Hi!
This is the last post for our class, so there are a few things I'd like to comment on before saying good-bye:
* My final project’s conclusion, which some of you are going to learn in detail during our last class, is essentially that, in order for one to identify the different accents in a given country, not only language proficiency but also living experience in the country is necessary. Having recently moved to the United States, I can attest to it based on my own experience. One example has to do with my roommate Nathan is from Mississipi. My other roommate, Ram, has been talking about his accent since our first week at Stanford. But at first, I couldn’t really notice it and that bothered me (now I know that actually his accent is not really strong). During Thanksgiving break, though, I had the opportunity to talk to his mother on the phone a few times. She has a strong southern accent which now, after almost 3 months in the US, I was able to notice!
During this past week, I received some wonderful news: my twin brother is coming to the US next January, he's going to spend a month studying at the University of Tennessee. I'm sure he's going to be better than I am at identifying southern accents after that month.
* I also learned some Californian (or maybe only Stanfordian) words during this first quarter. One of them is “sketchy”. It was pretty easy to learn this word, people here say it all the time! Another one is “hella”, used as an adverb of intensity (synonymous with “very”). But just like Adelaide, I still don't use it. I don’t have exams anymore, I just have midterms (we have final exams, though). That’s a pretty new word for me. And what I would earlier call ice cream, now I can call frozen yogurt (or just fro-yo)! I also noticed that, whenever people want to express their appraisal for something, they say that this thing is "the best ever", which is sort of funny for me, because I would never use the literal translation for this expression in Portuguese (and, believe you or not, I mentioned that during my last IHUM paper).
I think it is very important for me to acquire this everyday vocabulary because I feel I have a good grasp on formal English, but sometimes I don’t know how to say things informally. Sometimes, when I ask my roommate whether a given sentence construction is appropriate, he says: “people are going to understand it, but it seems you’re giving a lecture”. I still have a lot to improve; sometimes I can’t measure properly the level of informality I’m using in my speech. But I’m happy to notice that it is getting better overtime. Actually, I feel more confident in relation to my English skills now, as opposed to when I arrived here. But I can do it better, I want to speak perfect English!
* My last thought is a THANK YOU to Meghan for teaching my first IntroSem at Stanford. Stanford is all about pushing the limits of knowledge and now I certainly know more about Accents, Phonetics and Linguistics than I knew 10 weeks ago. And thank you to my readers too!
Now it's time to say Good-bye, and I want to do it the Brazilian way: TCHAU!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Still Sounds
“It was Sunday and I was at home back in Brazil. The phone rang so my father picked it up. Immediately afterwards, he turned the phone to me, a little bit surprised. ‘Somebody’s speaking English’, he said. It was a professor from Virginia Richmond University who was visiting Curitiba with some students. He called to tell me he had just arrived – I would help his team during the city tour. (the very first time I worked as an interpreter!) It feels awesome to be able to speak two languages and then make connections between them, but I have to admit that I was scared of speaking English on a phone. That was the first time I had to do it. I was scared because, on the phone, there are no visual clues. It’s all about sounds. And sound-related skills were kind of troublesome for me. But, in the end, all went well.”
“Six months later, I’m standing at the office of Mr. Andrew Dimock, Branner’s academic director. We were working on a petition for me to change my assigned PWR quarter. I had a very good idea of how to justify my request, i.e., I knew what I would write. All I would have to do was to submit my petition online and wait for a response. But the PWR website was facing some technical problems. Mr. Dimock decided to call the PWR Office to learn how to proceed. The woman from the PWR office said she could deal with my request through phone and then asked to talk to me. Again, I’d have to speak English on the phone, and it still scares me to some extent. I hate it when I have to ask somebody to repeat a sentence because I didn’t understand it. If I had the sentence written, I’d be probably able to understand it. In other words, it’s a matter of being able to comprehend sounds rather than words. Anyway, I faced the challenge and talked to her. After three minutes, my assigned PWR quarter was changed (and I even received a compliment due to my good English. ‘You speak English very well, I can tell only by talking to you on the phone’, she said).”
What's the most important feature in language comprehension? Sounds, syntax or vocabulary? This was the question that opened our journey through the world of Linguistics here in this blog. Before drowning deep in the study of Linguistics, my answer was Sounds. Guess what? After almost two months, my answer is still SOUNDS!
After two months taking classes in English and surrounded by English speakers, now I feel much more comfortable with my listening skills. As I learned during our classes, the reason is that I got more accustomed to the environment where now I live, and to the (English) speakers that now I live with. That is to say that now I am used to the sounds they produce. It is natural that after some time I can understand them better. Accents do not bother me too much now, I can even notice then! I could also watch the electoral coverage on TV and understand clearly what was being said. The end of the Autumn Quarter is coming and now I understand almost everything that my professors say in class. The opportunity of living here broadened my capacity of adaptation to a variety of English speakers.
Before coming to Stanford, I had been studying English for almost nine years. I had a pretty good knowledge of the syntax and of the vocabulary of the English Language. However, my listening and speaking skills – the ones related to sounds – were only reasonable (in my personal evaluation). When I arrived here, it bothered me not to be able to understand everything people around me were saying. I didn’t like it either when people could not understand what I was trying to say. For example: last week, I went to FroSoCo to talk to a friend of mine, whose name is Caroline. As I didn’t know the number of her room, I had to ask for help. But nobody there knew the number of her room! The reason, I learned quickly, was that I was mispronouncing her name. I was pronouncing the third vowel as /i/ instead of /ai/. I knew her name (the vocabulary); the problem was lying on the sound. Eventually, I was able to find her – I could communicate well and solve the problem! I am realy happy to notice a fair amount of improvement in my “sound skills”, so to speak, during the last months – now I can even speak comfortably on the phone (so feel free to call me whenever you need)!
