Google Assistant Now Supports Cantonese on Android and within Actions on Google SDK

Google Assistant today introduced Cantonese to both Google Assistant on Android smartphones and the Actions on Google software development kit (SDK). This means that users can access Google Assistant services in the most-spoken language in Hong Kong and third-party developers can build voice apps for them. It also means that Google Assistant now supports 37 language variants (or localizations) across 20 distinct languages.

Third-party Google Actions do not utilize the primary Google Assistant voice but Google instead offers other synthetic voice options for developers to choose from. This approach is designed to make it easier for users to recognize when they are speaking with Google Assistant directly as opposed to a third-party Action. Developers may select from two standard synthetic Cantonese voices for their Actions, one male and one female.

Female Voice 1

Male Voice 1

Not Yet on Smart Speakers or iOS

Cantonese is not supported on Google’s smart speakers according to Google documentation and the devices are not for sale in China. When you select Cantonese as a language option, the Google Assistant app even provides a helpful message saying that it “won’t work on some of your devices.”

However, Google has said in the past that about 50% of all usage of Google Assistant is on smartphones and that may have grown as new languages have been released on smartphones but not on smart speakers and related devices. While the Cantonese option appeared earlier today on Pixel Phones, the iOS version of Google Assistant does not currently support the language option.

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