Voice Recognition Phone System Doesn't Recognize Southern Drawls

AP Breaking News ^

[stainlessbanner]

Otherwise they'd put people with strong Southern dialects on as news anchors and weather people--hint: THEY DONT!

Right. They put pompous pretty boys (metros) and cheer girls up there to read lines. I'd trust JoeBob's knee more than I trust them tv personalities. True to Southern tradition, a cattleman or farmer can tell you what the weather will be like.

[Non-Sequitur]

Why can't they develop a system to recognize accents of all kinds?

Because there could be dozens of different pronunciations for the same word, and the amount of storage necessary for the voice recognition systems to store all those permutations would be massive. Voice recognition systems work by converting the spoken word into patterns and then comparing those patterns with records stored in the database. They generally return as many as three possible hits and the probability of each hit being the correct one. The IVR software then proceeds based on these probabilities.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

I called Boston once and had to ask 3 times "Pardon me?" before I realized I had called the right number after all..."Copley Towers."

[aomagrat]

In Louisiana, we have a problem with Southern drawl and what I call lazy mouth

Now that's an insult to Southerners I've never heard before.

[PistolPaknMama]

They dont' put people on with strong yankee dialects either. There's a reason for that. Nobody can understand what they're saying.

The Southern drawl is close to the Irish/Scot accent. When I was in Ireland, everyone asked if I was from Australia. My accent comes from the people who first settled this land...my Irish ancestors. Just becasue you're a snob doesn't mean *I* can't speak intelligble English.

[Hawkeye's Girl]

I, from Minnesota, ordered something over the phone from Virginia once, and it was awful. I had no idea what she was saying her drawl was so thick, and she didn't speak Minnesohtan, so we spent more than half the phone call repeating ourselves. Accents suck.

[l8pilot]

As a temp, I worked at this company that had just landed a contract with HUD. Our job was to listen to voice mails left by people who were requesting brochures advertised in a national campaign by HUD. Besides people who were obviously non-native English speakers, the most INCOMPREHENSIBLE messages(and keep in mind, they only left addresses and names) were left by Southerners(of various kinds.) I never heard anyone with a Midwestern accent that I couldn't understand, provided their voice was audible.

We talk like thyis, so'z we can tayle damyankee jokes in front of y'all, an' you can' tayle what weah sayin'.

Besides, our women soun' bettern' y'alls.

ROTFL

Larry ,

[l8pilot]

As a temp, I worked at this company that had just landed a contract with HUD. Our job was to listen to voice mails left by people who were requesting brochures advertised in a national campaign by HUD. Besides people who were obviously non-native English speakers, the most INCOMPREHENSIBLE messages(and keep in mind, they only left addresses and names) were left by Southerners(of various kinds.) I never heard anyone with a Midwestern accent that I couldn't understand, provided their voice was audible.

We talk like thyis, so'z we can tayle damyankee jokes in front of y'all, an' you can' tayle what weah sayin'.

Besides, our women soun' bettern' y'alls.

ROTFL

Larry ,

[Doctor Stochastic]

That doesn't work. Live operators don't understand accents either. (Not to mention hearing things like: "We charge extra to foreign places such as New Mexico."

[Cooter]

Lord help 'em when a Cajun makes a call, I gar-ron-tee.

[l8pilot]

As a temp, I worked at this company that had just landed a contract with HUD. Our job was to listen to voice mails . Besides people who were obviously non-native English speakers, the most INCOMPREHENSIBLE messages(and keep in mind, they only left addresses and names) were left by Southerners(of various kinds.) I never heard anyone with a Midwestern accent that I couldn't understand, provided their voice was audible.

The reason we talk like the-yes, is so's we can make fun of y'all damyankees, an' y'all won't know the difference. B'sides, our women soun' like laydees, instead of uncultured, uncouth cab drivers.

ROTFL

Larry

[4CJ]

Ma'am, I will say this, Southern women are a pleasure to listen to, their voices are melodious and beautiful. I pray it never changes.

[WKB]

M i s s s i p p y p i n g

[Spok]

But does it recognize Eubonics?

[Blood of Tyrants]

That remids me. I was 8 before I ever met anyone not from the south (Yankees from Chicago) and I literally could not understand what they were saying. You can imagine what kind of problems I had with trying to understand someone from Maine. (Did someone forget to teach them about he letter "r"?)

[Blood of Tyrants]

Go to southern Georgia and talk to a few people. Lazy mouth is a big problem there. Words simply get sort of "rounded off" and it comes out sort of a mumble to an untrained listener.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The problem with that is developers generally use their own voices (and the few around them who tend to talk like them) to test their software.

[Hatteras]

yo...

[Hatteras]

Sounds like 'profiling' to me. And everyone knows.... Profiling is wrong.

[Steve0113]

I literally could not understand what they were saying.

I'm from MD, and will never forget the time I met a guy who was visiting from New Orleans. Despite his best efforts, I simply could not understand a word he said. He might as well have been speaking Swahili.