Best,
Nikolas
“Six months later, I’m standing at the office of Mr. Andrew Dimock, Branner’s academic director. We were working on a petition for me to change my assigned PWR quarter. I had a very good idea of how to justify my request, i.e., I knew what I would write. All I would have to do was to submit my petition online and wait for a response. But the PWR website was facing some technical problems. Mr. Dimock decided to call the PWR Office to learn how to proceed. The woman from the PWR office said she could deal with my request through phone and then asked to talk to me. Again, I’d have to speak English on the phone, and it still scares me to some extent. I hate it when I have to ask somebody to repeat a sentence because I didn’t understand it. If I had the sentence written, I’d be probably able to understand it. In other words, it’s a matter of being able to comprehend sounds rather than words. Anyway, I faced the challenge and talked to her. After three minutes, my assigned PWR quarter was changed (and I even received a compliment due to my good English. ‘You speak English very well, I can tell only by talking to you on the phone’, she said).”
What's the most important feature in language comprehension? Sounds, syntax or vocabulary? This was the question that opened our journey through the world of Linguistics here in this blog. Before drowning deep in the study of Linguistics, my answer was Sounds. Guess what? After almost two months, my answer is still SOUNDS!
After two months taking classes in English and surrounded by English speakers, now I feel much more comfortable with my listening skills. As I learned during our classes, the reason is that I got more accustomed to the environment where now I live, and to the (English) speakers that now I live with. That is to say that now I am used to the sounds they produce. It is natural that after some time I can understand them better. Accents do not bother me too much now, I can even notice then! I could also watch the electoral coverage on TV and understand clearly what was being said. The end of the Autumn Quarter is coming and now I understand almost everything that my professors say in class. The opportunity of living here broadened my capacity of adaptation to a variety of English speakers.
Before coming to Stanford, I had been studying English for almost nine years. I had a pretty good knowledge of the syntax and of the vocabulary of the English Language. However, my listening and speaking skills – the ones related to sounds – were only reasonable (in my personal evaluation). When I arrived here, it bothered me not to be able to understand everything people around me were saying. I didn’t like it either when people could not understand what I was trying to say. For example: last week, I went to FroSoCo to talk to a friend of mine, whose name is Caroline. As I didn’t know the number of her room, I had to ask for help. But nobody there knew the number of her room! The reason, I learned quickly, was that I was mispronouncing her name. I was pronouncing the third vowel as /i/ instead of /ai/. I knew her name (the vocabulary); the problem was lying on the sound. Eventually, I was able to find her – I could communicate well and solve the problem! I am realy happy to notice a fair amount of improvement in my “sound skills”, so to speak, during the last months – now I can even speak comfortably on the phone (so feel free to call me whenever you need)!
Best,
Nikolas
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Make a comment!
If you are reading this, leave me a message! You are welcome to comment on any of the previous (and future) posts of this blog.
Best,
Nikolas
Best,
Nikolas
Friday, November 7, 2008
Lexical differences across dialects!
Hi, again!
This week once again we have a very nice topic, which is lexical differences across dialects, and in order to discuss it I’d like to share with you some more (cool) information about the amazing country where I come from. As you all may know, Portuguese is a romance language derived from Latin that is currently the sixth most spoken language in the world. It originally comes from Portugal, but nowadays more than 80% of all Portuguese-speakers are Brazilian, which makes the Brazilian dialect the predominant one in the language (and I was very happy to see, when I arrived here, that Stanford acknowledges it by teaching the Brazilian dialect to students who want to learn our beautiful and sweet language. By the way, Prof. Lyris Wiedemann, director of the Portuguese Language program at Stanford, told me that the majority of students who want to learn Portuguese are interested in Brazilian issues).
In terms of comparison, we can say that the difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese is basically similar to the one between British and American English. It means that speakers of one dialect can understand speakers of the words (which is what characterizes a dialect, if I’m not mistaken), but they have some lexical differences. Even within the Brazilian variety of the language, though, it is possible to find different dialects.
Curitiba, the city where I was born and raised, has some very typical and unique words in its lexicon. One of them, for example, is “piá”. This word, that stands for “boy”, “guy” or something alike, is used essentially in my city. And it is used a lot. I often use it as a vocative to call my friends in Curitiba, for example. But a friend of mine from Minas Gerais (which is a Brazilian state of the Southeast region) had never heard this word before I tried to call his attention by using this word as a vocative, so he did not answer to me when I used it to call him. Later he told me that he didn’t think I was talking to him, which is interesting because I remember that it took me some time to realize that the problem was that he didn’t know the word.
