Curious.....

December 13, 2006 8:40 AM

"Olive Juice" looks like "I love you" by someone lip reading. What is this called?

"Olive Juice" looks like "I love you" by someone lip reading.
So does, "I'll have two", "Elephant shoes", "Onion soup", and "Island view'.

What is this called?
Know of any other similar sentences?
Any site to generates these?

posted by Coolcan2 to human relations (22 comments total)

Homophone
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:42 AM on December 13, 2006

These are definately not homophones.
posted by phrontist at 8:45 AM on December 13, 2006

A homophone is a word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning.

Olive Juice and I love you are not pronounced the same.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:45 AM on December 13, 2006

Basically, you're describing a pun. Any pun-like arrangement will work. There aren't pun generators online, but interestingly it is a topic in AI research.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:45 AM on December 13, 2006

These are definately not homophones.

But "latter" and "ladder" are (see linked joke), and are similar to "olive juice" and "I love you" for the same reason.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:47 AM on December 13, 2006

I want to vacuum.
(Apparently looks like "I want to fuck you.")

I'd wager there's a linguistics term for it, since all it's just all about substituting voiced and unvoiced consonants (the vowels are pretty catch as catch can without speaking anyway).
posted by klangklangston at 8:48 AM on December 13, 2006

from Wikipedia

"Where there's life, there's hope" = "Where's the lavender soap"

"What's that pig outdoors?" = "What's that big loud noise?"

(the latter comes from the title of a book with a chapter about problems with lipreading, it's referenced in the entry)
posted by Lucinda at 8:52 AM on December 13, 2006

'latter' and 'ladder' are only homophones if you speak an apallingly sloppy brand of english. american english.
posted by jacalata at 9:16 AM on December 13, 2006

They're called homophenes.
posted by snownoid at 9:21 AM on December 13, 2006

'latter' and 'ladder' are only homophones if you speak an apallingly sloppy brand of english. american english.

No, flapped T is more common than that -- Canadians, Australians, and some British accents at least occasionally flap it as well. That's not indicative of some kind of linguistic flaw any more than a glottal stop is. It's just a different sound.
posted by mendel at 9:22 AM on December 13, 2006

I would like to coin "visemegreen".

(Not to be confused by lip readers as "fizzy marine".)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:23 AM on December 13, 2006

I have no idea what they're called but "elephant shoe" also looks like "i love you"
posted by carpyful at 9:23 AM on December 13, 2006

The people who put together this video (NSFW) tried to exploit this phenomenon, with mixed results.
posted by maudlin at 9:23 AM on December 13, 2006

Snownoid's got it with "homophene".
posted by mendel at 9:24 AM on December 13, 2006

See also the McGurk effect.

But yeah, it's homophene. It's not in a whole lot of dictionaries.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:26 AM on December 13, 2006

As an Australian who has lived in Britain, it would sound sloppy in most of the accents I'm familiar with, and that's where my first reaction came from. Then I remembered that it's conventional usage in (some?) american accents, (and I'm going to go ahead and lump canadian with them because honestly, it's no more different from 'american' than deep southese is from new yorkian.)

I left the wording as it was just for fun :)
posted by jacalata at 10:00 AM on December 13, 2006

maudlin, that video is brilliant. Couldn't stop laughing.
posted by micayetoca at 10:00 AM on December 13, 2006

I would call it an optical illusion. Optical illusions take advantage of the brain's remarkable ability to use partial information to form a complete picture.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:10 AM on December 13, 2006

If this sort of ambiguity interests you, it might be worth looking up "cued speech", which was designed to remove these ambiguities from lip reading.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 10:15 AM on December 13, 2006

"I love fig newtons" also looks a lot like "I love you".
posted by TheAnswer at 11:48 AM on December 13, 2006

Alligator food
posted by Chickenjack at 2:48 PM on December 13, 2006

I have no idea what they're called but "elephant shoe" also looks like "i love you"

No it doesn't. It sounds like it in your head when you read it, though.
posted by The God Complex at 4:07 PM on December 13, 2006