Young woman can say any word backwards, instantly (video)

"Alyssa Talking Backwards." (thanks, Joe Sabia!)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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geech

aohw, looc!!!
http://profiles.google.com/jdh0128 Jeff Hotchkiss

I had a college class with a girl that could do the same thing.
- xzzy
  
  I knew a guy in high school who could do it too.
  
  So I suppose the question to ask is how common is it, and is genetic or learned?
- nejstastnejsistene
  
  My girlfriend can speak like this fluently in both Czech (her native language) and English. She says she does it phonetically, which blows my mind just thinking of it.
Mujokan

Probably synaesthesia, I’d love to hear an interview with her on the details of how she visualizes it.
- irksome
  
  If it’s synaesthesia, wouldn’t she taste each word, or associate a color?
  - IamInnocent
    
    I don’t know if I’d like to taste ‘pot roast’ backward…
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

I can’t quite tell if she’s reversing the words literally and saying the reversed word (“Shire” becomes “Erihs”) or actually reversing them phonetically (“Shire” becomes “aiarsh”)

Each seems a different kind of genius, if you see what I mean.
- mongo
  
  She’s reversing the letter sequence of the word and pronouncing that. She does “live” –>”evil”
  
  Imagine. She has to see how the words are spelled first, and then flip it in her head.
  
  I have a hard enough time spelling the words FORWARDS.
- endymion
  
  As mongo says, she’s reversing the words letter by letter. Another example: her reversal of “bridge” was pronounced “eg-dirb”.
  
  Reversing the way she does seems *much* harder to me than doing it phonetically. Though that could just be me.
  - corydodt
    
    It’s hard, but I don’t think it’s *harder*. Actually reversing the waveform would, in some cases, require forms that a human mouth can’t actually pronounce. I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed she’s pronouncing the spelling in reverse, though.
    - Dr_Wadd
      
      Whether it is possible with every word I can’t say, but it is possible to learn to say short phrases with the waveform reversed, I taught myself a few words when playing around with an Amiga and a sampler back in the day. I’m not suggesting that it was perfectly clear speech when played backwards, but you did get recognisable words.
    - http://twitter.com/Iananan Iananan
      
      In terms of reversing the waveform, beardyman definitely seems capable of that. there used to be (about 5 years ago) an audio clip on his website of him doing that exact thing, the radio host would say a word, and beardy would say it forwards, backwards, and start scratching with it. it was incredible, but an entirely different skill to this one.
      
      he does it a bit at the start of this thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZjYUFTRn5U
- SamSam
  
  It’s not all letter-by-letter, some of it is just reversed phonetically.
  
  “Dolphins” becomes “sniflod” at about 2:25.
  - penguinchris
    
    Er… you’re suggesting that “dolphins” reversed is not “sniphlod”, which would be pronounced “sniflod” as “ph” forms an “f” sound.
    - http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
      
      When I reverse words in my head I always read it out as if it were a word, in this case I would say snihplod with the p being a “hard” p as the h is no longer placed after it to give it the “soft” sound.
    - http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
      
      When I reverse words in my head I always read it out as if it were a word, in this case I would say snihplod with the p being a “hard” p as the h is no longer placed after it to give it the “soft” sound.
    - SamSam
      
      Er… you’re suggesting that “dolphins” reversed is not ”sniphlod”
      
      Yes… that’s exactly what I’m suggesting, since “dolphins” reversed is “snihplod”….
      
      There’s an important difference.
      - penguinchris
        
        Yep, I’m in idiot, sorry :) My comment haunted me, lingering in the back of my mind for a couple hours before I realized, too late to ninja-edit.
Joel Phillips

Seems like she’s reversing the letters. But she gets a couple wrong, e.g. bugles becomes slegub.
- davidasposted
  
  Maybe she is a bad speller. ;)
aHarshDM

I also live in Poteau, yet I do not possess this power. I may be interviewing her today for the local paper.
- Mujokan
  
  Go for it, this video is pretty viral so an interview would be worth some hits.
- RedShirt77
  
  Record the interview, I bet BBG would post. it.
mongo

Talk Backwards by Steve Goodman 1982

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMSMAjg2zCU
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BOOM27DBLMZQIJVK4BQLE7K5YA Nagurski
  
  Hey, thanks. Steve is one of my all time favorites. Cat died wayyy too young. Funny, funny talented man.
PaulDavisTheFirst

remember to listen to beardyman doing this … totallyawesome.
Sagodjur

I had a friend in high school who could do this.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

I have had this ability since I can remember. People always seem amazed. I trace it to my learning to read at an early age and getting bored with the story in one direction, decided to see what it was like in reverse.
EggyToast

I can do this, albeit not as well, and it’s a fun cocktail party trick. She’ll likely find that she’s good at hearing accents, speaking other languages more naturally, and can do some fun imitations/impersonations, as well. I think for her, and people like her, is that they have an ear for hearing phonetics and how they’re strung together, which makes it easy to also string them together in different ways.

