A difference between “phonetic” and “pronunciation” fields:
If you show Siri how to pronounce a Contact’s last name using the “phonetic” field, the phonetic spelling will be used in the alphabetization of that Contact! I have never been able to find out why that’s done.
Example – Siri always pronounced my friend Dave Baronik’s last name as if it were the word “baron” followed by “ick”, so I entered the phonetic “buhh-RO-nik” and she said it correctly (accent on second syllable, long O)…but for years, the phone has filed him between Budget and Burnham!
This article gave me the idea of trying “pronunciation last name” (and deleting the phonetic one), and his name is now filed and pronounced properly.
I’ve done this out of need, my wife shares a name with three others in my contact book. With my two sons Siri can ask which son and I have nicknames for key people depending on the work or project.
I like all the other commands you can use with Siri and messages - change it, add to it, read last message from, etc.
Oh, that’s fascinating. Even more so is that a quick search suggests that the same is true in Android. The best explanation I saw was that if you’re moving between script systems, the phonetic name may be useful for changing the sort order.
That makes a lot of sense. Sorting names in Japanese, for example, is impossible unless you have the name written phonetically, because it’s quite possible for names which sound different to be spelled the same in Kanji. This article discusses the problem and gives some examples:
Siri is so aggravating at times, how old is Siri now? I have a hard to pronounce last name shared with multiple brothers and sisters and other relatives. When I train Siri to pronounce my last name, it still doesn’t understand how to pronounce THEIR last names spelled the same way. Then, once trained for them, it pronounces the trained names correctly when making a call to them, but will frequently mispronounce again when sending an iMessage or email…
Love Apple, love my Apple stock but tome times the remedial nature of some components is frustrating. Wish we could say, Hey Siri! Ask Google NOW, “what we really need to know”.
Dave in Dallas
iPhone 8+
That’s not really surprising, but setting the Pronunciation Last Name field in Contacts for all your relatives should solve that problem fairly easily.
You enter the name into the phonetic name field, spelling it the way it should be pronounced (phonetically). Siri will use the phonetic spelling field as a guide as to how to pronounce the name. So if the last name is Goethe, but is pronounced Gerta, you would enter Gerta into the phonetic last name field and Siri will pronounce it correctly.
Thank you Fritz, but that’s not what I asked.
My problem is that macOS does not seem to have the Pronunciation field in Contacts. I see it in iOS on my iPad (it has both: Pronunciation and Phonetic), but I don’t see Pronunciation on my Mac. Using Phonetic causes the problem noted by Bob Leedom above, i.e. it names are sorted according to phonetic, not to actual spelling. That’s undesirable. My name is pronounced MEE-row and if I enter it in Phonetic Last Name in Contacts on my Mac, it gets sorted under ME, not MI. Your example will be sorted GE, not GO.
I don’t use either field so I was shooting from the hip, but now, looking at my iPad, I see what you’re talking about and frankly, I don’t get it either.
