MetaFilter posts tagged with speech and language

What language is music?

univac — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:52:25 -0800

Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here. Some think that language and musicality evolved in tandem (see the singing Neanderthals), and Mendelssohn thought that the communicative ability of music is even more precise than that of language (as related by Oliver Sacks, at 9:05 - .mp3 link).

The Flatter the Landscape the Flatter the Accent

anastasiav — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:39:37 -0800

How The Edwardians Spoke :: BBC documentary via Google Video, about an hour Via Kottke (so sue me)

Yet Another Text To Speech program

daninnj — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:42:25 -0800

Oddcast's Text To Speech Demos let you type in words in 14 different languages. Hear thick accents if you enter English or learn how to pronounce that word you always say wrong in Spanish.

Coming soon to a cinema near you

Gyan — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 12:40:34 -0800

The Human Speechome Project - "A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.". Selected video clips. Paper (PDF, 750KB). To test hypotheses of how children learn, Prof Deb Roy's team at MIT will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. Total storage required: 1.4 petabytes.

By Gum, I divvent!

Masi — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 06:20:17 -0800

English Accents and Dialects. The British Library has compiled an online archive of northern speech dating back to the 19th century. The recordings range from from audio from Victorian cylinder dictaphones to 1950s football fans chanting.

F-Worded on the Radio

wendell — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 09:07:01 -0800

Screw Howard Stern. But Save Sandra Tsing Loh!
The radio culture wars have claimed an unlikely victim, and an unlikely victimizer (America's favorite NPR station, KCRW).

Accents In English

MiguelCardoso — Sat, 20 Sep 2003 22:21:33 -0800

It's Not What You Say, It's The Way That You Say It: George Bernard Shaw famously remarked that every time an Englishman opens his mouth it's guaranteed that another Englishman will despise him. This website offers a motley and unintentionally hilarious collection of the many, ever-growing pronunciations of the English language. The variety is so wide you could almost be listening to different languages. But is a particular accent still an anti-democratic barrier, strictly revealing your position on the socio-geographic ladder, as it was in the days Nancy Mitford discussed U and non-U vocabulary? Or have upper-class accents in the U.K. and U.S. (note the Boston Brahmin samples), once coveted and preferred, now become the opposite: unforgivable impediments? Does posh speech exist in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand as it does in the U.K. and U.S.? In other words: Does it still matter? (Quicktime Audio for main and fourth link; Real Audio for third.)

Speech Accent Archive

mediareport — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 09:29:35 -0800

The Speech Accent Archive, with 264 audio clips of native and non-native English speakers reading the same paragraph. Wonderful sounds if you love languages (and who doesn't?), including Bambara, Vietnamese, Uzbek, Quechua and the instantly recognizable Synthesized. [via Tara Calishan's invaluable ResearchBuzz]

rtimmel — Mon, 28 Oct 2002 07:31:32 -0800

Remember the Dialect Survey ? The results are up.

zerolucid — Fri, 05 Oct 2001 13:40:23 -0800

"Language Gene" found... (link to arstechnica discussion) "A group of Oxford University researchers presented findings in this week's Nature that they isolated a gene called FOXP2 that appears to be involved in both speech and language development." this is intriguing... that so much can start from so little.

Mo Nickels — Fri, 23 Feb 2001 01:48:36 -0800

15 of the 18 sentences beginning with the word "Well" in this transcript mark a speaker responding to a question or taking his/her turn. I'm sick of it.

tiaka — Fri, 25 Aug 2000 06:39:00 -0800

This reminds me of a quote, or, well, there are different version of this. "If dolphins are so smart, why don't they get a job?" Was it on Simpsons? or? Ohh well.
"Janik, a Scottish biologist now at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, said that the signaling pattern of the dolphins is similar to what experts believe happened when ancient human beings first began organized speech."