Pronunciation ChallengeHow Footpaths Help Shape Our Technology - Cheddar Explains

Intro:
Hi, VoiceTubers! This is Jeff Chiao. While walking in a park or any path on grass turf, have you ever noticed that towards the end, there seems to always be a shortcut like a sub-path that was formed by people trampling over it? This scene may either make you scratch your head and think: "Why people couldn’t just follow the route and don’t be that hasty?" or, "If there is apparently a more efficient way for people to get from this end to the other, why is it not designed like that in the first place?"

Such a path is called the desire path and is actually one of the core design philosophies that form our technology today, especially in multiple applications and websites you might be browsing right now on your devices. To find out more about this interesting idea, go watch the video we featured today! But before that, let’s first get our hands on the sentence of the day.

Featured Sentence:
“It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organized by topic.”

Okay, let me repeat it one more time, just a little bit slower.

“It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organized by topic.”

With that out of the way, let’s head to the pronunciation tips.

Pronunciation tips:
As always, our first tip is about the connection of two successive words. The first example in the sentence is “wanted a”. We could combine the /d/ sound in “wanted” with “a”, and pronounce them as “wanted-a”. Wanted-a.
The other example is “specific conversations”. As “specific” ends with /k/ and “conversations” also starts with a /k/ sound, we could connect them end to end, and pronounce them as “specifi-conversations.” Specifi-conversations.

There are also two words worth paying extra attention to. The first is “specific”, in which, the “e” is a shorter, weaker /ə/ sound, the two “i”s should be pronounced as a shorter /ɪ/ sound, and the stress should be put on the “ci” /sɪ/ sound. Specific. Specific.
The other word is “organize”. The “or” should be a long, tongue-twisting /ɔr/ sound, the “a” should be a short /ə/ sound, and the "i" should be a long /aɪ/ sound. With the stress put on the first /ɔr/, the world should be pronounced as: organize. Organize.

All right, with the tips sorted, let’s get to the vocabulary.

Vocabulary:

specific (adj.) KK [spɪˋsɪfɪk] IPA /spəˈsɪf.ɪk/
relating to one thing and not others; particular

In order to find the specific make-up products his girlfriend asked him to bring back, Jack spent hours in several duty-free shops and nearly missed his flight.

organize (v.) KK [ˋɔrgə͵naɪz] IPA /ˈɔːr.ɡən.aɪz/
to do or arrange something according to a particular system

All the novels are organized by genre in the bookstore so customers can find the books they like easier.

topic (n.) KK [ˋtɑpɪk] IPA /ˈtɑː.pɪk/
a subject that is discussed, written about, or studied

The revision of traffic regulations has been a popular topic since the tragic death of the famous actor committed by a drunk driving recidivist.

Outro:

So that wraps up today’s episode!

Aside from the classic trampled path example I mentioned earlier, I think it’s quite fair to say that most other examples of desire path philosophy we could see nowadays are from the digital world. From @ names feature to # hashtags, these features that we may take for granted, are all the results of how we interact with the technologies around us. Especially with smartphones: you unconsciously reach for top or bottom right corners for an app’s options, scroll from top to bottom when you expect to see more content, and use your index and middle fingers to zoom in or out while viewing a picture.

It’s difficult to tell whether it’s our intuition that inspired the app designers, who then put these features into every app they made, or maybe it is another way around that we are so used to these mechanisms, and we are then actually conditioned by these technologies. I would say it’s like a “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” question. What do you think? Have you seen any interesting examples that you think might be the result of desire path? Again, if you want to know more about this intriguing topic, be sure to check out the video. But for now, that’s all for today’s episode! This is Jeff Chiao from VoiceTube. Hope y’all have a good one! Until next time, goodbye.

It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organized by topic.

It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organized by topic.

It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organized by topic.

It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organised by topic.

It was clear that people wanted a way to join specific conversations organized by topic.