0:00 Intro 0:26 'B' and 'F' are pretty similar 2:18 'CK' or sound effect??

I can hear Farbie but not f*ck.

@RealGrouchy

Жыл бұрын

Ditto, but hearing "f*ck" - f = "buck" blew my mind!

@NerlenDept

Жыл бұрын

Me too.

@bassbusterx

Жыл бұрын

I think the original viral video was manipulated

@annasilvestre2984

Жыл бұрын

Quiet it down a bit and focus, the “bie” part will fade away. I heard it when I was tired and I hear the f-word, but I heard the “bie” now.

@t-girl9643

Жыл бұрын

I heard "Oh, Fuck me!"

Both yesterday and today it just sounds like Barbie to me.

@ZwHwY

Жыл бұрын

Someone commented in the last video to turn your volume low, which I found helps you hear it the other way.

@unitariansavage8513

Жыл бұрын

@@ZwHwY It doesn't really work.

@PanicbyExample

Жыл бұрын

agreed, virality is a weird thing... i mean i do hear the expletive but i'd never think that's what's being said... it'd take slowing down the content and pointing out the moment before "bie" to hear it but i kind of doubt people are really getting hung up on the reality of the scene

@Michael-sh1fb

Жыл бұрын

@@ZwHwY that worked for me. Couldn't hear it as anything other than Barbie until I did that.

@Nn-3

Жыл бұрын

@@unitariansavage8513 Listening through a muffled speaker can also help.

It’s hard to have a video about how a word sounds when you have to censor that word.

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

All that matters is that taking its F off makes it sound like buck!

@mashed_sb

Жыл бұрын

@@DrGeoffLindsey take that youtube censorship!

@BagOfGum

Жыл бұрын

Yeah but KZread

@K___R

Жыл бұрын

Nope, It's always preferable to avoid swearing

@emilymonahan5232

Жыл бұрын

what a fucking cringe take

I just assumed that the viral video had simply been heavily manipulated, that nobody actually heard it like that... but somehow you've Sherlocked a legitimate reason for the meme! And not just for laughs, this amusing video is still instructive to how words are put together, and how our brains puts sounds together into heard speech. Cool.

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

Thanks. Even if it was manipulated, I think it's still interesting to see where the potential ambiguity comes from.

@jergarmar

Жыл бұрын

@@DrGeoffLindsey Yes, exactly, even if that specific video was tweaked, I see how many people could have honestly heard it that way from the movie, especially if listening on low-quality audio. It's actually interesting just how small of a tweak it would take to "hear" one word rather than another.

@QuantumJump451

Жыл бұрын

I can definitely say that even the original audio has the same property because I was watching the original upload of this video and my dad in the other room yelled out "EXCUSE ME???" because he'd misheard

@Arkylie

Жыл бұрын

For a writing project, I researched Auditory Processing Disorder, and it's basically the brain being less intuitive about parsing these shifts -- hearing an ambiguous set of sounds and not being able to easily map them to existing words. It's fascinating because I've caught myself doing that a lot over the years -- hearing nonsense, and then, a few seconds later, figuring out the obvious words that had been said. In my fic "Turtles in a Bottle", I tried to convey that experience by carefully going through the sounds of each phrase and determining which ones could be misinterpreted. I think the phrase that got the most interesting twist was "oh cave-eye callyu Clint" ("okay if I call you Clint?"), though there were a lot of little shifts like "the many more" instead of "them anymore". Given the ways this channel has demonstrated that our words are weirder than we think, I'm sure I could've pushed the phrases a lot farther (and might consider it in future chapters), but I want the reader to still be able to decode it with a little effort -- getting that same mental speed bump, the little delay between hearing the phrase and making sense of it. It's been interesting to play with.

@jergarmar

Жыл бұрын

@@Arkylie I mean, there's literally a party game where you have nonsense syllables that only make sense when you read them out loud, and typically the person who is reading has the hardest time figuring out the words.

I never knew about this ‘controversy’, and it sounds 100% like Barbie to me. 🤷🏼‍♀️ I don’t even get how any could hear the f-word here since Ken pronounces his “r” in “Barbie” rather strongly.