Another curious feature of the Curitiba’s dialect is the common use of the word “daí” (that could be translated as “then”) in the end of the sentence, as an expletive word. I find it really interesting that we Curitibanos do have this trend in our dialect but I had never noticed it until it was pointed out through a character in a Brazilian TV show. This character is a maid called Bozena (she has Polish ancestry, just like me!) that comes from my state but works in Rio de Janeiro, in a middle-class family. As it is a humor TV show, she exaggerates the trend by saying “daí” in the end of almost every sentence she pronounces. We don’t do that, but we do use this word in the end of sentence, as a way to convey an idea of consequence. Again, when I went to Rio de Janeiro and started talking, people was impressed because in fact I do use this word (it was not just a delirium of the writers). In case you got curious and want to see this very funny character, here it is a youtube link (it’s in Portuguese, but if you don’t speak it anyway you can still try to hear this word in the end of her sentences. I guess that the IPA pronunciation for the word would be /dai/): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxIaY7Y3di0
Best,
Nikolas
This week once again we have a very nice topic, which is lexical differences across dialects, and in order to discuss it I’d like to share with you some more (cool) information about the amazing country where I come from. As you all may know, Portuguese is a romance language derived from Latin that is currently the sixth most spoken language in the world. It originally comes from Portugal, but nowadays more than 80% of all Portuguese-speakers are Brazilian, which makes the Brazilian dialect the predominant one in the language (and I was very happy to see, when I arrived here, that Stanford acknowledges it by teaching the Brazilian dialect to students who want to learn our beautiful and sweet language. By the way, Prof. Lyris Wiedemann, director of the Portuguese Language program at Stanford, told me that the majority of students who want to learn Portuguese are interested in Brazilian issues).
In terms of comparison, we can say that the difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese is basically similar to the one between British and American English. It means that speakers of one dialect can understand speakers of the words (which is what characterizes a dialect, if I’m not mistaken), but they have some lexical differences. Even within the Brazilian variety of the language, though, it is possible to find different dialects.
Curitiba, the city where I was born and raised, has some very typical and unique words in its lexicon. One of them, for example, is “piá”. This word, that stands for “boy”, “guy” or something alike, is used essentially in my city. And it is used a lot. I often use it as a vocative to call my friends in Curitiba, for example. But a friend of mine from Minas Gerais (which is a Brazilian state of the Southeast region) had never heard this word before I tried to call his attention by using this word as a vocative, so he did not answer to me when I used it to call him. Later he told me that he didn’t think I was talking to him, which is interesting because I remember that it took me some time to realize that the problem was that he didn’t know the word.
Another curious feature of the Curitiba’s dialect is the common use of the word “daí” (that could be translated as “then”) in the end of the sentence, as an expletive word. I find it really interesting that we Curitibanos do have this trend in our dialect but I had never noticed it until it was pointed out through a character in a Brazilian TV show. This character is a maid called Bozena (she has Polish ancestry, just like me!) that comes from my state but works in Rio de Janeiro, in a middle-class family. As it is a humor TV show, she exaggerates the trend by saying “daí” in the end of almost every sentence she pronounces. We don’t do that, but we do use this word in the end of sentence, as a way to convey an idea of consequence. Again, when I went to Rio de Janeiro and started talking, people was impressed because in fact I do use this word (it was not just a delirium of the writers). In case you got curious and want to see this very funny character, here it is a youtube link (it’s in Portuguese, but if you don’t speak it anyway you can still try to hear this word in the end of her sentences. I guess that the IPA pronunciation for the word would be /dai/): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxIaY7Y3di0
Best,
Nikolas
Dialect perception
Dear friends,
Hi! The theme of this week is to talk about potential experiments examining the perception of regional dialects, which is really nice, since my final project happens to be focused on perception issues.
Just to let you guys more aware of what I’m intending to do, here it is a basic description of my project (the first paragraph of my final project proposal):
“The purpose of my project is to investigate whether proficiency in a given language is essential for one to identify the different accents in this language. As we can notice by analyzing sound waves through Praat Software, speakers with different accents produce sound waves with different features that are related to such accents. My question is: are such differences so noticeable that these distinct sound waves are perceived as distinct sounds regardless of the listener or, instead, such differences are not so evident and as such rely on the knowledge of the language to be noticed?”
I can already tell some interesting facts related to dialect perception (and maybe to accent discrimination too) that happened during the first steps of my project. In order to answer the question that I proposed in my final project, I recorded five English female speakers reading a sentence for me. What was interesting is that, after I asked the girls to record a sentence for my Linguistics project, they replied with “But I don’t have an accent, is that OK?” or something alike. And it happened more than once! My guess is that, as we discussed in class, college students are generally worried about being discriminated for their origin. Not surprising, these two girls who claimed not to have a strong accent are not Californians. Still not surprising, some Californians told me that they do have an accent (and they actually went further, saying that they have a funny accent. Maybe this is why they say they don’t have an accent – they want to avoid this kind of assertion).
I found the results of the journal article we had to read this week interesting especially because they are applicable to the Brazilian accent-related reality. Look at the following Brazilian map that highlights the five different geographical regions of the country:
Source: http://www.bbportuguese.com/library/Map-brazil-state.bmp.
Notice the South of Brazil (the yellow region). I live in the state of Paraná (according to Wikipedia, pronounced [paɾaˈna]). For me, it is pretty clear that each state in the south of Brazil (Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul) has a different accent. The difference is evident for me. People from the Northeast (blue region) or even the Southeast (red region), though, do not see this difference so clearly. When I went to Rio de Janeiro, I was asked a couple of times if I am “gaúcho”, i.e., born in Rio Grande do Sul. A friend of mine from the state of Santa Catarina had a similar experience. On the other hand, I cannot say that I am able to identify the difference between the accents of Ceará and Bahia (which are two states of the Northeast region). As the research concludes, we tend to confuse accents that are not close to our reality.
Taking a step further, maybe this is why I am not entirely capable of identifying all the accents in English (even though some of them I do distinguish). Does it mean that my final project will lead me to conclude that people usually do not identify accents of a foreign language? Let’s wait for the results.
Hi! The theme of this week is to talk about potential experiments examining the perception of regional dialects, which is really nice, since my final project happens to be focused on perception issues.
