English Language Learners

Theta30

00:05

@DamkerngT. at about what time?

Damkerng T.

@Theta30 I usually started somewhere between 19:00-21:00 GMT.

Theta30

so you started early today?

Damkerng T.

Today I started late. :)

3 hours ago, by Damkerng T.

Let's continue with A Farewell to Arms.

Anonymous

GMT is a mystery to everyone. Except those mean people in Greenwich, I guess.

Damkerng T.

Ah, it's now UTC, I think.

2

@Theta30 I usually started somewhere between 19:00-21:00 UTC.

Here is chapter 1.

2 days ago, by Damkerng T.

Let try Hemingway's,

Chapter 2.

yesterday, by Damkerng T.

Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

Chapter 3.

3 hours ago, by Damkerng T.

Let's continue with A Farewell to Arms.

Theta30

00:15

you have a different intro each day

Damkerng T.

It's new to me. :-)

Theta30

@DamkerngT. why do the Japanese women laugh differently?

Damkerng T.

I don't know. But I think snailplane mentioned a good reason.

Theta30

hmm

I thought you mentioned that

Damkerng T.

I just extended snailplane's mentioning. :D

3 hours ago, by snailplane

Laughing like ho ho ho is traditionally thought to be more feminine than laughing like ha ha ha in Japanese, I think because it doesn't show the inside of your mouth as much

Theta30

00:21

before that

Damkerng T.

Oh, I can recall that.

I just mentioned my observation; I didn't know their reasons.

Theta30

In what sense was your observation?

what exactly did you observe

Damkerng T.

I've usually seen villain females laugh that way (Ho ho ho) before doing something evil or nasty. :D

Just sounds like, "Ho, ho, ho, I already have all my evil plans laid out!"

Theta30

in the movie when the women are together and say Baka

which means Cheeky, they are really cheeky

sometimes

Damkerng T.

I guess Cheeky! is okay in that scene too.

Theta30

00:28

where do you watch these dramas?

Damkerng T.

I just watched that one today, and only a little.

Theta30

do the dramas have English subtitles?

Damkerng T.

But I usually watch a few Japanese dramas in Thai on my cable.

Sometimes I left the Japanese soundtrack on.

So I guess I could pidgin Japanese a little. :P

Theta30

I have a Thai friend

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Theta30

00:30

ok

I see, so Japanese dramas on Thai TV

Damkerng T.

Yes.

Theta30

By dramas do you mean Tv movies or serials or soap operas?

Damkerng T.

Usually, TV series.

They are dramas imho, though not soap operas.

Theta30

I knew some Asian people talking about watching Japanese cartoons while young

Damkerng T.

Oh, I think most of us watch them anyway.

It's hard to escape them. :-)

Kinda like every kid these days and their mobile phones.

Who hasn't got one? Who hasn't?

Anonymous

00:42

I have a friend who doesn't have a cell phone.

Anonymous

Weird, but true. :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

I have an iPhone, myself.

Anonymous

It's my third cell phone.

Theta30

I never had until 1 1/2 years ago

Damkerng T.

00:43

Evidently, some of us can escape the mobile phones. :-)

Anonymous

@Theta30 "Drama" as used in Japanese typically means a live action serial.

Damkerng T.

I guess that could apply to the escaping from Japanese cartoons too.

Anonymous

But it encompasses all sorts of genres. Comedies, for example, are dorama, whereas in English I would usually not refer to a comedy as "a drama"

Anonymous

So I would not call all dorama "dramas" in English, but some other people do.

Damkerng T.

I just realize that I usually said TV series when I thought of US series, and TV dramas when I thought of Japanese series. :-)

Anonymous

00:45

I usually say dorama to make it clear that I'm using the Japanese word borrowed from drama

Anonymous

There are often little differences like that with loanwords.

Anonymous

In English, for example, we use anime to refer to Japanese animation, whereas in Japanese, anime just means "cartoon", more or less :-)

Damkerng T.

Hah!

Anonymous

In Japanese, an American cartoon can be anime, but in English, anime is specifically Japanese.

Damkerng T.

nods

Theta30

00:47

what is "live action serial"? I don't think it's reality Tv.

Anonymous

"Live action" means "not animated".

