Amazon’s Voice Assistant, Alexa Gets Hindi & Hinglish Support in India

Published Date : Sep 21, 2019

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Almost two years after Amazon launched its Alexa voice assistant in India, the e-commerce giant has added a new much-needed Hindi and Hinglish functionality to the voice assistant in order to expand its reach in the nation.

According to the company, Indian users will now be able to interact with Alexa in both Hindi and Hinglish in various contexts, varied dialects, and accents.

Simply put, you can now ask her to do your routine things like set an alarm, check for software updates, turn on the lights, order food, sing rhymes, or tell you a joke in the same language you use to talk with your friends.

In light of this, Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa can now understand commands such as “Alexa, Bollywood ke latest gane sunao”, “Alexa, Kya aaj baarish hogi?”, “Cricket score batao”, “Subha 7 baje ka alaram lagao”, “Kitchen light chalu karo”, “Mera aaj ka Rashifal batao”, or “Alexa, tum kya kar sakti ho?”.

“We are thrilled to bring a suite of AI advances in multi-lingual understanding so that customers can interact with Alexa in different regional variants of colloquial Hindi. We are grateful to Indian customers who contributed to Hindi development through the Cleo skill,” Amazon’s Alexa AI, Vice President, and Head Scientist, Rohit Prasad said in a statement.

“We look forward to Alexa delighting our Hindi-speaking customers and working with developers in India to invent many more Hindi skills,” Prasad added.

To speak to Alexa in Hindi, just ask, “Alexa, help me set up Hindi.”

Existing Echo and Alexa device users in India can manually change their language to Hindi via language options inside the device settings on the Amazon Alexa app.

Amazon’s Alexa arrived in India in 2017. Working in Indian English for over two years helped her to understand and pronounce names of places, names, songs, etc. in different regional languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, and Marathi.

“With today’s launch, you will notice that Alexa has become more local. Alexa will not only understand and respond in Hindi or Hinglish but, is also armed with a lot of knowledge about topics that interest users in the country ranging from local information to music, and from Bollywood to cricket,” Puneesh Kumar, Country Manager for Alexa Experiences and Devices, Amazon India, said in a statement.

In the months to come, Amazon will also be rolling out multilingual household’s support, which will enable family members to communicate with Alexa in the language they each prefer.

However, Amazon has not shared a timeline on when it will add multi-language support in the country.

Monil

Monil is a professional writer whose forte is absorbing a lot of data and help large technical organizations convey their message clearly across multiple products. An engineer by qualification, his affinity for design enables him to write to inspire, energize, and influence various audiences to uncover their true potential. When not writing, Monil is likely to be found listening to music, traveling, or simply excavating into his favourite cuisines.