Back in the summer of 2014, Apple posted a few job listings on its official website for Siri Language Engineers. This suggested that the company wanted to add more supported languages and accents to its virtual assistant mobile software. In its job listings, Apple also specified that job applicants must be fluent in at least one of nine languages. Those languages included Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Thai and Turkish.
Earlier this week, Apple released iOS 8.3 beta for developers. Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant was updated and can now speak seven new languages, including Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai and Turkish. As a result, the smart personal assistant now knows nearly 20 different languages. In addition to that, Siri has learnt a few English accents.
The curious bit here is that about half a year after Apple’s Siri-related job listings, Apple adds support for all but one of these languages – Arabic. It seems that the app has difficult times mastering it. But why is that?
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has developed a list called the Language Difficulty Ranking. It ranks languages based on how difficult they can be to learn. Nearly half of the languages supported by Siri fall into Category I, which means they are the easiest to master. These include Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch and Danish. According to FSI, in order to achieve proficiency in any of them, you will need just between 23 and 24 weeks or around 600 class hours.
Arabic, on the other hand, falls in Category V, which is the very last group of languages. It is estimated that to achieve proficiency in Arabic, would need at least 3.5 times more time than to learn Spanish (Category I language). This means that language engineers working on Siri would also need more time to include all of the language rules and exceptions related to Arabic into the software.
If that was not enough, Arabic is also the official language of 26 countries. That means that it has various national varieties. That is why there is still a debate whether Arabic should be classified as a language or a collection of languages.
Learning Siri to speak Arabic sound almost like a mission impossible. But if people can learn it, so can computers. It will just Siri Language Engineers a bit more time to build Siri support for the Arab world. According to FSI, about 88 weeks are enough for learning basic Arabic.
Considering the time when the job listings were posted, Siri may learn Arabic by the Spring of 2016.
