son who said he wanted to  "keep the old folks in the technology loop").  The iPad has been in the family about 18 months now, and we are still trying to develop a friendly relationship with it.

Before I discovered the oral language talents of Siri, I learned that to write in a foreign language was a piece of cake on the iPad.  The keyboard is already set up with diacritical markings for various languages, like accent marks in Spanish.  If I need to write the Spanish surname Gómez, for example, the 'o' with an acute accent can be located by holding down the 'o' key and then tapping on one of nine 'o' choices with different markings. For the English writer who wants to throw in an occasional word in a foreign language, Apple has made it super easy to spell correctly.

Now you can use your iPad to complain that a linguistic term is recherché, brag about your new recipe for pâté de fois gras, or describe your vacation in São Paulo with complete confidence that you are showing the world you are a literate person.

Up to this point, I have not used Siri very often.  My husband Wayne talks to her all of the time, although  he gets really annoyed when she doesn't understand his Texas accent  Maybe me not using Siri is a gender thing.  Did I hear that the new iPhone 5S has a choice of male or female voices?   That brings us some interesting possibilities.

Recently I read that Siri speaks and understands several different languages.  My mind started whirling. How could I use Siri's cosmopolitan outlook not especially to get information but as part of my foreign language learning hobby?

Step 1 was to see which languages Siri knows.  I went to Settings, General, Siri, and Language to find the answer.  Nineteen languages are listed, some of which are dialects of the same language.  I was pleased to find, in addition to my native language English,  that Siri is conversant in French, which I have been brushing up on, and Spanish, which was my first foreign language. I didn't find Portuguese, which I used to teach. Too bad, because Portuguese is really fun to speak.

Map of Spanish-speaking countries

What caught my eye was that Spanish was listed with three dialects, Mexico, Spain, and United States.  I understood the separation of Mexican Spanish and Peninsular Spanish, but I didn't know that there were enough common identifying features of Spanish spoken in the US to warrant a separate setting.  Spanish in the US differs considerably from location to location.  Spanish spoken in New York City, for example, may differ considerably from that spoken in Los Angeles. And New Mexican Spanish may differ considerably from Spanish spoken in Colorado.  How did the Apple software engineers decide on which features to include in the Spanish-United States setting?

I also notice that Siri speaks French from Canada and French from France.  I'm not sophisticated enough in that language to hear the difference in the two dialects.  As a matter of fact, if I can get Siri to understand anything I ask in French, I will feel quite accomplished.  I hope she isn't secretly smiling at my unauthentic French 'r'.

Now I am intrigued with Siri and her language ability.  I'm going to try some simple experiments that I will be writing about in coming weeks.  Do you have a story about Siri and languages? Please share.

PLEASE NOTE:  Language Lover's Blog is going on vacation and will return on October 28.  See you then!