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Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

I am glad to see I'm not the only one who has done this!

Ever since my first Garmin GPS, I have always switched to the Australian accented English because it 'felt the most accurate'. But thinking about it now, it's clear the reason was that US and British English is so common to my ears that I noticed every flaw. Australian was just unfamiliar enough to have me focusing on decoding the street names rather than noticing the unnatural gap between two phenomes.

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Affirmative. I'm an Australian living in the US and the Australian accent on the iPhone is horrible. I prefer the US accent, which is much more soothing on my ears.

I switched my Garmin to Australian as well. Now it calls onramps 'sliproads'. Does know what the abbreviation HWY means. A few others as well. Not sure why that's encoded in the accent and not the location.

I am an Australian. Seems they got it wrong. I am familiar with onramps, but haven't heard of sliproads until now. We use the Hwy abbreviation in Australia, too.

As per the parent, we refer to them as onramps in Australia, though that may be an Americanisation of our language with exposure to US-centric TV. I am also familiar with the term 'sliproads' and although I don't use it naturally, something in the back of my mind says it is in fact the 'traditional' name for them. it might in fact be the British version.

> it might in fact be the British version.

Correct, we call them sliproads in Britain, and I believe in Ireland too.

Except that a sliproad can be either an on-ramp or an off-ramp.

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