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In a country where blootered, laggered, airlocked, lashed, mortalled and drunk all mean the same thing, understanding Britain’s regional dialects can be a challenge. SpinVox reckons its D2 voice-to-text conversion service has succeeded where other men and machines have stumbled... “D2 now boasts an extensive vocabulary that allows it to understand the Scouse, Glaswegian, Geordie or any other regional accents or dialects, that are being used in everyday conversation,” the company said, thankfully in plain English.
SpinVox said D2 had “learnt to understand” these regional variations in the English language.
“With a formidable combination of artificial intelligence, voice recognition and natural linguistics, D2 is learning new words and expressions every day,” a company statement said.
“In fact only 30 per cent of D2’s vast vocabulary can be found in standard English language dictionaries. The rest has been collated as a result of D2’s amazing ability to learn new words at an average of 150 words a week.
Voicemail messages sent via SpinVox can be converted to text and sent as SMS text messages, or in a number of other ways.
These include:
* SpinVox Social Networks – Update your Facebook, Twitter or Jaiku page by speaking into your phone.
* SpinVox Blog – Speak into your phone and SpinVox will convert it to text and post it right to your blog.
* SpinVox Memo – Dictate memos and reminders into your phone and SpinVox will convert them to text and email them to your inbox.
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D2’s UK regional dictionary currently includes words such as:
* docky n. Norfolk. a snack
* blart v. Midlands. to cry
* brammer n. W. Scotland. an outstanding person or thing
* gennell n. N. England. alleyway
* dreckly adv. S. West. immediately
* hoy v. Cumbria. to throw
* hacky adj. Tyneside. dirty
* jangle v. Liverpool. to gossip
* spogs n. Yorks. confectionary
* snappin n. Stoke-on-Trent. food.
Dr Tony Robinson, former Cambridge University speech expert and director of SpinVox’s Advanced Speech Group, said the English language is in a constant state of evolution.
“One might assume that UK English is a fairly straightforward language but the truth is it is very complex and changes rapidly,” he said.
“With regional dialects, new slang words and the fact that we’re incorporating words from other languages, D2 is constantly updating the SpinVox system to build the world’s largest dictionary of spoken language in the messages that we convert, right now. We call this the ‘Voxgeist’.”
