Siri ain’t southern

The newer iPhones have this handy little feature called “Siri”… touted by Apple as an “intelligent personal assistant.” Siri allows you to use your voice to do almost anything… set reminders, have text conversations, get driving directions, find nearby restaurants, etc. All you have to do is press the button at the bottom of the phone and start talking… or asking for her assistance. And, Siri kindly speaks back to you with her answers or directions or what not.

I’m a little slow to embrace the very latest technological developments, and have therefore not been a frequent user of Siri’s services. I don’t know why, but I still feel a little strange talking to my phone like it’s a person. Yet, the Spouse is always telling me… “You need to use Siri… It would be so handy with the kids if you’d just learn to use Siri… You could use Siri in the car…,” so forth and so on. So, I’ve been trying to warm up to Siri lately.

But, I’m finding that I just may not have the patience for Siri. It’s frustrating enough to have to repeat myself over and over when I’m talking to the girls, but now… I have to yell at Siri, too? I don’t know if I hold the phone too close to my face or if my voice is strangely inaudible or what, but let me tell you one thing I know for certain about Siri.

Siri sure ain’t southern.

And, honestly, she can be a little insulting.

Last week I tried to send the Spouse a quick text as I hopped in the car to run some errands. Here’s the excerpt:

Let it be known that this was my third attempt to send the following simple message:

“You can smell that MULCH FIRE from our house now.” 

{See, we had a huge mulch fire burning all last week in the downtown area of the city, and the weather was making it hard for firefighters to put it out. I thought it was unbelievable that I could smell it from our house miles away}.

Now, I’ll admit that I tend to use the long “i” sound a little too much and probably stretched the word “fire” out to include two syllables. But, I did not… I do not… pronounce the word “fire” as “far.” As in:

“Let’s build a camp far.”

“What a lovely far place.”

“Somebody call the far department!”

No, I say… “f-eye-err.”

And, clearly, Siri isn’t aware of the profound difference between the two pronunciations. Not to mention that she didn’t get the word “mulch” right either.

I think the only hope for Siri is if the Apple company will hire a few southerners to help with her programming before they release their next phone.

In the meantime, I have to put my own name up on our chalkboard for the flippant use of the word “stupid” in the context of name calling.