Theta30

okay

Anonymous

"Serial" means there's continuity between episodes, so they go in a certain order.

Anonymous

But the terms "serial" and "episodic" don't describe a true dichotomy. Television is usually more of a continuum between the two, with some shows having more serial aspects than others

Anonymous

In a show with no serial aspect, episodes can be played in any order, and TV networks used to view this trait as very desirable, so most shows were made that way

Anonymous

00:50

These days, the trend is toward serials instead

Anonymous

People watch whole series in a row on Netflix...

Damkerng T.

You have Netflix. :(

Anonymous

I do not.

Anonymous

I, however, know people who do.

Damkerng T.

But you can.

Anonymous

00:51

Yes, I suppose that's true.

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

Though if I'm going to spend time watching TV, I try to watch Japanese TV

Damkerng T.

Gegege no Nyobo is good.

Anonymous

Note that those are long vowels in Nyobo.

Damkerng T.

On Nyo?

Anonymous

00:53

Both.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

You can indicate those in writing with macrons: Nyōbō

Damkerng T.

I couldn't find its theme song on YouTube.

Anonymous

Did you search for ゲゲゲの女房?

Damkerng T.

After I heard it over a hundred times, I really love the song.

Yes.

Anonymous

00:56

What's the song?

Damkerng T.

Just some covers, and karaoke.

Arigato something.

It's the song that actress plays the piano.

Cerberus

Hey that's Japanese!

I know sushi and arigato.

Damkerng T.

Me too! Yay!

Cerberus

And Nii...pon.

Anonymous

►

Damkerng T.

00:57

Yes.

Anonymous

@Cerberus Nippon?

Anonymous

Is it that one?

Cerberus

Ding!

Theta30

Are Nii and pon two different words?

Cerberus

That is, the i is supposed to be very long, I was told.

Damkerng T.

00:58

Only if I can have better recording quality. :)

Cerberus

@Theta30 No.

Anonymous

The i in Nippon is a short vowel.

Anonymous

The /i/ in /nippoN/ is a short vowel.

Damkerng T.

I don't know its meaning, but I think it must be something really nice.

Cerberus

@snailplane Oww...did I totally get it wrong?

I'm kind of drunk, I may have confused it with another word.

Anonymous

00:59

@Cerberus Oh, don't worry :-)

Anonymous

The word is four morae long. /ni.p.po.N/

Anonymous

Each mora is supposed to be of about equal length.

Damkerng T.

I think the first /ni/ has some quality of /ji/ in it too.

Cerberus

in English Language & Usage, Feb 16 '13 at 16:59, by Robusto

Also, there are four syllables in Nippon: にっぽん　（日本）。

Anonymous

Four morae.

Cerberus

01:01

Yay!

He also used the word morae.

Anonymous

If you define syllable in a Japanese context as "mora", then that's true.

Anonymous

However, if you do that, you might as well say morae instead.

Anonymous

And other people define the term syllable differently in Japanese.

Anonymous

So it avoids confusion if you stick to mora when you mean "mora".

Cerberus

Haha.

Makes sense.

Anonymous

01:03

People who believe in a Japanese syllable, as distinct from a Japanese mora, would say Nippon has two syllables: /nip.poN/

Cerberus

in English Language & Usage, Feb 16 '13 at 17:06, by Robusto

In Japanese they are simply sounds: 音

Anonymous

Consisting of four morae: /ni.p.po.N/

Anonymous

The Japanese term for mora (mōra is possible but not commonly used) is haku, which means "beat"

Anonymous

(拍 in kanji)

Anonymous

However, many people use 音節 (onsetsu "syllable") instead

Anonymous

01:06

Much as in English, many people say syllable instead of mora...

Damkerng T.

onsetsu :-)

Sounds like English's onsets.

Anonymous

It does, especially because the final /u/ can be devoiced or elided, but the vowel /o/ in Japanese is different from English /ɒ/ or /ɑ/, and the /e/ is a little different too...

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, Feb 16 '13 at 17:08, by Robusto

Nov 11 '12 at 13:29, by Robusto

By the way, when we were talking about apostrophes the other day, in Japanese the character most frequently transliterated as an apostrophe is っ, a tiny version of tsu　(つ) which is used to indicate a dropped but held syllable, usually before a te (て)。I couldn't write that at work because my laptop doesn't have the JLK.

