Playing with Machine Translation

Maybe you’ve been hearing about Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in the news in recent months. AI touches a lot of linguistic areas and one of those is machine translation (MT). I had heard of tools like Google Translate, but I admit that I had turned my nose up at MT. How could it be…really? Would I ever use it?

MT and Accessibility

A lot of people really, including foreign language students. OK – but our university wouldn’t introduce a tool with MT right? Actually yes – some tools designed for students with disabilities (e.g. Anthology Ally and Read and Write) include decent MT options.

For the record, the focus of these tools isn’t translation, but enabling students with certain reading or sensory differences access documents. They typically include TTS (text to speech), magnification, conversion to audio files and other options.

But one of these options is translation – from English to a student’s preferred language. If you’re an international student in a technical class, this could be very helpful for learning what some of those English technical terms translate into. But, of course the option to translate languages (e.g. Spanish) into English is also there. What to do? How about some research?

Other translation tools

By the way, these aren’t the only MT options. It’s also in Facebook (where it is automatic) and (yikes!) Microsoft Word. It seems to be creeping into all my tools!

Some MT Glitches

I’ve done some experiments and so far results are not bad, but not perfect either. They’re enough to say a human should still audit MT output.

Spanish Gender Glitch

As one experiment, I ran MT on an old blog post on language diversity. Most of the translation was pretty good, but there was an interesting gender glitch.

The post first mentions “the geneticist Sarah Tishkoff,” and based on the first name gives the translation la genetista Sarah Tishkoff with the feminine definite article la “the.f.” The article also mentions linguist Salikoko Mufwene who happens to be a male – but his title was translated as la lingüista Salikoko Mufwene.

How did this happen? The personal name “Salikoko” is neither English or Spanish and probably not in a translation database. Prof. Mufwene is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, so my guess is that his first name “Salikoko” originates from an African language. However, the ending -ko is found in many Japanese female names. Maybe the program thought Salikoko was a Japanese personal name? In any case, expect some oddities from your edge cases.

Proper Names

For the most part, proper names for people and places shouldn’t be translated. Some MT can detect them, but some did slip through as in the example below.

English Original

My dog’s name is Glyndwr. We live in State College (PA).

Into Welsh

Enw fy nghi yw Glyndwr. Rydym yn byw yng Ngholeg y Wladwriaeth.

As you can see, the name State College has been translated to Coleg y Wladwriaeith and then the Welsh Nasal mutation has been added. Sweet!

Register Glitch

In addition to the proper name translation, this translator used a verb form new to me (and not the one I was taught in class). Specifically, the first person singular r-ydym for “we are” with the subject pronoun ni dropped (like it can do in Spanish).

Back in the 1980s when I learned Welsh, I was taught that formal written Welsh was pro drop, but that the subject pronoun was required everyday spoken Welsh – I learned rydyn ni’n as “we [are].” That’s what I’m finding on these sites also:

So this tool is giving me a slightly more formal version than what my instructors might be expecting. Just saying.

Spanish Example: Imperfect Subjunctive

This sort of happened in a Spanish example also. I translated a blog post and the tool correctly outputted an imperfect subjunctive. For a language teaching perspective this could be interesting because this tense is usually taught relatively late.

Multilingual Texts

If you really want to trip up the MT, try a blog about pronunciation like whether to pronounce buoy as “boo-y” (U.S.) or “boy” (U.K.). Technically, this was a monolingual article, but in Spanish it will actually become multilingual with some words needing to remain in English.

There were a lot of glitches, but a fun one was that the Spanish version claimed that boya “buoy” could rhyme with chico (cite) or niño” (boy). Not really.

It also kept translating the related word buoyancy (where the first syllable usually rhymes with “boy”) with flotabilidad. The translation is accurate, but not what was needed right them.

Final Words

Like calculators and other modern tools, I’m sure MT is here to stay, but I think it will be a while until it’s perfected. I could see professional translators who know Spanish using this and then editing results. But some translations are weirder than others.

I think language teachers should experiment with the tools to see what’s happening, and even point them out. Lots of students are finding them useful for learning vocabulary – but you need to beware of what could happen if you don’t review the output.

I will say my biggest concern is that the Internet will stop allowing me to live even my quasi multilingual life. I was wondering if the Spanish form un biólogo “biologist (male)” had a feminine form una bióloga “biologist (female).” However, even going to Google Spain, I kept getting English results or offers to translate the Spanish. ¡Basta!

