[OT] Re: [Ti] accents and Apple's Speech Recogntion

[Mark O'Brien]

On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, at 03:02  PM, Erika wrote:

> Has anyone with anything other than one of the North American accents 
> ever grappled
> with Apple's Speech Recognition? I find it understands very little of 
> what I say, which
> is disappointing to say the least, because as an invalid I'd be making 
> good use of it
> otherwise. I can imitate my mother's Canadian accent for a while with 
> reasonable
> success, and then the recognition accuracy level improves 
> dramatically, but it makes my
> mouth hurt and anyway, speaking slowly and clearly in someone else's 
> acccent to a
> computer makes me feel like a prat.

LOL! I was amazed when I discovered a few years ago that 2 of the main 
characters in L.A. Confidential were played by Australians (Guy Pearce 
and Russell Crowe...yeah, I know he was born in N.Z.). Their American 
accents were perfect! Same with the current U.S. TV series "Without A 
Trace", with Anthony LaPaglia and Poppy Montgomery, both from Oz.

And Toni Collette, who played the mother in Sixth Sense. Not only did 
she play an American, but one with a heavy Philadelphia accent. At 
first I was sure they hired a local Philly actress. I fancy myself a 
pretty good mimic of regional accents, but I lived in Philadelphia for 
three years and *never* got that accent down!

Not to take anything away from the talent of these fine actors, but 
they must have made some great advances in speech coaching in recent 
years. Maybe Apple can use some of them to help regionalize 
(regionalise?) their Speech Recognition :-)

Mark