Anonymous

Actually, the small っ typically indicates gemination

Anonymous

Utterance-finally or exceptionally it can indicate a glottal stop

Anonymous

01:09

(Or utterance-initially but less often)

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, Feb 16 '13 at 17:11, by Robusto

I remember my first Japanese teacher literally drumming this concept into my head. She would rap her knuckles on the table four times, enunciating the sound (or lack of same) for each syllable: ni ... ' ... po ... n

Anonymous

When you get to that ', your lips come together for the /p/ stop.

Anonymous

You don't release it for another beat.

Anonymous

So that pause is not you holding your breath. The airflow is stopped labially

Damkerng T.

Quite close to English -pp-.

Anonymous

01:13

Does English have geminate /p/?

Anonymous

We don't have much gemination.

Damkerng T.

No, I mean the way the whole pronunciation sounds like.

Or can sound like.

Anonymous

Well, it sounds different because the stop is longer in Japanese than in, say, happy

Damkerng T.

Yes.

Anonymous

But the /p/ sound is pretty much the same on both ends.

Damkerng T.

01:14

So they're just close, but not quite.

Anonymous

(The difference being in the vowels around the /p/, I think :-)

Damkerng T.

Prolly. :-)

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, Feb 16 '13 at 17:01, by tchrist

I thought that Nippon had four moras, not four syllables.

Anonymous

What he said.

Damkerng T.

I wouldn't think it has four syllables.

Must count in a very different way to get four. :-)

Anonymous

01:17

Well, that's using the syllable = mora definition.

Damkerng T.

I think the word mora itself is now common enough.

Anonymous

But I think syllables are usually a sonorant (the nucleus) plus zero or more (phonemic) consonants clustered on either side.

Anonymous

So in that sense, /nip.poN/ makes two syllables.

Damkerng T.

I would count it as two too.

Anonymous

By the way, the capital /N/ is a different phoneme than the little /n/ in /na ni nu ne no/. The capital /N/ is the moraic nasal

Anonymous

01:20

But you can write all the phonemes of Japanese without pulling up the IPA keyboard thingy. :-)

Damkerng T.

^^

Anonymous

That makes it more fun than English.

Anonymous

Yay, I turned ELL chat into Japanese chat!

Damkerng T.

Don't worry. We will be right back to Hemingway soon enough. :-)

I wonder what's the meaning of that theme song.

Just notice that in the video clip you gave me, there are both timestamp (8:01) and the subtitle on the TV. :-)

Cerberus

OMG it's sooo complicated!

Morae and syllables...

Damkerng T.

01:27

^^

Anonymous

@Cerberus Most people ignore syllables in the analysis of standard Japanese. They're only relevant for rules related to movement of pitch accent on inflection, I think

Anonymous

And morae are pretty simple.

Anonymous

They're a little weird... Everyone teaches that they're of equal length, and perceptually they seem to be, but if you actually measure there's a fair amount of variation.

Anonymous

And vowel length has low functional load in Japanese, so you get some amount of lengthening/squishing going on anyway...

Anonymous

But you can mostly ignore all those details. :-)

Cerberus

01:31

Interesting.

And overwhelming.

Hehe.

Damkerng T.

> a i u e o

> ka ki ku ke ko

> sa si su se so

> ta ti tu te to

Hmm... Can't think of something with /ti/ sound. /tu/ too.

Anonymous

@Cerberus My apologies!

Cerberus

None needed!

If I were completely sober...

It is good to know that they mostly ignore syllables.

Damkerng T.

@Cerberus Yay!

Cerberus

Oh, yeah?

Damkerng T.

01:36

Ah, because they are: ta chi tsu te to

@Cerberus Oh, you said If you were ...

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. /t/ has three (main) allophones in modern Japanese. /ta ti tu te to/ are typically realized as [ta t͡ɕi t͡sɯ te to]

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, you looked it up while I was laboriously IPAing! ;-)

Damkerng T.

^^

Anonymous

Yeah, /ta ti tu te to/ are romanized ta chi tsu te to in Hepburn's scheme.

Anonymous

Be careful, though. That ch is not [tʃ] like English <ch>, but [t͡ɕ]

Anonymous

01:39

You'll have to be careful of a few things when judging Japanese pronunciation by Hepburn romanization...

