OS X Command Line Utilities

Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by Bud on Sunday August 30, 2015 @01:23PM (#10143904)

They don't actually know how to speak English. If you listen carefully, what they are doing is sounding out English using the pronunciation rules of their "native" language. It's not an accent at all, just a literal parsing using different rules.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by reuven on Sunday August 30, 2015 @02:15PM (#10144065)

That's precisely what ends up causing an accent, no? Using the sounds and pronunciation of your native language in another one, with different rules.

I don't think that Apple has created the World's Best Accent Impersonator here, but it's good for a few laughs.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by Bud on Monday August 31, 2015 @02:08AM (#10145650)

An accent is when you do it occasionally and accidentally, not pervasively, the wrong way, every single time for every single sound. That's something else.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by pavel_lishin on Sunday August 30, 2015 @02:18PM (#10144075)

Two-part response.

1, the pedantic: technically none of them know how to speak English, or any other language - there's just a rule set for making phonemes based on characters out of waveforms.

2. Ignoring the pedantic response, I still don't think that's true - if that were the case, then Milena wouldn't be able to speak an English sentence!

    say -v Milena "Hello, I am Milena"

If they only speak their own language, then Milena should be saying "Прописная буква Х, строчная буква и", etc.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by microtherion on Sunday August 30, 2015 @04:01PM (#10144320)

It's even more complicated than that: Some voices DO speak multiple languages, e.g. the German voice "Anna" (downloaded from System Preferences) speaks excellent German, English, Spanish, Italian, and French:

   say -v Anna 'über allen Wipfeln ist Ruh'
   say -v Anna '[[lang fr_FR]] que restet-il de nos amours'
   say -v Anna '[[lang it_IT]] chi nasce asino non muore cavallo'
   say -v Anna '[[lang es_SP]] nosotros tenemos mas influencia  con sus hijos que su tiene'
   say -v Anna '[[lang en_UK]] are we having fun yet?'

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by carlob on Monday August 31, 2015 @02:12AM (#10145665)

No, it doesn't speak Italian, for one 'chi' is pronounced like 'she' and not like 'ki'.

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by pavel_lishin on Sunday August 30, 2015 @06:11PM (#10144638)

Hm, do you know how many speak languages that aren't "ascii"?

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Re:OS X Command Line Utilities by the_mitsuhiko on Sunday August 30, 2015 @04:59PM (#10144475)

They actually do, but only if you also download the entire language packs for them.

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