You want directions to your house in Scotland? Aye? Well, ye cannae. Siri, Apple iPhone 4S' virtual assistant doesn't understand the Scots accent.
The Aberdeen Evening Express quoted Mark Chubb from technology site Phones Review as saying: “We have tested out Siri with different accents, such as Scottish, Welsh and Irish. At the moment it looks like a few will miss out.”
Kotaku also reports that their Scottish accent v Siri experiment failed. That site asked the iPhone 4S: "Do ye ken ra best bit fur me tae go an' git ah boatle ae Buckie?" (English translation: ‘Do you know the best place for a gentleman like myself to find a nice bottle of red wine?") In reply, Siri said: "Would you like to do a websearch for ‘campestris from your melbourne hockey'?" Hopeless.
We called a Scottish friend, Manda Rin from indie band Bis, to see how Siri coped with her Glaswegian accent.
"I asked Siri 'remind me to take my pieces to work' - pieces is Scottish for sandwiches. Siri thought I said 'remind me to take my PC to work'. Then I said 'remind me to buy some Irn Bru'. Siri thought I said 'remind me to buy some hiring blue'. Naturally I had to try 'tell my husband he's an idiot' and it then started calling his Mum."
"The funniest one it told me though was that it wasn't going to rain and didn't need my umbrella. I think that's someone in California having a joke, there's not a day it doesn't rain here!"
Other regional accents that Siri does not compute include Australian and various Asian accents.
To be fair to Apple, plenty of English people can't understand Weegie or other Scots accents. That's why there's a Scots-English dictionary.
Comedy show, Burnistoun, has a particularly amusing sketch in the video below on just what a tech fail Scottish voice recognition is.
What do you think? Should Scotland succede over this Apple oversight?