Improving Siri with Phonetic Fields

[jade]

My friend sent me this article. If you have an usual name spelling, use your iphones phonetic field to get Siri to recognize it.

Link: http://shawnblanc.net/2011/10/phonetic-name-fields/

Excerpt:

Two little-known fields in iPhone contact cards are the Phonetic First and Last Names. Fill them in to help Siri understand your requests better and to keep Siri from mispronouncing the names of your friends and family.

To set a phonetic field just go to a contact’s entry from your iPhone, scroll to the bottom, and tap “Add Field”. From there you’ll find the fields you’re looking for.

Problem solved for me, now Siri can say my name correctly! Hurrah! (And call your friends and family easily.)

 

[HazyCloud]

Thanks for posting this. It seems a lot of people are having issues with Siri understanding their name or a friend's name.

To add: You can also setup nicknames for people and contact them that way.

 

[ksoze]

More: http://idreamofsiri.blogspot.com/

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Very handy!

Interestingly my iPhone always said (and wanted me to say) "LEWIS" when I was calling my friend Luis. But after the iOS5 upgrade, it knows how to pronounce Luis properly.

But this works great for my daughter Hopeann, which the phone always pronouced "Hoe-Pea-Ann". Now I've put in the phonetic "Hope Ann".

 

[jade]

Thanks for posting this. It seems a lot of people are having issues with Siri understanding their name or a friend's name.

To add: You can also setup nicknames for people and contact them that way.

Got this one too. Now I can use nicknames for nicknames and not pronunciations.

This really completes things for me! Now I can call anyone and say there name the right way and not the computer way.

 

[maricc]

great find. I did not know this existed

 

[stevearm]

Am I the only one where Phonetic names don't appear in 'Add Field'?

 

[redscull]

Before even seeing this post, I'd tried using the phoenetic first field to help Siri understand how to pronounce people's names. And while that does help her to understand who I'm talking about when I give her a command, she still refers to people by their non-phoenetic name when she's talking.

So this solution is only half useful. I want to teach Siri how to correctly say names, not just understand whose name I'm saying.

 

[pabloelque]

Doesn't work for me...

I've entered a couple of phonetic first names and Siri continues to mis-pronounce the actual name as before. Any ideas?

 

[Yendog]

I've entered a couple of phonetic first names and Siri continues to mis-pronounce the actual name as before. Any ideas?

same for me... i spelled a last name a few different ways... didn't change anything she was saying.

 

[gtmac]

Before even seeing this post, I'd tried using the phoenetic first field to help Siri understand how to pronounce people's names. And while that does help her to understand who I'm talking about when I give her a command, she still refers to people by their non-phoenetic name when she's talking.

So this solution is only half useful. I want to teach Siri how to correctly say names, not just understand whose name I'm saying.

Same here, tried this early on, it helps her understand but not pronounce for me.

 

[daviddth]

Am I the only one where Phonetic names don't appear in 'Add Field'?

Same here - Are you syncing contacts with Outlook on a PC, or sharing with many devices, including those without Siri?

 

[Travis Bickle]

gone into edit but it doesn't have the option for phonetic, just first name, last name etc. Is this a US setting only perhaps?

 

[daviddth]

gone into edit but it doesn't have the option for phonetic, just first name, last name etc. Is this a US setting only perhaps?

At least one at mactalk in Sydney said he has it, so I dont think it is US only.

What do you sync your contacts with? Outlook on a PC here

 

[daviddth]

This is all I see in the add field.

 

[daviddth]

The fix was that I had my phone set to "British English", not "English". Changing that to English gave me the fields and I can now call/message my daughter by name, not nickname and she is much happier!

Watch out though, as it sorts the names by the phonetic sound, not real spelling as it was not specifically designed for this use: http://smnevans.com/iphone4s-phonetic-name-siri/

 

[EasyRyde]

I am a fan of this BUT when I tried to do the phonetic spelling for "Khristina" and put "Christina" it reordered it in my address book to "C" instead" of "K" but kept the "K" spelling.

