{"id":62704,"date":"2024-02-29T20:13:35","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T01:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=62704"},"modified":"2024-02-29T20:13:35","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T01:13:35","slug":"the-voices-of-gps-and-siri-not-what-you-think-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=62704","title":{"rendered":"The voices of GPS and Siri:  not what you think they are"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\"Meet the Voice Behind Your GPS\"<\/p>\r\n<p>2:40\u00a0\u00a0 2\/17\/23<\/p>\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Meet the Voice Behind Your GPS\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hOLRWJVIseY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\">Meet Karen Jacobsen, a voiceover artist from Queensland Australia, who has one of the most recognisable voices in the world. As the original voice of GPS, she\u2019s helped billions of us to reach our destination. Back in 2002, she recorded more than 50 hours of audio for the first ever GPS voice system, including 168 versions of the word \u201capproximately\u201d. Has she told you where to go? Recalculating. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p>Jacobsen articulately and succinctly explains how the sound engineers created the GPS voice and why they chose an Australian speaker for its basis:\u00a0 \"because the Australian accent was considered the most pleasant English speaking accent to listen to.\"\u00a0 Don't react negatively to that until you hear how the engineers proceeded to work with the raw material they accumulated.<\/p>\r\n<p>The fascinating account of another super famous voice that billions of people have interacted with during the last dozen plus years is entertainingly told here:<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1cr5zFlr6B8\">Accidentally Famous: The Story Behind the Original Voice of Siri | Susan Bennett | TEDxFurmanU<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">13:45<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\">With a strong personality and a sense of humor, Siri and the voice behind her, give the story of voice acting and how Susan Bennett became the original voice of Siri. Susan and her voice talent were suddenly a persona on devices worldwide, thrusting her into accidental fame. Susan tells of how Siri was created and how she dealt with the fear of living up to the expectations of Siri.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p>I know many people who rely on Siri for countless decisions they make and information they seek.\u00a0 They treat her as a real person and are truly grateful for her assistance.\u00a0 I can hear it in their voices and see it from their demeanor.<\/p>\r\n<p>I do not know how to use Siri or GPS, but I marvel when other interact meaningfully and usefully with them.<\/p>\r\n<p><b>Selected readings<\/b><\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Siri can you hear me?\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=32816\" rel=\"bookmark\">Siri can you hear me?<\/a>\" (5\/22\/17)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Siri and flatulence\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=31831\" rel=\"bookmark\">Siri and flatulence<\/a>\" (3\/27\/17)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Sirimania\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3495\" rel=\"bookmark\">Sirimania<\/a>\" (10\/14\/11)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=40106\" rel=\"bookmark\">'OK Google\/Siri\/Alexa\/Cortana, What's Next?<\/a>'\" (9\/29\/1)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Siri in Korea\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=31486\" rel=\"bookmark\">Siri in Korea<\/a>\" (3\/10\/17)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to No scanner\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=42414\" rel=\"bookmark\">No scanner<\/a>\" (4\/13\/19)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Voice recognition vs. Shandong accent\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=17908\" rel=\"bookmark\">Voice recognition vs. Shandong accent<\/a>\" (3\/1\/15)<\/li>\r\n<li>\"<a href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1452\">Shandong Dialect Intelligibility<\/a>\" (5\/24\/09)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>[Thanks to Gene Hill]<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\"Meet the Voice Behind Your GPS\" 2:40\u00a0\u00a0 2\/17\/23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,357],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speech-technology","category-voice-recognition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62739,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62704\/revisions\/62739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}