Chinglish

[Tom Zurinskas]

We can reduce variability by using a standard pronunciation source like m-w.com, a very good one.

I've got praat.  Somebody tell us how to copy the m-w.com voicing and compare waveforms and formant numbers.  But it's obvious to my ear that the vowel sounds for "i" are different in the following,

ching vs chin
wing/wink vs win
king/kink vs kin
think/think vs thin

It's more than an allophone thing.  It's a full phoneme shift.

Here's a thought.  Suppose you take the word "sheep" ~shee.  That's a true long e, right, as pronounced in m-w.com.  And you replace "p" with "ng" to make nonsense word ~sheeng (with a true long e).  Then say to other folks: "Spell this word - ~sheeng."  I predict they would spell it "shing" and say it rhymes with all the other "ing" words, like wing, sing.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.

> Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:59:18 -0500
> From: gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU
> Subject: Re: Chinglish
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Matthew Gordon
> Subject: Re: Chinglish
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> You can't ever take variability out of the equation. Each human vocal tract
> is unique. Your [i] will have different acoustic characteristics from mine
> due simply to the fact that they're played on different instruments. In
> fact, there is intraspeaker variation too; each time you pronounce an [i] it
> will differ acoustically from the last time you pronounced one.
>
>
> On 8/27/08 7:57 PM, "Tom Zurinskas"  wrote:
>
>> I would like to trust the numbers to identify vowels. I've played with Praat
>> (I assume the "aa" is pronuounced "ah" like "Saab" (foespeld ~aa in truespel).
>> I'm not practiced at it but I find it hard to determine vowel identity by
>> numbers or wave forms. If this is possible with practice, it would be a good
>> thing, taking human bias and variability out of the equation.
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>> See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at
>> authorhouse.com.
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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