A customer tries the Siri voice recognition function on an iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong. Jerome Favre / Bloomberg
A customer tries the Siri voice recognition function on an iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong. Jerome Favre / Bloomberg
A customer tries the Siri voice recognition function on an iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong. Jerome Favre / Bloomberg
A customer tries the Siri voice recognition function on an iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong. Jerome Favre / Bloomberg

Not all accents are boss (great) when it comes to your voice-activated assistant


  • English
  • Arabic

I’m an early adopter of all things tech. In the late 1990s, while browsing in a computer hardware shop, I came across a transcription application called Dragon Dictate.

The picture on the box showed a smiling young executive speaking into a headset while his words magically appeared on the computer screen. I had to buy it. I arrived home, tore open the box, set it up and began speaking to my computer.

The results ranged from dismal to absurd. Almost every word I spoke appeared on screen misspelt or was not the word I had intended.

I’m from Liverpool in the northwest of England and the speech recognition software spluttered under the weight of my regional accent.

Twenty years later the technology has definitely improved but a recent survey undertaken by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK suggests that four in five of us still have to adjust the way we speak so that speech recognition applications like Siri and Alexa can understand us.

The study in question was undertaken among native English speakers with regional accents but it would be interesting to know how speakers of other languages get on? How accommodating is Arabic Siri of diverse Arabic dialects and accents and how useful is English Siri, with bilinguals barking commands at her in foreign accents?

At present Arabic Siri is tailored to users in the UAE and Saudi Arabia but understands some modern standard Arabic terms. How Arabic speakers from other nations with different dialects get on is unknown –and even within the UAE and Saudi Arabia, accents and dialects can vary.

As speech recognition-driven applications become a more prominent part of our daily lives, one fear is that we will start to lose our regional accents altogether. Regularly adapting our speech to accommodate machines or people who don’t share our accent is undoubtedly likely to modify our pronunciation and word choice.

People who have lived in the UAE long enough might testify to moderating their pronunciation to aid the comprehension of the nation’s cosmopolitan residents. After a few years, such linguistic accommodation can start to take the edge off a regional accent. It certainly has done so with mine.

Some psycholinguists and speech scientists, however, are sceptical about whether speaking to smartphones could lead to accent loss or modification, given that we tend to spend far more time talking to each other than we do to technology.

However, that balance could very well shift in the coming decades as speech-activated artificial intelligence encroaches on more aspects of daily life, from the robo-driver to the robo-barista, robo-waiter and robo-salesperson.

Another possibility, however, is that the machine learning technology associated with speech recognition applications becomes more sophisticated and sensitive to regional variations in word pronunciation and word choice. Siri currently supports 21 languages, including Arabic, while Alexa supports three and Google Assistant can simultaneously interpret bilingual commands from its 11 languages.

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Read more from Justin Thomas:

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But it is estimated that the world is losing languages at the rate of about one every 12 weeks. Over the past century, approximately 400 languages have become extinct and linguists project that between 50 and 90 per cent of the world’s remaining 6,500 tongues could vanish by the end of the 21st century. Might we also start losing accents and dialects too?

Some people – my old English teacher for example – would be happy to see regional accents vanish forever. People with regional accents also sometimes pay money for elocution lessons in an attempt to rid themselves of unwanted pronunciation patterns. This unenthusiastic attitude towards language diversity is generally motivated by negative stereotypes associated with certain accents.

Classic psycholinguistic research looking at British accents, for example, tends to report a hierarchy of accent prestige. At the top of this prestige scale is what is known as RP, or received pronunciation (otherwise known as the Queen’s English). Regional accents occupy a middle ground, with the accents of industrial towns traditionally at the bottom. Under experimental conditions, people tend to judge those speaking with received pronunciation as being more intelligent and confident while those with regional accents are judged to be more sincere and more kindhearted. Of course, these are stereotypes, not based in fact.

I love diversity; if nothing else, it makes the world a more interesting place. I would hate to see diverse regional accents being obliterated by the rise of the robots. It would be a tragedy to see khaleeji Arabic's distinctive “ch" and "sh” sound replaced by the hard “k” sound of other Arabic dialects and accents and vice versa. Siri and her likes should know when fajr (dawn prayers) take place, as well as fayer (an alternative pronunciation of fajr).

