Apple confirms Siri support for Japanese on iOS 5.1

Apple has just confirmed what we've suspected from a few leaks in the past that its Siri intelligent voice-controlled assistant will be supporting the Japanese language. The new language capability will be introduced on iOS 5.1, which will be available to some markets starting today and then rolled out over the next few weeks to Japan.

Currently, Siri only has support for English in the three accents of the US, UK, and Australia along with the languages French and German. Reports last month started surfacing that when users asked Siri what languages it speaks, that the feature itself revealed that it also spoke Japanese, which suggested that such support would be imminent.

As for other languages, Apple has promised that Siri will be able to support Korean, Chinese, Italian, and Spanish by the end of this year.