Does any speech recognition software use vowel normalization?
There are good reasons for saying hello.
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Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#12On a related note, the Oatmeal just posted 10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone:
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#13I fully support being polite, but there's a lot more to vowels than relative pitch. When speaking a vowel, the geometry of your mouth creates multiple resonant frequencies. The ratio among those frequencies is far more important than the ratio of the dominant frequency of one vowel to the dominant frequency of the next.
Consider a couple of examples:
1. A trombone can't say "I Owe You", despite the fact that it can produce any dominant frequency, and that phrase contains only vowels.
2. Voice "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh", going from a high to a low pitch (I imagine the doppler effect of a cartoon screaming as he rides by on a cart), and then voice "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh" in the same fashion. At every point, they sound different. You can't take a clip from an arbitrary pitch range of an Ah and convince someone its an Oh.
3. Shape your lips like you would for oo as in Moon, Noon, or Spoon, and try make the ea vowel as in Squeak just by changing your pitch. It won't happen. You'll get the German ö, but not the English ea.
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#14I'd like to see this theory put to the test. Get a number of differently-sized individuals record "see" or "saw" and test the ability of native speakers to identify which they heard.
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#15I like this little esmerel.com site ... it's quaint and interesting. Thanks.
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#16Wait, people would just call somewhere and say the extension? That sounds awfully rude to me. Wouldn't you normally say, "Hi, can I have extension 432, please?" It does the same thing the article says, but you sound like a decent human being.
What it reminded me of is when, after waiting on hold forever, the CSR says something like: "Thanks for calling ABC Company. What's your account number?" or "What is your phone number?" Having the first "words" a customer utters be numbers is probably not the best idea. I wonder how many hours of waiting on hold could be eliminated if more companies understood this phenomena.
I also wonder if the full word "hello," would be necessary, since the word "hi," makes the similar cavity-sound as the spoken number "five"?
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#17Sounds like a good practical explanation why in some cultures (French, for example), it's practically mandatory to say the equivalent of "Hello" and other pleasantries before getting to the actual content of the conversation.
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#18On a related note, the Oatmeal just posted 10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/phone
I always noticed the awkward goodbye, in other people, not so much myself because of lack of phone conversations really.
But it seems people have to make an excuse for every time there hanging up rather than just saying im going to go now bye or something.
Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#19I fully support being polite, but there's a lot more to vowels than relative pitch. When speaking a vowel, the geometry of your mouth creates multiple resonant frequencies. The ratio among those frequencies is far more important than the ratio of the dominant frequency of one vowel to the dominant frequency of the next. Consider a couple of examples: 1. A trombone can't say "I Owe You", despite the fact that it can p…
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Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.
#20I fully support being polite, but there's a lot more to vowels than relative pitch. When speaking a vowel, the geometry of your mouth creates multiple resonant frequencies. The ratio among those frequencies is far more important than the ratio of the dominant frequency of one vowel to the dominant frequency of the next. Consider a couple of examples: 1. A trombone can't say "I Owe You", despite the fact that it can p…
People who don't know the German ö may very well mistake it for an ineptly-said English ea, however. Just as many Americans interpret the Canadian-raising pronunciation of "about" as "aboot", even though it's a different sound entirely.