Unexplained Accents

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Myperson54
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#16 Post by Myperson54 »

For those interested, I've got sample measurements and a few charts which I've managed to more or less recreate in Excel. It's not perfect (the ellipses are missing their degree), but with this I can input my own data on Rookie's voice and have it appear next to the expected results on the chart. Plus I can add colours and adjust labels and all that jazz to make the chart easier to read.

This chart is for vowel formants; I'll probably do another one with Voice Onset Time as well, depending on how my studies go.

Edit: Raz has also hit the nail on the head with the issue here. I'm going to see if there are more stringent tests available in the literature for capturing Australian English vowel sounds, because the isolated sound tests I've run with Rookie aren't great at ascertaining whether an allophone is word-specific or general to that person's speech. For now, however, this test should be a good starting point.
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Razmoudah
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#17 Post by Razmoudah »

Don't forget, accents aren't purely on the allophones either. One of the distinctive traits of a Niponese accent is the lack of the 'ell' phonem, and in the language itself all vowels have set sounds (which is a big part of what makes reading Romanized Niponese such a pain, is that dual vowel two separate vowel sounds or a hybrid vowel sound since arguably Niponese has more than five vowels) which also leads to a few oddities when someone with a Niponese accent tries speaking a language like English. Now, I'm not familiar enough with Canadian and American accents to know whether or not all of the consonant phonemes are the same or not, although it is possible that they are (Espanol does have some different consonant phonemes, but I don't know how to put the '~' over the 'n' to represent the altered phoneme).

*EDIT* Apparently the font the forum uses for displaying posts really dislikes tilde's (I didn't want to use the accent marks name as I'm not sure who here would know what I was talking about).
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Hmmm......about what I expected when almost half of the questions I'd want to select a few of the answers not a specific one.

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Myperson54
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#18 Post by Myperson54 »

Razmoudah wrote:Don't forget, accents aren't purely on the allophones either. One of the distinctive traits of a Niponese accent is the lack of the 'ell' phonem, and in the language itself all vowels have set sounds (which is a big part of what makes reading Romanized Niponese such a pain, is that dual vowel two separate vowel sounds or a hybrid vowel sound since arguably Niponese has more than five vowels) which also leads to a few oddities when someone with a Niponese accent tries speaking a language like English. Now, I'm not familiar enough with Canadian and American accents to know whether or not all of the consonant phonemes are the same or not, although it is possible that they are (Espanol does have some different consonant phonemes, but I don't know how to put the '~' over the 'n' to represent the altered phoneme).

*EDIT* Apparently the font the forum uses for displaying posts really dislikes tilde's (I didn't want to use the accent marks name as I'm not sure who here would know what I was talking about).
In the case of Japanese, the phoneme /ɾ/ is used in place of both the rhotic /r/ and light and dark laterals /l/ and /ɫ/. Any time those sounds appear in a word, a Japanese speaker will realize them as [ɾ], which is an allophone because it doesn't change the meaning of the intended word (generally). Obviously this isn't so easy across languages and I'm making this simpler than it really is, but I'm not interested in doing an in-depth study anyways. I'm just looking at Rookie's speech with a single term's worth of Linguistics education, so I'm not really trying to do more than the basics. I think, however, that the basics will tell me a pretty good deal based on the data I'm finding.
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minime
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#19 Post by minime »

schradieck wrote:You know, I've actually had a question that's been bugging me my whole life, and this seems like the right place to ask.

This might sound Really dumb, but do non Americans ever have trouble understanding american accents? I've got a pretty basic Canadian accent and I often wonder if people could have trouble understanding me because of it. I have so much difficulty dealing with accents that it's had me curious.
Personally I've never had trouble understanding American accents do far.
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#20 Post by The Rookie »

schradieck wrote:This might sound Really dumb, but do non Americans ever have trouble understanding american accents? I've got a pretty basic Canadian accent and I often wonder if people could have trouble understanding me because of it. I have so much difficulty dealing with accents that it's had me curious.
I can't say I've ever had much of an issue understanding American accents. Local slang, yes; but never the accent.

I've only ever noticed accents being a problem when English is clearly the person's second language. So I've often had to ask people (Namely from Asian cultures, but also some South Western and Eastern European) to repeat themselves multiple times before I can understand.
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Bon
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#21 Post by Bon »

schradieck wrote:You know, I've actually had a question that's been bugging me my whole life, and this seems like the right place to ask.

This might sound Really dumb, but do non Americans ever have trouble understanding american accents? I've got a pretty basic Canadian accent and I often wonder if people could have trouble understanding me because of it. I have so much difficulty dealing with accents that it's had me curious.
I have never had trouble understanding an american accent, i think they are usually quite clear and audable accents. Personally i know us scottish have accents that are pretty hard to understand though :flora:
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minime
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#22 Post by minime »

Bon wrote:
schradieck wrote:You know, I've actually had a question that's been bugging me my whole life, and this seems like the right place to ask.

This might sound Really dumb, but do non Americans ever have trouble understanding american accents? I've got a pretty basic Canadian accent and I often wonder if people could have trouble understanding me because of it. I have so much difficulty dealing with accents that it's had me curious.
I have never had trouble understanding an american accent, i think they are usually quite clear and audable accents. Personally i know us scottish have accents that are pretty hard to understand though :flora:
I still think some of the English accents are the hardest to understand. :flora:
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#23 Post by TinyVoices »

I have only ever had a tough time understanding an accent when it makes the words run into each other or else get obliterated. Basically, your're trying to speak English but instead nonsense comes out of your mouth.

That has a fancy word to it that I'm forgetting at the moment. Strong slang and the like is what I'm talking about. Or if nothing else like the cliche "khakis" Boston accent, or the ever loved "cor blimey"

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Re: Unexplained Accents

#24 Post by Razmoudah »

@Myperson54: Well, I don't think any of the accents he's been accused of half having have much, if any, representation there amongst each other, I'm fairly certain it's all in the vowels so what you're working with should be sufficient to identify if there is or isn't a true accent going on there.
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Hmmm......about what I expected when almost half of the questions I'd want to select a few of the answers not a specific one.

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Myperson54
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#25 Post by Myperson54 »

Razmoudah wrote:@Myperson54: Well, I don't think any of the accents he's been accused of half having have much, if any, representation there amongst each other, I'm fairly certain it's all in the vowels so what you're working with should be sufficient to identify if there is or isn't a true accent going on there.
Agreed! I'm fairly certain I'm going to find the majority of my results in the vowels. Although, it would be interesting to look at rhoticization... Still, I'll be a bit. Still gotta study for finals but I'm excited to see where this leads.
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Razmoudah
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Re: Unexplained Accents

#26 Post by Razmoudah »

Yeah, it could be interesting.
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Hmmm......about what I expected when almost half of the questions I'd want to select a few of the answers not a specific one.

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