The new feature is designed to understand up to five languages at a time. For the user to avail himself of this feature, he must preselect each of the five languages he intends to use before using the app. However, the user must remember to stick with using one language in every sentence.
Prior to the update, the app already supports more than 50 languages. Every time a user wanted to switch from using one language to another, he is always asked to change his settings. This time, the user can go straight ahead in using his chosen language as the app can automatically recognize it. Hence, there's no need to change the language setting every now and then.
With this feature, the user can gather information using different languages in varying situations. Whether he feels like asking about the weather in Spanish or chanting out a text in German, the Google Voice Search app will be able to recognize both.
In order to get started, the user should go to the apps menu and make a one-time change on his account's language settings. The user must remember that some languages can come in several dialects. One example is Spanish which has its own version in El Salvador, Mexico, Spain, and other countries. Another is Chinese which has the Cantonese version and three Mandarin versions. Moreover, Arabic has several forms and a handful of them are supported.
While a user may at times feel like it's OK to brag using different languages in the same sentence when he knows that a lot of people may be eavesdropping, the Voice Search app may in turn get confused and thereby be unable to perform the search. The user is therefore advised to speak only one language for every sentence he speaks.
Google will definitely add more languages and features in the near future which is good for those users whose language preferences are not supported just yet. When trying out the new feature, the user can first open his app drawer and select the Google Settings app. He then continues by clicking Search & Now, Voice, and finally Languages. A long press on a language would make it as the primary. The rest of the language choices will become secondary after the user has tapped on the other four. Of course, there's nothing wrong if one has a single primary language and a single secondary language.
"For many people out there, speaking just one language isn't enough. More than half the world's population speaks two or more languages -- and now Google can keep up," says David Eustis, a software engineer for Google's Android OS.
