Reading through the previous blogs about taking the profiling quiz, what struck me most was how various everyone's levels of success were. People's scores ranged from 100% correct to nothing better than random chance. That seems to imply that one's score is heavily dependent on their background and personal exposure to these accents. I grew up in a very white suburb, but I went to a school that was relatively racially diverse and my town was right next to a low-income, Hispanic neighborhood. I don't think I was ever especially exposed to accents much different from my own.
That said, I got 5-6 correct on my first try. (I didn't keep count, which was stupid in retrospect, but the number was definitely around there.) The ones I remember I got right immediately were the white speakers, the Indian speaker, and the Middle Eastern speaker. I had trouble with the black and Hispanic speakers, although by the end I was able to pick up some differences, such as an overall softer vowel and consonant quality, especially at the start of words, in the Hispanic speakers. With some speakers I was completely off-base, cycling through literally all other options before typing in the correct one.
Ultimately, I think linguistic profiling is legitimate (not in a moral sense but in that people are able to correctly profile people through their voices), but it depends to a large degree on the background of the person doing the profiling. Since I had a relatively homogenous childhood, I didn't do very well, but others should and did have more success.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Imitating Prince Charles
I, too, chose for my accent the most ridiculous British Crown Royal caricature I could muster. I always talk like this anyway when I feel like being socially awkward, so it was fun to actually do this for a class.
Here are my normal dulcet (?) New England tones:
And here's my Prince Charles:
The most obvious difference between the two is the length. The American sample is 1.64 seconds long and the British one 2.99 seconds - almost twice as long. About everything was elongated - vowel duration and consonant duration. In the British sample my consonants are exagguratedly crisp. For example, at the end of the phrase there's a block of sound which doesn't have a partner in the American sample: that's the /t/, but in my British accent the pause between them at one point is completely empty, while in the American accent there's always some sound. at the end of [khɔt]. In my regular voice it sounds more like [khɑʔ], which is a big difference. I also do the alveolar tap in the word butter in my own voice, whereas in British English I enunciate the /t/.
In a British accent my vowels are more rounded as well - the first vowel sound in butter is more of a /ɔ/ than a /ʌ/. My pitch is also a lot more varied and sing-songy. And in both I say "butters pilled" instead of "butter spilled", with a definite pause between the /s/ and the /p/. However, in my British voice, there is a moment of complete silence between the /s/ and /p/, whereas in my normal voice I'm always making some audible sound.
Gosh, Praat's fun!
Here are my normal dulcet (?) New England tones:
And here's my Prince Charles:
The most obvious difference between the two is the length. The American sample is 1.64 seconds long and the British one 2.99 seconds - almost twice as long. About everything was elongated - vowel duration and consonant duration. In the British sample my consonants are exagguratedly crisp. For example, at the end of the phrase there's a block of sound which doesn't have a partner in the American sample: that's the /t/, but in my British accent the pause between them at one point is completely empty, while in the American accent there's always some sound. at the end of [khɔt]. In my regular voice it sounds more like [khɑʔ], which is a big difference. I also do the alveolar tap in the word butter in my own voice, whereas in British English I enunciate the /t/.
In a British accent my vowels are more rounded as well - the first vowel sound in butter is more of a /ɔ/ than a /ʌ/. My pitch is also a lot more varied and sing-songy. And in both I say "butters pilled" instead of "butter spilled", with a definite pause between the /s/ and the /p/. However, in my British voice, there is a moment of complete silence between the /s/ and /p/, whereas in my normal voice I'm always making some audible sound.
Gosh, Praat's fun!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Regional American Accents
There was one website on the list that made me ridiculously happy. It was a glossary of all the Massachusetts towns, their out-of-state pronunciations and their real pronunciations. Here's the link: http://www.worcestermass.com/pronounce/index.shtml. The feeling I got while reading it was one of intense, almost delirious regional pride. I wanted to turn to someone and high-five them shouting: "BAHSTIN IS WICKED PISSAH!" Here's an example of how discrepant the real pronunciation and the perceived one can be:
"Worcester is a town in central Massachusetts."
Say that out loud. How did you pronounce the first word?
Wor-sess-ter? Hah.
War-chest-tah? To be fair, at least you're trying to sound like a Massachusetts native. Partial credit.
Wis-tah. Bingo. I would have also accepted Woo-stah.
Other good examples are Gloss-tah (aka Gloucester) and Hayv-ril (aka Haverhill). We're pretty much second to London in how terribly we butcher our town names. (But as the website says, "We're from Massachusetts, so I know we're right!")
