Linking Assignment #1
Phiviet’s original response to voice to text
I have chose Phiviet’s response within module 3 to link.
I chose to link his assignment as his analysis offered thoughts and ideas that I had not considered before or at least had not thought deeply about. This was especially true for me in his comment of: “in some Asian languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese, accent and intonation can completely change the meaning of a word, so these voice recordings are less likely to be misunderstood in conversations”. As an ESL educator, voice to text does become incredibly frustrating with different dialects and pronunciations. With some of my ESL students we often use a translator application. Similarly, you speak into the text and it translates into the desired language, however, it is incredibly flawed and also becomes incredibly frustrating for students who want to share but their ideas are misunderstood.
As Phiviet mentions, from Gnanadesikan (2011) “The actual sounds of language are infinitely varied, as they are uttered by different people in different circumstances (p. 9)”. The sounds of language often relay a deeper message than the actual words; this is missing within written language.
Additionally, hearing the voice of a loved one as opposed to reading a message from a loved one has a deeper meaning. Phiviet mentioned how his grandparents use voice messaging as a way of sharing. My husband and I also experience this from family members who speak German and Arabic; meanings are lost when they can only rely on written text. This form of representing and recording oral language could be viewed similarly to Phiviet’s comparison and arguments to written language. Phiviet notes how Gnanadesikan (2011) describes written text as having the ability to be “examined, analyzed, and dissected” (p. 4). Perhaps this was true as there was no way to preserve oral texts.
There are over 3.5 million podcasts available for listeners (Cridland, 2022). With audio books and various voice messaging systems more available now, Phiviet’s post had me questioning as we now have the ability to save and store oral text: could we eventually move beyond written text and move (again) to more oral driven text forms?
Furthermore, as more cultures collide (each with different dialects, tones and of course languages), and the more we experience solitariness (as evident by the pandemic and many of us working from home), could we be seeking more oral language texts as a way to “keep us company” ?
If an oral message could possess the ability to stay exactly the same throughout time, could it be considered more “reliable” in terms of accuracy and transmission than text? Or could there be more misinterpretations through dialect, tone, pronunciation, and other modifications of the voice? Perhaps this form of oral technology could be better examined, analyzed, and dissected than the Gnanadesikan (2011) argument for written text?
Cridland, J. (March 10, 2022). How many podcasts are there?. Podnews.net. https://podnews.net/article/how-many-podcasts
Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.