Skip to main content

Journal Entry 5–Unravel Magazine - What’s in an accent?: An interview with Steven Weinberger

52c03de2-2e3a-4ce1-b165-e5532d04a465

Figure 1. Still from Unravel Magazine.

pop-7112848_1280

 

The Speech Accent Archive is a project which was started by Steven Weinberger, a linguist professor at Georgia Mason University in Virginia. The purpose of which is to compare accents – and currently has recordings of individuals of 175 different countries and 381 languages.

     So why study accents? Weinberger states that one of our basic abilities is to listen to each other, and it’s one of the first things we pay attention to when meeting someone for the first time. Weinberger relates that people make assumptions  about others as soon as they speak. Once someone says hello, the listener can tell the person isn’t a local based on their unique way of pronouncing certain words in English – or their accent.

 

W Flowers alphabet-6916985_1280

 

einberger says that by collecting the accents of several people around the world, he hopes to, “become more understanding of different kinds of variety of language”. Weinberger is also interested in learning what makes German speakers sound German, and French speakers sound French” and “[h]ow is someone making their vowels . . . their consonants?” Weinberger is measuring his findings and figuring out what makes an accent, but is currently in need of funding to continue his project.


     People who are interested in adding their pronunciations to the archive, can do so by going to https://accent.gmu.edu/, and after answering a few questions on their background, will be asked to recite the phrase:

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

 

W Flowers alphabet-6916985_1280

 

einberger states this paragraph “has virtually all the sounds of standard American English. Not all of them, but virtually all of them”. Another great feature the archive does is that it gives the phonetic transcription of the person’s speech in which they can gauge how they are pronouncing each word. Weinberger says anyone can apply and submit their speech, however, they only take “really good quality samples”.

_____________________

Works Cited

Geleynse, Joyce. “alphabet-6916985_1280.” Pixabay, 22 Jan. 2022. https://pixabay.com/illustrations/alphabet-letters-decorated-letters-6916985/. Accessed 5 Sept. 2023.


Marcelo Russo de Oliveira - Coffee Tips Welcome. “pop-7112848_1280.” Pixabay, 04 Apr. 2022. https://pixabay.com/vectors/pop-heart-lips-background-7112848/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.


Teixeira, Maria Inês. "What’s in an Accent?: An Interview with Steven Weinberger." Unravel Magazine, 5 Oct. 2019, unravellingmag.com/articles/whats-in-an-accent/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Journal Entry 10: Discovery Journal Assignment Reflective Note

  Thank you so much for visiting Julie’s Journal! Here is my video - Discovery Journal Assignment Reflective Note. I've learned so much through this assignment - check out my video for all the details !
Post a Comment
Read more

Journal Entry 2: Why Do Languages Have Gender? by Lexicon Valley Podcast

Fig. 1. Still from Lexicon Valley.       I am a new listener of Lexicon Valley Podcast, and I ran across an episode with a subject that seemed very interesting and answered a question I hadn’t previously thought to ask. Why do languages have gender, and more importantly, why doesn’t the English language have that?                  Having an advantage of being bilingual in Spanish, I was instantly struck with this question and realized it had never occurred to me that English doesn’t follow the same pattern of adding gender to nouns. First, Some Rules:   Lexicon Valley Podcast’s host, John McWhorter, tackles this question expertly. In some languages, gender is divided between masculine and feminine, and some gender rules in some languages makes sense.           McWhorter continues and states that the gendered feminine and mascul...
Post a Comment
Read more

Journal Entry 9–The History of English Podcast–Bonus Episode 2: History of the Alphabet

Fig. 1. Still from The History of English Podcast Website.     This podcast episode from The History of English, hosted by Kevin Stroud, deals with looking at the core group of letters which have stayed constant since the Phoenician alphabet. Stroud explains that their shapes might have changed, but the sounds they make and their position in the alphabet shows the consistency of these letters for over 3000 years.      Stroud also points out that the original alphabet only had consonants, so all of these letters were also consonants – which he calls Constant Consonants. He reminds us that the vowels present in our modern English language were added later by the Greeks. The Constant Consonants are:  B, D, L, M, N, P, R,  and T.      Stroud further states these letters are still found in the same order as the original Phoenician alphabet, and besides  their individual shapes and their modern English names...
Post a Comment
Read more