Phonetics quiz

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

News from Pittsburgh.
 Quiz: What were the nonstandard sounds in "did," "my," "bed" and "dad" that
the children were expected to change? - Allan Metcalf

Poetry helps city kids become well-versed
  Friday, May 19, 2000
  By Carmen Lee, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
[abridged version; full story at
http://www.post-gazette.com:80/neigh_city/20000519speech5.asp]
  The performance did not grace an elegant stage or unfold before a bright
spotlight.
  But applause and tear-filled eyes abounded asabout 30 Holy Rosary
fifth-graders recited poetry during a recent program that ended
asemester-long speech project.
  It's been a triumphant ride for the pupils at the Catholic school in
Homewood.
  The performance in the school gymnasium last Friday before a small group of
Carnegie Mellon University students, staff and representatives of the Extra
Mile Education Foundation was the culmination of a new Carnegie Mellon course
called My True Voice.
  In this speech and phonetics class, college theater majors work with
elementary pupils to help the muse standard American English without traces
of accents or dialects.
  As part of the program, a special interactive software was developed that
described step-by-step how to pronounce certain sounds so the youngsters
could practice speaking.
  "When you speak clearly and distinctly, your true voice will come out,"
said Natalie Baker, a Carnegie Mellon associate voice and speech professor
who developed the course. "Even when you're in a scary situation, that voice
doesn't have to change. We're giving them the same thing we give the actors."
  Nineteen Carnegie Mellon sophomores in Baker's course worked once a week
with Holy Rosary fifth-graders, teaching them vocal exercises and correcting
pronunciation,
  Baker asked Maxine Eskenazi, a systems scientist for Carnegie Mellon's
Language Technologies Institute, to develop an interactive, voice-recognition
software that the youngsters could use to practice pronouncing words.
  Eskenazi had previously created software for a computer program to detect
speech errors made by people from other countries who were trying to speak
English.
  After recording the Holy Rosary youngsters in a professional studio last
fall and studying their speech patterns, Baker and Eskenazi decided to
initially focus on five sounds the children seemed to need the most work on:
"th" and the four vowel sounds in the words "did," "my," "bed" and "dad."
  As they sat in front of computer screens wearing headsets and microphones,
the pupils repeated phrases such as "dim spirits" and "existing poets" while
the software program showed them how toposition their jaws and tongues to
pronounce the words correctly.
  But unlike Professor Higgins, the Carnegie Mellon students and staff
steered clear of trying to define what constitutes proper speech.
  Baker and others insisted that they weren't trying to strip the children of
their culture but were offering an alternative dialect that could help them
in the future.
  "The majority of the world accepts certain types of expression, and it's
important for them to be able to communicate with those people in a way they
can understand," Young said.
  "Nobody wants anyone's heritage to be disrespected," Baker said. "We don't
want them to be cookie-cutter copies."