Brain Training racist against Northerners

By Ellie Gibson Published 5 February, 2008

Claims BBC's Watchdog programme.

Consumer affairs show Watchdog has claimed the voice recognition system in Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training isn't capable of recognising Northern accents.

On last night's episode of the programme, Manchester radio reporter Michelle Livesey complained the game failed to understand her pronunciation.

"I'm going, 'yeller' and everyone's saying to me you need to be a pit posher. You need to say 'yellow' and as soon as I did, it picked it up," she reported.

Michelle wasn't the only one complaining. Child Laura Dickenson said, "You get so annoyed you just start shouting at it, but it doesn't make it any better." Tell that to Jeremy Kyle, will you.

More than 2.5 million copies of Brain Training have been sold in the UK. Nintendo said it has received a very small number of calls from non-Londoners moaning about the voice recognition system, and apologised for any frustration caused.

The company claims extensive research was done to ensure the game would recognise different accents, and pointed out only a small part of Brain Training involves using your voice.

Players are advised to follow the guidance in the manual, which suggests you should be between 20 and 30 cm away from the DS when speaking, avoid shouting or blowing and ensure you are in a quiet environment. You should also aim for clear pronunciation and "try to avoid using strong dialects or accents". Innit.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (69) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Metalfish #1 4 years ago

    Someone please put this as the topic on the BBC HYS website, it'll be gold.

  • NthSimulachum #2 4 years ago

    Ba-hahahahah!

    And since when are Northerners a "race"?
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 09:37

  • DUFFMAN5 #3 4 years ago

    Southerners are fookin great. I know I am one. Although I come from Portsmouth, most people I meet from outside Hampshire think I must be from Londin (Tubbs 4ever)*



    * Northerners are also great.

  • jebus #4 4 years ago

    It was a non story on Watchdog I have no idea why it's on here as well. You have to ask why northerners are playing games shouldn't they be down a coal mine or in a mill/poor house somewhere?
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 09:41

  • Sulphur_Man #5 4 years ago

    Gives Ninty the chance for a glorious 'pronunciation' sub menu in game settings

    Pronunciation menu

    1. South West Ooo-Aaar
    2. Soft as shite South East
    3. Flat-pack Midlands
    4. Grim Northern Drawl
    5. Defiant Yorkshire Spit
    6. Tuneful Geordie
    7. Scot - Other

  • DB2k #6 4 years ago

    So she's saying if she drawls and doesn't pronounce the word properly as its written, the game can't understand her? It's not WOPR its a fucking nintendo. Learn to speak you silly bint.

  • Sulphur_Man #7 4 years ago

    Oh, and
    8. Wales - Factory Reset

  • Steroyd #8 4 years ago

    All the coal mines got shut years ago [insert personal insult]

    Saw this on BBC, the deadringers impersonist dude impersonated the queen and it worked perfectly.

    This would explain why my sister nintendog wouldn't recognise it when she called it by name, maybe I could get a lawsuit against Nintendo.

  • t8yman #9 4 years ago

    thats funny, because as a yorkshireman, i pronounce yellow as yellow, not yeller.

  • DrR0b3rts #10 4 years ago

    Even Joanna Lumley wouldn't be able to get the bastard thing to recognise 'blue'.

  • cloud_ix #11 4 years ago

    Yeller?! Wasn't that a dog who got SHOT...Idiot, just because you speak f'ed up English doesn't mean nintendo should re-write it for you. IT's a freakin DS ffs even the best of voice synching technology can't understand everything from everybody.

  • bitesize #12 4 years ago

    incredible. how come watchdog will do an in-depth investigation of this bollocks, yet if i send em an email about an actual issue to do with actual real-life cash money ripoffs, i just get ignored?

  • gimo80 #13 4 years ago

    How horrific, Nintendo should be sued for this.

  • Lebowski #14 4 years ago

    This doesn't surprise me. Nintendo has been anti-Northern for months. When we had the floods, I rang their Italian plumbers but was told they weren't working and were chasing skirt and doing mushrooms instead. Though to be fair, I heard that 'Bowser' helped give out some drinking water in the street.

  • Notorious_LRO #15 4 years ago

    The game won't understand Norwegian either!! I'm smelling a big money class action suit where other races like Swedes and Danes go together to fight racism.

  • symbiote #16 4 years ago

    Oh FFS EG get OVER yourself. What a pathetic 'please populate our thread pretty please' tabloid style headline.

    Fucking southern wankers ;)

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #17 4 years ago

    Whilst mainly I laugh at this, in my sexy North Yorkshire drawl, the game definitely has a problem with flat vowel sounds, like "uz" and not "us" (if you know what I mean).

