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There are good reasons for saying hello.

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Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#21

Post by dfreidin »

repiret wrote: post #13

I 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…

Actually, #1 isn't quite true. A trombone can be made to sound like speech in a couple of ways.

First, with a plunger mute. The adults in the Peanuts cartoons were "voiced" by a trombone with a plunger mute, which gives the impression of a voice without necessarily sounding like it's saying anything in particular. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts#Television_and_film_pro...)

Second, it's actually possible to make it sound slightly like specific words by altering the shape and size of your vocal cavity while playing a note. When this is combined with slight glissandos, it can be made to sound a lot like speech. In fact, there is a piece for solo trombone called "General Speech" which uses this technique to recreate General MacArthur's farewell speech at West Point on the trombone. You can read about it and hear it at http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=11

To be fair, neither of these techniques produces anything you'd be able to understand in a conversation, but the point is that a sufficiently skilled trombonist could definitely say something that could be recognized as "I Owe You" on the instrument.

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#22

Post by petercooper »

leftnode wrote: post #2

Wait, 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.

I've never encountered an operator who takes extension numbers rather than names, but I'd say, for example: "Mark Thompson, please" without thinking it's rude (as long as I didn't know the operator). You gotta "make the nice" somewhere though :-)

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#23

Post by ezy »

grinich wrote: post #11

Does any speech recognition software use vowel normalization?

Yes. See: "VTLN". Also, the audio feature transformations are adapted during recognition in most cases. For instance, speaker independent recognizers generally do runtime adaptation on a per conversation basis. Speaker dependent ones generally continually adapt to the user using the same techniques.

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#24

Post by jimbokun »

repiret wrote: post #13

I 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…

"It won't happen. You'll get the German ö, but not the English ea."

Cool! Now I know how to pronounce a German ö!

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#25

Post by lqdshadow »

andrewcooke wrote: post #6

this is particularly true (in my limited experience) if you're not a native speaker - saying something like "hello i'd like to talk to extension 123" gives people a chance to figure out your accent. also, like smiling, saying something friendly encourages people to make an effort to understand you.

I wonder if attention plays a part. I have noticed that people can interpret what I say if I start with a grunt or other vocal sound, but if I start off with the thing I want to say immediately, I have to start over. I realize that it can be explained by this "human brain interprets your two syllables" idea, but if a mere grunt also does the trick, this suggests to me that attention plays at least as much an important part.

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#27

Post by eru »

jimbokun wrote: post #24
repiret wrote: post #13

I 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…

"It won't happen. You'll get the German ö, but not the English ea." Cool! Now I know how to pronounce a German ö!

And also the Turkish ö. But not `coöperate' from the New Yorker.

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#28

Post by eru »

NathanKP wrote: post #10
thwarted wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known a few people who don't get the "conversation is ending" inflection and can't/don't express it. It leads to some awkward pauses on the phone and me having to ask continuously if there is anything else. May be the other person doesn't want to hang up first, but I have no trouble hanging up first if there's an indication that the conversation is over and the other person isn't just stalling because they have…

In my experience I know a couple people who don't understand how the conversation starting and ending works. Usually a person's tone and speaking pace has a distinct pattern at the beginning of the conversation, and also a distinct pattern at the end that shows that the conversation is ending. These people just start off talking like it is the middle of the conversation. When they are done they just walk right off ab…

> It is interesting the way we come to expect certain speaking patterns based on how most people communicate.

Isn't this what language (and other practical conventions) are all about?

Re: There are good reasons for saying hello.

#30

Post by lunchbox »

kbutler wrote: post #29

Are you sure this isn't a troll? It's so easily disprovable. Here's a sound clip of an adult male speaking, followed by a young boy. Do you honestly have trouble understanding the number the boy says? http://soi.kd6.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sound.mp3

Bingo. I'm surprised nobody else has questioned whether the purported fact in the article is even true. I can't relate at all to not understanding the first few words someone says.

(Although I doubt it's an intentional troll.)

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