If you have a name that's not common in your default language, you know how weird it can be to hear it spoken back in speech-to-text. Google Assistant is a pretty good example of that in action, and of how it's becoming a more common problem as more and more of our tech gains voice powers. But thanks to some recent improvements, Assistant should be better at handling unusual names and spellings in the future.

Starting soon, you'll be able to train Assistant in how to pronounce the names of your contacts. This is more in-depth than the phonetic options in Google Contacts: the more targetted contact listings in Assistant will give you a choice between the default, machine-generated pronunciation of a name and one you say out loud.

Once you've recorded your own pronunciation of your contact's name, Google will approximate it with its speaking engine, then delete the recording of your voice. It will then (hopefully) recognize the way you use the name for actions like "text Meemaw."

Google says that this is rolling out now for the English version of Assistant, and coming to more languages "soon."