Posted on 02/10/2016 1:48:23 PM PST by SkyPilot
'People speak to machines differently than how they speak to people,' says language technology expert Alan Black.
It was a simple enough question, at least in this part of the world.
"How can we mosey on down to the rodeo?" my friend Ben Crook drawled, sat in a rocking chair on his front porch, a can of Lone Star beer in his left hand on a humid night in Houston.
Only one thing jarred with this otherwise stereotypical Texas scene: Crook was asking Siri, the voice-activated digital personal assistant on his iPhone, rather than, say, a passing sheriff on horseback with a cowboy hat wider than the Buffalo Bayou.
Siri understood the individual words but didn't know how to respond. But Crook had other questions. He was hungry; heck, so hungry he coulda eaten the north end of a southbound billy goat.
"We're fixin' to eat brisket, where should we go?" he asked Siri. She offered a list of 15 restaurants - though not all appeared to serve Texas barbecue. Siri was also helpful when asked where to find crawfish, but baffled about kolaches, the pastries of central European origin that are hugely popular in Texas, calling them "Colotchies".
Meanwhile, though the free Dragon dictation app performed admirably when fed lines from the 2004 movie The Alamo, it did turn "Davy Crockett feller" into "David Rockefeller", and evoking a family of Yankee industrialists is no way to describe a hero of the battle for Texas independence.
The upshot of this brief and decidedly unscientific experiment is that Siri is at her best when addressed in standard English, with accents toned down and slang avoided where possible.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Funny. My parents, my siblings, and my nieces and nephews who live in Texas all have Texas accents. They’re all technologically savvy and I haven’t noticed a drop off.
By the same token, I wonder if Siri could tell me the quickest way to the corner of Toidy Toid ‘n Toid?
The best one I heard was when my son was fishing on the Stubblefield bridge on the North fork of Lake Conroe in Walker County. He said this old lady pointed to the creek bank and said, “I’m gonna bunker down over yonder.”
I don't think my accent was the problem.
The Midwestern accent was prevalent in the media in the 1930s-1950s. Since Opie it’s also been flattened. The California radio voice rules all. Yes, it happens to be my accent, but I am sad about it. I love all the different accents of this country.
From the article you cite...
“The fact that a rural, broadly Midwestern dialect became the basis of what is General American English is often attributed to the mass migration of Midwestern farmers to California and the Pacific Northwest from where it spread,[citation needed] since California speech itself became prevalent in nationally syndicated films and media via the Hollywood film industry.”
Having lived in CA all my life, it always seemed to me that people on TV talk like people here do. Most people from the Midwest sound “hick” (as Midwesterner Rush Limbaugh calls it) in comparison.
Of course when SoCal became the center of media, especially the destination for people with dreams of stardom, the midwestern accent took over SoCal. The California radio voice is the midwestern accent.
My drawl is very slow, except when I'm mad. The madder I get, the faster I talk.
And I get very mad when people try to finish my sentences for me.
You think Californians have no accent?
That’s funny rite there!
Yes, for a variety of reasons the midwestern accent took over CA, especially SoCal where so much of the entertainment industry is headquartered and so many of the people think they’re going to be famous. It’s the midwestern accent that rules the media, since long before CA became the media capital.
No matter how you want to trace it, the General American Accent, which is what the media uses, came from the midwest.
I suppose I do have a Texas accent, like everyone else out here-but since I shut off GPS-and all those annoying apps as soon as I got this phone, I’ll never know if it is unable to understand accents...
When was that? Before movies, radio and TV?
Mine gets worse when I am tired. But yeah mad doesn’t help either.
MY uncle didn't marry an insect !
I asked siri where to find a Chicken fried Steak and she couldn’t tell me.
True story.
(I already knew where to go, anyway).
LOL!
“Texans don’t have accents, lot’s of folks outside the state kind’a sound funny but not Texans.”
Amen to that, y’all!
I’ve never heard a Texan ask how can we mosey on down to the rodeo. EVER.
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