Finally Buoyed with Joy! (A Roundtrip to a Correct Pronunciation)

A yellow buoy in the water.

This is a buoy. Image courtesy of NOAA.

I generally consider myself a native speaker of U.S. American Standard English, but I did acquire a few odd pronunciation and grammar quirks along the way. One was that for a long time, I really thought that buoy, the device that floats in different bodies of water, was pronounced as /bɔɪ/ (rhyming with “boy”) instead of the more acceptable /bu.wi/ “boo-ie.” I’ve been informed several times, including by my students, that buoy should have two syllables and NOT rhyme with “boy.”

OK I surrender, Americans do say /bu.wi/ (even when it’s a verb), but how did I “learn” my alternate version? Especially since I actually recognize “boo-ies” as the warning objects floating in the water. But it is possible I thought they were spelled as “bowies”, like the town Bowie, MD (/bu.wi/, not the expected /bo.wi/~/baʊ.wi/).

British English?

In fact, in British English, buoy does rhyme with “boy.” Was I watching too many Tudor era historical movies as a child? It’s possible, I doubt it. At least in elementary school, it’s a good idea to stick to local pronunciation whenever possible.

In fact the Speaking English Podcast argues that both pronunciations are correct (although he favors /bu.wi/ because you will “sound very smart” and less likely to confuse the water safety device with a young local lad. Whatever…

Or Just “Buoyancy”

Although I’m from Maryland, I actually grew up mostly in farm country and not right on the coast. I might have heard the word, but not really connected it with a written form. I believe I was more exposed to the more technical terms buoyant and buoyancy. In both cases, the initial syllable is /bɔɪ/ “boy” for most people, even in the U.S.

So I think that’s where my pronunciation came from. I suspect that British /bɔɪ/ is more archaic, but the U.S. one makes more sense in term of spelling. But the memo didn’t make it to all the related words (actually, I think buoyancy as /bu.wi.ɨn.si/ would be tricky to pronounce, at least for me.)

Oxford English Dictionary Etymologies of buoy and buoyant

buoy – 15th cent. boye corresponds to Old French boye (Diez), boyee (Palsgrave), modern French bouée , Norman boie (Littré), Spanish boya , Portuguese boia ‘buoy’; Dutch boei , Middle Dutch boeie ‘buoy’, and ‘fetter’; the same word as Old French boie , buie , boe , bue , beue , Provençal boia , Old Spanish boya fetter, chain < Latin boia halter, fetter (compare boy n.2); applied to a buoy because of its being fettered to a spot. It is not clear whether the English was originally from Old French, or Middle Dutch. The pronunciation /bwɔɪ/, indicated already in Hakluyt, is recognized by all orthoepists British and American; but /bɔɪ/ is universal among sailors, and now prevalent in England: Annandale's Imperial Dictionary, 1885, has /bɔɪ/ or /bwɔɪ/, Cassell's Encyclopædic Dict., 1879, says ‘u silent’. Some orthoepists give /buɪ/.

buoyant – perhaps < Spanish boyante in same sense, or Old French bouyant (apparently also synonymous, though explained differently in Godefroy); in English it is apparently older than buoy v.

Pronunciation of Bowie, MD

According to Reddit r/Maryland

  • SkunkMOnkey: The town is Boo-ee, the musical artist is Bow-ee.
  • Then_Campaign7264: Exactly, Natty-Boh [National Bohemian beer] lives in Baltimore and Boo-ee lives in PG county. And, fortunately we can enjoy both state wide if we go to a Bowie Baysox game!
  • PocoChanel: Lifelong Marylander/old person here. It’s Boo-ey. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Google Search: What are you trying to autocomplete?

Wired magazine had a good article on offensive Google autocomplete answers to questions like “Are Jews…” or “Blacks/Feminists are….”

There have been lots of good articles on built-in bias in different algorithms such as evaluations of credit worthiness which perpetuate unconscious bad assumptions already built in to traditional financial evaluations.

But…what is the question?

In this case though, I wonder if the customer isn’t partly to blame. To me the very question “Are XXX…” to me sounds like a non-XXX person trying to check on an aspect of XXX culture. A benign scenario could be to clarify a stereotype or just to learn more about the XXX culture. I can even see people in the community want to search answers about questions they may have.

