Invitation to English Pronunciation Survey

Post by **Availle** » May 21st, 2020, 5:16 am

I've just completed the survey, on Firefox.

Interesting! I especially liked some of the explanations that are provided for the words. My favourite:
face - front part of your head.

There's something I noticed, I'll send you a pm about it.

CSCO · Post by **CSCO** » May 21st, 2020, 7:49 am

nakanishi wrote: ↑May 20th, 2020, 3:32 pm ps.
I like your signature

(POP!) "..........................But this is the most at this point."
(Her frown comes into flower.)

nakanishi · Post by **nakanishi** » May 21st, 2020, 6:40 pm

Dear Ava and all,

Ava has kindly reported that an error message "do you want to leave this page? Some of your data may not be saved." appears on screen though she has completed the survey. It might be something that Firefox does, and maybe out of our control, but I'll share this information with my technical team. You will receive a thank you message within 48 hours (if you provide us with your email address, which is optional) when your recordings are processed and uploaded on the website.

Ava: Thanks for your kind post and the private message

.

nakanishi · Post by **nakanishi** » May 21st, 2020, 6:53 pm

mightyfelix wrote: ↑May 20th, 2020, 9:06 pm I'm interested in participating, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to sit down and record next. How long will this survey be open?

Dear Devorah,

Thanks for your interest. Please take your time because it won't close till I get a large enough number of contributors.
I will post a brief report on one or two results of the current survey before closing it. This way you will know that it's coming close to the end. How about that?

For example, I was looking at GARage/gaRAGE distinction yesterday, and the trend is somewhat different from that shown in LPD3 (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary ver.3) published in 2008. However it's too early to jump into conclusion because the LPD3 is based on the data of around 2,000 participants where I only got 100 or so.

Noriko

CSCO · Post by **CSCO** » May 22nd, 2020, 9:03 am

Hi, Noriko-san.

nakanishi wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 6:53 pm because it won't close till I get a large enough number of contributors.

Do you need 1,900 more takers and more? When does your collect phase time out? Your paper has no deadline?

schrm · Post by **schrm** » May 24th, 2020, 4:36 am

i participated, but didn't provide a e-mail address.
you were right, it is a little bit tiring and it is a little bit long - but better, to do the whole thing in one session, as to never come back.
what i realized, i stopped adding pauses to the recordings start and end and i stopped listening to the whole recording, most times.
i'm sorry for that but i hope, some stats can be drawn...
greetings from austria,
cheers

nakanishi · Post by **nakanishi** » May 25th, 2020, 4:15 am

Dear all (before CSCO-san gets kicked out):

I just want to thank you all for giving me warm feedback and advice.
Though it is shown at
https://nakanishi.kobegakuin-gc.jp/uploads/nakanishi/files/nakanishi/Survey.pdf,
I avoided identifying myself as a professor here because I did not want to sound like a snob, and more importantly, professors do need help and advice. So I really appreciate all your comments.

Thanks to your kind support (and other media) I got around 200 recordings last week. If I keep up this pace, I will be able to gather enough data by this summer.

Post by **TriciaG** » May 25th, 2020, 7:20 am

I completed the survey.

My contributions might skew your data a bit. I lived in Minnesota to adulthood, then moved 1600 km away to Canada - a different set of pronunciation rules! So my pronunciations are all over the place!

I definitely say "roof" differently than I used to (although that one wasn't on your list). Sometimes I say "project" (n.) the Ontario way, sometimes the Minnesota way. I'm a very unique hybrid of pronunciations.

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » May 25th, 2020, 8:46 am

Ava, how did you get the survey to work under Firefox? When I got to the first section ("I am originally from ..."), the record button did not start a recording. I don't know how to set specific microphone permissions in Firefox, which may be the problem.

EDIT: I've just realised that the online recorder is actually working; it's simply not displaying a counter as if it were.

Peter

Post by **Availle** » May 25th, 2020, 2:51 pm

Yes, I also thought nothing happened at first. But a quick trial and error was all that was needed.

nakanishi · Post by **nakanishi** » May 25th, 2020, 5:48 pm

Dear Tricia,
Thanks for completing the survey.
Your contribution is more than welcome because I want to describe the current situation of "real-life" accents. I will NOT exclude anybody just to make my results look good.

TriciaG wrote: ↑May 25th, 2020, 7:20 am My contributions might skew your data a bit. I lived in Minnesota to adulthood, then moved 1600 km away to Canada - a different set of pronunciation rules! So my pronunciations are all over the place!