Damkerng T.

Hmm, like Hibiki, no?

Cerberus

@DamkerngT. Yes, because...I am not haha.

Damkerng T.

@Cerberus LOL

Anonymous

/ha hi hu he ho/ are typically realized as [ha çi ɸɯ he ho]

Anonymous

But they're transcribed <ha hi fu he ho> in Hepburn romanization.

Damkerng T.

01:41

@snailplane This ɯ is interesting. :-)

Anonymous

Which might lead you to pronounce hi and fu inaccurately.

Anonymous

The Japanese vowel /u/ is often given the phonetic transcription [ɯ] but there isn't an exact IPA symbol for it

Damkerng T.

Thai has [ɯ] sound, but always dubs Japanese's u as [u] sound. :-)

Cerberus

Yeah that's one of those mysterious IPA vowels...

Anonymous

It's a very distinctive vowel--if you hear the Japanese /u/, you can be fairly certain you're hearing Japanese

Anonymous

01:43

Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Anonymous

> The symbol 〈ɯ〉 is sometimes used for Japanese /u/, but that sound is rounded, albeit with labial compression rather than protrusion. It is more accurately described as an exolabial close back vowel.

Damkerng T.

To me, when I use my ears, most of the time, Japanese's u sounds like a funny [ɯ] to me. But much closer to [ɯ] than [u].

Anonymous

I think that's why people choose that as the closest symbol and just stick with it. (As with most things IPA, as long as you explain what you mean by it, it doesn't really matter which symbol you pick...)

Anonymous

I think someone more competent than me in phonetics might add more detail to their [close transcriptions] than I do

Anonymous

In The Sounds of Japanese (Vance 2008), the author writes "The IPA symbol for a high back unrounded vowel is [ɯ], and we'll go ahead and use this symbol consistently in our broad phonetic transcriptions of Japanese. In other words, we'll simply ignore the presence or absence of compression."

Damkerng T.

01:52

compression?

Anonymous

"... the jaw closes and brings the lips together vertically so that the side portions are in contact, but there's no conspicuous protrusion." (pp.54-55)

Damkerng T.

Aha!

Anonymous

"In connected speech at normal conversational tempos, compression is generally weaker, and often totally absent."

Damkerng T.

Exactly like what I thought.

Though I don't know these terms.

Anonymous

"As a result, Japanese /u/ is commonly described as unrounded."

Anonymous

01:55

That's why Vance chooses to ignore the presence or absence of compression and simply transcribe it with [ɯ]

Damkerng T.

I think one might say that it's quasi-rounded. :-)

Anonymous

Well, they use the term compression

Anonymous

I think because it's not really rounded, as in, it's not really rounder.

Anonymous

The lips don't form a round thingy.

Damkerng T.

But it's not flat either.

Hmm... maybe sometimes.

Anonymous

01:57

It varies.

Damkerng T.

But if it's flat, then it would become really like Thai's [ɯ].

Anonymous

But in careful speech it's .. flat-ish, not quite

Anonymous

It's, umm...

Damkerng T.

Quasi-flat-ish. :)

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

01:59

It's possible that it is like Thai's [ɯ] sometimes in rapid speech.

Anonymous

I believe.

Damkerng T.

nods

That's what I've heard.

But it has its own unique quality.

When you wrote so that the side portions are in contact, I got my A-ha!

Anonymous

Ahh

Anonymous

Yeah.

Damkerng T.

Now I know why it sounds a little funny to my ears. :-)

Anonymous

02:01

Most learners of Japanese don't quite get that sound right. At least English-speaking learners of Japanese

Anonymous

It's okay because Japanese doesn't have that many vowels, and you can get all of them a bit wrong without impeding comprehension much.

Anonymous

Since Japanese has so few vowels, there's a lot of room for error on each one before it starts sounding like something else.

Damkerng T.

I believe so. I think most English-speaking learners of Thai has a similar problem with Thai's [ɯ] too.

Anonymous

Ahh, I bet.

Damkerng T.

Taking a good look of their faces when they're trying to pronounce [ɯ]...

I know that they're really struggling. :-)

Anonymous

02:04

You've probably heard utterances ending in what appear to be "des" or "mas" in Japanese, right?

