Siri's language choice (Settings) - does it affect speech recognition?

Question

If I prefer to hear US/Canadian Siri, will she understand my Australian accent?

Sorry Australian-voiced Siri, but you sound too much like the Telstra automated bill payment system voice. And I'm used to hearing the US/Canada Siri so I would rather select that language option in Settings.

Apple's Siri FAQ page says:

"the more you use Siri, the better it will understand you. It does this by learning about your accent and other characteristics of your voice. Siri uses voice recognition algorithms to categorize your voice into one of the dialects or accents it understands"

I am curious about whether it will correctly categorize my voice as being from an entirely different region to the one I have selected or just pick an accent from within the region I have chosen and maybe never achieve the best potential accuracy. It seemed that after I switched to "English (United States)" accuracy went down. I haven't been using it long enough to decide whether it is improving.

Answer 1

In my experience with Siri, the initial language setting of Siri does help a lot to help it discover your accent more quickly, but it's not the only measure it uses. It will base its understanding of your accent off of its own starting point. It's pretty difficult to convince Siri you're not American if you choose American English as its language. It will eventually change, but it takes a lot of time, and might not even be completely accurate.

I speak with a pretty standard British accent. Not northern, not southern, almost Welsh, actually. Siri's accuracy shot up with I switched to a British starting point.

I suspect that over time, Siri will eventually categorise your accent correctly regardless of its own language setting. This is evidenced by the fact that after a few tries, some of contacts' names (ones that a computer would have a hard time pronouncing correctly) are recognised now whereas they weren't originally.

The key is that Siri will attempt to categorise your voice into an accent. It will not necessarily learn your own specific accent, but it will broadly put your accent into a box, with a few exceptions for how you pronounce proper nouns like places, sports teams, people, and even apps.

Answer 2

Siri was developed to "learn" your voice tendencies, including accents. Over time, it will warm to your ebb and flow of your voice.

However, if you change the language setting, your location choices, etc...l will be all wonky. WHile it may be nice to hear a voice from "home" (that sexy Aussie voice is awesome) it will mess with Siri results.