Friday March 29th, 2024 9:05AM

Modern technology needs a Southern accent

I have a Southern accent. I’m proud of it. I have no plans to try and get rid of it. But every time I try to use some type of voice-activated software, like Siri on my iPhone, I fail.

“Siri, what is the weather going to be tomorrow in Gainesville?” I’ll ask.

“What the heck are you saying?” Siri responds. Or some words to that effect.

Siri can’t understand me because “going to” comes out “gonna,” and the last syllable in Gainesville sounds more like “vuhl” than “veal.”

It’s not like Siri is a New Jersey American who expects me to say, “Yo, Siri, what’s da weather like tomorrow in Trenton?”

Siri was created by the folks at Apple in Cupertino, Calif. The folks at Apple are very smart. You’d like they would have developed Siri to understand the nuances of the way Americans speak in different parts of the country.

They didn’t.

I have the same problem with I try to talk to Helen, my GPS lady. Not only should I be able to use Helen for directions, I should be able to ask her to change stations on the radio or turn on the rear-window defroster.

But Helen seldom understands anything that I say. When I tell her an address on Browns Bridge Road, she wants to take me to Hog Mountain Road. When I tell her to turn up the air conditioning, my seat warmers come on.

Once, I asked Helen to turn the radio to our news/talk station, AM-550. I ended up on some rap station on FM.

I’ve given up on using voice-activated controls on my car, and I do things the mundane, manual way now.

Honda is a Japanese car company, so I suppose I can understand how its voice-activated software might struggle with English, especially English with a Southern accent. But the company has been building and selling cars in America long enough that you’d think they could program Helen to understand me.

They can’t.

I also have trouble with autocorrect on my phone. Most of my text messages, before I edit them, look like they were typed in a foreign language.

Last week, I was texting with some friends who play trivia at a local restaurant on Wednesday night. At the end of the conversation, I wanted to type “See y’all tonight.”

But autocorrect didn’t like “y’all.” The message it send out was “See talk tonight,” which frankly makes no sense.

Look “y’all” is a perfectly good word. It is a contraction of the words “you” and “all,” and when used properly – as Southerners do – it means a group of people you are talking to, as in, “Hey, do y’all wanna go to the rasslin’ matches on Sattidy night?”

Northern Americans like to make fun of us for saying “y’all,” but I don’t reckon we ought to pay any attention to anybody says “youse guys” instead. I concede that sometimes Southerners get crazy when talking about a large group of people and we say “all y’all,” which is admittedly over the top, but it gets the message across and isn’t that the point of communication in first place?

So I’m unable to effectively use all of the fancy new technology around me because it can’t understand a word I say. You’d think I’d just get over it.

I won’t.

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