Comments on: Curious.....

Question: Curious.....

Coolcan2 — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:40:50 -0800

"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?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:42:55 -0800

Homophone

By: phrontist

phrontist — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:45:09 -0800

These are definately not homophones.

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:45:09 -0800

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.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:45:31 -0800

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.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:47:51 -0800

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.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:48:52 -0800

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).

By: Lucinda

Lucinda — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:52:19 -0800

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)

By: jacalata

jacalata — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:16:38 -0800

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

By: snownoid

snownoid — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:21:05 -0800

They're called homophenes.

By: mendel

mendel — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:22:16 -0800

'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.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:23:11 -0800

I would like to coin "viseme green".

(Not to be confused by lip readers as "fizzy marine".)

By: carpyful

carpyful — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:23:45 -0800

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

By: maudlin

maudlin — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:23:53 -0800

The people who put together this video (NSFW) tried to exploit this phenomenon, with mixed results.

By: mendel

mendel — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:24:46 -0800

Snownoid's got it with "homophene".

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:26:55 -0800

See also the McGurk effect.

But yeah, it's homophene. It's not in a whole lot of dictionaries.

By: jacalata

jacalata — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:00:46 -0800

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 :)

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:00:51 -0800

maudlin, that video is brilliant. Couldn't stop laughing.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:10:27 -0800

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.

By: spaceman_spiff

spaceman_spiff — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:15:24 -0800

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.

By: TheAnswer

TheAnswer — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:48:32 -0800

"I love fig newtons" also looks a lot like "I love you".

By: Chickenjack

Chickenjack — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:48:47 -0800

Alligator food

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:07:54 -0800

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.