Good technology adapts to us; we do not adapt to it. That would be a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

Dr Justin Thomas is professor of psychology at Zayed University

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Under 19 Cricket World Cup, Asia Qualifier

Fixtures
Friday, April 12, Malaysia v UAE
Saturday, April 13, UAE v Nepal
Monday, April 15, UAE v Kuwait
Tuesday, April 16, UAE v Singapore
Thursday, April 18, UAE v Oman

UAE squad
Aryan Lakra (captain), Aaron Benjamin, Akasha Mohammed, Alishan Sharafu, Anand Kumar, Ansh Tandon, Ashwanth Valthapa, Karthik Meiyappan, Mohammed Faraazuddin, Rishab Mukherjee, Niel Lobo, Osama Hassan, Vritya Aravind, Wasi Shah

RESULTS

Time; race; prize; distance

4pm: Maiden; (D) Dh150,000; 1,200m
Winner: General Line, Xavier Ziani (jockey), Omar Daraj (trainer)

4.35pm: Maiden (T); Dh150,000; 1,600m
Winner: Travis County, Adrie de Vries, Ismail Mohammed

5.10pm: Handicap (D); Dh175,000; 1,200m
Winner: Scrutineer, Tadhg O’Shea, Ali Rashid Al Raihe

5.45pm: Maiden (D); Dh150,000; 1,600m
Winner: Yulong Warrior, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar

6.20pm: Maiden (D); Dh150,000; 1,600m
Winner: Ejaaby, Jim Crowley, Doug Watson

6.55pm: Handicap (D); Dh160,000; 1,600m
Winner: Storyboard, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar

7.30pm: Handicap (D); Dh150,000; 2,200m
Winner: Grand Dauphin, Gerald Mosse, Ahmed Al Shemaili

8.05pm: Handicap (T); Dh190,000; 1,800m
Winner: Good Trip, Tadhg O’Shea, Ali Rashid Al Raihe

FA CUP FINAL

Manchester City 6
(D Silva 26', Sterling 38', 81', 87', De Bruyne 61', Jesus 68')

Watford 0

Man of the match: Bernardo Silva (Manchester City)

Brief scoreline

Switzerland 0

England 0

Result: England win 6-5 on penalties

Man of the Match: Trent Alexander-Arnold (England)

Labour dispute

The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.


- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law 

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
US PGA Championship in numbers

Joost Luiten produced a memorable hole in one at the par-three fourth in the first round.

To date, the only two players to win the PGA Championship after winning the week before are Rory McIlroy (2014 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational) and Tiger Woods (2007, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational). Hideki Matsuyama or Chris Stroud could have made it three.

Number of seasons without a major for McIlroy, who finished in a tie for 22nd.

4 Louis Oosthuizen has now finished second in all four of the game's major championships.

In the fifth hole of the final round, McIlroy holed his longest putt of the week - from 16ft 8in - for birdie.

For the sixth successive year, play was disrupted by bad weather with a delay of one hour and 43 minutes on Friday.

Seven under par (64) was the best round of the week, shot by Matsuyama and Francesco Molinari on Day 2.

Number of shots taken by Jason Day on the 18th hole in round three after a risky recovery shot backfired.

Jon Rahm's age in months the last time Phil Mickelson missed the cut in the US PGA, in 1995.

10 Jimmy Walker's opening round as defending champion was a 10-over-par 81.

11 The par-four 11th coincidentally ranked as the 11th hardest hole overall with a scoring average of 4.192.

12 Paul Casey was a combined 12 under par for his first round in this year's majors.

13 The average world ranking of the last 13 PGA winners before this week was 25. Kevin Kisner began the week ranked 25th.

14 The world ranking of Justin Thomas before his victory.

15 Of the top 15 players after 54 holes, only Oosthuizen had previously won a major.

16 The par-four 16th marks the start of Quail Hollow's so-called "Green Mile" of finishing holes, some of the toughest in golf.

17 The first round scoring average of the last 17 major champions was 67.2. Kisner and Thorbjorn Olesen shot 67 on day one at Quail Hollow.

18 For the first time in 18 majors, the eventual winner was over par after round one (Thomas shot 73).