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Frame from Scottish Elevator - Voice Recognition - ELEVEN ! Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Scottish Elevator - Voice Recognition - ELEVEN !

Noel N
Comedy
YouTube
Cited on HN 5 times, 2019–2022, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Used as a joke whenever voice interfaces and accents come up, and shared as a Scottish comedy sample.

A sketch from the Scottish comedy show Burnistoun in which two men cannot get a voice-recognition elevator to understand the word eleven in their accents.

1 citations · 4 jokes · Comedy

5 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@stevekemp Apr 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Ask HN: I’m already fluent in English. How can I improve further?
I was going to suggest something similar; listening/watching English TV which doesn't have the received-pronounciation. Other good choices would be "Yes Minister" (original series), "Fawlty Towers", and for extra-credit you should absolutely try to watch "Rab C. Nesbitt" (which is set in Glasgow. I'd suggest that Only Fools & Horses (after the second/third series) is pretty understandable to all British people, but a lot more would struggle with the Scottish accents. Here's a brief sample, and another Scottish themed comedy sketch: [link] [this video]
Sample of Scottish-themed comedy for accent practice.
@jonathankoren Feb 2019 Makes a joke
on HN thread Mozilla releases the largest to-date public domain transcribed voice dataset
Audiobooks have a very small number of accents. Often they’re recorded by middle-aged, or older men with a standard accent. (Think newscasters, and most actors) One of the advantages of CommonVoice is that breadth of voices. By having more, and different types of voices, you can build a more robust system, which works for more people. For instance, my wife is a nonnative English speaker, and had trouble for years using Siri. Alexa can’t understand small children. And of course, elevators can’t understand Scottish accents. [this video]
@aidenn0 May 2022 Makes a joke
on HN thread The benefits of “low tech” user interfaces
Two reasons to resist using voice commands 1. Do not want to talk in the loud-clear voice needed for them to work (e.g. someone else in car is on their phone, kids are sleeping). 2. Completely soured on the experience due to things like this[1] 1: [this video]
@bambax Aug 2022 Makes a joke
on HN thread The end of the manual transmission is near?
> We take a voice-first approach That sounds like a nightmare. So you have to forcibly silence everyone in the car to do anything? Even if I'm alone I would prefer silence and pushing buttons instead of having a conversation with a machine. Obligatory reference, if you haven't seen it: Scottish Elevator: [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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