Why Have Voice Assistants Started Supporting Conversations In Hindi Language?

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Hindi, the fourth most spoken language in the world, has recently paved its way into the virtual assistant industry. As the usage of voice assistants has recently started to grow, tech companies are working on different tactics that help them to further expand their reach in India, one of the largest populations in the world.

For today’s discussion, we have compiled some of the main aspects behind voice assistants that support the Hindi language, and much more that you just can’t miss out!

Without further ado, let’s dive straight in.

Among the 1.3 billion people in India, English is still considered as a more predominant language than Hindi. Although English is spoken and understood by many, people usually like to hold their conversation in the Hindi language. Know why?

Why Is The Hindi Language Preferred More Over English?

Hindi is the most widely spoken first language in India over English. Derived from Sanskrit, Hindi is not only the most preferred way to communicate, but also represents India’s culture and tradition.

English speakers are generally people belonging to the elite class, and are educated. The topmost digital assistants like Google and Alexa, a digital assistant of an e-commerce giant Amazon, have recently introduced a new feature that allows the users to speak to their assistants in their native language – Hindi. 

The Usage Of Hindi Language In Voice Assistants:

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With a little research, we have come across a few of the main reasons behind the usage of Hindi language among voice assistants. 

Let’s have a quick look below:

• In order to make Digital assistants more accessible to users and to break the language barrier, the digital voice assistants have adopted the Hindi language in the voice assistants. This allows users to give commands and receive results in Hindi. 

• It has also been found that although people are normally comfortable with using English as their device language, while communicating they tend to either speak in Hindi or a mix of both Hindi & English, called “Hinglish”

• The customers that are using smart assistants generally are from metropolitan cities, and are educated enough to speak in English as well. By supporting the Hindi language, customers from smaller towns and cities are likely to give smart voice assistants a try.

• Consumers in India are showing more interest in searching any queries via voice search. Google, being one of the world’s top-most leading companies, has found that as soon as they have released the feature of Hindi voice search, they have found a rise in Indian users. Keeping that in mind, introducing the Hindi language in voice assistants will make a good deal for both companies and their users.

With this new feature of giving commands and receiving responses from the smart voice assistant in the same language, customers will be experiencing a personal touch that was missing until now.

What Is The New Multilingual Support In Digital Voice Assistants?

The war between the voice assistants has been in full swing since Siri was first created. 

At the moment, the only digital assistants supporting the Hindi language are Amazon’s Alexa and Google assistant. To make your task easier, we have detailed information on the latest features which both of the digital assistants upholds.

Alexa: 

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The e-Commerce and retail giant Amazon have incorporated the Hinglish language in the Alexa, speaking and understanding Hinglish and performing the same function for supporting “Shudh(Pure) Hindi”.

“If you say, Alexa, alarm set karo, in that 'alarm' and 'set' are English words, but 'karo' is a Hindi word. But, if you ask somebody, he will say – haan, wo Hindi main baat kar raha hai (yes, he is speaking in Hindi). That's the way Indians speak in Hindi to a large extent, and that's why Alexa can speak and understand shudh (pure) Hindi. It also supports the Hinglish variant” - Dilip Kumar, Vice President of Alexa, said in a recent press conference held in New Delhi.

Do you know someone who speaks in pure Hindi in this era? Considering this, access to Hinglish in Alexa might come as a complete revolution by the digital assistants in the near future.

Google Assistant: 

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To level up the game of digital voice assistants, Google has launched 8 other local languages which are – Gujarati, Kannada, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Tamil, and Telugu in its Google assistant.

On top of that, users don’t need to change the language from the setting menu as they can start off with their respective spoken language just by speaking “Okay Google, Hindi may Bolo” or “Hey Google, talk to me in Hindi”.

With this latest update, users will be able to access and make use of this amazing feature, helping the company to reach more to their Indian users.

Final Thoughts:

People feel more comfortable speaking in their local language, so adopting the most popular language by the voice assistants will ease voice assistant companies into making their way into Indian households. Moreover, with an end on the language barrier, customers who don’t speak or understand English will feel more comfortable in using the assistants, and the usage of voice assistants shall continue to grow.