@sotetsotetsotetsotetsotet2379

Жыл бұрын

Lower your volume

@jamaul1391

Жыл бұрын

It's not the f word lol, it's farbie. It's something that happened which shows that we hear what we think. So rewatch that scene but think of farbie and you'll hear it then try again but think Barbie and you'll see what I mean

@grymns

Жыл бұрын

The clear 'bie' at the end should've been enough

@josiahjray

Жыл бұрын

Who called it a controversy? 😂 It wasn’t a controversy, obviously he says Barbie but a lot of people misheard it and that went viral.

@adamandsethdylantoo

Жыл бұрын

i guess if an r is strongly pronounced but also muffled, it can make a hard u soung

The barbie/farbie effect is mindblowing. Makes me think once again that what we hear might not be what the actual sounds are, we're just used to interpret them in a certain way...

@spaghetti5914

Жыл бұрын

As a non-native English speaker, English is a mess when it comes to pronunciation. I still struggle with watching adult shows or movies without subtitles because people tend to whisper, sometimes over music too and it's illegible

@4kleidisc

Жыл бұрын

how does the 'e' dissapear in the low quality audio depending on which you choose to hear?

@vsm1456

Жыл бұрын

@@4kleidisc This one I'm not sure and it wasn't addressed in the video, but my guess would be this: "e" is more on a high frequency side than other sounds in this word, so if someone focuses on lower frequencies they might miss the "e". Kinda like Yanny/Laurel trick.

@fredneecher1746

Жыл бұрын

'Farbie' is not a rude word - or a word! No one heard the rude word.

@Mienshao11

Жыл бұрын

Yes this is exactly how language works lol. Liminal pairs are an example

The slowed "Oh, Barbie!" Sent me into a brick wall

@adkneze1854

Жыл бұрын

Very serious and educational speaking then out of no where "OOhhhhhhhh . . .. Barbie" i died

@gracelessabomination9847

Жыл бұрын

I was losing my shit every time he showed the clip lmfao

I mean, I keep hearing "farby," on both versions, so... also, would love to see a lot more videos analyzing mishearings!

@muttlanguages3912

Жыл бұрын

Ditto

@veroniquejeangille8248

Жыл бұрын

Me too !

@plasmasnow2ndaccount87

Жыл бұрын

Hold your phone to where it's standing up and not sideways, then tilt whichever side the speaker is on towards you

@101jir

Жыл бұрын

@@plasmasnow2ndaccount87 I'll give that a try when I can

@101jir

Жыл бұрын

@@plasmasnow2ndaccount87 Tried it. Just hear "Farby" even more clearly.

2:30 I think the sound effect is the paddle hitting the dressing screen

@TigerFucker

Жыл бұрын

I searched for this comment

Can we just appreciate how well placed Dr. Geoff Lindsey says "briefly" in this clip? 😆0:58

@O2life

Жыл бұрын

That's incredible! Thanks for sharing.

@ShirinRose

Жыл бұрын

@@De1n1ol It's at 1:00

@musicredsubaru

Жыл бұрын

@@O2life You're welcome. 😊

@emilyrln

Жыл бұрын

Lmao 😂

@O2life

Жыл бұрын

@@De1n1ol give it a few seconds

I legit just found your channel and had no idea this whole controversy is a thing. I always knew English was weird, but you have opened my eyes to an amazing new awareness! You are a wonderful teacher and I greatly appreciate your linguistic wisdom!

@harsimaja9517

Жыл бұрын

Tbf this particular sort of weirdness isn't specific to English, but the weirdness of spoken languages' phonetics in general

@oldcowbb

Жыл бұрын

tiktok lives in their own weird universe

@fredneecher1746

Жыл бұрын

It happens in every language - people rarely pronounce words in connected speech quite as they are understood to be in 'theory'. A lot of our understanding of real speech relies on our understanding what those words are from the context. There's nothing weird about English in this respect.

@volnartheunforgiving3952

Жыл бұрын

"controversy" ???

No matter how hard I try, I can't hear anything but Barbie. :/

@haxkztasy

Жыл бұрын

nor can i, the "R" sound in Barbie is just too strong on my end lol

@pixierabbit1128

Жыл бұрын

Same man

@xchasingthefallx

Жыл бұрын

Turn your volume down a little bit and you'll hear it. I couldn't hear nothing but barbie until I did that lol

@_Pixelated

Жыл бұрын

@@xchasingthefallx all I hear is "arbie"

@xchasingthefallx

Жыл бұрын

@@_Pixelated Try to tilt your speaker upwards and towards you.

