Spoken content issue between Persian and Arabic

Question

Spoken content issue between Persian and Arabic

I love the option to get my iPhone to read aloud text.

I saw that Persian is now available through the voice named Dariush.

However, when I select Persian text for example on an official Iranian government website, it uses the Arabic voice and reads it as Arabic!

I have set the default language in the spoken content settings to Persian and when I do this the speak selection doesn’t even appear in selected text.

I want Persian Dariush to read aloud to me, not Arab Mariam!

If anyone can provide extra tips or help solve this problem, it would be greatly appreciated from all Persian learners using iOS!

iPhone 12 Pro Max, iOS 17

Posted on Aug 14, 2024 9:00 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,856 points

Aug 15, 2024 2:32 AM in response to Marlikethe0cean

In settings > general > language, do you have Persian near the top of the Preferred Languages list (or at least higher than Arabic)?

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,856 points

Aug 15, 2024 5:54 AM in response to Marlikethe0cean

Marlikethe0cean wrote:

I have set the default language in the spoken content settings to Persian and when I do this the speak selection doesn’t even appear in selected text.

That seems to be a bug. Let Apple know via

hhttp://www.apple.com/feedback

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Answer 3

Top-ranking reply

Marlikethe0cean Author

Level 1

6 points

Aug 15, 2024 8:24 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom! YES it is a bug! And it looks like it's been around for a long time! Too long! I went completely bonkers trying to figure it out. And yes I do have Persian right under English as a preferred language and deleted everything else. It's sad because I am a polyglot and deleted them :(

I did come up with a way to use Dariush to read to me. It's more inconvenient than selecting text and asking it to read, because it requires more steps but he will read aloud.

I use the Live Speech feature in Accessibility. Dariush in Persian does need to be selected in the voices list in the Life Speech section. When reading Persian text, for example from a family member on WhatsApp, I triple-click the side button and up pops a grey box at the bottom of the screen activating Live Speech. Persian needs to be set as the current keyboard. From there I copy and paste the Persian text, then hit the blue send button on the keyboard and Dariush reads aloud. Voila! A true persian male voice can read your cousins happy birthday text in authentic persian!

It's a step in a good direction, but you can't adjust how slow or fast he reads so it's harder for learners.

And yes I did notify Apple with feedback on this. Hopefully they fix it!!!

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,856 points

Aug 16, 2024 2:19 AM in response to Marlikethe0cean

Oddly I do not see this bug on my iPad, it has no problem reading Persian text directly from a website.

The list of preferred languages doesn't really do anything important in most cases, so it doesn't matter if you add more. If by chance you sometime want to see Arabic script in the Nastaliq form, you should have Urdu higher on the list than Arabic or Persian.

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Spoken content issue between Persian and Arabic

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