Peter Ladefoged, Linguist and Movie Consultant (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

  PETER LADEFOGED, LINGUIST AND MOVIE CONSULTANT

  From News Services
Monday, January 30, 2006; B06

 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012900989.html

  Peter Ladefoged, 80, a pioneering linguist who consulted on the 1964 film "My
Fair Lady," in which actor Rex Harrison plays a phonetician, died Jan. 24 at a
hospital in London after a stroke.

  Dr. Ladefoged, who made it his life's work to record and study the various
parts of speech, became ill while traveling home from a research trip to India.

  Dr. Ladefoged pioneered the use of state-of-the-art equipment in the field.
His first portable phonetics lab, which included a tape recorder and various
scientific instruments, weighed 100 pounds and required a porter but enabled
him to do more than listen: He could take quantitative measurements, such as
gauging how much air escaped from the nose or throat when a sound was made.

  In an earlier trip to India, he recorded the Toda language, which is spoken
by fewer than 1,000 people, as he documented its six trills produced by the tip
of the tongue. In the Kalahari Desert, he studied the click sound native to
Africa. In the United States, a Native American tribe whose members knew their
language was vanishing refused to cooperate because they didn't want to reveal
their culture to outsiders.

  Soon after moving to Los Angeles from Scotland to become an assistant
professor at UCLA in 1962, Dr. Ladefoged had a brief career in Hollywood as the
chief linguistic consultant on "My Fair Lady."

  Director George Cukor wanted him to teach Harrison -- who would win an
Academy Award for the starring role of Professor Henry Higgins -- to behave
like a phonetician.

  "My immediate answer was, 'I don't have a singing butler and three maids who
sing, but I will tell you what I can as an assistant professor,' " Dr.
Ladefoged told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

  Dr. Ladefoged helped set up the film set's phonetics laboratory, taught
Harrison to read phonetic symbols -- and ate cookies that the film's co-star,
Audrey Hepburn, baked for crew members.

  "I'd never heard of Cukor. It just struck me as the chance to earn a fortune
each week," Dr. Ladefoged said. "It was just so much more than a professor's
salary. It paid me enough to buy my first car in America."

  The professor's voice is preserved on the soundtrack. When Henry Higgins
stomps down the stairs, he knocks a record player that starts playing a
recording of Dr. Ladefoged making vowel sounds.

  Peter Nielsen Ladefoged was born in Sutton, England. After serving in the
British army during World War II, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in
Scotland. He planned to study English literature but soon became fascinated by
the sounds of speech. He earned a doctorate in phonetics at the university.

  "I wanted to find out why Shelley could write better-sounding poetry than I,"
he told the Los Angeles Times in 1970.

  Survivors include his wife, Jenny; three children; and five grandchildren.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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