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Brain Training racist against Northerners News
DS News by Ellie Gibson
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.
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NthSimulachum
05/02/08 @ 09:37
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Ba-hahahahah!
And since when are Northerners a "race"?
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most recently on 05/02/08 @ 09:37
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Sulphur_Man
05/02/08 @ 09:44
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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 |
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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. |
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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.
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Notorious_LRO
05/02/08 @ 10:02
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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.
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Britesparc
05/02/08 @ 10:05
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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).
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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".
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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. |
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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://www.wikihow.com/Talk-Like-a-Scous... |
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"...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. |
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optimusprym8
05/02/08 @ 10:32
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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 |
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kangarootoo
05/02/08 @ 10:43
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@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? |
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asphaltcowboy
05/02/08 @ 10:43
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"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! ;) |
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kangarootoo
05/02/08 @ 10:48
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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.
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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:-)
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most recently on 05/02/08 @ 11:18
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President Weasel
05/02/08 @ 11:19
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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. |
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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!" |
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scouserfuller9
05/02/08 @ 12:44
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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.
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kangarootoo
05/02/08 @ 13:07
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@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 :) |
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