LINGUIST List 13.2973

Sat Nov 16 2002

Sum: Model/Sample English recordings

Editor for this issue: Dina Kapetangianni <dinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

  • Yasuo Nakajima, Model/Sample English recordings

    Message 1: Model/Sample English recordings

     Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 09:13:50 +0000
    From: Yasuo Nakajima <nakajimycolorado.edu>
    Subject: Model/Sample English recordings


    Regarding my previous question about model/sample English recordings for a college undergraduate phonetics course, I got the responses below. Thank you very much for your contribution. (Each message followed by the contributer.)

    1) Here are two very interesting sites that may be what you are looking for: http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/ http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/Linguistic/Accents.html (Johanna L. Wood, Dept. of English, Arizona State University)

    2) The second edition of Trudgill & Hannah's International English had an accompanying tape with the same text read in thriteen different varieties of English. The book is now in its fourth edition but this material no longer seems to be available. (Marc Picard)

    3) There's very nice website of the Evaluating English Accents WorldWide Project. Below I'm copying a message that appeared on the Linguist List last summer. There may be some proviso for using their data in class though. (Adrienne Bruyn, ULCL / Spinoza, Leiden University, the Netherlands) (Thu, 27 Jun 2002) The Evaluating English Accents WorldWide (EEAWW) Project is made up of an international group of scholars interested in analysing the evaluations and opinions of different national and ethnic groups to four of the ''standard'' accents of English: Near-RP (educated Southern English English); General North American; and middle-of-the-road Australian and New Zealand accents. We use 22 personality, voice, and status traits in the questionnaire for this project. The data acquired by the EEAWW Project is being used in a number of different research projects and studies by participants. Linguists interested in language attitudes and learning, along with researchers in the social psychology of language and accent loyalty, media influence, the impact of paralinguistic features, and related topics in the Gilesian tradition should find our website interesting. Our website is located at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/Linguistic/Accents.html it has recently been revamped and enlarged to make navigation easier. The site has full details on aims, methods, etc. and a sample questionnaire. Summary results of our evaluations in New Zealand, Australia, the USA, England, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Fiji are already available on the site, along with sound clips of the accents used and the text read by each of the eight male and female voices. New additions since our last update in May of this year include: * data on 133 native-born Japanese students at International Christian University, Tokyo. * a new page on research under way at present. * A summary of our research on the impact of intonation patterns on listener evaluation. * An exploratory study contrasting significant dimensions used to group personality traits by Chinese and Japanese students on the one hand and Western students on the other. * Data on the perceived ease of comprehension by Japanese and Hong Kong students of the eight voices used in the study. (Donn Bayard, Anthropology Department, University of Otago, New Zealand) 4) I would recommend the recording which accompanies Accents of English by Prof. J.C.Wells: on it, along with authentic recordings of spontaneous speech from various parts of the English-speaking world, you'll also find some of the speakers reading a test passage written by Prof. Wells. You could also check the Speech Accent Archive at http://classweb.dmu.edu/accent (Snezhina Dimitrova, Department of English and American Studies, University of Sofia ''St Kliment Ohridski,'' Bulgaria)

    Yasuo Nakajima nakajimycolorado.edu Dept. of Foreign Studies, Kyorin University, Japan Dept. of Linguistics, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA

    Subject-Language: English; Code: ENG