Black Guy Pretending to Drive Car With Can of Spray Funny Fb
Freelance translator Peter Prowse is used to untangling languages and playing around with words.
Key points:
- In a joke video on social media, Mr Prowse pretended to ban certain speech sounds
- He said science showed consonants were more dangerous than vowels
- Despite the comic intent, scientific research underpins some of the claims
But the retired public relations consultant has set tongues wagging — in his native UK, and around the world — with a viral video in which he pretends to ban certain speech sounds on the grounds they increase the risk of spreading coronavirus.
In the joke clip, Mr Prowse suggests the sounds produced by the letters P, T and C will be phased out and replaced with the sounds produced by N, F and L.
"Consonants project the virus for much greater distances than vowels, and certain consonants — the so-called plosive sounds — are worst of all," he says in the video, which was posted online earlier this month.
"Based on this new evidence, the [UK] Government is introducing new rules in stages to make people's speech less dangerous, and slow the spread of COVID-19," he adds, before switching his own speech patterns.
Anyone speaking in a "fublic flace will have to stof using the flosive sound. Failure to do so will lead to a fine, or even frison", he says.
The clip was posted on YouTube and social media, where it has been viewed more than 100,000 times after being shared by an English rapper.
Speaking conventionally to ABC Radio Adelaide this morning, Mr Prowse said the public response to the video was completely unexpected.
"It happened all around the world, largely due to a rapper called Zuby, who re-posted it to [a] third-of-a-million followers."
Despite the video being marked as a joke on his YouTube page, some viewers were fooled into taking it seriously.
"Quite a lot of them [are] in America and a lot of them didn't actually realise it was a joke," he said.
Consonant concern based on science
The inspiration for the clip came after Mr Prowse was shown a similar video in a different language.
He said, despite the comic intent, it was partially based on scientific findings.
"There was a spoof thing done in French that somebody sent me … and I thought, 'This is quite funny, I'll have a go at translating it'," he said.
"I listened to it a few more times and thought, 'No, it is untranslatable', so I just put it to one side and wrote my own version.
A study earlier this year, which included filming droplets and aerosols emitted when someone sings, showed how singing might be an infection risk.
Another research team at Princeton University recently analysed, with the help of high-speed imaging, how saliva droplets are expelled from the mouth during speech.
"This droplet-producing mechanism is especially pronounced for so-called stop-consonants or plosives like P and B, which require the lips to firmly press together when forming the vocalized sound," the university stated on its website.
Those claims were echoed by atmospheric chemist Dr Robyn Schofield, from the School of Earth Sciences at Melbourne University.
She said while Mr Prowse's video was "totally a spoof", the basic point about certain sounds projecting more spittle than others was correct.
"On the progression of things, you've got breathing, and then you have talking quietly and then talking loudly, and the plosive sounds are in between talking quietly and talking loudly."
Dr Schofield said while some languages might favour sounds more conducive to spreading aerosols, she said there were too many factors at play — including cultural factors around social distancing — to suggest some were more prone to spreading coronavirus than others.
"We know very little about aerosol generation from humans [but] we know that the volume with which we speak plays a role," she said.
"The volume of your voice really matters."
She said there was "no need" to watch your Ps and Qs — at least where coronavirus is concerned.
"Changing the way we speak is not going to help," she said.
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Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-24/spoof-coronavirus-advice-viral-video-bans-consonant-sounds/13012468
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