Our Smartphones Are Changing How We Speak

February 13, 2016 in Daily Bulletin

Cortana accent

Tom Dart wrote that automated assistants such as Cortana and Siri are changing how people speak:

  • In the United States voice recognition apps seem to struggle with southern accents and slang.
  • People in Australia and India often say they have to fake an American accent to get their smartphones to understand them.
  • While voice recognition is getting better…it may not need to. People are adapting themselves to their virtual assistants rather than the other way around.
  • Most people have a “telephone voice” – a clearer version of their voice that people use when speaking to strangers or those over the phone.
  • But with the hyper-connected world we have today, where people in Texas maybe talking to those in Thailand, people are increasingly using their “telephone voice” during day to day interactions.

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Source: The Guardian