Just to let you guys more aware of what I’m intending to do, here it is a basic description of my project (the first paragraph of my final project proposal):
“The purpose of my project is to investigate whether proficiency in a given language is essential for one to identify the different accents in this language. As we can notice by analyzing sound waves through Praat Software, speakers with different accents produce sound waves with different features that are related to such accents. My question is: are such differences so noticeable that these distinct sound waves are perceived as distinct sounds regardless of the listener or, instead, such differences are not so evident and as such rely on the knowledge of the language to be noticed?”
I can already tell some interesting facts related to dialect perception (and maybe to accent discrimination too) that happened during the first steps of my project. In order to answer the question that I proposed in my final project, I recorded five English female speakers reading a sentence for me. What was interesting is that, after I asked the girls to record a sentence for my Linguistics project, they replied with “But I don’t have an accent, is that OK?” or something alike. And it happened more than once! My guess is that, as we discussed in class, college students are generally worried about being discriminated for their origin. Not surprising, these two girls who claimed not to have a strong accent are not Californians. Still not surprising, some Californians told me that they do have an accent (and they actually went further, saying that they have a funny accent. Maybe this is why they say they don’t have an accent – they want to avoid this kind of assertion).
I found the results of the journal article we had to read this week interesting especially because they are applicable to the Brazilian accent-related reality. Look at the following Brazilian map that highlights the five different geographical regions of the country:
Source: http://www.bbportuguese.com/library/Map-brazil-state.bmp.
Notice the South of Brazil (the yellow region). I live in the state of Paraná (according to Wikipedia, pronounced [paɾaˈna]). For me, it is pretty clear that each state in the south of Brazil (Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul) has a different accent. The difference is evident for me. People from the Northeast (blue region) or even the Southeast (red region), though, do not see this difference so clearly. When I went to Rio de Janeiro, I was asked a couple of times if I am “gaúcho”, i.e., born in Rio Grande do Sul. A friend of mine from the state of Santa Catarina had a similar experience. On the other hand, I cannot say that I am able to identify the difference between the accents of Ceará and Bahia (which are two states of the Northeast region). As the research concludes, we tend to confuse accents that are not close to our reality.
Taking a step further, maybe this is why I am not entirely capable of identifying all the accents in English (even though some of them I do distinguish). Does it mean that my final project will lead me to conclude that people usually do not identify accents of a foreign language? Let’s wait for the results.
Acoustic Phonetics
Dear All,
Welcome to the world of acoustic phonetics. After having read some material about the theme, today I’m going to describe the results of a specific phonetics exercise that we were asked to do. This exercise consists on measuring F1 and F2 values for eight American English vowels after recording them in Praat.
Before talking about the results, I’ll try to summarize in a few words for those of you who are not accustomed with phonetics terminology what F1 and F2 are, based on the reading material. F1 stands for First Formant and F2 stands for Second Formant. Formants are characteristic pitches inherent to vowels that make them distinguishable to each other (there’s actually more than only two formants, but F1 and F2 are the ones phoneticians most commonly look at). In other words, by measuring this first there is how to analyze differences in wowels’ pronunciation, that is, accent-related differences.
In the following chart, the words I had to record, their representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and the values for the formants I found for my recordings through Praat are displayed (click on the image if it is too small):
First, I have to say that I found it somewhat complicated to measure Formant values in Praat. The software has a feature that gets F1 and F2 values automatically, but the problem is that the value changes significantly depending on where you click in the wavesound picture. Maybe it’s just me who don’t know exactly where to look for the values, but I’m not sure if my measures are entirely reliable. When I plugged in the values on the graph we were given, the points are not in remarkably different positions than the ones presented in the example graph on page 198.
The most interesting conclusion, for me, is that the points for “heed” and “hid” are very close. I think the reason is that I don’t see a significant difference in the pronunciation of these two words, maybe because the vowel “ɪ” is not common in Portuguese, as opposed to “i" (by the way, the letter “i" in Portuguese in pronounced like /i/).
Best,
Nikolas
Welcome to the world of acoustic phonetics. After having read some material about the theme, today I’m going to describe the results of a specific phonetics exercise that we were asked to do. This exercise consists on measuring F1 and F2 values for eight American English vowels after recording them in Praat.
Before talking about the results, I’ll try to summarize in a few words for those of you who are not accustomed with phonetics terminology what F1 and F2 are, based on the reading material. F1 stands for First Formant and F2 stands for Second Formant. Formants are characteristic pitches inherent to vowels that make them distinguishable to each other (there’s actually more than only two formants, but F1 and F2 are the ones phoneticians most commonly look at). In other words, by measuring this first there is how to analyze differences in wowels’ pronunciation, that is, accent-related differences.
In the following chart, the words I had to record, their representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and the values for the formants I found for my recordings through Praat are displayed (click on the image if it is too small):
First, I have to say that I found it somewhat complicated to measure Formant values in Praat. The software has a feature that gets F1 and F2 values automatically, but the problem is that the value changes significantly depending on where you click in the wavesound picture. Maybe it’s just me who don’t know exactly where to look for the values, but I’m not sure if my measures are entirely reliable. When I plugged in the values on the graph we were given, the points are not in remarkably different positions than the ones presented in the example graph on page 198.
The most interesting conclusion, for me, is that the points for “heed” and “hid” are very close. I think the reason is that I don’t see a significant difference in the pronunciation of these two words, maybe because the vowel “ɪ” is not common in Portuguese, as opposed to “i" (by the way, the letter “i" in Portuguese in pronounced like /i/).