  • Stebop #18 4 years ago

    Not that it upset me massively, but when I've had a bash on Brain Training a few times I've had to tone down my middle of the road North East accent. I've got a bit of a knack for accents and mimicry generally, so, sad bastard that I am, I tried a few out. Didn't get too scientific about it but definitely noticed that there were less "misunderstandings" when I used Received Pronunciation or a bit of Estuarian English (all done in private naturally). Not being one of those Northerners with a chip on my shoulder (you know the type) I didn't lose sleep over it, to be honest I find the idea of someone shouting into their DS in a broad regional accent/dialect then being surprised it can't understand amusing. "Eeyer Mam! This fuckin DS yer gorrus fer Chrissmas is canny shite like, it does'n even knaa it's colours n'that". Even my full on Mackem Nana and Grandad, whose game it is, realised it might be best not to say "yeller".

  • jack_klugman #19 4 years ago

    Works fine for me. Maybe you just have to talk properly.

  • MGG #20 4 years ago

    As a northerner I thought this was a complete non-story anyway - especially as I know how hard it is to write voice-recognition software anyway. Its also not anti-northern - its anti-anyone-with-an-accent-other-than-the-queens.

    Anyway, what is English? Certainly not what the Queen speaks, as she is in a very small minority. As Melvin Bragg showed a few years ago on a documentry about our language and its accents, you can basically divide England into two, with a diagonal line starting just north of London and ending up just south of Manchester (iirc). Those to the south/west speak "French", while those of us to the North/East speak "Danish". Add the Scots, Welsh and Irish to the count, and we can safely say that the "French" speakers, while seen as those that speak "correctly", are in the minority.





    And as a normal person, I say yeller. And there is no "r" in castle or glass. This may be news to you Southerners.

    I thank you.

  • Dr_Wadd #21 4 years ago

    Why didn`t I jump on this bandwagon when Rainbow Six 3 was released for the XBox, which definitely seemed to work better if I affected a mock Yank accent. Clearly that was retaliatory action by our belligerant colony.
    Edited by 2 at 05/02/08 @ 10:19

  • Bassassin #22 4 years ago

    "Racist"?? Since when has being inarticulate been a racial characteristic?

  • Aero #23 4 years ago

    lol - I'm crap at "doing accents" - (Southerners ftw!)

    I say "bring on the Brain Training: Scouse Edition" - it'll be hilarious hearing all the guys in the office trying to pull off a perfect score!!

    http://ww w.wikihow.com/Talk-Like-a-Scous...

  • Skooch #24 4 years ago

    Well done Eurogamer, another silly inflammatory tag line to bait everyone with - I watched the Watchdog programme and it focussed on poor voice-recognition software rather than just saying Brain Training was "racist".

    And IIRC, it wasn't just Northern accents that couldn't be recognised....

  • AlpTighen #25 4 years ago

    From my personal experience and others' as well, if you have a latin-style accent you have to say "boo" instead of "blue" or it thinks you said "black".

  • bad09 #26 4 years ago

    I guess the DS doesn't understand you when your gob is stuffed with chips and gravy!

    Sorry couldn't help myself.....

  • NewYork #27 4 years ago

    A lot of people in the comments thread taking this way too seriously.

  • harrisimo #28 4 years ago

    "...the deadringers impersonist dude"

    Err, I think that was Rory Bremner.

    It's all just free publicity for the DS. No doubt quite a few people watched it, and thought "ooh, that looks like a good game." Well, the 11 people left in the UK who don't alread own a copy.

    'Normalisation' of spoken English only arrived with the development of the media. Before radio came along, most people had probably only rarely heard the way people spoke outside of their own region. The fact that the accent of the South came to be associated with 'proper' English was only because it was the most prosperous area.

  • optimusprym8 #29 4 years ago

    maybe Nintendo should release "Pronunciation Training" and get everyone speaking properly :p

    I've noticed it has trouble with female voices in general, it rarely picks up what my girlfriend says

  • the_dudefather #30 4 years ago

    the wotter in madjorka dan taste like it otter

  • Tomo #31 4 years ago

    Very strange headline for this article...

  • kangarootoo #32 4 years ago

    @symbiote

    Dude, stfu. Its news, so EG report it.

    Its news related to video games, and its been on national television, so why WOULDN'T the report it?

    Seriously what is wrong with your mind?

  • asphaltcowboy #33 4 years ago

    "The fact that the accent of the South came to be associated with 'proper' English was only because it was the most prosperous area."

    ...and is therefore, the best! ;)

  • Lothar Hex #34 4 years ago

    Slow news day?