Given the way lips are animated to the sound track, and the skill of the people involved in making Toy Story 3. I wouldn't be surprised if this was inside joke.

I think the “K” sound that you heard actually came from the paddle Ken’s strapped to knocking against the wall when he struggles.

He scientifically analysed a word without saying it once. Wow

@marmac83

Жыл бұрын

oh f(_)ck 😜

@FlcwerxX

Жыл бұрын

Definitely wow

I think the low quality audio has been manipulated. That said, you provide a plausible explanation for the meme.

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

I wonder too. If so, the manipulator is pretty clever.

@jankrnac3535

Жыл бұрын

I also think because must be lot of low quality pirated copies and is weird it get viral only now after so many years.

@ASharkNamedWaffle

Жыл бұрын

I dont think so. I can hear both Barbie and f*ck clearly. I replayed the low quality part over and over. its 50/50 on what word i hear. Even if I try to focus on one of the words it is still random for me.

@PumaArg

Жыл бұрын

I heard it in the good audio too

@bonecag3

Жыл бұрын

I heard both in the beginning of the video. Pretty weird lol

You know you're weird when you learn about a meme from a phonetics channel 😀 But then again, Geoff Lindsey is excellent at reacting to current topics, the Queen had hardly been dead for 5 seconds and he was already analysing the new King's accent!

@leafyfantheanimator5545

Жыл бұрын

OwO 😊😏😩😫 UwU 😚😍

The fact that the swim trunks make the sound of hitting the floor much too early almost leads me to believe that the final audio editor heard the "OH FUCK" during editing and intentionally left it in.

@corneliastreet2491

Жыл бұрын

It’s actually the wood of the paddle hitting the wall lol

I recently got interested in phonetics and International Phonetic Alphabet, and I really love the waveform analysis of the sounds. Even knowing that /f/ and /b/ share roughly the same place of articulation, I wouldn't have thought that just by adding some noise before /b/ you can make it an /f/! It's really amazing how we perceive sounds and how easily we can be fooled by the context and not even know it!

I thought I was going crazy. I only hear the swear in the low quality version and this perfectly sums up the phenomena.

I am teaching different classes in English phonetics and phonology at the moment and one of my students just sent me an e-mail yesterday with this clip. He was wondering about this effect. I had a look in Praat and found the same influences (especially the dropping of the pants which can quickly be perceived as a /k/ and the influence of the background music). Totally agree with your analysis! I can't believe you made a video about this one, this is absolutely fantastic and perfect timing :D I'll definitely show this one to the class! Your ways of explaining phonetics/phonology are absolutely lovely!

Thank you for this detailed explanation! I was actually shocked when seeing this Clip for the First time and how this worked and i couldnt imagine how this is even possible. Now my consciousness in terms of that got expanded

I literally watched this movie again a couple of days ago and I literally thought “hmm… ok… must be watching the uncensored version” 😂😂

Ever cover "good teenagers, take off your clothes"? Supposedly that is heard instead of "Down kitty, take off and go" in 1992's Disney's animated feature film, Aladdin. It is the scene where "Prince Ali" meets up with Princess Jasmine on her balcony.

Getting flashbacks to Yanny and Laurel.

Glorious!!! I'd been hoping someone would come up with a phonetic explanation for this illusion. Your video is limpid, thank you so much.

This is such a good explanation that easy to understand ^^ the vocabs are not too advanced, and you're so soft and structured in explaining, thank you for the knowledge

I’ve always heard “Oh Barbie” there was never a doubt in my mind that it was different. But apparently internet happened as per usual 😂

Thanks for explaining the "b/k" part. It was driving me crazy since it was clearly a "b" when hearing "barbie" but clearly "k" when not.

Everytime you do one of your audacity cut and pastes you blow my mind.

This is such a good video, thank you. I like the effort put in

I'm very very happy you are including acoustic analysis with your breaking down of English phonemic and phonetic peculiarities. It's something you don't always get when linguistics is being explained in lay terms. Thank you for that, Dr Lindsey!