Damkerng T.

Not to mention a long sequence like [ɯai] or [ɯau].

@snailplane Yes.

Sometimes I heard it as "des" sometimes "desu".

Anonymous

But those are typically understood as /desu/ and /masu/.

Anonymous

Japanese sometimes has vowels that are either 1. devoiced or 2. elided entirely

Anonymous

(Or inbetween: partially elided, etc.)

Damkerng T.

At the end of the utterance only?

Anonymous

02:05

No, not necessarily

Anonymous

But if /desu/ is [desɯ]

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

You'll often hear that last [s] apparently held for the length of the mora

Anonymous

But the lips make the [ɯ] shape.

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes.

Anonymous

02:06

So the coarticulation changes the sound of the [s]

Anonymous

So in that sense, the [ɯ] is still sort of there.

Damkerng T.

So actually, sometimes they just pronounce it as [dess].

Anonymous

Or sometimes they pronounce the vowel, but it's unvoiced so it's barely audible.

Damkerng T.

The last [s] is an s sound with a devoiced [ɯ], I guess.

Anonymous

There's a range of possible realizations.

Damkerng T.

02:08

Ah, I think I understand that now.

To me, they are two different sounds, but to them they're just the same sound.

Anonymous

3

A: Actual phonetic realization of "devoiced" vowels

I've got an old PDF folder full of papers on Japanese, and I managed to pull up two which might be helpful. (I've been on the search for a full detailed phonetic study of Japanese. Add a comment if you know of some other technical resources!). The first, the open paper Processing missing vowels: ...

Damkerng T.

Inherently, you can think of any consonant in English as always being pronounced with a devoiced vowel.

Anonymous

You mean any phonetic consonant?

Damkerng T.

Yup.

Anonymous

And presumably excluding stops.

Damkerng T.

02:12

Yes, but the release part can be considered in the same way to other consonants too.

Anonymous

Yes, if there is a release and it's not released into a voiced sonorant

Damkerng T.

I tried analyzing my own whispering voice.

Anonymous

Like for example, the /p/ in yep is usually not released.

Damkerng T.

And the F1-F2 movements are not very different from when speaking in full voice.

Anonymous

Although I guess it can be.

Damkerng T.

02:14

@snailplane Yep. :-)

(No release)

Yep [ɯ].

(Released)

^^

Just for fun.

Anonymous

But it makes more sense to say that the unvoiced vowels are underlyingly there in Japanese for phonotactic reasons

Anonymous

And because they cause coarticulation.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Although I have that pronunciation dictionary, it seems like a herculean task to actually get all the devoicings and pitch accents right in my spoken Japanese...

Anonymous

I usually try to rely on doing it automatically

Anonymous

02:17

But then I discover that the words as listed in my brain do not have the accent in the right position, or are missing the devoicing (or worse, have it in the wrong spot!)

Damkerng T.

I think doing it automatically is more natural.

Anonymous

Yeah, but I may never get there ;-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Oh!

Anonymous

I don't have an aptitude for language, really...

Damkerng T.

Perhaps it's the same with me listening to Eminem. :-)

Anonymous

02:18

I do have a very good ear for pitch, which is helpful.

Damkerng T.

I think we can formulate some formula that can predict the accuracy of each person when listening to some specific sound clips.

@snailplane Ah, you got musician ears. :-)

Anonymous

Many people move to a country where the language they're learning is spoken. They hear and speak it every day. But they may never acquire a native-sounding accent, despite that.

Anonymous

That seems to be partially dependent on natural aptitude, which varies greatly from speaker to speaker

Anonymous

Studies show that explicit instruction in phonetics can help (or is perhaps necessary in some cases)

Anonymous

You know what's weird, though?

Damkerng T.

02:22

What is it?

Anonymous

In Japanese schools where they teach English, well... They traditionally use katakana, which is not that great for indicating English pronunciation.

Anonymous

But it's common to see English spelling with the stressed syllable indicated with a little `

Anonymous

An acute accent over the nucleus of the stressed syllable.

Damkerng T.

nod

Anonymous

And many dictionaries of English for Japanese students indicate stressed syllables in the same way.

Anonymous

02:23

So it's fairly common for Japanese students to learn the stress of a word when they learn that word.

