Burnistoun
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2020–2023
3:48 · 1.8M views · May 25, 2015
A Burnistoun sketch in which a voice-recognition elevator cannot understand two Scottish men saying the number eleven. It satirizes voice interfaces that fail on accents.
HN invokes it as the go-to joke whenever voice interfaces, speech recognition or natural-language UIs are discussed.
5 comments from Hacker News
I would argue that all falls off the cliff in terms of usability when we consider the rest of the world in terms of multiple languages, accents, creoles, and dialects. Seen this skit? this video So, maybe voice control is great for local work, but as soon as we consider the rest of the world, IMHO, its profitability and usefulness nosedives.
Or spatially-proofed: this video "Please? Pathetic." (Autocorrected SMS was unpopular in my country when it was first introduced, because it corrected to german german spellings, and ever since the mid-twentieth, we've been proud of regional orthographies. I imagine francophones who use "SMS language" also have to turn off autocorrect.)
English was my mother's 5th language, I can relate to acting as interpreter for family. I'm reminded of the "Voice Recognition Lift" sketch from the Scottish comedy Burnistoun - this video
Obligatory Burnistoun reference: this video But I'd be interested to see what its reliability is like on various types of Scottish accent.
Not sure if you'll understand all the Scottishness here but I think you'll appreciate the message... this video