Happy Thought for 18 November 2022

Have a Happy Thought: 

 

In the 1960s, electrical engineers in the US figured out a way to test whether a new audio communication method was clear enough for people to be able to understand each other. They based their testing methods on something developed during World War II that was used to test military communication lines.

The testing method set up in the 1960’s is still in use today.

It’s used for lots of things, including:

• actually testing phone lines (including mobile/cell phones – US-based readers may remember the Verizon “Can you hear me now?” guy…)
• Watching how actors’ mouths move to make animations (including CGI) more realistic
• Training text-to-speech (or speech-to-text) algorithms
• Art

 What is this magical test, you ask?

It’s random words, put together in groups of 10 “phonetically balanced sentences” – each “sentence” is a group of words that include a mixture of sounds commonly made in English. The idea is that if you can understand these random sentences and repeat them back, you’d definitely be able to understand actual sentences spoken on the other end of a line (or Skype call).

 Here is an example of this accidental poetry – bonus points if you try this out on an unreliable line and come up with mis-translations 😃

The horse trotted around the field at a brisk pace.

Find the twin who stole the pearl necklace.

Cut the cord that binds the box tightly.

The red tape bound the smuggled food.

Look in the corner to find the tan shirt.

The cold drizzle will halt the bond drive.

Nine men were hired to dig the ruins.

The junk yard had a mouldy smell.

The flint sputtered and lit a pine torch.

Soak the cloth and drown the sharp odor.

Or

Slide the box into that empty space.

The plant grew large and green in the window.

The beam dropped down on the workmen's head.

Pink clouds floated with the breeze.

She danced like a swan, tall and graceful.

The tube was blown and the tire flat and useless.

It is late morning on the old wall clock.

Let's all join as we sing the last chorus.

The last switch cannot be turned off.

The fight will end in just six minutes.

 

You can read all 720 (yes, 72 groups of 10 sentences each!!) of the Harvard Sentences and discover your own poetry, here:

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/harvard.html

 

Or you can download audio files and hear various American and British voices reading these out loud – your new bed-time routine? (There’s also equivalents for Mandarin Chinese, French, and Hindi – would love to know if any readers know those languages enough to tell me how laughable those sentences are!)

 

Thanks to this You-Tuber for bringing this to our attention

And Sarah Zhang’s always excellent reporting https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/03/the-harvard-sentences-secretly-shaped-the-development-of-audio-tech/