Since many people have at least one way to connect with Alexa, Google, or Siri within their homes, it’s only logical that smart voice assistants adapt to sound more like the people using them. 

How to make Alexa bilingual

Alexa has the option to listen and respond in English and other languages, or a combination of two languages. This feature is available on 3rd Generation Echo speakers, 2nd Generation Echo Shows and the newer generations of both devices.  That’s it, Alexa should be bilingual within a few minutes of setting this up. Since the voice assistant can understand both languages, it will respond in each language, depending on which one was used to make the request. Alexa has at least some grasp of “Spanglish”, which is the combination of both English and Spanish where speakers may alternate words within a phrase in one language or the other. In my experience, Alexa has understood all of my family’s requests in Spanglish, as is the experience of other users. However, we obviously haven’t asked everything under the sun in Spanglish, but the things we have asked have worked.

Why can’t I change Alexa to bilingual in the app’s global settings?

Whenever you’re changing Alexa’s language for an Echo device, you need to do it specifically from within that device’s settings, not the general settings that the Alexa app has. This is a little tedious, but it makes it so that you can set different languages for different Echos within your home.