(1) Your hybrid pronunciation would be a perfectly good example to represent this globalized world.

TriciaG wrote: ↑May 25th, 2020, 7:20 am I definitely say "roof" differently than I used to (although that one wasn't on your list). Sometimes I say "project" (n.) the Ontario way, sometimes the Minnesota way. I'm a very unique hybrid of pronunciations.

(2) Differences within the same person is also an interesting phenomenon, and we will also look into that in further study.
-> Some participants kindly give more than one acceptable pronunciations for a word, but it is not necessary because we will regard the first one as this person's "default" for this study.

nakanishi · Post by **nakanishi** » May 25th, 2020, 6:02 pm

Dear Ava,
Thanks as always for your kind help

I am so lucky to have such a warm-hearted admin staff like you with me here.

Dear Peter,
Thank you for your input.
Now I realized that the navigator (next to the "Stop" icon) has been causing the confusion. It does not react WHILE you are recording, and indicate the length of the recording only AFTER you have finished recording the word, right?
This navigator only confuses people rather than navigates people anywhere, so we will consider eliminating this bar from the page, and fix the page as soon as possible.
Thanks so much for your question, which has saved us from further troubles.

Noriko

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » May 26th, 2020, 12:40 am

Noriko-san; I suppose that I'm used to recorder programs which display a moving indicator to show input volume. It was a bit disconcerting to see nothing happening on-screen when I spoke.

I've done the three blocks of recordings. When I first encountered the second half of the first block, I wasn't sure what to record, and had to abandon the whole recording. I'll explain: there seemed to be three possibilities; a) record an answer of my own to the top line, coloured by the advice on the emotion to use, b) to record the second line coloured by the emotion, and a) to record the top line, coloured by the emotion. I think I got it right in my final recording session. Assuming that there are others as unfocussed as I am, it might be worth expanding your instructions a little.

Also, if it doesn't involve too much fiddling with the program, I would have liked the option to return to the previous word, to rerecord it. Because of the number of words, I tended to drop into the almost hypnotic pattern of read word, click record, speak, click stop, click accept and move on. A couple of times I abandoned recordings because I realised too late that I'd made a mistake in the previous recording, or realised that traffic noise had intruded.

Like Tricia, I know that my pronunciation has changed over my life. I know that when I was a child, I used to say "GA-ridge" where I now say "GA- rahzh". I've no idea when I made the change.

Peter

nakanishi · Post by **nakanishi** » May 26th, 2020, 5:30 am

Dear Peter,

Thanks for your advice.
I consulted with the technical support about the indicator, and we will have a meeting tomorrow (5 am GMT on 27th). We will also fix the instructions for the sentence reading section, and discuss the possibility of going back to the previous page.

Peter Why wrote: ↑May 26th, 2020, 12:40 am I know that when I was a child, I used to say "GA-ridge" where I now say "GA- rahzh". I've no idea when I made the change.

That's really exciting! According to J. C. Wells (1999),
(1)"-ri-" was favoured than "- rah-" by the young population (as of 1998) and the non-English speakers, where it was disfavoured by the older generation.
(2)the younger generations at that time preferred "-dge" over "-zh", where the older respondents were equally divided between the two possibilities.
I cannot wait till we find out
* How do today's younger generations pronounce the word?
* Do the younger ones at that time still keep their pronunciation now?
* What about people in different parts of the world?

It is not just the vowel and consonant of "garage". All the words in the current survey are taken from Professor Wells' research, and I am hoping to describe what has happened since his last survey.
The data in Wells (1999) is the basis of the most recent version of Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (2008), which was the major reference dictionary for an English-Japanese dictionary called Wisdom that we published last year. I was in charge of the pronunciation part of this dictionary, and urged to update the data for the next edition.

Reference
Wells, J. C. (1999). British English pronunciation preferences: a changing scene. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 29(1), 33-50.

Peter Why · Post by **Peter Why** » May 26th, 2020, 6:26 am

Thank you, Noriko-san;

It came to me just now that I still use "GA-ridge" occasionally ... when I talk about a "bus garage". Odd. It seems to be something to do with rhythm and tone: "BUS gar-ridge" sounds better than "bus GA-rahzh" or "bus gar-RAHZH" ... so the most important part of the phrase gets the emphasis.

Peter