I always bake my bread for 49 minutes. Reason being that Siri on my Apple Watch doesn’t understand my accent, and if I say “50” it sets the timer for 15.
I said this on Twitter yesterday, and Simon Walters mentioned that he programmed Alexa to accept the word “toggle” to control his home media setup, but had to change it to accept ‘taco’ instead.
Accents!
Dan Saffer had a good point:
There should be two words/phrases for this. One for making ourselves “readable” to digital objects and another for the warping of outcomes because they’re affected by outside digital processes.
And it got me thinking about radio…
There’s a particular accent associated with BBC radio sometimes called BBC English which is also known as “RP” – Received Pronunciation. Back in the day, it was a upper class, southern English, prestige accent, but then it was adopted by the BBC in 1922, and that’s what radio sounded like from then on.
So it’s a non-geographic accent; it’s “place” is ageographic radio. (Is “ageographic” even a word? Can it be?)
Here’s the British Library on the history and features of RP.
It turns out the US has something similar with radio voices, which I didn’t know, but it has a different origin. From The Atlantic: That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away.
There’s an (unattributed) speculation in that article:
The primary reason [for the accent] was primitive microphone technology: “natural” voices simply did not get picked up well by the microphones of the time. …
Microphone technology improved enormously in the 40s, but a pattern, a style of speech in the news and entertainment industries had been set: radio announcers and broadcasters could, from the late 1940s onwards, speak more naturally, but those who wanted to “sound like a real newsman” had to affect the old way of speaking, probably as a way of establishing their bona fides…
Bad microphones lead to a specific accent; accent becomes a marker of gravitas; mics get better but accent persists.
Going back to Saffer’s point:
The starting point is about us making ourselves readable to machines, and that’s where the accent comes in
BUT THEN, as he says,
there’s this “warping” of culture that occurs from then on – the legacy of janky microphones or the standards manual that results in an accent that endures decades later.
Back to my baking:
There’s a good chance that Siri got better in the most recent software update, and perhaps it can now discern “50” and “15” in my voice. But I’ll never know. I now have a habit of saying hey siri set timer for 49 minutes – even if Siri has improved, there’s no moment for me to discover that. So I’ll carry on baking my bread for 49 minutes forever.
AND SO:
Will we see, alongside Cockney, Indian English, Mid-Atlantic, Estuary English, and all the rest, a new accent of Machine English which is ageographic, placeless, that we all keep in our repertoire to be understood by not-quite-good-enough voice-controlled objects?
And, even when Siri and Alexa and all the rest are good enough, will we carry on speaking with it?
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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I always bake my bread for 49 minutes. Reason being that Siri on my Apple Watch doesn’t understand my accent, and if I say “50” it sets the timer for 15.
I said this on Twitter yesterday, and Simon Walters mentioned that he programmed Alexa to accept the word “toggle” to control his home media setup,
Accents!
Dan Saffer had a good point:
And it got me thinking about radio…
There’s a particular accent associated with BBC radio sometimes called BBC English which is also known as “RP” – Received Pronunciation. Back in the day, it was a upper class, southern English, prestige accent, but then it was adopted by the BBC in 1922, and that’s what radio sounded like from then on.
So it’s a non-geographic accent; it’s “place” is ageographic radio. (Is “ageographic” even a word? Can it be?)
Here’s the British Library on the history and features of RP.
It turns out the US has something similar with radio voices, which I didn’t know, but it has a different origin. From The Atlantic: That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away.
There’s an (unattributed) speculation in that article:
Bad microphones lead to a specific accent; accent becomes a marker of gravitas; mics get better but accent persists.
Going back to Saffer’s point:
The starting point is about us making ourselves to machines, and that’s where the accent comes in
BUT THEN, as he says,
there’s this “warping” of culture that occurs from then on – the legacy of janky microphones or the standards manual that results in an accent that endures decades later.
Back to my baking:
There’s a good chance that Siri got better in the most recent software update, and perhaps it can now discern “50” and “15” in my voice. But I’ll never know. I now have a habit of saying – even if Siri has improved, there’s no moment for me to discover that. So I’ll carry on baking my bread for 49 minutes forever.
AND SO:
Will we see, alongside Cockney, Indian English, Mid-Atlantic, Estuary English, and all the rest, a new accent of Machine English which is ageographic, placeless, that we all keep in our repertoire to be understood by not-quite-good-enough voice-controlled objects?
And, even when Siri and Alexa and all the rest are good enough, will we carry on speaking with it?