Best,
Nikolas
Accent discrimination
Friends of our blog,
Hi again! This week our focus will be in accent discrimination. Professor Sumner asked us to take a quiz at http://www.uiowa.edu/~c103112/profile.html and then to try to guess the speaker’s race/ethnicity based solely on a recording of their pronunciation of a given sentence. In other words, we have to guess their origin based on their accents.
I found this quiz particularly interesting because the experiment I’m thinking of for my final project relies on the same methodology (which is to have a listener answering questions about the speakers based solely on recordings of their accents. The purpose is a little bit different: to evaluate whether one who doesn’t speak a certain language is able to distinguish accents of this language). And I actually did pretty well in the quiz: out of 10 speakers, I guessed the origin of 7 of them correctly:
From the chart, it is noticeable that I had trouble with identifying the origin of Hispanic speakers. I’d say that this is mainly due to my expectation that Hispanic speakers would have a strong accent, and the ones in the quiz didn’t have it at all (at least, not strong for me). I know some Hispanic speakers whose accent is very typical, in the sense that it keeps most of the sounds of the Spanish language. On the other hand, I did pretty well at identifying Middle Eastern speakers, and I think that the reason for that is the fact that these speakers do have a strong typical accent. This is quite interesting because it reminds me that, when I was taking an English class back in Brazil earlier this year, we listened to a Middle Eastern speaker in an listening exercise and in fact it was not easy to understand what he was saying due to his accent. Specifically, I remember that his pronunciation of the words “replenishment” and “soul” was very curious. I’ve just noticed the very same thing with speakers 7 and 10 (to be quite honest, I cannot see a remarkable difference between the Indian and the Middle Eastern accent, but somehow I was able to guess each one correctly).
Best,
Nikolas
Hi again! This week our focus will be in accent discrimination. Professor Sumner asked us to take a quiz at http://www.uiowa.edu/~c103112/profile.html and then to try to guess the speaker’s race/ethnicity based solely on a recording of their pronunciation of a given sentence. In other words, we have to guess their origin based on their accents.
I found this quiz particularly interesting because the experiment I’m thinking of for my final project relies on the same methodology (which is to have a listener answering questions about the speakers based solely on recordings of their accents. The purpose is a little bit different: to evaluate whether one who doesn’t speak a certain language is able to distinguish accents of this language). And I actually did pretty well in the quiz: out of 10 speakers, I guessed the origin of 7 of them correctly:
From the chart, it is noticeable that I had trouble with identifying the origin of Hispanic speakers. I’d say that this is mainly due to my expectation that Hispanic speakers would have a strong accent, and the ones in the quiz didn’t have it at all (at least, not strong for me). I know some Hispanic speakers whose accent is very typical, in the sense that it keeps most of the sounds of the Spanish language. On the other hand, I did pretty well at identifying Middle Eastern speakers, and I think that the reason for that is the fact that these speakers do have a strong typical accent. This is quite interesting because it reminds me that, when I was taking an English class back in Brazil earlier this year, we listened to a Middle Eastern speaker in an listening exercise and in fact it was not easy to understand what he was saying due to his accent. Specifically, I remember that his pronunciation of the words “replenishment” and “soul” was very curious. I’ve just noticed the very same thing with speakers 7 and 10 (to be quite honest, I cannot see a remarkable difference between the Indian and the Middle Eastern accent, but somehow I was able to guess each one correctly).Best,
Nikolas
We are back!!!
Dear readers,
"Brazilian accent at Stanford" is back. I had a hard time with the blog server during the past weeks. Due to some unknown reason, my blog was (unfairly) identified as a spam blog (automatically generated by spam programs). As a result, I was not allowed to create new post until they verify that our blog is not a spam blog at all, which took a while (more than I expected). But now everything is finally just fine, so now I can post all the texts I should have been able to post during the last weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it was definitely not my fault.
Best,
Nikolas
"Brazilian accent at Stanford" is back. I had a hard time with the blog server during the past weeks. Due to some unknown reason, my blog was (unfairly) identified as a spam blog (automatically generated by spam programs). As a result, I was not allowed to create new post until they verify that our blog is not a spam blog at all, which took a while (more than I expected). But now everything is finally just fine, so now I can post all the texts I should have been able to post during the last weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it was definitely not my fault.
Best,
Nikolas
Monday, October 13, 2008
Spectograms
Hi!
Sorry about the delay, I know that it's been a while since the last time I posted here, but I had some issues with Blogger, our blog server. Luckily, things are working well now so let's get back to Brazilian accent!
Good news: meanwhile, we have started working with Praat on class. Praat is a software through which it is possible to analyze physical qualities of our voice (since sound is a mechanical wave!). It's a very interesting tool. Even though I (still) can't handle it very well, I really like the program. The idea of using a software and analyzing accent-related differences through physics concepts is very clever.
To warm up, we were asked to record ourselves saying "The butter spilled on the cot" naturally, and then trying to imitate a different accent. As I could not really do a good imitation, I decided to ask one of my roommates, Nathan, and one dormmate, Evelyn, to say the same sentence so that I recorded not only myself but also both of them. For each record, Praat provided the following spectrograms:
My own record (As you all know, I'm from Brazil!)
By comparing the spectograms, I have the impression that my spectogram is more similar to Evelyn's one than to Nathan's one, probably because, to an American, I probably sound more like a midlander than like a southern English speaker. (It's interesting that this is the same conclusion of the quiz, as described in my first post).
For instance, it's possible to see that dark areas vary from each spectogram. If we notice that the spectograms are divided into "columns" (the gaps, I believe, represents the pauses between sounds) , we can conclude that, in what we'll call the "third column", Nathan's sound has a different feature. The "higher" area of this "column" is not so dark as in the other two spectograms. As there's a relation between darkness and energy, intensity, I'd say that he spends less energy when pronouncing the end of the word "butter", when compared to the energy that Evelyn and I spend.