  • t8yman #35 4 years ago

    @harrisimmo

    I thought it was John Culshaw.

    agreed, people are taking this a little too seriously, websites can be fun too guys.

  • kangarootoo #36 4 years ago

    My thoughts (I'm a northerner, for reference).

    This is so NOT racism. Voice recognition doesn't give a shit about accents, it simply recognises patterns of frequency. If you build and test code using a particular accent as reference, that is going to colour the results you get when testing using other accents.

    Its certainly not the case that northern accents are hard to recognise, its just they sound different to southern accents (which is kind of obvious right?). If you used northern accent samples for build and test this game, the detection would work equally well, but perhaps it would have problems detecting southern accents. I would be willing to bet is also has problems with Scottish, French and Columbian accents.

    As for people talking about "correct" pronunciation, if you understood anything about language you would realise that it is a transient medium. A dictionary is not a list of definition, but a record of current meaning and usage (otherwise it would never get updated or changed, which again seems obvious when you think about it). There is no such thing as "proper" pronunciation, there are only contextual references (such as "queens english";).

    Edit: many typos, it would appear I can't type as well as not being able to speak clearly.
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 10:49

  • AbyssUK #37 4 years ago

    Nintendo are missing a trick "Voice Training with Elizabeth Windsor".... multi million pound seller right there and nintendo if your watching you can have that for free!

  • HiddenAway #38 4 years ago

    @ Dead Ringers

    It's Jon Culshaw.

  • bitesize #39 4 years ago

    i don't think anyone ever thought this was racism, no-one made that claim in the prog. EG just like to do the occasional pisstake tabloid style headline... cue everyone up in arms about EG's tabloid journalism.

  • yupyup #40 4 years ago

    WY AYE MAN!

  • richieu #41 4 years ago

    I had a traumatic experience last Christmas, when against the odds I managed to secure a copy of Nintendogs and a DS for my eight year old son. It started well until it came to the voice calling session (don't know the details, I was just a witness to the event). Two hours later my son was in tears as he'd been calling this dog so many times, it got fed up with him and started to ingore him. His trauma was further compounded by his insensitive Father bursting into howls of laughter....
    Needless to say, that particular hound's lifetime turned out to be shorter than the Christmas period.
    Ban voice recognition now, it's the only way:-)
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 11:18

  • President_Weasel #42 4 years ago

    Yet another manufactured controversy from Watchdog. 3 programs a week, one real scandal a month - you have to do something to use up that airtime.
    We should all work together as a nation, and build a giant cannon to fire Nicky Campbell and Jeremy Kyle into the Sun. Think of how good we'd all feel afterwards.

  • symbiote #43 4 years ago

    @kanga

    What's wrong with yours? I had a go at the juvenile strapline, the the validity of reporting such news.

  • Restart #44 4 years ago

    It's not just the Northerners it doesn't understand. It utterly fails at understand my pronounciation as well, & I'm from Cornwall. Specifically it doesn't understand me when I say "Scissors". I got really annoyed with it eventually & shouted "JESUS CHRIST!", at which point it happily gave me a gigantic green tick.

    So I no longer play "Rock, Paper, Scissors" anymore, as it's now been re-branded as "Rock, Paper, JESUS!"

  • Thornhillboy #45 4 years ago

    Rock, paper, Jesus is clearly unfair.

    Jesus would win every time.

  • mingster #46 4 years ago

    wtf is 'yeller' who says that? You have to be a complete chav to speak like that.

  • zimzu #47 4 years ago

    @optimusprym8

    noone ever understands what their girlfriends say. or maybe its the not listening that makes the difference... meh =p

    hooray for nintendo!

  • scouserfuller9 #48 4 years ago

    You beat me to eat bad 09. Anyhow, they're probably holding it to close and then get frustrated and start shouting which decreases their chances. My mates here in Oxford will do the same.

  • kangarootoo #49 4 years ago

    @symbiote

    Oh shit. Totally my bad. I'm really sorry man, I utterly mis-read your post and thought it was another " this is not news, why tell us" comment. I hate those sorts of comments, and my bile-in-waiting obviously affected my eyesight, causing me to utterly miss your point.

    Massive apology :)

  • DDevil #50 4 years ago

    Blue.

    Blue.

    Blue.

    Blue.

    BLUE

    BLUE!

    BLUE!!!

  • kangarootoo #51 4 years ago

    @groovemeister

    "the pond life that I lived around had a very insular view of things around them"

    I know exactly what you mean, except that I've been all over the place and met insular, narrow minded fuck heads in every place I've been. You meet them on here sometimes too, though you probably have a harder time spotting them than most. Of course, to anyone with a mind larger than a minstrel it would be quite apparent none of this has anything to do with accents or dialect, which is of course the subject of discussion.

