‘Whose Hindi Is Better?’ The Quint’s Techies Challenge Google Home
Google Home smart speakers can now reply in Hindi. We put this to the test.
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Video Editor: Prashant Chauhan
Google Home, the smart speaker from Google, can now speak in Hindi. Google is slowly adding more regional language support as well to the smart speaker. While it could do translations from one language to another earlier, it now responds in Hindi with a uniquely Indian context.
Our resident tech & auto editor at The Quint, Roshun Povaiah, has lived in Delhi since 1999, but hasn’t picked up the language that well. Although he claims to speak in Hindi, most of us at The Quint have a tough time comprehending what he’s trying to say. He’s from Coorg and has studied in Ooty & Chennai - so Hindi wasn’t a language he took to easily.
What better way to put Google Home to the test than to pit it against Roshun? That’s what we did with a set of simple questions, with Cyrus John as moderator. Watch the video to see how that panned out.
If you want to enable Hindi on your Google Home smart speaker, here’s how you can go about doing it.
Hindi Support for Google Home
- Open Google Home app on your mobile
- Tap ‘Account’ icon at lower-right corner
- Select Settings and go to Assistant tab
- Select Add Language and choose Hindi as first language
- Say ‘Ok Google’ to get Home talking in Hindi
From the video it is clear, that while Google Home can reply in Hindi, it is not as comfortable as it is in English. The search results that it throws up in Hindi are not as vast as those in English.
Sure, it can do the basics like looking for information or giving you general knowledge replies. But if you ask it for specific tasks (like directions) it cannot perform them in Hindi. However, the same question asked in English gets a perfect reply. Google still has to work on the Hindi algorithm for the assistant.
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