For now, I'm not so comfortable to Praat as to come to better conclusions about these sounds, but hopefully this comfort is coming soon. This software is certainly an amazing tool for studying sounds' characteristics.
Best,
Nikolas
Sorry about the delay, I know that it's been a while since the last time I posted here, but I had some issues with Blogger, our blog server. Luckily, things are working well now so let's get back to Brazilian accent!
Good news: meanwhile, we have started working with Praat on class. Praat is a software through which it is possible to analyze physical qualities of our voice (since sound is a mechanical wave!). It's a very interesting tool. Even though I (still) can't handle it very well, I really like the program. The idea of using a software and analyzing accent-related differences through physics concepts is very clever.
To warm up, we were asked to record ourselves saying "The butter spilled on the cot" naturally, and then trying to imitate a different accent. As I could not really do a good imitation, I decided to ask one of my roommates, Nathan, and one dormmate, Evelyn, to say the same sentence so that I recorded not only myself but also both of them. For each record, Praat provided the following spectrograms:
Evelyn's record (Evelyn is from Washington, DC)
Nathan's record (Nathan is from Mississipi)
My own record (As you all know, I'm from Brazil!)
By comparing the spectograms, I have the impression that my spectogram is more similar to Evelyn's one than to Nathan's one, probably because, to an American, I probably sound more like a midlander than like a southern English speaker. (It's interesting that this is the same conclusion of the quiz, as described in my first post).For instance, it's possible to see that dark areas vary from each spectogram. If we notice that the spectograms are divided into "columns" (the gaps, I believe, represents the pauses between sounds) , we can conclude that, in what we'll call the "third column", Nathan's sound has a different feature. The "higher" area of this "column" is not so dark as in the other two spectograms. As there's a relation between darkness and energy, intensity, I'd say that he spends less energy when pronouncing the end of the word "butter", when compared to the energy that Evelyn and I spend.
For now, I'm not so comfortable to Praat as to come to better conclusions about these sounds, but hopefully this comfort is coming soon. This software is certainly an amazing tool for studying sounds' characteristics.
Best,
Nikolas
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Articles
The 4 articles from the website of American Dialect Links that I read are:
"Canadian" raising in the Northern Midwest (http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/~nagy/nwav/WWWabs/Dailey.html)
Chicago Vocabulary (http://members.aol.com/mistamoose/vocab.html)
Alaskan slang words (http://www.decorphoto.com/ak-slang.htm)
Learn How to Talk Like a Trinidadian (http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html)
The problem was that many links in the website are disconnected, so I wasn't able to read some articles that seem to be interesting (such as "How to Talk Like a California Dude" and "CANADA - Speaking Canadian"). Among the ones that I read, "Alaskan slang words" was my favorite. It's really curious how Alaskans refer to other American states as "Lower 48" , how they call a cold night a "three-dog night" (because two dogs are not enough to warm you up enough!) and how they describe the only two season they have throughout the year (winter and road construction season). In a well-humored way, the authors describe some traditions and curiosities about the state of Alaska and make their reader learn a little more about their state's particularities. I think that "Chicago Vocabulary", an article with the same purpose of describing a place through local slang, is not so efficient in its purpose, mainly because the text is too long and there are many references that only local citizens can understand (such as Resurrection Mary, "A legendary ghost that has been known to hitch rides with men, get out of the car, and run into the cemetery" or Reversibles, "Express lanes on the Kennedy, which reverse direction depending upon the time of day"). To be honest, I did not understand the point of "'Canadian' raising in the Northern Midwest" simply because I'm not sure of what a "raising" is. Finally, "Learn how to talk like a Trinidadian" is interesting because it describes the diversity of languages that took part in building the Trinidadian dialect. I found it particularly interesting that, in Trinidad and Tobago, "college" stands for secondary school. That's because in Brazil a similar word, "colégio", is also used to refer generally to second school. Due to this similarity, some Brazilian students who are beginning to learn English sometimes misinterpret "college" as "colégio" when "universidade" would be the best translation. Nevertheless, the article that I liked most is "Alaskan slang words".
"Canadian" raising in the Northern Midwest (http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/~nagy/nwav/WWWabs/Dailey.html)
Chicago Vocabulary (http://members.aol.com/mistamoose/vocab.html)
Alaskan slang words (http://www.decorphoto.com/ak-slang.htm)
Learn How to Talk Like a Trinidadian (http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html)
The problem was that many links in the website are disconnected, so I wasn't able to read some articles that seem to be interesting (such as "How to Talk Like a California Dude" and "CANADA - Speaking Canadian"). Among the ones that I read, "Alaskan slang words" was my favorite. It's really curious how Alaskans refer to other American states as "Lower 48" , how they call a cold night a "three-dog night" (because two dogs are not enough to warm you up enough!) and how they describe the only two season they have throughout the year (winter and road construction season). In a well-humored way, the authors describe some traditions and curiosities about the state of Alaska and make their reader learn a little more about their state's particularities. I think that "Chicago Vocabulary", an article with the same purpose of describing a place through local slang, is not so efficient in its purpose, mainly because the text is too long and there are many references that only local citizens can understand (such as Resurrection Mary, "A legendary ghost that has been known to hitch rides with men, get out of the car, and run into the cemetery" or Reversibles, "Express lanes on the Kennedy, which reverse direction depending upon the time of day"). To be honest, I did not understand the point of "'Canadian' raising in the Northern Midwest" simply because I'm not sure of what a "raising" is. Finally, "Learn how to talk like a Trinidadian" is interesting because it describes the diversity of languages that took part in building the Trinidadian dialect. I found it particularly interesting that, in Trinidad and Tobago, "college" stands for secondary school. That's because in Brazil a similar word, "colégio", is also used to refer generally to second school. Due to this similarity, some Brazilian students who are beginning to learn English sometimes misinterpret "college" as "colégio" when "universidade" would be the best translation. Nevertheless, the article that I liked most is "Alaskan slang words".