But this really isn't a good example of regional accents. I think that place names and their pronunciations are separate from the accents of their people. For example, I say Wis-tah but I never drop my r's in regular speech if I can help it. I don't think it's coincidence (or the result of a faulty quiz) that almost all of our class, even though we're from all corners of the US, placed into the Midland accent. I think that, generation by generation, regional accents are starting to blend together and become less distinct. I don't really hear much of a difference between the accents of my American (and to a certain extent, Canadian) friends here, whereas my international friends usually have distinct accents. I don't know why - maybe it's because we're exposed to more (and more various) media, maybe it's a product of general globalization, whatever. But I definitely think that while we keep our wacky regional vocabularies and specific wacky regional pronunciations, our general accents are not as noticable as they would have been in say, our grandparent's time.
"Worcester is a town in central Massachusetts."
Say that out loud. How did you pronounce the first word?
Wor-sess-ter? Hah.
War-chest-tah? To be fair, at least you're trying to sound like a Massachusetts native. Partial credit.
Wis-tah. Bingo. I would have also accepted Woo-stah.
Other good examples are Gloss-tah (aka Gloucester) and Hayv-ril (aka Haverhill). We're pretty much second to London in how terribly we butcher our town names. (But as the website says, "We're from Massachusetts, so I know we're right!")
But this really isn't a good example of regional accents. I think that place names and their pronunciations are separate from the accents of their people. For example, I say Wis-tah but I never drop my r's in regular speech if I can help it. I don't think it's coincidence (or the result of a faulty quiz) that almost all of our class, even though we're from all corners of the US, placed into the Midland accent. I think that, generation by generation, regional accents are starting to blend together and become less distinct. I don't really hear much of a difference between the accents of my American (and to a certain extent, Canadian) friends here, whereas my international friends usually have distinct accents. I don't know why - maybe it's because we're exposed to more (and more various) media, maybe it's a product of general globalization, whatever. But I definitely think that while we keep our wacky regional vocabularies and specific wacky regional pronunciations, our general accents are not as noticable as they would have been in say, our grandparent's time.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Question of Smack 'Em Yak 'Em
Airplane: one of the best movies of all time. I challenge you to watch it and not instantly fall in love with it, then spend the next week quoting every single line you can remember to every single person you can find, gradually losing friends and acquaintances because every time they start a word with an s-sound you yell "DON'T CALL ME SHIRLEY" which makes discourse very difficult, and finally finding yourself alone in a corner mumbling, "Good luck. We're all counting on you," to the wall while the world passes serenely by, which is fine, because Airplane is one of the best movies of all time.
Cyclical crazy rant aside (one more: never watch Airplane with your grandmother), the movie is in fact relevant to the question of language comprehension. One scene in particular illustrates this. The movie was released in 1981, when what is now African American Vernacular English was called jive and was, apparently, the hippest slang on the block. Airplane parodied jive in this scene:
First Jive Dude: Shiiiiit, maaaaan. That honky muf' be messin' mah old lady... got to be runnin' cold upside down his head, you know?
Second Jive Dude: Hey home', I can dig it. Know ain't gonna lay no mo' big rap up on you, man!
First Jive Dude: I say hey, sky... subba say I wan' see...
Second Jive Dude: Uh-huh.
First Jive Dude: ...pray to J I did the same ol' same ol'!
Second Jive Dude: Hey... knock a self a pro, Slick! That gray matter backlot perform us DOWN, I take TCB-in', man!
First Jive Dude: Hey, you know what they say: see a broad to get dat booty yak 'em...
First Jive Dude, Second Jive Dude: ...leg 'er down a smack 'em yak 'em!
First Jive Dude: COL' got to be! Y'know? Shiiiiit.
This was obviously an exaggeration of the dialect, but the point is clear: it's incomprehensible. The movie even puts in subtitles a standard English translation. I'll let Youtube fill in the details:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRDOp6zypbM
The point the movie is trying to make is that some vernacular English dialects are so far removed from standard English that trying to understand them in the context of standard English is absurd. The question is: which of these differences from standard English exactly makes it so hard to understand? The sounds are obviously different, and the syntax is very liberal too. But even reading through the dialogue, and listening to the audio repeatedly, the meaning might still be lost on us, even when each word individually and in the context of a sentence is understood perfectly. (By context of the sentence, I mean the role the word plays in the sentence; if I say "That yaxoodle totally shumptified my bizzlack!" you understand that yaxoodle is the noun shumptify is the verb, and bizzlack is the direct object, but that serves nothing towards helping your understanding of its meaning.)
We have no reference point from which we can draw meaning from the vocabulary, and so the meaning remains hopelessly incomprehensible. This leads to my general point: if when talking to someone who speaks your language, sounds and syntax differ from what you're used to, comprehension may at first be difficult but it rapidly becomes obvious what they mean. I think that this is because, based on the wealth of your experiences, you are aware of what the words your companion is using are, how they sound in different circumstances, and the different things they mean depending on their order. You can usually parse meaning out of the most jumbled of sentences as long as you are aware of the definitions of the words. And even if the accent is one you've never heard before, my own experience tells me that while the incomprehension time may last a bit longer, we adapt remarkably quickly to new accents and are able to understand meaning with ease in short amounts of time.