Damkerng T.

nod

Anonymous

Meanwhile, English-speaking students of Japanese...

Anonymous

Although Japanese has something very similar (each Japanese word contains zero or one accented syllables)

Theta30

@snailplane yes, I think this aptitude is related to learning theit own first language

Anonymous

They don't teach it to us. A lot of us English-speaking students are taught to pronounce Japanese with flat pitch...

Theta30

02:24

and becoming proficient into it

Damkerng T.

@snailplane That would sound very artificial.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Japanese complain that it's hard to understand...

Anonymous

@Theta30 Uh-huh?

Damkerng T.

@snailplane They mean it's hard for learners to understand?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I mean, when a learner pronounces Japanese with the pitch flat, it can be hard for native speakers to understand

Damkerng T.

02:27

But they teach learners that way!

Theta30

@snailplane do you agree that you can become better and better communicating in your own first language? (I call first language what people call native language)

Anonymous

@Theta30 Of course. I'm always working on my English ability.

Damkerng T.

We all can.

Anonymous

I prefer the terms L1 and L2 because they're so short and easy to type. :-)

Anonymous

Plus, you can have more than one L1 language and more than one L2 language.

Damkerng T.

02:30

I think one big trap for language learners is that many of them (us) think that learning language is about "knowing" stuff.

Theta30

@snailplane then one who is better improving L1 language, it is more likely to be better improving L2 language

Anonymous

Uh-huh?

Damkerng T.

@Theta30 Maybe or maybe not.

Theta30

@DamkerngT. logically you say my assertion is false. Note the word "more likely"

Damkerng T.

It can be true, and it can be false.

Still can be true, and can be false.

For each x in set X, there is some x that ..., and some x that ...

Theta30

02:36

@DamkerngT. that's not the same logically

Damkerng T.

I read it that way. :-)

Theta30

that's different than "the number of x's that... is bigger than the number of x's that..."

Damkerng T.

It's about speculation on some speculation. To be certain, you need research.

Theta30

yes, it's just an assertion

Damkerng T.

And the word "improving" is not definite by itself.

StoneyB

02:39

Hellow, world ... anybody know any good (dare I say sound) online source about acoustic phonetics? - specifically, how to read waveforms and those pitch-y graphs?

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB Spectrogram?

Are you talking about how to read spectrograms?

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. That's the word!

Anonymous

And oscillograms.

Damkerng T.

I think I knew some good tutorials but don't remember their links.

Anonymous

home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~robh/howto.html

Damkerng T.

02:43

What is the purpose, specifically?

StoneyB

@snailplane Yah, oscillograms - but in the video editing world they're always called 'waveforms'.

@snailplane Bingo! That looks like it!

@DamkerngT. A question came up ?yesterday? about unvoiced schwa. I'm pretty sure they exist as allophones of ordinary schwas; but I'm checking voice recordings in Audition to make sure what I'm hearing is actually there, and I'd rather not make a fool of myself in public!

Damkerng T.

Oh I see.

Reading spectrograms in real-life can be very tricky.

It's much easier to read clean speech.

StoneyB

When I was a linguistics minor back in the Dark Ages, we didn't have all these cheap computer-based tools; only analog playback and displays, which only very expensive labs had. So I never learned this stuff.

@DamkerngT. 'clean speech'?

Damkerng T.

High signal-to-noise ratio.

Virtually no noise.

Human ears are extraordinary. Our ears can discern so many things we can't see on spectrograms.

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. That's not too much of a problem for me. I have field recordings, interviews on pro-grade equipment, and you can filter out the ambient sound digitally or even just by eyeball.

Damkerng T.

02:52

That's great. I don't have that good equipment. :-)

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. (Bother. My connection keeps dropping). 1) Young human ears are extraordinary. 2) I work for a company which inter alia produces videos, and I have on my hard drive a whole bunch of interviews with Southern Illinois farmers - about as rock-bottom General American as you can get without hiring an actor.

What sort of source do you work with? ... More interesting, what do you do with it?

Damkerng T.

I try to read it. :)

I've read that some linguists can read spectrograms successfully (being able to tell what was said without having to hear the sound) with over 95% accuracy. So I practiced on it a bit.

I'm not that good, but I think I get all the basic ideas.

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