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Sounds
What's the most important feature in language comprehension? Sounds, syntax or vocabulary?
The answer certainly depends on the communication skill we focus on. If we think about reading, for example, sounds are not relevant at all, but they are the most important feature of spoken language. Likewise, syntax is definitely a key point when it comes to writing. Which one is the most important, then?
From my experience so far as an international student who's living abroad for the first time ever, my answer is SOUNDS. As I stated before, syntax and vocabulary are indeed relevant, but they don't really help when it's hard to understand one's pronunciation. I've had some trouble trying to understand people this week, and (unfortunately) not only once. Sometimes when I'm in a group (in the dining hall or even in the hallway) people talk so fast that I can't understand what they're saying. It's an extremely uncomfortable situation, primarily because I don't feel comfortable with adding comments when I don't understand exactly what's being said. As a result, I may remain quiet and people may think I'm shy or I'm not getting along well with people (or worse, that I'm not even trying) when the reality is that I do try but the sounds that come out of their mouths are sometimes incomprehensible for me. But why are these sounds incomprehensible for me if I've studied English for 8 years before coming to Stanford?
I think that the main reason is that people here speak English for English listeners, and that makes all the difference. In an English course, tapes are recorded in a slow-paced way so that students can understand what's being said even though they're not so proficient in the language. It helps then to have confidence in themselves by feeling that they're actually improving. Obviously, as the course goes on the difficulty of the listening exercises increases but still. Students remain quiet and entirely focused on the speaker in classroom; there's no extra sound bothering them. Everyday life is not that easy. Try to speak to your roommate while you both are biking to a class and everybody else is also speaking. Try to understand what an actor is saying during a play when somebody near you is whispering in somebody else's ears. Try even to understand what somebody whispers to you. It's not easy if the sound is not clear, and if you're not speaking your native language, you're much more likely to face problems with this clearness.
Obviously, I'm talking about spoken language. And my focus is in the spoken language because this is the one which I have more problems to deal with. Spoken language is instantaneous and, as such, requires promptness. While I'm here typing this text, I can delete a sentence and rephrase it in a better way. I can stop writing now and continue later. When the reader receives the entire text, he'll probably not realize that such break has occured. However, the same doesn't happen in the spoken language. After something's said, there's no way to "erase" it. And what if a professor asked his students to hold on some minutes because he'd have to think about what to say? Wouldn't everybody be bored? This is the promptness I'm talking about. A writer can take months and even years to write a single book but a speaker generally loses his audience's attention in a few minutes.
One could argue it's worthless to be able to hear properly and clearly if there's no uniqueness in the language, that is, if syntax differs and if the vocabulary varies. That'd be also true but in everyday life these situations are not so common as the sound-related ones. I'm considering a context where everybody is supposed to be able to use the same communication code (which is what happens here at Stanford).
I'm aware that this opinion is probably influenced by the challenges I'm now facing while settling in this new environment that is the USA, that is California, that is Stanford - which is perfectly fair in my opinion. We're all here to learn from other's experiences but also to share our own ones.
The answer certainly depends on the communication skill we focus on. If we think about reading, for example, sounds are not relevant at all, but they are the most important feature of spoken language. Likewise, syntax is definitely a key point when it comes to writing. Which one is the most important, then?
From my experience so far as an international student who's living abroad for the first time ever, my answer is SOUNDS. As I stated before, syntax and vocabulary are indeed relevant, but they don't really help when it's hard to understand one's pronunciation. I've had some trouble trying to understand people this week, and (unfortunately) not only once. Sometimes when I'm in a group (in the dining hall or even in the hallway) people talk so fast that I can't understand what they're saying. It's an extremely uncomfortable situation, primarily because I don't feel comfortable with adding comments when I don't understand exactly what's being said. As a result, I may remain quiet and people may think I'm shy or I'm not getting along well with people (or worse, that I'm not even trying) when the reality is that I do try but the sounds that come out of their mouths are sometimes incomprehensible for me. But why are these sounds incomprehensible for me if I've studied English for 8 years before coming to Stanford?
I think that the main reason is that people here speak English for English listeners, and that makes all the difference. In an English course, tapes are recorded in a slow-paced way so that students can understand what's being said even though they're not so proficient in the language. It helps then to have confidence in themselves by feeling that they're actually improving. Obviously, as the course goes on the difficulty of the listening exercises increases but still. Students remain quiet and entirely focused on the speaker in classroom; there's no extra sound bothering them. Everyday life is not that easy. Try to speak to your roommate while you both are biking to a class and everybody else is also speaking. Try to understand what an actor is saying during a play when somebody near you is whispering in somebody else's ears. Try even to understand what somebody whispers to you. It's not easy if the sound is not clear, and if you're not speaking your native language, you're much more likely to face problems with this clearness.