But there are plenty of negative reasons people are looking up information about “those” XXX people out there. The fact that Google is prone to bring up offensive stereotypes in the answers suggest a lot of negative searching is happening under the umbrella “Are XXX …” Even today, I asked the question “Are XXX…” for various groups and got some odd answers like “Are Pennsylvanians rude?” (or they just weird?)

Google search for Are Pennsylvians with autocomplete answers rude/weird

Can you ask this instead?

I do use Google to look up cultural information about all sorts of XXX cultures, but I confess I haven’t run into this problem. For one thing, I rarely use words like “are/is” in my search terms. Instead I use nouns and adjectives which are what I’m really interested. It’s up to you if you want to enter in something neutral or more loaded.

In terms of searching I had thought of “to be” as a semantically empty (although grammatically important) verbs that wouldn’t affect my search results one way or another. Apparently that verb is more powerful than I thought.

The Tennis Ball Color is…5GY (Chartreuse)

Tennis ball in standard color
Tennis ball used in 2011 Japan Open. Photo by Christopher Johnson. Licensed by Creative Commons.

Today the most recent color debate is about those bright fluorescent tennis balls – the question being are they yellow or green? The answer probably is …both.

Focal Colors

This issue points to how cultures do divide color space and supports the Berlin and Kay theory of focal color. Although humans can see thousands, if not millions of colors, most languages assign primary names for only a small percentage of them. In English, two of these color words are “yellow” and “green” (along with red, blue, orange, purple, white, black, brown).

Of course these colors are umbrella terms for a range of colors. For instance, we may speak of pine green (dark and a little blue), sea green (pale green), olive green (like the green olive) and so forth. But when “green” stands alone, we may be thinking of the prototypical or focal color – a bright green associated with emeralds, leaves or “Kelly green”. This green is what is normally seen in national flags, corporate logos or many sports team logos.

Similarly, although yellow comes in different shades including mustard (slightly darker), lemon (slightly paler) and saffron (with a touch of orange), the word “yellow” refers to the shade of yellow used in many national flags and logos such as John Deere (tractors). The focal colors are also what is taught to children when they are exposed to color words as can be seen in the sample images below.

What About the Tennis Ball?

An answer that I think many people have guessed is that the color of the fuzzy round object is right on the mental border between a bright yellow and a yellowish pale spring green. If “yellow” or “green” are the only available options, it appears some think yellow and others green. To be clear, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) (and tennis player Roger Federer) calls this color “yellow”, but if you want an ITF approved model, it may be green.

Some other factors to consider is that lighting may make a tennis appear greener in some photos and yellower in others. Even in the Japan Open photo, the ball appears yellower in direct light and greener in the shadow.

For me, I couldn’t really classify this color as either yellow or green…just fluorescent and perhaps fluorescent chartreuse. Interestingly a lesson artists have to learn about color is that 1) there are a lot of them and 2) most professional color wheels have lots of color divisions on the edge, often including chartreuse (or 5GY in the Munsell system).

From a linguistic point of view, this does show what happens when the color of an object sits on a mental color border, and apparently it’s not pretty.

P.S. Japanese Blue Traffic Lights

Ever heard that Japanese label the Go traffic light as “blue” (ao) even when they’re the same color as U.S. traffic lights? There are differences between the English and Japanese color system, but if you look closely, you’ll see that traffic light “green” is actually pushed towards a bluer (cyan shade). In some photos, the correct color may be “cyan.”

Some Near Rhymes from Nashville

A near rhyme is refers to words paired in songs or verse which sound similar, but not quite enough to be called a “perfect rhyme”…at least not in Standard English. They can be interesting for revealing insights into spoken phonology, in this case the phonology of country songs.

Here are some interesting cases I found on a recent mix CD playing in my car.

Hell On Heels (Say What You Will)

In Hell On Heels (by the Pistol Annies featuring Miranda Lambert), there are lots near rhymes. Just for context, the song chronicles the past exploits of a classic “gold digger.”

Most near rhymes have the same vowel, but end with slightly different consonant, although usually with some phonological smilarities. For example

(1) This diamond ring on my hand
Is the only good thing that came from that man

(2) Poor ol’ Billy, bless his heart
I’m still using his credit card

Note: both /d/ and /t/ are coronal stops.

And even one actual rhyme that features two words with different spellings

(3) Then there’s Jim, I almost forgot
I ran him off, but I took the yacht

Both end with [at] in this dialect.