Huh. Disney at the center of yet another "secret message" conspiracy theory. Those are always fun to deal with. Mario gets it, too. "So long, gay bowser" (actually "So long-a Bowser" in Charles Martinet's faux Italian accent) and the far less scandalous (I think, anyhow) "Let's pickle" (actually "Let's-a go") My fellow Americans also thought Banjo Kazooie had a reference to erections in the soundtrack, when it's just a football chant about being tough since Rare is British... The real phallic reference in THAT game came from a level map.

Thanks a lot for the explaination as this ate my mind off since last night when I first heard this... Really appreciate your efforts...

you explain what goes thru my mind in half a second perfectly! i know why we hears one or another but i can't explain why 😭

Fascinating. One piece missing from the equation in my humble opinion is the fact that english speakers will often pronounce the f-word without the final /k/ and only use a partial glottal stop. Hence the single stressed syllable "Faa" implies the f-word to most native speakers.

1:32 This section made me crack up! 🤣

This reminds me of the Laurel/Yanny meme that swiffered the nation. Thank you Geoff your channel is amazing!

I love this style of explanation. Amazing

I love how you have the Google Translate voice say the two words, but one is just a bleep 😂

Thank you sooo much for this explaination, was driving me nuts lol. I can hear both words now. Couldn't hear Barbie until this video 🙂

@GoodNewsEveryone2999

Жыл бұрын

Even after this video, I can only hear Barbie... clear enough that I thought hearing anything else was a hoax for attention. Even in his explanation, the sounds that he claims sound similar don't actually sound similar to me. I'm curious where the people who hear the f-word are from, since I think it may be due priming based on regional accents.

Thank you so much for this,, I thought I was going crazy when I had to loop the same clip twice but heard two completely different things each time. I am at peace

Yea! This was my question ❤ thanks for explanation! It’s def more evident in the low quality Instagram version

Ironically in the low quality clip it sounds more like "Barbie" and less like the F word. As someone who's toyed around with audio editing and learned some interesting stuff about how speech works purely through experience I had no idea that you could make a B and an F into each other so easily until now though, that's genuinely surprising

It's back!

Thank you I thoroughly enjoyed this video !!

Thanks for this Geoff

Can't hear anything except Barbie

@onesandzeroes

Жыл бұрын

Could hear f*** in the previous video

@WeeWeeJumbo

Жыл бұрын

all the clips in this video sound correctly. the clips in viral uploads were absolutely ambiguous

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

@@WeeWeeJumbo I include the sound from the viral uploads in this video

I can only hear Barbie! I feel like I'm missing out!! 😭

Great content once again Dr Lindsey

Thanks. You saved my life. I could not have slept the entire night before wrapping my head around this. lol

Thank you very much 🙂 I think I finally have an explanation ! Not for Barbie & Ken, but for Dream On, Aerosmith. I was amazed to read obviously misleading lyrics on Spotify. After a few research, I guess it is due to the poor audio quality from the radio edit of the song, blended with orchestration. The official lyrics (and I think close to the long version) are the following: Every time that I look in the mirror All these lines on my face getting clearer The past is gone It went by like dusk to dawn Isn't that the way? Everybody's got their dues in life to pay kzread.info/dash/bejne/am2YqaVxlMiWc6Q.html The "wrong" ones (even grammatically I think) as shown in Spotify (allegedly from Musixmatch, despite differing from the website) are: Give it time and look in the mirror All these lies in my face kept me clearer The past is gone In when back like dust to dawn Isn't that the way? Everybody's got do's and life depends kzread.info/dash/bejne/m3ZmtsuRnbuxXbg.html Searching for this I saw that this song seems to be prone to a lot of "mishearing". Did you knew the refrain was not intended to be heard "Sing winner !" but "Sing with me" ?

@HappyHawthorn

Жыл бұрын

✨Wow!✨

@IdiotAmigo

Жыл бұрын

Moby once did a cover version of Mission of Burma's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" but his lyrics are quite different from the original. E.g. "Cry and whispers sing in muted pain" becomes "He'd sign it with complete community." All in all, Moby's version makes little sense lyrically. I always wondered if he learned that song by ear, without ever having read the original lyrics - because some of Moby's lines sound suspiciously mondegreen-ish, and the vocal in the original version isn't crystal clear. The original Mission of Burma LP featuring this song, "Signals, Calls, and Marches," did come with a lyric sheet - but with all the words from all the songs in alphabetical order.