Obviously, I'm talking about spoken language. And my focus is in the spoken language because this is the one which I have more problems to deal with. Spoken language is instantaneous and, as such, requires promptness. While I'm here typing this text, I can delete a sentence and rephrase it in a better way. I can stop writing now and continue later. When the reader receives the entire text, he'll probably not realize that such break has occured. However, the same doesn't happen in the spoken language. After something's said, there's no way to "erase" it. And what if a professor asked his students to hold on some minutes because he'd have to think about what to say? Wouldn't everybody be bored? This is the promptness I'm talking about. A writer can take months and even years to write a single book but a speaker generally loses his audience's attention in a few minutes.
One could argue it's worthless to be able to hear properly and clearly if there's no uniqueness in the language, that is, if syntax differs and if the vocabulary varies. That'd be also true but in everyday life these situations are not so common as the sound-related ones. I'm considering a context where everybody is supposed to be able to use the same communication code (which is what happens here at Stanford).
I'm aware that this opinion is probably influenced by the challenges I'm now facing while settling in this new environment that is the USA, that is California, that is Stanford - which is perfectly fair in my opinion. We're all here to learn from other's experiences but also to share our own ones.
Friday, September 26, 2008
No accent at all?
Hi!
Welcome to "Brazilian accent at Stanford"! My name is Nikolas Iubel and I'm from Curitiba, the best city in Brazil! What, have you never heard of Curitiba? So take a look in the following picture and have a taste of the beautiful landscapes my city has to offer:
Botanical Garden in Curitiba. Personal photograph by author. 05 May. 2008.
Now that you have a (brief) idea of where I'm from, let me explain what's the purpose of "Brazilian accent at Stanford". This blog is meant to be a space where I'll share what I'm learning from this very challenging and stimulating Intro Seminar I'm now taking here at Stanford, called "What's your accent?" and conducted by professor Meghan Sumner.
Accents have called my attention since the very beginning of my on-campus Stanford experience. International New Student Orientation was an excellent definition of "diversity of accents". I could here English spoken by native Romanian, Chinese, Tanzanian, Argentinian, Indian, Singaporean, French, German people, and so on. And they could hear my Brazilian accent. By the way, what's this Brazilian accent? I always wondered how my English sounds to Americans. Do they notice I'm from abroad? If so, can they tell I'm from Brazil? In order to figure it out, our professor asked us to fill out a quiz called "What American accent do you have?". My results are as follows:
So it seems I have no accent at all. I'd say that it might be due the way I learned English. I've never lived in the USA before and never studied in an American school as well. In other words, I learned English at school and in English courses. Therefore, I've been mostly in touch with what people call "standard English" or English with no regional accent. I guess this "standard English" that's being taught in English courses (at least in Brazil) matches this description of "Midland accent".
Consequently, I'd probably agree with this result, if it wasn't for what happened to me last Thursday. I went to the bookstore and when I was at the checkout the cashier said: "You have a nice accent. Where are you from?".
Well, isn't the quiz so accurate then? I'd argue that this is one of those situations when theory differs from real life (and probably this quiz is not based in any kind of scientific methodology). Anyway, even though the quiz might not be as precise as we wanted it to be, its results are still valuable, since they are not far from reality. My efforts are to speak this standard English I've been learning for years and in this sense the quiz is indeed accurate. Am I ready to achieve this goal or now that I'm living in California I'll start speaking as Californians? By the way, how is the Californian accent?
What's your opinion, dear reader?
All the best,
Nikolas Iubel
Welcome to "Brazilian accent at Stanford"! My name is Nikolas Iubel and I'm from Curitiba, the best city in Brazil! What, have you never heard of Curitiba? So take a look in the following picture and have a taste of the beautiful landscapes my city has to offer:
Botanical Garden in Curitiba. Personal photograph by author. 05 May. 2008.Now that you have a (brief) idea of where I'm from, let me explain what's the purpose of "Brazilian accent at Stanford". This blog is meant to be a space where I'll share what I'm learning from this very challenging and stimulating Intro Seminar I'm now taking here at Stanford, called "What's your accent?" and conducted by professor Meghan Sumner.
Accents have called my attention since the very beginning of my on-campus Stanford experience. International New Student Orientation was an excellent definition of "diversity of accents". I could here English spoken by native Romanian, Chinese, Tanzanian, Argentinian, Indian, Singaporean, French, German people, and so on. And they could hear my Brazilian accent. By the way, what's this Brazilian accent? I always wondered how my English sounds to Americans. Do they notice I'm from abroad? If so, can they tell I'm from Brazil? In order to figure it out, our professor asked us to fill out a quiz called "What American accent do you have?". My results are as follows:
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| The Northeast | |
| The Inland North | |
| The West | |
| Boston | |
| The South | |
| Philadelphia | |
| North Central | |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
So it seems I have no accent at all. I'd say that it might be due the way I learned English. I've never lived in the USA before and never studied in an American school as well. In other words, I learned English at school and in English courses. Therefore, I've been mostly in touch with what people call "standard English" or English with no regional accent. I guess this "standard English" that's being taught in English courses (at least in Brazil) matches this description of "Midland accent".
Consequently, I'd probably agree with this result, if it wasn't for what happened to me last Thursday. I went to the bookstore and when I was at the checkout the cashier said: "You have a nice accent. Where are you from?".
Well, isn't the quiz so accurate then? I'd argue that this is one of those situations when theory differs from real life (and probably this quiz is not based in any kind of scientific methodology). Anyway, even though the quiz might not be as precise as we wanted it to be, its results are still valuable, since they are not far from reality. My efforts are to speak this standard English I've been learning for years and in this sense the quiz is indeed accurate. Am I ready to achieve this goal or now that I'm living in California I'll start speaking as Californians? By the way, how is the Californian accent?
What's your opinion, dear reader?
All the best,
Nikolas Iubel
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