Yanny or Laurel? That question has been dividing the nation thanks to a video that surfaced on social media this week. A simple recording looped the word in question and everyone was split as to whether “yanny” or “laurel” was the phrase being uttered. Well, now science is stepping in to settle the debate.
But first, here is the audio.
Do you guys hear Yanny or Laurel?
IF YOU HEAR LAUREL YOU MIGHT BE CRAZY BECAUSE I 100% HEAR YANNY WTF. pic.twitter.com/4hAyksjjSn
— NoahJ456 (@NoahJ456) May 15, 2018
No one seems to know what the answer is, but Brad Story, Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing at The University of Arizona decided to weigh in on the matter to give a firm answer.
“When I analyzed the recording of Laurel, that third resonance is very high for the L. It drops for the R and then it rises again for the L,” he said, via CNN. “The interesting thing about the word Yanny is that the second frequency that our vocal track produces follows almost the same path, in terms of what it looks like spectrographically, as Laurel. If you have a low quality of recording, it’s not surprising some people would confuse the second and third resonances flipped around, and hear Yanny instead of Laurel.
“Most likely the original recording was ‘Laurel.'”
So if you heard “Laurel,” congratulation. Science says you are the winner of this debate.
But regardless of what science says, let us know what you heard by voting in the poll below.
[polldaddy poll=10006054]