If she’s anything like me, she’ll find French to be fun to speak but terrible to actually understand in writing.
Mike Norman

Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Supercalifragilisticexpialodocious.
Xander R

It would be more impressive if she could actually say the words backwards, not simply the backwards-spelled form of the word. Then you could take the recordings and play them backwards, and they would sound remotely like the actual word. I can usually do this, but it takes at least a good ten seconds of thinking for most words. It helps if you know IPA well.
- Aaron Oman
  
  India Pale Ale?
  - DMStone
    
    International Phonetic Alphabet
    - dculberson
      
      That doesn’t taste anywhere near as good.
      - http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai
        
        I dunno, linguistics geeks get pleasure in weird ways (more power to ‘em).
waltbosz

My mom is able to do this. She taught herself when she was a kid stuck at home with chicken-pox or measles. I think her method is to take a word, reverse the letters, and then pronounce it phonetically with the new spelling.
PlutoniumX

Not one Zatanna comment. For shame!
iamlegion

But how does she look in fishnet stockings and a half-tux?
- baronkarza
  
  ytterp doog, d’I yas!
Mujokan

For those wot can do it, my question is whether you visualize anything during the process, or whether the answer just pops into your mind directly.
- http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
  
  I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, so I don’t visualize anything more than when I am speaking forwards. It helps if your a good speller. Had I known this was YouTube worthy I would have made a video myself.
  - Mujokan
    
    Thanks.
  - C.J. Hayes
    
    Pretty much everything is Youtube worthy. It’s harder to lower the bar on Youtube than it is to raise it. But thank you for considering.
  - penguinchris
    
    Muphry’s law strikes again (I say as I have to edit my spelling of “muphry” three times…)
xian

As I pee, sir, I see Pisa.
Also, race car.
lost feliz

There’s a great Bob Newhart Show episode where his wife joins Mensa and some dude at the meeting speaks backwards.
cbt22

I do this too, though I can’t tell you if it was genetic or learned. I never made a specific effort to do it. I’ve just done it as long as I’ve been able to read. I did pick up reading very easily and was a good speller from an early age–maybe it was a reaction to boredom in the classroom.
- http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
  
  I think mine was the exact same thing.
http://chicagoscooterclub.com Chicago_SC

can someone who has the time, and the tools pull this video edit and repost it backwards
peregrinus

I love the way she focuses when she’s processing!
SBW

And there are people like Scot Fagerland, who can alphabetize the letters in each word and then pronounce or recite the results. LA Times link
John McCarthy

I suspect it is Harry Caray reincarnated. He died in 1998 just about when this girl was born.
http://profiles.google.com/wordtrey Trey Muhlhauser

If you do this, and you picked up reading early, or pick up other languages quickly (or some combination of similar abilities), you are surely dealing with an ability that is more than learned. Likely there is some unusual efficiency between your hearing and speech processes, no?
- http://profiles.google.com/wordtrey Trey Muhlhauser
  
  Well, the reading would fall out of the hearing>speech loop obviously…need caffeine.
upload941

Here is a version of the video with her words reversed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXdDFrZDmco
- KBert
  
  Phonetic!
miasm

came for the soo-o-ickodeel-ayepzeck-itsilly-garf-illakripus, left with a smile and some misani-ratnem-hisilba-tzesid-aye-t-knee.
:3
baronkarza

John Cleese can do this too, among his other peculiar talents. I heard him do it once in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, back in the 90s. He’s always been able to do it. Kinda like silly walks.
Maddy

I was so waiting for someone to give her :
Red Rum
garyg2

And we still don’t know who really killed Laura Palmer…
caipirina

I read in one of the many many baby books years ago, that kids initially do not differentiate between forward / backward / up and down. I have a photo of my kid when he was 4 in which he copied a Miro from his T-shirt, in complete reverse http://nacken.com/img7/julmiro.jpg
From what I understand this omnidirectional thinking is than taken away from us by school / society over time.
polyglot

.ti gnikaeps naht redrah saw siht gnitirw tub (ereh nettirw sa) yllacitonehp naht rehtar yllacixel ti od I. daeh ruoy ni esrever ot redrah era secnetnes elohw uoy llet em tel dna siht od I.

In my case, it was learned when I was about 9 due to a board game called Backwords, which I was grumpy about losing all the time. And IMHO though I’m apparently good with languages, it doesn’t require any particular gifted-ness since after a year or two, I’d managed to squeeze a whole bunch of backwards words into my family’s lexicon and they were getting pretty good at catching my errors.

Compound syllables can be problematic though – how do you agree to pronounce “uoy” ? There are a few things that become ambiguous too.
JhmL

She belongs into an Evil Dead remake.
drabkikker

She must be a Muslim, cuz they speak from right to left, innit?
http://profile.yahoo.com/FKMXA3RUHEDMI6VSDAN4JGIXI4 TO

This really does not seem all that remarkable. Most anyone with decent spelling chops can do the same, just maybe a couple of seconds slower. The impressive feat would be to accurately pronounce the words backwards.
http://profile.yahoo.com/VZCOKLOPBGFABV2UFFUKCGLIOI Tabi

I know this girl personally, she has to know how the word is spelled before she can say it backwards
http://profiles.google.com/andrew.l.wood Andrew Wood

Funny that they can’t pronounce ‘omniscience’ corretly the RIGHT way round.

P. Dant.