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Honored Contributor
Posts: 12,845
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Laurel. I kept hearing laurel too along with this last time on youtube.

 

However they had this on the noon news yesterday and I heard Yanny...very weird!

Honored Contributor
Posts: 41,253
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

@debic wrote:

@sunshine45 wrote:

@RedTop

 

isnt there really a wrong answer?

has the person who recorded this actually said if he was saying yanny or laurel or both something else OR is it a computer generated voice?


They showed on the news that it was a 'bot' word and laurel for an info card.   Knowing that we never could hear anything besides 'yenny' 


 

 

 

so the word really IS laurel ( as taken from the vocabulary.com website) and there is a "wrong answer." i cannot hear laurel either @debic

 

just read an interesting article in the new york times.

 

 

Jody Kreiman, a principal investigator at the voice perception laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, helpfully guessed that “the acoustic patterns for the utterance are midway between those for the two words.”

 

“The energy concentrations for Ya are similar to those for La,” she said. “N is similar to r; I is close to l.”

 

Patricia Keating, a linguistics professor and the director of the phonetics lab at U.C.L.A., said: “It depends on what part (what frequency range) of the signal you attend to.”

 

“I have no idea why some listeners attend more to the lower frequency range while others attend more to the higher frequency range,” she added. “Age? How much time they spend talking on the phone?”

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/science/yanny-laurel.html

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Honored Contributor
Posts: 13,401
Registered: ‎07-15-2016

Both with and w/o my hearing aids, I heard YANNY.  

 

I had a discussion with my ENT and audiologist re a similar "problem" when I heard something different than someone else.  Apparently, it's not uncommon!

Honored Contributor
Posts: 41,469
Registered: ‎03-12-2010

Laurel

There are many elements: wind, fire, water
But none quite like the element of surprise
Honored Contributor
Posts: 15,519
Registered: ‎09-01-2010

@goldensrbest,

I heard both on the NBC nightly news last night as well, because the man in the video played the sound byte on the high frequency first, then hit a key on the laptop to play the low frequency setting second.   My normal hearing picks up Yanny; enhancing or isolating the low frequency makes me hear Laurel.   I don’t think it is that unusual. 

Trusted Contributor
Posts: 1,858
Registered: ‎06-03-2017

It switches back and forth for me.  I think it has to do with either the frequency, the device you're using to listen to it, and I think a lot of the recordings are also messing with us to cause debate.  The most ridiculous thing about this debate is how some people on social media are acting like they're smarter because they hear one over the other. 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 14,488
Registered: ‎04-18-2013

I heard Meghan and then I heard Harry.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 33,580
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

@QueenDanceALot wrote:

I heard Meghan and then I heard Harry.


See the source image

Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 5,296
Registered: ‎09-18-2010

Ellen D heard Laurel.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 24,685
Registered: ‎07-21-2011

It depends whatr pitch it is in and you hear different things.  I saw this on The Talk yesterday.

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