Any of MAP's Scottish contingent have any views on this? http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-scotland-siri-20120131,0,6158274,full.story [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGxKhUuZ0Rc"]Apple Scotland - iPhone commercial for Siri - YouTube[/ame]
Other than the fact nobody has ever really built a voice recognition system that understands the Scottish accent? It's a technological challenge nobody is interested in.
They train it on American English speakers, it understand most Canadians, English, Australian accents because they are close enough to American for the model to still work. Scottish and Irish accents are too far away and so they don't work.
I had to use a Royal Mail parcel location thing and spent about 15 mins trying to get the system to recognise what I was saying (I have a bit of a Geordie accent). The Australian girl at work gave it a try as we decided it was my accent causing the problem... Turned out it was her accent too...
Its not just the accent, its the words as well e.g. none o youz il 'ken' whit am takin about. - 'ken' - to know in east-coast scots - I think in Geordie as well. Once it gets to Aberdonian and Doric Scots its difficult for me to understand, never mind an Englishman or a Computer. In the 90s when I lived in the south of England, I used hold translation sessions for Trainspotting in the pub (got me a pint or 2) - so that folk could go to the movie and understand a couple of words. Speech processing technology is coming along leaps and bounds, but it is still a very long way off from being capable of interacting with complex dialogues filled with accents, intonation, slang words and on-the-fly context driven expressions. Can you imagine Siri dealing with Cockney rhyming slang?
Dude your Scotts spelling is terrible. "Ken", meaning to know is used all over Scotland. Not just the east coast. We need to direct Apple here.
Fife-speak is tricky :- they used to say to me something to the effect of "England sterts soo o the Forth Bridge" - when I couldn't understand what they were saying to me. However, that wee site is a topper an Epple best take note of it.
