Tuesday, June 8, 2021

iOS: New Language Features in iPadOS 15

Apple has released a preview of new features in iPadOS 15 to be issued later this year. Below are the parts of interest in the language area:

+Vietnamese VNI and VIQR keyboards

+QuickPath for more languages: Dutch, Hindi (Latin), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

+New keyboard layouts: Ainu, Amharic, Fula (Adlam), Igbo, Navajo, Rohingya, Syriac, and Tigrinya .

+Enhanced 10-key layout for Chinese Pinyin: Lets you quickly switch to QWERTY, access symbols more easily, and type words that share the same keys with greater accuracy by allowing you to select the exact Pinyin for more than just the first syllable in the phrase.

+Smart Replies for new Indic languages: Urdu, Bangla, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, and Odiya.

+Neural text-to-speech voice in more languages: Swedish (Sweden), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), and Finnish (Finland).

+Mixed English and Indic language support in Siri: Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi.

+New Voice Control languages: Mandarin Chinese (China mainland), Cantonese (Hong Kong), French (France), and German (Germany).

+New dictionaries for India: Urdu–English, Tamil–English, Telugu–English, and Gujarati–English.

+New idiom dictionary for China mainland

+New dictionaries for Hong Kong: A Traditional Chinese–English idiom dictionary, a Traditional Chinese–English dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms, and a new Traditional Chinese dictionary.

+Dialect lexicon support for Cantonese and Shanghainese: Type words in Pinyin using native Cantonese or Shanghainese dialectal spellings.

+On-device dictation in more regions and languages, including Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Cantonese (Hong Kong), English (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, UK, U.S.), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico, Spain, U.S.), Turkish (Turkey), and Yue Chinese (China mainland).

+Improved Japanese Support for Scribble and Note Taking.

+Various Improvements in Translation.app

MacOS: New Language Features in MacOS 12 Monterey

Apple has released a preview of new features in MacOS 12 Monterey, which will be issued in the fall of 2021. Below are the parts that relate to languages.

+New keyboard layouts: Ainu, Amharic, Fula (Adlam), Igbo, Navajo, Rohingya, Syriac, and Tigrinya

+New Voice Control languages, including Mandarin Chinese (China mainland), Cantonese (Hong Kong), French (France), and German (Germany).

+New dictionaries for India, including Urdu–English, Tamil–English, Telugu–English, and Gujarati–English.

+New Simplified Chinese idiom dictionary for China mainland

+New dictionaries for Hong Kong, including a Traditional Chinese–English idiom dictionary, a Traditional Chinese–English dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms, and a new Traditional Chinese dictionary.

+Dialect lexicon support for Cantonese and Shanghainese: Type words in Pinyin using native Cantonese or Shanghainese dialectal spellings.

+On-device dictation, available in Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Cantonese (Hong Kong), English (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, UK, U.S.), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico, Spain, U.S.), Turkish (Turkey), and Yue Chinese (China mainland)*.

+Neural text-to-speech voice in more languages: Swedish (Sweden), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), and Finnish (Finland)*.

+Mixed English and Indic language support in Siri for Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi.

*Requires Mac with M1 chip