But listen to someone talk using unfamiliar slang or obscure jargon, and you're out of luck. There simply is no reference to draw from when faced with words you've never encountered before. You have to either learn them from context, which takes much longer time, or you have to have them explained explicitly to you. While all three features - sounds, syntax, and vocabulary - can be obstacles to your comprehension, only vocabulary can be potentially an insurmountable one, and it is for that reason it is the most important feature in language comprehension.
(Watch Airplane!)
Cyclical crazy rant aside (one more: never watch Airplane with your grandmother), the movie is in fact relevant to the question of language comprehension. One scene in particular illustrates this. The movie was released in 1981, when what is now African American Vernacular English was called jive and was, apparently, the hippest slang on the block. Airplane parodied jive in this scene:
First Jive Dude: Shiiiiit, maaaaan. That honky muf' be messin' mah old lady... got to be runnin' cold upside down his head, you know?
Second Jive Dude: Hey home', I can dig it. Know ain't gonna lay no mo' big rap up on you, man!
First Jive Dude: I say hey, sky... subba say I wan' see...
Second Jive Dude: Uh-huh.
First Jive Dude: ...pray to J I did the same ol' same ol'!
Second Jive Dude: Hey... knock a self a pro, Slick! That gray matter backlot perform us DOWN, I take TCB-in', man!
First Jive Dude: Hey, you know what they say: see a broad to get dat booty yak 'em...
First Jive Dude, Second Jive Dude: ...leg 'er down a smack 'em yak 'em!
First Jive Dude: COL' got to be! Y'know? Shiiiiit.
This was obviously an exaggeration of the dialect, but the point is clear: it's incomprehensible. The movie even puts in subtitles a standard English translation. I'll let Youtube fill in the details:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRDOp6zypbM
The point the movie is trying to make is that some vernacular English dialects are so far removed from standard English that trying to understand them in the context of standard English is absurd. The question is: which of these differences from standard English exactly makes it so hard to understand? The sounds are obviously different, and the syntax is very liberal too. But even reading through the dialogue, and listening to the audio repeatedly, the meaning might still be lost on us, even when each word individually and in the context of a sentence is understood perfectly. (By context of the sentence, I mean the role the word plays in the sentence; if I say "That yaxoodle totally shumptified my bizzlack!" you understand that yaxoodle is the noun shumptify is the verb, and bizzlack is the direct object, but that serves nothing towards helping your understanding of its meaning.)
We have no reference point from which we can draw meaning from the vocabulary, and so the meaning remains hopelessly incomprehensible. This leads to my general point: if when talking to someone who speaks your language, sounds and syntax differ from what you're used to, comprehension may at first be difficult but it rapidly becomes obvious what they mean. I think that this is because, based on the wealth of your experiences, you are aware of what the words your companion is using are, how they sound in different circumstances, and the different things they mean depending on their order. You can usually parse meaning out of the most jumbled of sentences as long as you are aware of the definitions of the words. And even if the accent is one you've never heard before, my own experience tells me that while the incomprehension time may last a bit longer, we adapt remarkably quickly to new accents and are able to understand meaning with ease in short amounts of time.
But listen to someone talk using unfamiliar slang or obscure jargon, and you're out of luck. There simply is no reference to draw from when faced with words you've never encountered before. You have to either learn them from context, which takes much longer time, or you have to have them explained explicitly to you. While all three features - sounds, syntax, and vocabulary - can be obstacles to your comprehension, only vocabulary can be potentially an insurmountable one, and it is for that reason it is the most important feature in language comprehension.
(Watch Airplane!)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
What American accent did I have?
All my life I've sworn to anyone who'd listen that I had no accent whatsoever. I honestly couldn't hear one in my voice. I live near Boston, so I know many people with endearingly grating Bostonian accents, and I was pretty sure I didn't "pahk the cah" nearly as bad as they did. So when I took the quiz I wasn't surprised to find I had - huzzah - a Midland accent. Exciting. I see Boston was second, though.
The quiz was a little tricky because I wasn't sure if concentrating on the words would affect how I pronounced them. I ended up mumbling little sentences to myself with the appropriate words in them; I did this a dozen times for each question until I was satisfied. I think my roommates think I'm insane.
Some thoughts about specific questions:
- For the Mary-merry-marry bit, I definitely say merry with more of an eh sound than Mary and marry, which sound alike. Am I alone in this? The quiz made me feel lonely.
- I've never even considered that pen and pin could sound the same. The South is weird.
I also took the "What American accent do you really have?" quiz, which seems to be an updated version of the original by the same guy. There were a few more questions, some different choices, but the same result: Midlands.
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