iPadOS 14 Apple Pencil Features Expand to French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish Languages

Apple has expanded several iPadOS 14 Apple Pencil features to additional languages, improving ‌Apple Pencil‌ functionality for those who write in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

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According to Apple's iOS and iPadOS Feature Availability page, these languages can now be used when copying handwriting as text and there's also data detector support.

That means if you write something in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, you can now copy the handwritten text and paste it as standard typed text, and addresses and other content written in these languages will also show up as interactive and clickable.

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Both Copy Handwriting as Text and Data Detectors were already available for the English and Chinese languages, but have expanded much more broadly. Various dialects are supported including French (Belgium), French (Canada), French (Switzerland), French (France), German (Austria), German (Germany), German (Switzerland), Italian (Switzerland), Italian (Italy), Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), and Spanish (Mexico).

Apple earlier this year introduced Apple Pencil Scribble support for these same languages, allowing German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese speakers to write in their native language across iPadOS.

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Top Rated Comments

ghanwani Avatar
50 months ago
I miss the days of old technology (like plain old pen and paper) where the feature was released for all languages at the same time.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
PinkyMacGodess Avatar
50 months ago
I just wish there was a way to 'Find My'...

Pencil...

I haven't found it yet...

Depressing...
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
V86 Avatar
50 months ago
Please have the Nordic Languages be next. (Norwegian, Danish, Islantic, Finnish, Sami and Swedish)

C’mon we gave you Thor and all the other awsome Gods. Even Loki has become a much loved God.

If not we will have to unleash Ragnarök!
[HEADING=2][/HEADING]
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
David Tomasulo Avatar
50 months ago

Every Latin American country has their own flavor of Spanish, and on top of that there are regional differences. But "Latin American Spanish" is what you would use to communicate with a majority of the Latin American countries so that you would understand each other. Some countries have more indigenous words in their language, while some change the sounds of some common consonants (I'm looking at you Argentina).

It's like the differences between American, Canadian, British, Australian, New Zealand English, but standardizing on British English if you need to be understood universally.

In Latin America, conversationally everyone speaks in "slang", or rather, the local dialect. But TV shows that are international would use "Latin American" phrasing so that everyone can understand, or the predominant dialect (usually Mexican).
Although you are completely right, the differences are in the pronunciation and some vocabulary. But the syntax and the grammar is exactly the same for all Spanish-speaking countries. In that case, I don't understand why is it needed to differentiate the different regions when we are talking mainly about recognition of written text.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Karllake Avatar
50 months ago

Will it be able to automatically detect when I switch languages? Now that would be cool!
If not all languages then hopefully at least dual, the world is getting smaller and I guess a good chunk of people are using 2 languages regularly, I’d like the across the board, so predictive text can apply the correct language to each word.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
InsideApple Avatar
50 months ago
Wow…I finally feel special for once, as a Swiss German speaking person, this is great.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)