    "shed their harsh regional dialect and try to get a more standard English thing going"

    That is just plain funny. Do you vote BNP by chance?

    You've obviously had a bad experience in the north, maybe working the streets doesn't pay as well up there as you are used to, or perhaps you just got beaten up by locals equally as bigoted as yourself when you tried to buy a bag of chips. Who could say.

    Edit: "It's not a northern problem, it's a problem of intelligence"

    Ooh, missed that bit. Clearly you presume yourself to be very intelligent....
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 13:15

  • Tweakmonkey #52 4 years ago

    Racist? I don't think so EG.

  • Nithron #53 4 years ago

    Unintentional hilarity FTW

  • FenderMaster #54 4 years ago

    just shout at the DS some more, if your angry enough it'll work... dumb bitch


    btw Brain Training doesnt recognise my Irish accent, im suing for racism

  • frod. #55 4 years ago

    BLUE. BLUE. BLUE. BLUE. BLUE.






    BLUE.

  • Muddtallica #56 4 years ago

    groovemeister: Regional accents are sign of low intelligence, are they? You can stick that one right up your elitist rectum and spin on it. The institutionalised hierarchy of accents and dialects has nothing to do with intelligence, education and objective superiority, and everything to do with the historical happenstance of London and the South developing as the UK's seat of wealth and power. I can't stand this kind of condescending, small-minded thinking, like these Little Englander types who rail against the Americans for "ruining" "our" language. One of the defining and sustaining traits of language is its ability to change, adapt and diversify over time; yes, I understand the need for a certain degree of standardisation and an intolerance for genuinely incorrect language use, but setting standards should never need to mean patronising judgements and belligerent cultural homogenisation...

  • Nick007 #57 4 years ago

    I wouldn't travel up north, far to rough for my liking. The men fight, the women fight and they all drink far to much.

    But then again we have chavs in London so I guess we're equal.

  • CountStiltzkin #58 4 years ago

    Surely it's a good thing that the game forces you to speak properly? Queen's English :)

  • kangarootoo #59 4 years ago

    @CountStiltzkin

    Even the Queen doesn't speak the Queen's english anymore. There is documentary evidence (probably on youtube) comparing her accent now and from her coronation. She sounds more like me that she sounds like her youthful self these days.

    Language, dialects and accents evolve continually, as Muddtallica among others pointed out.

    @Xiphos

    That might be quite a funny joke if it made any sense at all ;)

  • kangarootoo #60 4 years ago

    @Nick007

    Like I said earlier, there are some rough f*ckers in every part of the world. People try and act like its about location (or one of a hundred other factors), but the truth is that people are the same all over the world. The same few types of people, wearing slightly different hats and speaking in slightly different voices.

  • toy_brain #61 4 years ago

    Well I'm from 'The North' and frankly I couldnt give a toss what you soft Southern ***ts think or say.

    HOLLA!!

    EDIT: Oh and glol at Restart's Rock, Paper, JESUS comment, I dont know why it was so funny, it just was.
    Edited by 2 at 05/02/08 @ 17:40

  • murphy245 #62 4 years ago

    lulz ds is racist becouse it cant understand slang.northern idiots.

  • mr_steve100 #63 4 years ago

    Or they could just not play that test. What is wrong with these people?!?!!

  • kangarootoo #64 4 years ago

    @murphy245

    When you learn to string a sentence together, employ capital letters and maybe even read the article you comment on... maybe then you can use the word idiot with some authority. Now put your cap back on and go flip some burgers.

  • kangarootoo #65 4 years ago

    @toy_brain

    Thanks for the contribution. You're a real help.

    /sarcasm off

  • jonsaan #66 4 years ago

    As long as you say Blue like Alf Stewart off Home and Away it works alright.

  • Tim #67 4 years ago

    "Why can't you talk properly Mario, you spastic!"

  • MightyMouse #68 4 years ago

    On every other game of halo I get abuse if I don't speak in an american accent - now that's racism.

    P.S. Not serious, you just mute them or talk back.

  • noddy1969 #69 4 years ago

    "It was a non story on Watchdog I have no idea why it's on here as well. You have to ask why northerners are playing games shouldn't they be down a coal mine or in a mill/poor house somewhere?"

    Jebus ??? Strewth, your name isn't Neal by any chance, is it ??

    I work in a school way up north and half of the kids have the vocabulary and pronounciation of a caveman. Bung 'em on Dragon's Naturally speaking and I doubt it'd do any better...
    Edited by 1 at 06/02/08 @ 14:18