iPhone voice to text - does it work well for Japanese?

[seanblue]

I have an incredibly hard time getting iPhone’s voice to text to work well in Japanese. So either my pronunciation is terrible, or it’s just not that good. For example, I tried to say 奮ふるう, and no matter what it thought I was saying フル. I definitely extended the う sound long enough, and I tried with a few different pitch accents (since I don’t know the correct one). Yet every time it came back with フル. When I click the word to see what alternatives it thinks I might have meant I get フルール, Hulu, 古, and ふるー. I guess the last one is right-ish, but it’s still weird since there are a few kanji-based words spelled ふるう.

I’ve had this experience with so many words that I’ve all but given up on using voice to text for Japanese. That’s why I had to find out of it’s just not that good or if it’s a problem on my end. Perhaps it’s only this bad why you try to say a single word, which happens to be my use case right now.

[athomasm]

I’ve had decent luck when dictating short phrases, but honestly voice dictation even for English is pretty hit or miss for me.

[Leebo]

I’ll ask some natives to try it out on their phones later.

[Belthazar]

I generally have better luck with Japanese than English when it comes to voice, but I admit I’ve never tried 奮う. Don’t honestly know how much it relies on context.

[Leebo]

So when a native I asked to try it said it in isolation, it did default to Hulu.

But saying it in sentences worked fine.

[FrugFrug]

I’ve also noticed that it’s quite bad with single words, but preforms very well for me with sentences.

[sornvru]

I can also attest to having much better success dictating sentences than individual words, but also having difficulties with accuracy in English. Speech-to-text is a tricky business and I end up spending enough time correcting it that ends up being slower than typing it out myself.