For me though the most interesting near rhyme is one which pairs deal /dil/ and heels /hilz/ with will /wɪl/. It would be interesting to see how the spectrograms compare here.

(4) I’m hell on heels
Say what you will
I’ve done made the devil a deal

In this case, the vowels are different even though the final consonant is the same. However, in terms of the English vowel space, they are very close – that is both /i/ and /ɪ/ are phonemically high front unrounded vowels. Interestingly, it seems like first hell on heels is pronounced closer to [ɪ] to emphasize the rhyme, but closer to [i] or even [iə] thereafter.

Note: Another interesting case of /i/ in a near rhyme is from the Addams Family theme song which pairs scream and see’um.

Psycho Girlfriend

Another song with an interesting set of rhymes is Psycho Girlfriend by Jessie James (Decker) about a woman who has “issues” talking to her boyfriend who can’t seem to quit her.

Again, we have a great near rhyme where the vowel is the same, but the final consonant is different.

(1) Did I forget to mention
I need all your attention
Or else I’ll throw a tantrum [for it?]

This pairs both /ʌn/ in -tion and /ʌm/ in -um.. Even better, all the words actually end with [ntʌN] where N stands for nasal stop (/m/ or /n/).

And here’s another with different underlying pronunciations, but actually more closely rhyming in the colloquial pronunciation

(2) I’ll call you when you’re workin’ /i.e. working/
Over n over again

Underlylingly, the first line ends with working /wərkɪŋ/ and the second with again /əgɛn/. But phonetically, both end with [ɨn] in the actual lyrics. The vowel change is part of a larger pattern where many unstressed vowels reduce to [ɨ] in American English, causing spelling nightmares for American school children everywhere.

The last case is interesting to me because I think it’s meant to be a rhyme, but doesn’t work for me in my idiolect.

(3) Insecure, in denial
Immature, like a child

The way Jessie James sings it, but both denial and child have two syllables [aj.ɨl] or [aj.l̩] (with vocalic /l/). In my grammar though, I feel like child has only one syllable, so the rhyme doesn’t quite work for me. Checking the Oxford English Dictionary pronunciations, they too transcribe child with one syllable and denial with two.

So this appears to be a dialectal difference interfering with the rhyme. On the other hand, I suspect that if I took a spectrogram of my own speech, I might find that child and denial were actually more similar than I think. The status of /ajl/ and /ajr/ syllables is interesting in general.

How to Pronounce “Gal Gadot”

With the Wonder Woman movie about to come out, it’s important to review this timely pronunciation article from Vox and Slate.com about how to pronounce the name of star Gal Gadot ( גל גדות‎‎). As they point out, Gadot is NOT the same as the French family name of the play Waiting for Gadot but rather an Israeli name.

So bring out that final /t/ and say something like “Gal Ga-duht” /gæl gadɔt/ (stress on the final syllable). The first of Gal is fairly close to English Short A, but the is between English “uh” and “oh”.

I Give Arrival an A-

A good friend of mine commented that he liked how linguistics was depicted in the recent sci-fi movie Arrival, so I did feel duty bound to view the movie. The good news is that yes, the mechanics of linguistics is portrayed fairly well. Still I was a tad disappointed that some clichés, particularly the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is still being depicted as the most important thing about linguistics. To have the author Ted Chiang and screenwriters focus on this to me means he has missed one of the most important lessons of theoretical linguistics.

Spoiler Alerts – I will minimize this, but if you want to be completely surprised, watch the movie first. The first spoiler is – Amy Adams plays a linguist Louise who is asked to decipher an alien language when some mysterious objects park themselves in different parts of the world, including of course rural Montana.

The Good

Before I point out the clichés, I will point out the positives. Namely

  1. Linguist Louise (Amy Adams) is hired based on her “translation” expertise including some recent Farsi speaking terrorists (Farsi is from Iran). BUT she points out that translating a language she already knows how to speak is different from translating a completely unknown language. Therefore she will more data than a 30-sec audio clip. Duh.
    Note: The fact that she has to explain shows how little common sense some people have about how language works.
  2. When the military wonders why Louise is starting with basic vocabulary, she does a good job explaining how she needs to know basic grammar to to frame the question “What is your purpose?” To ask this question, we will need to understand how to build a sentence, make sure we pronouns correctly and more importantly, understand what they have to tell us.
    Note: This part show how linguists focus on “grammatical crap” that make other people’s eyes glaze over. But that’s because you can’t become fluent until this knowledge is automated. However you have to learn about how a grammar works to communicate effectively in a new language. Fortunately, most linguists begin life as grammar geeks, so we actually find this very interesting.
  3. Louise’s fieldwork followed by intense scrutiny of the language samples is pretty realistic. If you know nothing about the target language, it will take much time to decipher everything, even if the other party is fairly cooperative.
  4. The investigation team includes a physicist who comments “You approach this very mathematically.” Yes…linguistics is actually a science. We just use different math notation than calculus.

