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back to article Blighty's Android fans get British English voice control

Google has revealed that Voice Actions, the series of spoken commands that allows users to control their Android phone just by talking to it, now supports good ol' British English. The company announced on Friday that folk in the UK - not to mention France, Italy, Germany and Spain - can all now use the Voice Actions feature …

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  1. Mexflyboy

    Stop whining, and invent!

    I get tired of the Brits who whine about Amerrrrican companies that don't cater to British accents... by sheer numbers, it makes more sense for an Amerrrican company to target the USA market (307 million souls) versus the tiny UK market (60 million souls)... I imagine that if Microbarf had been British, we Amerrricans would be whining instead about parochial Brits...

    Instead, the UK government/IT industry needs to get off its ass and create its own version of Microbarf.. (well, I believe ARM *is* the Microsoft of chips, but the problem is that it's all at the backend, whereas Windoze is always up and front...)

    But the British can be as blinkered as the Americans: I now live in the UK, and I am surprised by how many Brits whine about going to America and not being understood... why the feck should Americans understand?? The Brits are exposed much more to US accents than the other way around (due to American TV, movies, and music available here in ol' Blighty), AND British and American English accents are quite different... British English seems to be influenced by French speech patterns, which make it tricky to understand Brits unless (like me) you've been exposed to a variety of UK accents over time...

    British English seems to do the "liaison" thing that French does at the end of a word... for example in British English "It is pretty" tends to be pronounced "Ih tis pretty", versus the American "Iht iz preddy"... (I'm a language geek, so sue me!)

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    1. phuzz Silver badge
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      All my mates who've been to the states have found it amusing when people don't understand them ('those stupid americans' etc), but generally found it to be an asset. Apparently a british (well, english) accent makes us sound more intelligent, and it really does work wonders for attracting the opposite sex.

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    2. BoldMan
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      My word old chap,, it seems one has a considerable chip on one's shoulder so may I politely suggest you return forthwith to the blighted land that gave you birth dear boy.

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  2. Ben Rosenthal

    "regional dialects"

    that's everyone, if you don't think you have a regional dialect, you must come from Laaaahndahhhn.

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  3. Alan 43

    wonder how it copes with Northern Irish accent

    lol must set a Ballymena man on it and see how it copes with the Ulster-Scots accent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suN2yfotE5Q

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    1. Grease Monkey Silver badge
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      Except of course Ulster is not part of Great Britain and as such they don't speak British English there. That would be UK English.

      </PEDANT>

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  4. heyrick Silver badge

    Way back when...

    ...I tried a voice recognition program from a cover-mounted CD. I had to spend around ten minutes talking to it, specific phrases read off the screen. Afterwards, it worked fairly well (as well as hardcore number crunching on a 75MHz Pentium would allow).

    Perhaps Google's voice recognition ought to have a training session and a user profile option to allow improved accuracy for regional accents?

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