What did you say? This distinct accent from the NC Outer Banks leaves AI all confused
The first virtual assistants showed up more than a decade ago — sonorous, customizable voices in our smart phones and home hub speakers just waiting to be asked: Is it s’posed’a rain? Can you set a timer for my éclairs? Could you play Patsy Cline?
If you thought yours was defective — or just ornery — because it tells you, “I didn’t quite get that” four times before you give up and type the request into a browser, there’s a good chance you’re a native Southerner and the AI that device relies on is not from around here.
And if you were raised on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, you gave up asking a smart device “When is the next hoi toide” after concluding artificial intelligence is dumb as a dingbatter.
A survey released this month says a Southern twang is the hardest accent in the United States for AI to comprehend: harder than New York, New Jersey or Boston accents.
NC’s Hoi Toider accent
The survey, by Guide2Fluency.com, a language-learning platform, listed Texas, Tennessee, Appalachian and other sub-categories of Southern accents separately in a collection of 30 U.S. dialects that are especially challenging for AI. It also includes the Hoi Toider accent from the Outer Banks.
Hoi Toide is the opposite of low tide in the language of islanders descended from original settlers who brought their English, Irish and Scottish brogue to what’s now Ocracoke in the 1700s.
The dialect has been diminished by the influx of dingbatters, dit dots and woodsers — people from the mainland — but still can be found among lifelong residents and in recordings made by linguists such as N.C. State University’s Walt Wolfram.
In a news release announcing the survey results, the company said of the Hoi Toide accent: “This unique dialect, with its retained Elizabethan English features, can sound like a foreign language to AI. Asking about ‘dingbatters’ or saying you’re particularly ‘quamished’ might have your AI suggesting bat houses or food.”
In fact, on Ocracoke, people who feel quamished aren’t looking for food; they have an upset or “bilious” stomach.
No wonder AI has trouble with the language. It’s only as intelligent as the people who program it.
This story was originally published July 31, 2024 at 5:04 PM with the headline "What did you say? This distinct accent from the NC Outer Banks leaves AI all confused."
