Cortana availability in windows 10

[Mathieu Ackermann]

Hello,

A question to the Windows insiders: what's the status of Cortana's availability in the latest Windows 10 builds? Is it still US only? Do you have to use the same annoying tricks than on Windows Phone (change region and language to US English) to make it work outside of US?
I think like many of us Windows fans in the non-US world, I'm quite disappointed by the speed of the release process. The French version has been in Alpha stage for more than a year (!) now. From what I heard until now, Windows 10 is even going backwards (US only again). Worse is their stubbornness to tie Cortana to the regional setting, basically ensuring that smaller countries will never get Cortana (a similar example is the world flow keyboard, 2015 and still not available for French Switzerland setting, although only a few keys are swapped compared to French France). Switzerland, Belgium speak French, but cannot use the French Cortana without changing their settings. That's stupid.
Cortana is useful as an assistant even if not all the regional details are worked right (proof is, I'm using the US version daily). But having to change the whole system configuration for this is a pain (especially so on a desktop computer).

 

[Harrie-S]

Windows 10 will be released with more languages.

"Cortana is only currently available on Windows 10 for the United States, United Kingdom, China, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain."
From below article.
Here are the Windows 10 system requirements for running the OS on your PC | Windows Central

And about the non availability of a local Cortana for other (smaller) countries I agree.

(And I see an additional problem for Cortana in Belgium (3 official languages), Switzerland (4 official languages) and similar countries.

 

[Mathieu Ackermann]

Thanks, good to know at least that some other languages are already planned.
Still, if you look at the total number of language configurations in the Windows settings, you can easily imagine that it will take 20 years for Microsoft to cover them all separately. Now I don't know how Siri or Google Now deal with this, but it's pretty clear that the easiest way would be to add a setting with a simple select menu allowing to enable Cortana and choose a language from the list of already available ones. Then anyone could choose what he prefers and there would be much less frustration.

Regarding the word flow keyboard, I consider it a *shame* that it is still not available for all languages configurations. This is simply unacceptable almost 2 years after the release of similar features to others. Especially considering that the dictionary is the same than i.e. for French France, only the location of a few letters are swapped.