Amazon Alexa was first introduced in India in 2017 and was able to understand and pronounce names of popular places, names, songs and more in many regional languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Punjabi. Today, Amazon officially announced Hindi and English support for Alexa in India. Alexa users in India can now interact with Alexa to ask for music, get Bollywood or sports updates and much more in Hindi or Hinglish. The new Hindi experience is available on all Echo family of voice-controlled smart speakers.
With this update, Alexa can now understand users speaking completely in Hindi or Hinglish, in multiple contexts, and varied regional accents and dialects. You can enjoy asking Alexa for diverse Hindi content such as jokes, shayaris, games, Kabir ke dohe, Panchatantra stories etc. To get started with Hindi users can just ask, “Alexa, help me set up Hindi.” Existing Echo customers in India can change their device language to Hindi via the Language options inside the Device settings on the Alexa App. Echo Show users can access the settings section to change the language by swiping down from the top of the screen.
Apart from Hindi interaction, Amazon is also working on a seamless language switch features which be rolled out all Alexa users in the coming days. Users can speak to Alexa in Hindi and English without changing the language setting back and forth. For example, if a customer asks for the weather in Hindi, Alexa will reply in Hindi, e.x. “Alexa, aaj mausam kaisa hai?” and when they ask for information in English, Alexa will understand and respond in English. This feature is specially built for Indian households where users speak both Hindi and English.
According to Amazon, thousands of developers have already started building Alexa skills with a Hindi flavor and users can choose from over 500 Alexa skills in Hindi offered by more than 30 brands including Ola, ChuChu TV, All India Radio, RedFM, Sanjeev Kapoor Recipes etc.
List of Hindi Commands for Alexa
- Alexa, tum kya kar sakti ho
- Alexa, Bollywood ke latest gane sunao – Play songs
- Alexa, sher ki aawaaz sunao
- Alexa, Kishore Kumar ke gaane sunaiye
- Alexa, workout music chalao
- Alexa, volume badhao – Control music
- Alexa, agla gaana lagao
- Alexa, yeh kaunsa gaana hai?
- Alexa, mujhe aaraam karna hai – Over 100 relaxation sounds in Hindi
- Alexa, Diwali kab hai – Get festival dates
- Alexa, 64 ka cube root kya hai – Get answers
- Alexa, Spain ka capital kya hai?
- Alexa, sone ka bhaav batao
- Alexa taali bajao
- Alexa, ek kahani sunao
- Alexa, tum kaun ho
- Alexa, chalo ek game khele – Play games with Alexa
- Alexa, light band kar do – Control Smart Light
- Alexa, subah saat baje ka alarm set karo
- Alexa, meri to-do list mein doctor’s appointment daal do
- Alexa, cricket score batao – Get score updates
- Alexa, aaj mausam kaisa hai? – Get the Weather updates
Starting 18th September 2019, along with all Amazon Echo smart speakers such as Echo Dot, Echo Show 5, Echo, Echo Spot, Echo Plus, Echo Show, and Echo Input, Alexa in Hindi is also available on a range of smart speakers by Bose including Home Speaker 500, Portable Home Speaker, Home Speaker 450, and Home Speaker 300. Coming soon, brands such as Motorola, MyBox, Boat, Portronics, Fingers, Sony, iBall, and Dish will launch and update their existing Alexa-built in devices to support Hindi.
Customers can also visit Amazon devices kiosk at popular shopping malls such as Pacific Mall in Delhi, Seawoods Mall in Mumbai, Mantri Mall in Bangalore and offline retailers such as Croma and Reliance Digital stores for a demo of the Alexa Hindi experience and to purchase.
Commenting on the launch, Puneesh Kumar, Country Manager for Alexa Experiences and Devices, Amazon India said, “We are a customer-first company than a technology-first company. In India pronunciation, diction, and accents in Hindi is different across the country even if the language being spoken is the same. Conversations in Hinglish are common. With today’s launch, you will notice that Alexa has become more local. Alexa will not only understand and respond in Hindi or Hinglish but, is also armed with a lot of knowledge about topics that interest users in the country ranging from local information to music, and from Bollywood to cricket”.