Personal assistants at Google and Apple sometimes have difficulty recognizing the pronunciation of a first or last name. Here’s how to give them a boost.
If you regularly use your smartphone assistant to call acquaintances, you may have noticed that it can have difficulty recognizing some names. This results from a possible confusion between the spelling of a patronymic and its actual pronunciation. To solve this problem, it is possible to add a name or even a first name phonetically to your contacts. Here’s how to do it on Android and iOS.
Google assistant
- Tap on the contacts icon at the bottom of the screen (or in the applications menu), then on the contact that interests you – in our example, actress Lupita Nyong’o seen in the last Star Wars. Tap the pencil icon at the top of the screen.
- Tap on Other fields then on the arrow pointing down in front of Phonetic name. You then access the phonetic fields that you can fill in with known words or with invented words that have the correct pronunciation.
- Confirm by pressing the check mark at the top of the screen.
Siri
- Tap the phone icon at the bottom of the screen, then tap Contact. Select the person you are interested in and tap To modify.
- Tap on add a field then on Phonetic first name. Repeat the operation with Phonetic surname. The fields then appear in the contact card and you just have to fill them in by entering the correct pronunciation. Tap on OK at the top of the screen to confirm.
You can also teach Siri how to pronounce a name correctly. To do this, say “Learn to pronounce” followed by the first name and last name of the contact. This triggers the learning of the pronunciation of the First Name, then the Last Name. Siri then offers you several options and it’s up to you to choose the one that comes closest to the result you want to achieve. Another approach is to tell Siri “This is not how you pronounce it” followed by the first and last name when the assistant gives you the wrong pronunciation.