Clichés and Questions

It wouldn’t be Hollywood without a few of these.

  1. As usual the movie assumes a linguist can speak any weird combination of languages – in this case Farsi, Sanskrit (these two can go together) and Chinese. That’s sort of like assuming a random linguist can speak Polish and Swahili. It can happen, but since those two languages are fairly distant geographically, culturally and linguistically…it would be fairly unusual.
    Note: In addition to general geographic literacy, some linguistic/cultural literacy would be a good idea.
  2. In the beginning of the movie, Louise is prepared to lecture about the history of Portuguese to a large lecture hall. But which class is this? I would only expect this in the history of Romance languages…and that class rarely fills a lecture hall.
    Note: But bonus points for connecting the origins of Portuguese to the kingdom of Galicia.
  3. Louise also comments that the proto-Portuguese speakers valued their poetry and literary culture…But EVERY culture I have encountered has valued the poetry of their language. Even when a language isn’t written or isn’t used for education, native speakers understand their language’s unique charm – just ask any hip-hop or country song artist.
    Note: There is a paradox that many linguistics consider all languages “equal” but also each language “special”. Still it never hurts to play a little indigenous music lyrics in class.

Major Spoiler Alerts Here

And then…Sapir-Whorf Hits Us

I was disappointed that a key plot point revolved the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which maintains that language strongly influences thought. Specifically when Louise learns the alien language at a “deep level”, their different tense system causes Louise to gain the ability to see into the future. Um no.

For the record, I don’t dispute that the aliens can perceive time differently than humans. After all, they are aliens. But I don’t think learning a new language has ever affected a human that deeply. Being exposed to a new culture can be definitely life changing, and the CONCEPTS behind a foreign language’s words can be different. But grammar doesn’t have the impact people think it has.

Consider the example from my experience – I have been exposed to Spanish, a language that classifies nouns and verbs as “masculine” or “feminine”. I understand how the system works and can properly implement it (mostly), but I have never transferred the concept to English. For instance, I can’t necessarily tell you if a fan is masculine or feminine. I’m not sure a Spanish speaker could either except by knowing what the final vowel of the word is.

And in fact the original story’s author Ted Chiang uses English tenses creatively to distinguish when Louise is having a memory from the future. In other words, if people could see into the future, the language’s tense system could make the adjustment. FWIW – Since Louise was exposed to the alien’s foggy atmosphere at one point, I will assume that’s how she got her new time sense.

Color

There are some subtle influences of language – such as an enhanced ability to distinguish red from orange if your language has those two color terms. On the other hand, other forms of training can override this default. A trained artist can distinguish lots of colors, including ones that may not have common words in a language.

Major Major Linguistic Spoiler

“Phonology” Questions

By focusing on Sapir-Whorf, the movie misses an interesting question about the alien language. Initially the scientists focus on the sounds the aliens make, but Louise wonders if we could communicate better by writing. It turns out that the aliens, which are vaguely squid like, can generate black ink circular signs from their tentacles. These signs float in their native white fog until they are dissolved.

For humans, language is normally spoken with writing learned later. Language can be combined with different gestural motions, which enhance the communication, but aren’t always consistent.

For the aliens, I think it’s the reverse. The signs are the primary linguistic form with audio cues enhancing communication, but not necessarily consistently. Unlike humans, the aliens don’t necessarily need tools to “write” just as humans normally don’t need tools to speak in person. With a foggy atmosphere, I could see that hovering black circles could be more a robust signal than audio alone, so that could be the main language signal.

Eventually, the scientists create an app to replicate the circles (yeah), but I would be curious to see if the circles contain words, phrases or sentences. And you don’t need time travel to understand the shape of the circle – it could definitely be a byproduct of how each tentacle ends with multiple mini tentacles in a circular formation. Circles would definitely be easier to make than a line with that anatomy. The aliens can also create sequences of circles which shows that there is in fact a linearity in their longer utterances.

