"I said, work!"

the riri hasa harr time with r sounds like in ruv or rorr, rist, raugh, ronery...

That pronunciation of "work" isn't so far off from some American regional accents.

-"I'm sorry, is it possible you might have an accent? Press Y if yes, N if no."
-"Okay, you pressed Y. What is your native language?"
-"Okay, Asian; you likely meant 'wok' previously. Your 'wok' is likely in your cupboard, next to the rice maker. lol."

In Siris defense, That guy cant say "work" worth a shit.

*talks *fail

Adding video to channels (Fail, Talks) - requested by ant.

>> ^csnel3:

In Siris defense, That guy cant say "work" worth a shit.

Hear hear!

Yeah but surely "work" is much less of a stretch than "while".

I laughed out loud when it said fuck in exacerbation

common, it didn't sound even close to "fuck". dumb siri bitch

Considering that thing was made in China, this was all probably somebody's idea at sticking it to their Japanese enemies.

Siri v2.0 says, "I don't understand 'walk' but it sounds similar to 'work'. Did you mean'work'?"
"Yes."

Hey, come on, Siri is in beta.

"Siri, call home."

"Yes sir, but stop calling me silly!"

Hopefully there's someone of Japanese/Chinese/some other Asian descent who can answer this for me.

Why is it that I can pronounce "walk", "wok" AND "werrrrrrk", yet this guy can't? I also hope no one thinks I'm racist, I'm just ignorant.

>> ^garmachi:

Hopefully there's someone of Japanese/Chinese/some other Asian descent who can answer this for me.
Why is it that I can pronounce "walk", "wok" AND "werrrrrrk", yet this guy can't? I also hope no one thinks I'm racist, I'm just ignorant.


I posted this because I am an ESL teacher, and speak Japanese and I run across this everyday! So I think your comment IS justified. To give you some perspective, in Japanese they only have 5 vowel sounds. In American English is have 15 and that is NOT including all the diphthongs (double vowel) sounds. We use more of our mouth speaking English than almost ANY other language and therefore Japanese just DON'T have the muscles to create a difference between walk, wok and work without YEARS of practice. Japanese also don't have any /r/ sound that isn't followed by a vowel so saying an /r/ between /wa/ and /ku/ is totally foreign for them. Hope that helps!

>> ^azukipie:

>> ^garmachi:
Hopefully there's someone of Japanese/Chinese/some other Asian descent who can answer this for me.
Why is it that I can pronounce "walk", "wok" AND "werrrrrrk", yet this guy can't? I also hope no one thinks I'm racist, I'm just ignorant.

I posted this because I am an ESL teacher, and speak Japanese and I run across this everyday! So I think your comment IS justified. To give you some perspective, in Japanese they only have 5 vowel sounds. In American English is have 15 and that is NOT including all the diphthongs (double vowel) sounds. We use more of our mouth speaking English than almost ANY other language and therefore Japanese just DON'T have the muscles to create a difference between walk, wok and work without YEARS of practice. Japanese also don't have any /r/ sound that isn't followed by a vowel so saying an /r/ between /wa/ and /ku/ is totally foreign for them. Hope that helps!


This is precisely what I was hoping to learn! Thank you!

Also, they have done studies on brain that show if certain sounds aren't used often by the brain as a child, the brain trims that area and people later in life will find it hard, and in some cases impossible, to learn those sounds. More and more, we learn that the human experience isn't nature or nurture, but nature AND nurture. The formative years are as much as a stumbling block as they are an opportunity in this case, which is such an alarming parental responsibility I doubt I could ever rationally convince myself to procreate.

>> ^garmachi:

>> ^azukipie:
>> ^garmachi:
Hopefully there's someone of Japanese/Chinese/some other Asian descent who can answer this for me.
Why is it that I can pronounce "walk", "wok" AND "werrrrrrk", yet this guy can't? I also hope no one thinks I'm racist, I'm just ignorant.

I posted this because I am an ESL teacher, and speak Japanese and I run across this everyday! So I think your comment IS justified. To give you some perspective, in Japanese they only have 5 vowel sounds. In American English is have 15 and that is NOT including all the diphthongs (double vowel) sounds. We use more of our mouth speaking English than almost ANY other language and therefore Japanese just DON'T have the muscles to create a difference between walk, wok and work without YEARS of practice. Japanese also don't have any /r/ sound that isn't followed by a vowel so saying an /r/ between /wa/ and /ku/ is totally foreign for them. Hope that helps!

This is precisely what I was hoping to learn! Thank you!

>> ^garmachi:

Hopefully there's someone of Japanese/Chinese/some other Asian descent who can answer this for me.
Why is it that I can pronounce "walk", "wok" AND "werrrrrrk", yet this guy can't? I also hope no one thinks I'm racist, I'm just ignorant.


The other replies to this were great, but I thought I'd chime in with a "shoe on the other foot" anecdote.

I am an American but I moved to Thailand almost 5 years ago to teach ESL English. I've been working on learning to speak and understand Thai. My comprehension is reasonable now, but my speaking is more mediocre and native Thai listeners sometimes have to guess what I am shooting for based on context, etc.

The tough part is tones. Depending on the pitch, in Thai the word "kow" can mean rice, white, mountain, or knee. A tongue-twister my students use is "krai kai kai gai" which means "who sells chicken eggs", if you get the tones right.

I think that if I live here another 20 years I could probably get to be fluent in Thai comprehension, but I'll never be good in pronunciation of the tones like a native Thai speaker. I can definitely get by and have a functional command of the language, but to a native Thai ear I will always have poor pronunciation somewhat analogous to this guy's inability to say walk/wok/weerrrrrk.