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Are you sick of Siri mixing up the names of your contacts? Siri gets frustrated and confused by names that are hard to say, but you can fix her mistakes so that your friendly neighborhood voice assistant learns how to Teach Siri pronunciation names of family, friends, and other people correctly.
Siri can also get confused if you use a nickname when you try to call or text someone in your contact list. You can teach Siri how to say words and call people by their nicknames on your iPhone or iPad, but you’ll have to do this again for each device. It works the same no matter what you use, which is good news.
How to change Siri’s voice on iPhone and iPad
Siri’s accents can be either American, Australian, British, Indian, Irish, or South African. There are four American voices to choose from and two voices for each of the other voices, for a total of 14 voices.
- Open Settings
- Tap on ‘Siri & Search’
- Tap on Siri Voice
- Select the accent you want Siri to sound like
- Select the voice within the accent
How to Teach Siri pronunciation
- Press and hold the Home button on your iPhone or iPad, or say “Hey, Siri” to activate Siri.
- Say the name of a person that you think Siri will mispronounce.
- After Siri says the name, say “You’re pronouncing [name] wrong.” You can use a first, middle, or last name.
- Siri will ask you how to pronounce the first name of the person. Speak the first name.
- Siri will ask you to select a pronunciation. Play each option and choose the correct one.
- Siri will ask you the middle name of the person. Speak the middle name (if applicable).
- Siri will ask you to select a pronunciation. Play each option and choose the correct one.
- Siri will ask you the last name of the person. Speak the last name.
- Siri will ask you to select a pronunciation. Play each option and choose the correct one.
Pronounce First Name
Let’s say you asked Siri to call someone or send them an email or text message, but Siri messed up the name. Turn Siri back on and tell her, “You pronounced it wrong.” Siri asks how you say the first name of the person. Tell her what you want, and she’ll show you a list of choices and ask you to pick the right one.
If you tap on each choice, you can hear how the name is said. If none of the choices sound right, tap the link that says “Tell Siri again.” Siri asks you to say the name again, and then shows you another list of options. Again, tap on each one to hear it, then tap on Select to choose the best one.
Pronounce Last Name
Next, Siri asks how you say the last name of the person. How do you say Siri’s name? She shows the list of possibilities. Tap each one to hear what it says. No good? Tap “Tell Siri again” and say your name again. Tap each of the new options and then tap Select to choose the best one. Siri will also ask you how to say the person’s middle name, if they have one.
FAQs
If the speech-to-text system keeps making the same spelling mistake, you might want to clear its memory and start over. You can do this by clearing Siri’s conversation history in Apple’s Siri settings. The problem could be fixed by deleting the history of conversations with Siri in Apple’s Siri settings.
Activate Siri again and say: “You pronounced it wrong.” Siri asks how you pronounce the person’s first name. Tell her, and she’ll display a list of options, asking you to choose the right one. Tap on each option to hear how the name will be pronounced.
You can also change the way Siri spells words or names for dictation purposes – such as the spelling of Louis (as Siri renders it) as Louie. Start by heading into Contacts and hitting the + button to add a new entry. Type in the word or name in the way that you want it spelled as the First name.