@vincentstartuplarbin2786

Жыл бұрын

@@IdiotAmigo What a funny way to open your lyrics source !

@cheryllwaldrop9732

Жыл бұрын

I'm genuinely surprised any of that could be misheard that way. Especially the sing with me, as the next lines are sing for the years, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears...

@vincentstartuplarbin2786

Жыл бұрын

@@cheryllwaldrop9732 As a non-native English speaker, it's hard to say. But I must admit that I struggle to hear the correct lyrics when listening to the radio edit song. Maybe the "priming" with the wrong lyrics helps me to hear them. After all, understanding natural language is always deciphering, context and expectations have a major role. Same for "sing with me..." I'm not the best placed to judge.

I'm still baffled how you can hear one syllable in a clearly two syllable word like that. It reminds me of the Brainstorm/Green Needle audio illusion, except reversed. It's supposed to be "Brainstorm" but I hear three syllables, so I hear Green Needle. I can't imagine hearing the shorter version of the illusion in these situations. It's interesting, but the way I hear it, other ways just seem made up to me. XD

Finally a good explanation! Well done 👍

Glad that this show up in my recommendation. I always interest in language, voice and, sound. 1 more subscribers.

“Oh phbark” If you talk like that you need help 😂

Truly speaking, I'll never thaught that this line could sounds to anyone as a "f word". I'm not a native speaker so the line sounds for me more like "Oh Farbie", but on the other hand Ken's facial expression looks more like he wants to say "of f*ck" :D

@eeriecraft1797

Жыл бұрын

Yeah. Same and I'm a native speaker. I can hear far or bar but the bee at the end is far too prominent and the are sound in bar is too strong to be the f bomb.

I'm currently in a linguistic course in uni so i actually understood all of that. Subscribed!

Absolutely epic channel

I could hear the wrong word even in the higher quality version, likely in part due to priming. Once you told me what he actually said, I could always here the "bie" at the end. But I didn't notice it the first time. Yet, when I actually watched the movie a couple years ago for the first time, I don't remember thinking he used an expletive.

Maybe the fact that I'm not a native speaker plays a role, but I don't hear it at all. I've heard a few sound illusions that was quite convincing but this one doesn't work for me.

Finally now I can sleep 🙂 thank you Dr Geoff Lindsey ❤❤

I'm surprised at everybody saying they can't hear it. In the low quality version it sounds exactly like "f*ck" to me. Great explanation & video!

A couple of things I have noticed recently. Some British people pronounce assume and presume with an added h so it is ashume and preshume. My American ear picked that immediately. (Or immejetly.) The other was was the pronunciation of "...ing" words that end up sounding like "...ink" not exactly a full k, but halfway between a g and a k with a slight ejective. "I was walkingk..." An English male born and raised in the Midlands, went to Oxford, and now lives in a suburb of London. About 35 years old. Well educated and fairly upper class. Are these individual tics or are they common pronunciations? The only American instance I can think of with the "...ingk" is Tom Hanks in Forest Gump. Think "itty, bitty stinging rain", but have never heard it in the wild.

@martavdz4972

Жыл бұрын

I'm Czech but I can answer your question. The "-ingk" thing is regional, I heard it in Nottinghamshire. The "ashume" thing is generally British but most often Southern England, I think. Where "u" is pronounced as "you", it sometimes palatalizes the sound before it. Stephen Fry does that a lot when he speaks as Hermione in the Harry Potter audiobooks.

@dingo137

Жыл бұрын

It's not an added H, but a change in the S sound, presumably due to the influence of the historical Y sound in assume (see his video on the Youchube pronunciation). The -ing thing was the historical pronunciation, but most English accents dropped the G in such words. This didn't happen in the Midlands and the North West though, so "sing" is still /sɪŋg/ and not /sɪŋ/.

@jeff__w

Жыл бұрын

My friend, originally from London but living in the US for close to 25 years, does that “…ing” → “…ink” thing. I’ve noticed it for as long as I’ve known him. (I thought it was his own idiosyncratic pronunciation.)

