Changes in a Quarter

A lot has changed in the quarter that I've been here. With my own speech, the biggest changes are probably lexical items that I've picked up or started using without really noticing. Besides not being able to say the word "hood" correctly (I realized afterwards I said it like "who'd" every time in the class experiment--I can read, I promise!), I'm sure I've started saying things I don't usually say. I still haven't said "hella" or "hecka" but I've become less surprised when I hear other people say it now. One thing I noticed is that I no longer call homework "homework." It's just "work" now. I don't know when that change happened, but I know I picked it up from the upperclassmen in my dorm. That is the only thing I've noticied myself, but I'm sure there are other changes. I'm interested to see what happenes after four years when I can see how my accent has changed in our class experiment!

Sound

I still think sound is the most important component of language. From what we've learned about two of the three (syntax and phonetics) I think phonetics makes the most difference in how language is interpreted. Syntax can be learned and vocabulary can be memorized, but new sound patterns are still very difficult to learn and produce over a short period of time. For example, Americans who live in Britain usually can pick up on the different words for things and the different sentence structure very quickly, but it usually takes years for them to lose their American accent.
Besides being the most important to understanding language, sound is what makes it unique. Without accents, everyone who spoke a certain language would sound the same and it would be no fun.

Lexical Differences

So I've been trying to keep track of lexical differences in my little notebook, but I often forget them by the time I run to write them down, because I don't always carry my notebook with me. SO far, I've encountered the "pop" vs. "soda" debate many times and heard a few more distinct ones. A little while ago, someone asked for the "flipper" and I did not know that meant "remote control."

One of my favorites was in my math section when a British English speaker asked to have a example explained. The T.A. said that she would explain ti and go in depth into another problem as well. He said "Splendid!" and the whole class turned, looked at him and said "What?!?" He repeated himself and people in the class slowly realized what he meant after he said, "What, you guys don't say splendid?" I think he was a little embarrassed and I have not heard him say splendid again, unfortunately.

Most of the lexical items I have noticed people getting confused by have been words (mostly having to do with food), not phrases or sayings.

Dialect Experiment

I would like to see if someone's dialect can be detected by how they look when they speak. If I could run the experiment, I would videotape people with different regional accents and remove the sound from the video. I would have the participants try to guess the region of the speaker by how they look when they talk and move their lips.

A variation to this could be to let the participants listen to the sound first and then try to match it to the video. The examples would have to be all the same gender and probably all the same race and age so the participants do not guess based on those characteristics. I'd be interested to see if people are accurate in this or not...

Heed, Hid, Head, Had, Hod, Hawed, Hood, Who'd

Although the reading was kinda tough at points, I was able to understand the vowel exercise.  I recorded myself a few times because I found myself pronouncing way too much when I thought about the words too much.  

Here's what my spectrogram looked like, starting with "heed" and ending with "who'd":

I was surprised to see that they followed the trends pretty well.  Especially on the trends of the F1 formants.  The F2s for "hod" and "hawed" were a little closer to the F1s than I thought they would be.

I was a little confused with how exactly to graph it in the blank graph, so I'll get that done in class today (I wasn't sure if the horizontal axis should be the F2-F1 or just the F2).  

Mary Had a Little Lamb

This was a really interesting test! I started out doing well but got confused by some of the Hispanic speakers. In general, I accurately guessed the races of the other speakers. It was really hard for me to place why I was able to guess the speaker's races, but I think that a lot of it was my own ear and comparing the speakers to people I know or have heard before. In addition, I think the inflection in their voices during the sentence helped me identify race. Since I couldn't go on vocabulary of syntax, I had to really listen only to sound. It made me go back to the video we watched earlier on Youtube:



And this one, too:

The Butter Spilled on the Cot

I recorded myself saying this with my normal accent first. My "cot" sound is very quick, as is "butter." Here's the spectrogram of my normal accent followed by the spectrogram of my attempt at a regional accent (see if you can guess the region):



Ok, so the main differences I see are that the "cot" sound is really long in the accented spectrogram. In addition, I think I have harder sounds in the my original recording for the "er" in butter and the "l" sounds in spilled.

The accent was supposed to be a New England accent...I think. My accent is from Washington, DC.

Regional Accents

Regional accents are hard to dislike. My favorite is probably an Appalachian accent. I find it the hardest to reproduce if you're not from there. And, it's different enough from a strict southern accent and a midwest accent that you can still place it easily. In addition, I like the variety of words and phrases that usually come with the accent. If I learn how to make the vowel sounds in an Appalachian accent, I would really like to learn how to imitate it.

Sound

I think sound is the most important feature of language comprehension.

If Native English Speaker 1 was listening to Native English Speaker 2 (who has poor syntax), 1 would be able to put together the parts of the sentence enough to figure out what 2 meant to say.

"Want breakfast." would become "I want breakfast."


Similarly, if 2 has poor vocabulary, 1 will be able to use 2's longer descriptions to determine meanings that would have come quicker if 2 have a good vocabulary.

"I love the bright things that come out at night in the sky" would become "I love the stars" after 1 thought for a moment.


But I think that if 2's sounds were off, 1 would have a very hard time deciphering what 2 meant to say.

"I love tomatoes so much" could become "I love to make those so much."
"Meet us at the bottom thing" could become "Meter sat the bar, dumb thing."
"I have to shave my legs" could become "I aftershave my legs."

With the right pauses or regional (or foreign) accents, I think these phrases could be confused, and 1 would have to work much harder to understand 2 than 1 would have to work if 2 had poor diction or poor vocabulary.

Accent Quiz

"You have an accent most closely matching that of San Carlos, California... more than likely the White Oaks section, maybe northern Redwood City (Edgewood Park area)."

I'm actually from right outside of Washington, DC, so the quiz got it pretty wrong. But the questions did make me think. Do I say "pen" and "pin" the same? No. Do I say "cot" and "caught" the same? Yes. I'm assuming that DC accents are pretty similar to the accents in San Carlos, California if the quiz is at least somewhat accurate. I thought it was too short to really try to guess where I'm from. Also, I didn't know there was a difference between accents in men and women.

Hopefully this means I will blend in well in California!