This is where the good stuff lies….

Teaching Standard English…Jeopardy Style!

Some urban (and rural) schools districts have quietly introduced a curriculum that teaches children who don’t natively speak Standard English to “translate” or “code switch” between their native dialect and standard English. One teacher has turned the grammar class into a Jeopardy style review. You can see that the kids are having fun figuring out arcane grammar rules. Generally speaking it’s a lot more motivating and effective to encouraging literacy than constantly correcting a child’s grammar.

P.S. As one educator Noma LeMoine explains, this effort has never been about “teaching” Ebonics to students, because “We don’t need to teach African American Vernacular English…They already know it.”

Linguistics for Young Readers?

I was watching the one of the Turnitin Writing X Tech 2016 Webinars on Teaching the Writing Brain and I was shocked to see that the presentation included the words morphonemic as well as morphology and phonology. You mean linguistics might be useful for understanding how children need to learn to decode the written word? Shocking!

Spelling and Linguistics

FYI – The word morphonemic was related to the issue of teaching spelling. The presenter Virginia Berninger emphasized that children do need to understand that not only do prefixes and suffixes affect the meaning of a word, but can also affect pronunciation (as in the first vowel of nation vs. nation+al. She also mentions another controversial word, phonics, to illustrate that English spelling (“orthography”) is supposed to be phonetically based and that she recommend that children learn the phonological structure of English spelling alongside all of our native spelling system quirks (that is, orthographic awareness).

And (OMG!) you might want to consider word origin (etymology) when teaching spelling. That’s because English borrows a foreign language’s spelling rules when it borrows the words. Linguists definitely know this, but you don’t see this mentioned as a strategy except in spelling bee competitions.

Building a Communication Bridge

For me as a linguist, the idea of teaching children phonics, word structure and matching spelling quirks to pronunciation seems fairly obvious as is the idea that writing teachers should have some linguistic training. Unfortunately linguists and more traditional “English” teachers have often seen each other as the enemy, and I will admit to mocking bad prescriptive grammatical rules. As a result, I often see many language teachers (even foreign language teachers) discuss teaching “culture” or “ideas” instead of “grammar” (As if we can’t we teach both!)

While I sympathize with frustrated linguists, I have to admit we have done a terrible job of explaining how linguistics applies to real world teaching and writing situations until fairly recently. That’s why I’m so happy that a seminar for writing instructors included neurological research supporting basic linguistic analysis. Linguistics could be starting to enter the world of general academic knowledge. Even Grammar Girl sometimes even mentions linguistics in a positive light (you go girl).

For linguistics, I do think we need to work better to appreciate the role of traditional prescriptive rules. While it is important to understand the structure of non-Standard English dialects (e.g. AAVE (African American English), Southern dialects, etc), we have to acknowledge that linguists always write standard academic English in their journal articles. As with other educated speakers, linguistics have learned to write and spell in a particular fashion that is at least a little bit different from their spoken forms (unless they are speaking like Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory.)

Some traditional grammar instruction is needed, but we also need to help teachers understand the role of linguistics in teaching those who don’t speak Standard English at home or those who have a learning disability related to reading and writing. I hope research like this can help build that bridge.

BBC: Evolution of the “Queen’s English”

Fresh off the BBC – an interesting article on how the pronunciation of the Queen (Elizabeth II) and RP Standard British English has shifted over time.

You can definitely hear a difference in the Queen’s Christmas speeches over the decades. In the 1957 Christmas speech video, the accent sounds a little archaic, but by 2015 the Queen has the same charming accent as Helen Mirren. It’s still RP, but a more modern form of it.

I should add that the context of the Christmas speeches has changed. The 1957 speech is set up very formally with the Queen in full formal regalia. By 1968, she was dressed in a day dress and by 1986, she was broadcasting from the stables and her accent has shifted as well.

The article also points out that the Windsor social circles have become less isolated than in decades past. Thanks to the late Princess of Wales, her children and grandchildren have much more contact outside royal residences than previous royal generations did.

Even so, it is difficult for the public to truly ascertain how the Queen speaks “colloquially”. By design, she has created a very formal persona and does not normally allow the public to see her speak except in formal speeches. Even when she is interviewed, her speech remains very formal, although this 2013 clip does show her relaxing just a bit. However, she still uses the impersonal one very frequently to describe her own daily duties.

Speeches Over the Decades