Amazon first introduced Hindi language support for its voice assistant, Alexa, back in September last year. Yeah, it has already been one-year since Alexa could listen to and understand your Hindi commands. The company has decided to celebrate its first-year anniversary by further expanding the reach of the Hindi language to the Alexa app on Android and iOS.
Alexa in Hindi has greatly improved over the past year. The official blog post reveals that a whopping 60 new features for the Hindi language were added to the voice assistant. You can now ask Alexa to whisper, adjust the speed at which it speaks, and other third-party features. It was recently also announced that Bollywood sensation Amitabh Bachchan is lending his voice to Alexa.
Amazon also reveals that Alexa in Hindi can understand 50 different types of queries to play a song, includes 6 new original songs and poems, and 20 stories in Hindi. You can even ask Alexa to sing about your friendship with her by saying – “Alexa, hamari dosti par poem sunao.” It also supports over 1000 Hindi Skills, which you can install and test out as per your liking.
“India’s unique cultural and linguistic diversity has always inspired us to make Alexa more local and relevant to users in the country. Introducing Hindi made Alexa accessible to hundreds of millions of native Hindi speakers,” said Puneesh Kumar, Country Leader for Alexa, Amazon India in an official blog post.
Amazon further mentions that there’s been a more than 40% reduction in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) errors made by Alexa. This has been possible due to mixed language requests made by users and advancements in deep learning, multi-dialect training, and semi-supervised learning at the same time.
How to Set Language As Hindi in Alexa App
To enable the ‘Hindi’ language in the Alexa app on your Android or iOS device, simply follow the steps listed below:
1. Open the Alexa app and navigate to “Settings > Alexa on this phone/ tablet” via the ‘More’ option in the bottom navigation bar.
2. Here, tap on the ‘Language’ setting and select ‘Hindi’ from the list, as seen below. You can now simply tap the Alexa icon on the home page to ask a query in Hindi and Hinglish.
Alexa is Hindi is more capable than ever and can even understand words like thum jaa (wait or stop) and dhai (two-and-a-half) that it could not in the past. This means if you attempt to talk with Alexa in Hindi today then the experience will be more natural and seamless than ever before.
