Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with phonetics

Site/Text with English dialect divergencies?

symbioid — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:53:47 -0800

There was a site of speakers around the world speaking a specific phrase in English. This was to show how regional dialects of English sounded. You could click on a map and it would pull up video of these speakers. Does anyone know what that site is? If not, perhaps a good response would include a concise phrase that can show different regional variations (cot/caught, don/dawn, pin/pen). I ask this due to a friend and I talking and she asking me if she had an accent to me. I noticed a slight Northern City Vowel Shift at times from her, and that got me wondering about this... I would like to post me speaking a phrase that has these pronunciations on my LJ, and have friends do the same. An interesting project, but I don't know a good source for such a text.

HELP?

¡Help me pronounce reventón!

Bizurke — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 14:31:41 -0800

SpanishPhoneticsFilter: Which gringo pronunciation best approximates [β]? In a recent LanguageHat blog post, the Hat-man wrote "The fact is that the closest thing to an accurate pronunciation of the Spanish word reventón, unless you're a Spanish speaker, is re-ven-TOHN." In other words, LanguageHat claims that the closest sound English speakers have to the Spanish sound [β] -- represented orthographically as v in reventón -- is [v] (the first sound in a word like "Victor"). The point of the post was to refute an assertion that the "v" in reventón should be pronounced as a "b".

A commenter responded: "I'd say that's less a fact than an opinion; to me the [β] sounds somewhere between an English [b], an English [v], and an English [w], and I'm not at all sure the [v] is the closest".

So, Hive-mind hispanohablantes, which English sound sounds most like [β]? Please mention which regional variety of Spanish you speak, since this might have an effect on your perceptions.

How do you pronounce stressed them?

Inigo Jones — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:00:28 -0800

How do you pronounce them when it's stressed? For instance, "Don't give it to me, give it to THEM." I pronounce the stressed them so that it rhymes with bum. I'm trying to get a sense whether this is idiosyncratic with me, or whether it's a dialectical thing (and if so, which dialect).

I expect there to be some variation, but get the sense most people will pronounce it to rhyme with hem. Though maybe not.

So, how do you pronounce it?

Why is my name so often confused for THAT name?

jchgf — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 09:05:40 -0800

My name is Christian. It seems that whenever someone mistake my name for another, they mistake it for François at least 80% of the time. Why? My name has been occasionnally mistaken for François in particular by different people in different environments for many years. There are no other obvious François in my entourage, and Christian and François seem phonetically unrelated, although they are both two syllables (I am a French-Canadian). This week, a new colleague called me François, prompting me to bring this topic to AskMe. Do you have any theory that would explain why my name is so often confused with François in particular?

What natural languages have unusual properties?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:08:29 -0800

Hawaiian has only eight consonants. Pirahã purportedly has even fewer phonemes and no numerals. What other languages have properties which would be considered unusual by Indo-European language speakers?

Looking for an application to give me phonetic spellings of words and surnames.

Heatwole — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 11:05:38 -0800

I need an application (preferably web based) in which I can enter a word, including surnames, and get the phonetic spelling in return. Any ideas?