On May 11, Katie Hetzel, a freshman at Flowery Branch High School in Georgia, was studying for her world literature class, where “laurel” was one of her vocabulary words. She looked it up on Vocabulary.com, and played the audio. Instead of the word in front of her, she heard “yanny.”
The recording at vocabulary.com doesn’t sound anything like the one linked above.
EDIT: Weirdly, now they do sound the same, and they both sound like Laurel.
Anyone who hears Yanny is an alien.
I hear “yeah ree”. Definetly no N’s.
WTF is happening. Now I listen and it’s “Yammy” (not Yanny) clear as a bell, and I can’t hear Laurel any longer.
You’re Benjamin Buttoning!
I played this last night for my wife and both of us heard Laurel very clearly. But our 4 & 6yo girls both heard Yanny from the same source. Bizarre! Then again, when I say NO, they often hear YES, so I question their hearing altogether.
When I listen to the link you have to it, it’s sounds like a deeper voiced man clearly saying Laurel. When I listen to the embedded clip @Telefrog posted, it sounds like a very old woman who smoked a lot in her day saying “Yammy”. They sound completely different to me.
e:
The sound shapes don’t even remotely line up. The first three shapes here are what is being recorded when I play the link to the actual word this all came from on vocabulary.com, which to me sounds just like “laurel” and there is no mistaking it. The second three is the “Yammy” from above, which has either been tampered with or is from a completely different source.
And now both the embedded tweet sounds like Yenny again, but so does vocabulary.com.
Interestingly, there is a lot more white noise than before due to a loud fan that just turned on behind me. Anyone else notice a difference depending on the background noise?
…
Fan is off. Laurel is back!
My AC is on right now and the link sounds like Yammy.
Sounds like it with the AC off as well.
I listened to it on Twitter or wherever and there was nothing remotely akin to anything but Laurel.
Edit: Went to Vocab.com and it was very obviously Laurel. I call bullshit and manipulation on all this.
No link other than the one Telefrog linked sounds remotely like anything except Laurel.
Edit2: My new stance.
Yes, now the tweet sounds very different from vocabulary.com again
I am starting to believe that maybe this is some artifact of caching and/or compression…
Obviously we just can’t trust our senses anymore!
The McGurk effect!
McGurk makes sense for similar sounds and how our brain processes language (ie non-verbal cues, etc).
This is something else.
So I heard Yanny clear as day an hour ago, same with my wife. I then played it again for my mom and heard laurel clear as day now, my mom heard Yanny. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
A co-worker played it in a meeting this morning, and there was a 5-2 split, with neither side being able to hear the other one even on repeat listens.
LOL.
But this whole phenomena could explain why my gf and I are always getting into arguments where she swears I said something very specific, when I know damn well I did not!
Me. “Hi Yanni, I’m home.”
Her: "WHO THE FUCK IS LAUREL?!?
I realize its not the same effect, just thought it was related to how the same sound can come across differently depending on our brains filters.
The tweet is “yanny” and the vocab.com is “laurel” for me. No mistaking one for the other at all. I’m going to try this on the wife and kids and see what happens.
I played the embedded clip above for my wife and me, sitting in the roo. Together. I hear Yanny and my wife hears Laurel. Weird.
Not only are they both Laurel but the tweet and vocab.com sound exactly the same! (tweet is lower quality though).
I suspect there might be some regionality going on here, though i’m unsure where the linguistic fault line lies.
Go here, play with the slider. It’s a frequency thing and what you prioritize, I suspect most older folks hear Laurel as it’s the low end.
