From Stephen Tomkins
You report on a facial-recognition system that can identify from mouth movements alone the distinctive patterns characteristic of particular languages (25 April, p 17). Skilled English lip-readers are aware of such differences even within the one language we share.
I had a deaf English student who attended various lectures at college, including classes delivered by a chemistry lecturer from Belfast in Northern Ireland. When I asked whether she was reading her lecturers’ lips satisfactorily she replied that all were fine, but asked of her chemistry teacher: “Does she have some kind of accent?”
Cambridge, UK
