Siri Support for Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Russian Languages Coming Next Month

Tech in Asia reports that Apple is preparing to bring support for Chinese, Japanese and Russian to Siri on the iPhone 4S next month. Chinese support will only include Mandarin, with Cantonese and other dialects being left out for the time being.

The Chinese tech site DoNews claims to have heard from an Apple engineer who’s working on the Chinese-language version of Siri, the clever voice assistant on the iPhone 4S. From this source it claims that Siri will launch in Chinese next month, and is already undergoing internal testing this month. [...]

The rumor also contends that the Chinese version will only support the standard Mandarin (aka: putonghua) Chinese, which would leave out Cantonese-speaking people, as well as some Taiwan folk who effectively speak in a different dialect. Plus, it alleges that Japanese and Russian will arrive next month as well.

Siri currently supports only English, French, and German but in Apple's Siri FAQ the company promises to start supporting for additional languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish, this year.

Chinese and Japanese support for Siri is likely a high priority for Apple, with the company having enjoyed long-standing popularity with users. Russia is considered as less important but very promising economies.