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Re:Stupid Alexa Trick: Speaking French with a Horrible Ameri... by crazygringo on Monday October 07, 2019 @07:21PM (#21187048)
That's a tough one, because you really need both options available.

"Mispronouncing" to your phone's language is actually helpful if you don't speak the language, because you'll legitimately understand it better. Local pronunciation can often be completely and maddeningly unrecognizable to a foreigner.

While if you speak the language, it's obviously nonsensical to have it mispronounced and you want the real thing of course.

Example: "Rio Tinto" in Portuguese is pronounced "HEE-oo CHEEN-too". If you don't speak the language, you're NEVER gonna map those sounds to a street sign because the "r" and "t" sounds you're expecting aren't there at all! While hearing a completely incorrect "REE-oh TIN-toh", you can probably recognize.

Re:Stupid Alexa Trick: Speaking French with a Horrible Ameri... by freddie_mercury on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:58PM (#21187930)
This is definitely true. I live in Vietnam and the same problem exists here. If you used true "local pronunciation", most foreigners wouldn't be able to understand many of the street names.

The disconnect between the two pronunciations is so stark that many times taxi drivers have literally no idea what street a foreigner is telling them to go to.

Re:Stupid Alexa Trick: Speaking French with a Horrible Ameri... by tseabra on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @08:53AM (#21191687)
Note: that would be in Brazilian Portuguese. "REE-oh TIN-toh" is not that far off from Portuguese from Portugal.
Re:Stupid Alexa Trick: Speaking French with a Horrible Ameri... by devnulloverflow on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @05:29PM (#21197477)
I was going to say that, since Rio Tinto is a mining company, that it probably originates in Brazil. But actually it is an Anglo-Australian company named after a mine in Spain. (Which, according to Wikipedia, started operations 5000 years ago).