See example below..It's now sorting Khristina in the C's. Can I prevent this?

 

[Cartaphilus]

Problem solved for me, now Siri can say my name correctly! Hurrah! (And call your friends and family easily.)

Isn't "Jade" pretty much pronounced just as it's spelled?

 

[daviddth]

Isn't "Jade" pretty much pronounced just as it's spelled?

Actually I know one Jade who insists her name is pronounced Jar Day. No different to my daughter Juanita, as we say WahNeeTa and I know another girl who uses JewAhNeeTa.

 

[Travis Bickle]

people, just call your children Jo!!



i'll get my coat

 

[petterihiisila]

Siri seems to ignore phonetic fields on my phone. Whatever I type there makes no difference at all, as if the field didn't exist. Any ideas?

 

[daviddth]

Siri seems to ignore phonetic fields on my phone. Whatever I type there makes no difference at all, as if the field didn't exist. Any ideas?

It is used to allow you to phonetically spell a name. It does not seem to help Siri with pronunciation. Say you have a wife called Jade, but prounounced JarDay, in Phonetic First Name you would put "Jar Day" and the Phonetic surname spell as you normally would.

When you go to call Jade, you can ask Siri to "Call JarDay" and it will call her. Siri will still respond "Calling Jade" but at least you can pronouce your spouse/friend/girlfriend's name right

 

[KentuckyHouse]

I have to say, I'm a little disappointed the phonetic fields don't help Siri to understand how to SAY names, and not to just understand what you're saying. Hopefully this is something they'll eventually update, but of course, she's still in beta, so maybe I'm expecting too much.

For instance, my bosses last name is Bourget. It's pronounced Bore-jay (soft J), but Siri pronounces it like every other hick Kentuckian does when they see it...Bore-get (I can say that since I was born and raised here...lol).

Interestingly enough, though, it got my mother's name correct from the get-go. Her name is Tonja...Tonn-ja. And Siri pronounced it correctly. I figured she'd screw that one up something fierce, but nope, she got it.

 

[St. Germain]

I am a fan of this BUT when I tried to do the phonetic spelling for "Khristina" and put "Christina" it reordered it in my address book to "C" instead" of "K" but kept the "K" spelling.

See example below..It's now sorting Khristina in the C's. Can I prevent this?

Same thing happened to me. The trick to get things ordered alphabetically again is to also add a phonetic spelling for the last name of the contact as well, even if its not needed phonetically.

 

[alptkz]

Siri can pronounce the contact names according to phonetic fields, but unfortunately, this only works with iCloud contacts.

This is very annoying indeed. I've tested it out and turned on contacts in my iCloud account. I created some contacts with the name Steve, but under phonetic, I put Bob. Siri then proceeded to pronounce Steve's name as Bob.

I read somewhere that one way to solve this is to use iCloud contacts in conjuncture with your regular contacts account and use the unified field settings. So let's say you sync your contacts with Google and your friend's name is John Smith. You have all the info (email, phone number, etc.) under your Google contact, but create an iCloud contact with the same name and add the phonetic fields. When you look at the unified contact, you should see all the information (the data from the Google-side and the phonetics from the iCloud-side).

Supposedly, once you do that, Siri pronounces the names correctly. But I wasn't able to do that. Can anyone try and see if it works ? I'm sure we can all work together and find a way to make this work without having to switch to iCloud entirely for contacts.

PS: this trick works great for using relations under your own contact. Just create an iCloud contact with your name and your relations (wife, brother, etc.) and leave the info like email, address, etc. under your regular contacts account. I've done it and it works.


Edit: I did some more testing and it looks like it's working now. I was always testing Siri's prononciation by saying "where is John", but apparently, phonetic fields are not used when tapping into Find My Friends. If I say "what's John's address", then Siri pronounces correctly according to the phonetic fields. Not only that but that works with non-iCloud contact accounts. It works fine with my Gmail contacts.