@notwithouttext

Жыл бұрын

for the ashume, watch the youchube video

Someone's probably done it by now, but I would love to see a phoneticist's explanation of Yanny and Laurel.

Fascinating, I can hear both depending on which one I wanna hear.

I was today years old when I discovered that some people didn't hear that Ken was saying "oh Barbie!" 😳

Ah, the "what colour is the dress" of phonetics :D

@Arkylie

Жыл бұрын

I was thinking of that "yanni/something" clip, too.

@notwithouttext

Жыл бұрын

@@Arkylie /jænɪj/ [jenəj] vs /lorəl/

“Barbie” is a two-syllable word that ends with “bee.” The F-word is only one syllable, and ends with the “k” sound. Ken also has the rhotic American accent, and pronounces the “r,” which is totally absent from the F-word. And for context, the character interacting with Ken is Barbie. Even if the “Ba” and “fu” sounds seem somewhat similar, it’s pretty strange to confuse the two words altogether.

@annamous5991

Жыл бұрын

No one heard fuck at all. It’s just mob mentality

In the low quality version I hear whichever word I'm thinking of at the time

Very well explained 👏🏻👏🏻

1:10 I'm not sure if the soundtrack waveform you show us is taken from the high or low quality version, I assume it's the former. It'd be even better to have the soundtrack waveforms from both on the same screen to compare the 'f' portion. What people hear not only depends on the audio clip quality, but also the volume, playback device and individual's hearing sensitivity.

It's disturbing enough that now we all know what Ken sounds like when he, um, "peaks" during "playtime" with Barbie.

This made the phenomenon really clear! 👏

I'm still hearing Farbie in both of them :) Good to know that original version wasn't removed by KZread!

Could the seeming (from the clips you showed) lack of lip movement in the animation on the second syllable also contribute to this? I know that you can cause people to mishear things when playing audio over lip movement that match similar words.

Surprisingly educational well done

Fascinating.

Could you someday do a contrastive analysis of the pronunciation of the F-word in English and the sound of the French word "phoque," which is the word for a seal, the kind that lives in or near water?

@IdiotAmigo

Жыл бұрын

The vowel is the only difference. If the f-word rhymed with "lock" instead of "luck", it would be pronounced almost exactly like French "phoque."

The best pointlessly wasted 3 minutes of my life. 🤓

this is such a cool video!

I’ve never heard this before, but I’m now obsessed with this.

I only started hearing "fuck" in any notable way in the lower quality one, where it was glaring, but the "bie" at the end completely wipes that out in the clearer one

Even put together, even looking at the alternative subtitles, I still can't make myself hear anything but "Barbie". Maybe the start could be slightly ambiguous, but the "-bie" at the end is clear, and isn't even a "-ck me!"

I wasn't able to know about this because I was watching dubbed non-english version as kid, thanks for video

The low quality is what really made it sound like the f bomb.

What are the odds of that I was just going to look this up and it was the first video recommended by KZread, weeeeird

You sounds like the english teacher i never had, pretty good video

3:25 minutes of direct, straight to the point content. excellent

When I first saw the movie, it never occurred to me it could be anything other than "Barbie". When this video played the original clip, I almost heard the other thing on the second play, and then never again, especially not in the degraded version.

The click sound is the paddle Ken is on hitting the plastic wall of the house as he jostles in frustration, not the shorts hitting the floor

I've only heard Barbie, now I'm hearing Farbie

Thank you! You could start a series of misheard rock songs 😅🎸🥁🤘

wow now this is the type of person who never has to go through the experience of "I understand but I can't explain it"

Nice video Dr. Lindsey

Like the "brainstorm" and "green needle" effect.

While getting "Barbie" and "f*ck" mixed up sounds completely bogus, I can actually hear them both, unlike with the Yanny/Laurel debate that sprung up a while ago. Your explanation made it really clear why that's the case and I really appreciated it, thanks a lot man!

if you're having trouble hearing the 'not safe for disney' version of the phrase, play the original lower-quality clip that did rounds on social media from your device's speakers, without using headphones.

I didn’t hear it all until you played the low quality clip! Lmao