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Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

doug.sh

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Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#31

Post by chrismorgan »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #28
chrismorgan wrote: post #24

I think the “What it won’t touch” section shows why the entire concept is unsound. Here it is with a different first sentence, and (other than the third sentence no longer matching erm’s reality) it’s perfectly coherent: > It leaves um , uh , er and elongated versions ( ummmm , uhhhhh ) alone. Those sound like fillers but they’re doing real work in the sentence, and cutting them automatically would change what someon…

>> It leaves um, uh, er and elongated versions ( ummmm, uhhhhh ) alone. Something's already gone wrong here. Uh and er refer to the same sound. Uh is the American spelling. Er is British; to them a following "r" like that is just a kind of vowel.

Um… no. Quite different vowel sounds.

(Also, in case it wasn’t clear: I was quoting from the start of the article in that sentence.)

Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#33

Post by HeavyStorm »

monster_truck wrote: post #30

It takes about 30 seconds in Audacity and will give an infinitely better result. Also works on any other sound

Doesn't sound true. Unless audacity already has a tool for this exactly... How would you do it on 30 seconds or less?

Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#34

Post by thaumasiotes »

chrismorgan wrote: post #31
thaumasiotes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It leaves um, uh, er and elongated versions ( ummmm, uhhhhh ) alone. Something's already gone wrong here. Uh and er refer to the same sound. Uh is the American spelling. Er is British; to them a following "r" like that is just a kind of vowel.

Um… no . Quite different vowel sounds. (Also, in case it wasn’t clear: I was quoting from the start of the article in that sentence.)

They're quite different vowel sounds in the same sense that "back" and "back" use "quite different vowel sounds" when pronounced by American vs British speakers.

But not in any other sense.

> in case it wasn’t clear: I was quoting from the start of the article in that sentence.

You don't seem to be quoting from the article at all, actually. You've combined two different sentences in a way that grossly misrepresents what the article says. But that's not really relevant to the point here.

Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#36

Post by bluebarbet »

wzdd wrote: post #10

It’s a nice engineering approach, but I’m interested in the motivation. Um and ah is distracting in a transcript, where you can naturally pause to take in information; in speech however it can serve as a focusing point to indicate the next part is important. See https://medium.com/better-humans/dont-worry-about-saying-um-... for example. The weirdly obsessive zeal that orgs like Toastmasters have about eliminating th…

The most popular academic theory (IIRC) is that "um" and "uh" are conversational placeholders that say, "don't talk, I'm not finished speaking yet". Which obviously serves no purpose in a monologue.

To me they just indicate lack of confidence on the part of the speaker.

Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#37

Post by skrebbel »

bluebarbet wrote: post #36
wzdd wrote: post #10

It’s a nice engineering approach, but I’m interested in the motivation. Um and ah is distracting in a transcript, where you can naturally pause to take in information; in speech however it can serve as a focusing point to indicate the next part is important. See https://medium.com/better-humans/dont-worry-about-saying-um-... for example. The weirdly obsessive zeal that orgs like Toastmasters have about eliminating th…

The most popular academic theory (IIRC) is that "um" and "uh" are conversational placeholders that say, "don't talk, I'm not finished speaking yet". Which obviously serves no purpose in a monologue. To me they just indicate lack of confidence on the part of the speaker.

There's a correlation between speaking with confidence and bullshitting / corner cutting. Hard, nuanced questions require more thinking time to produce a nuanced answer. But a bullshitter will just confidently answer subtly wrong stuff. But they won't say "uh"! Is that really better?

Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#38

Post by cubefox »

kaashif wrote: post #27
mrob wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The weirdly obsessive zeal that orgs like Toastmasters have about eliminating them is weird. If you speak with disfluencies, you probably didn't sufficiently rehearse your speech. If you didn't rehearse enough, you probably didn't put much effort into writing it either, so why should I put much effort into listening? It's the same principle as AI slop.

Not necessarily true, more rehearsal isn't the key to fluent oratory. Many people can speak off the cuff fluently and confidently, avoiding "like", "um", and other filler words. And even if you're not speaking fluently, leaving silences as punctuation is more effective, IMO. Many impressive speakers I've met actually cite Toastmasters! So their obsessive zeal actually does work. More rehearsal does work too sometimes…

> Many people can speak off the cuff fluently and confidently, avoiding "like", "um", and other filler words.

I don't think that's true, we usually just don't notice filler words in the same way we are surprised that people usually don't even talk in whole sentences, in contrast to written text or movies (which also use written text).

Re: Removing 'um' from a recording is harder than it sounds

#39

Post by RobotToaster »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #20
wzdd wrote: post #10

It’s a nice engineering approach, but I’m interested in the motivation. Um and ah is distracting in a transcript, where you can naturally pause to take in information; in speech however it can serve as a focusing point to indicate the next part is important. See https://medium.com/better-humans/dont-worry-about-saying-um-... for example. The weirdly obsessive zeal that orgs like Toastmasters have about eliminating th…

> in speech however it can serve as a focusing point to indicate the next part is important it's... exact opposite? the main (attempted) use for ummms is to keep continuation of speech despite the pause. And the main complaint is exactly that it ruins the focus and doesn't give respite

It can be a focusing point when someone wants to highlight the deliberate use of euphemism, removing those would be, um, unwise.

Although that is probably the less common use.

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