Yanny or Laurel?

“Yanny or Laurel” is an auditory illusion that became popular in May 2018. In the brief audio recording, 53% of over 500,000 people answered on a Twitter poll that they hear a man saying the word “Laurel,” while 47% reported hearing a voice saying the name “Yanny.”

The audio clip originated from a recording of Jay Aubrey Jones, an opera singer speaking the word “Laurel” as one of the 200,000 reference pronunciations produced and published in by vocabulary.com in 2007. The clip was made at Jones’ home using a laptop and microphone. Vocabulary.com needed someone who could read words written in the International Phonetic Alphabet “IPA,” with a strong pronunciation. Opera singers were chosen because they know how to read “IPA” since they have to sing in languages they do not speak.

The discovery of the phenomenon was made by Katie Hetzel, a 15-year-old freshman at Flowery Branch High School, near Atlanta, Georgia who posted a description publicly on her Instagram story on May 11th. The illusion reached further popularity when the student’s friends posted it on Reddit the following day. It was also picked up by YouTuber Cloe Feldman on her Twitter account.

Other celebrities responded to the clip including Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen King, and Chrissy Teigen. In a video released by the White House, various members of the Trump Administration reacted to the meme, and President Trump says “I hear covfefe” a reference to his “covfefe” tweet in the past. According to The Guardian, the clip was the most divisive subject on the internet since the Gold & White or Blue & Black dress controversy in 2015. Several days after the clip became viral, the team at Vocabulary.com added another definition to the word “Yanny,” which contained the same audio clip to “Laurel.” Its definition is about the Internet trend.

The debate has been settled for all, “It was Laurel,” says Jay Aubrey Jones to CNN News.

Click here to hear the recording, do you hear Yanny or Laurel?

For more information go to The Vox, Inside Edition, and LATimes.