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You can now speak to Alexa in Spanish

You can now speak to Alexa in Spanish

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‘Hola, Alexa’

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Amazon is rolling out Multilingual mode to Alexa, which lets users in the US speak Spanish to their Alexa devices. Alexa will be able to respond to requests in either English or Spanish, based on the language in which it was asked. The company announced the mode at its Echo event last month, and it’s now rolling out in three countries in pairs: English and Spanish in the US, Indian English and Hindi in India, and Canadian English and French in Canada.

Multilingual mode is meant to let users switch between languages quickly, as bilingual speakers may do at home with their families. “With billions of people in the world speaking more than one language, many homes are not homogenous when it comes to languages anymore,” Amazon explained in the announcement. The company also opened up the Amazon Skills Kit for developers to create skills for Spanish speakers back in April, and those skills can now be published to the US Skills store for customers to purchase.

The feature will be especially useful in the United States, where Spanish is the second-most widely spoken language in the country. Surprisingly, Amazon is a little late to the development, as Google Assistant added multilingual support features in 2018, and Siri has been speaking multiple languages for years. But it’s never too late to start learning a new language.