Voice recognition vs. Shandong accent

This is hilarious!

Even if you don’t understand Chinese, you’ll be able to follow what’s going on. The driver is trying to enter a phone number by voice, but the automated (machine) operator mishears him. It gets really funny when he tells the operator that a correction ( jiūzhèng 纠正) must be made, but the operator interprets that as jiǔliù 96.

At first the female passenger thinks it’s funny and giggles, but the driver gets more and more exasperated and angry, and ends up cursing at the operator.

The driver has a tendency to mumble, as when he repeats bōhào 拨号 («dial») near the beginning, and his tones are all over the place. The problem of tones in daily, spoken Sinitic languages will be the subject of a forthcoming post.

Lesson to be learned: if you’re talking to a machine, especially if you have a Shandong accent, you’d better speak slowly and clearly.

Incidentally, the driver has become famous because of this video and has acquired the nickname of jiūzhèng gē 纠正哥 («correction brother»).

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