It always amuses me when people get all excited by the Text-to-Speech functionality on some of our GPS units. Being a South African I am quite used to the sometimes odd (mis)pronunciation of some of our road names (especially some of the newer names) by many of our own citizens but believe me when I say that the Brits, Yanks and Aussies are ten times worse.

Take any of the Garmin Nuvi units with the Text-to-Speech feature for example. The voice directions for turning off Lynnwood Road onto the N1 freeway-South (the Danie Joubert freeway) would give you:

  • “Turn left on ramp to daynee jew-bert freeway-N-one” when using the British English voice and
  • “Turn left on ramp to daynee jobbert freeway-N-one” when using the American or Australian English voices.

Now I don’t know about you but I can only take so many “mangled” street names before I want to throw the witch out of the window. And this is only with the Afrikaans street names, you should hear what they do with some of our more “ethnic” names.

Another irritating factor is that when using the “Text-to-Speech” function, the road number is automatically attached to the end of the road name in the pronunciation (for example “turn left on General Lewie Both-er Drive-M-thirtythree” when turning into “Louis Botha Drive”). Since there is no gap between the pronunciation of the street name and the number, the resulting verbal directions can often be more confusing than they are helpful.

So why would South Africans want this feature? I honestly don’t know. The only thing that I can think of is that the feature sounds like a good idea at first but they don’t really know how excruciatingly painful it is to listen to for longer than the first 3 minutes.

Have you used this feature? I would love to hear your take on this so please leave a comment below.

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