Word List, F1, F2 and more!

In the beginning, this exercise was very confusing for me. I couldn't figure out how to get the formants on Praat. So I was a bit frustrated. But I soon figured it out and now I know a lot more about how to work with the spectrograms. I recorded the words "heed, hid , head, had, hod, hawed, hood, who'd" in Praat. Then I created a spectrogram and clicked "show formants". Then there was another tab that would tell me the F1 and F2 of each area on the spectrogram that represented a different vowel. I recorded these values and plotted them on the graph from the reading. I compared my graph to the graph in the reading that was also of an American accent and the same word list. Nearly all of my formant values are smaller than the graph provided. Also, the differences between my F1 and F2 values for each vowel sound is much smaller than the differences found in the graph provided. But the general location of the vowel sound formant relative to each other is somewhat the same. So in general, I pronounced the vowels like most Americans, but I may have spoken quieter or in a different way so that I got differing smaller formant values. Overall, the activity was fun and taught me more about Praat.
Class discussions, I thought, brought up many important points that may often be lost in the technicalities of linguistics. I'm really glad we talked about the implications of accents in our everyday lives at times we may not even realize. It showed how language is not just how we speak, it is part of how we think.

Accent Discrimination-"Mary had a little lamb..."

First off, I didn't know all the answers to the quiz. I only got about 3/4 of the answers correct. But there were reasons I knew the answers to the ones I did get correct on the quiz. I have heard these accents around me in everyday life. They have been replicated on TV, stereotyped at school, found within the people I knew. The association between accent and race was deep, one hard to ignore.
When trying to identify the speakers, I felt like I was just following stereotypes when I picked the right answers. It almost made me feel guilty that I could make those associations so lightly without realizing the consequences of those associations in everyday life. They lead to discrimination, even if the person is just on the phone. The speakers that I guessed wrong had accents that varied from the common stereotype. For example, three of the hispanic speakers did not have distinctly "hispanic" accents as I generally hear them, so it was hard to guess what ethnicity they were. I listened to them again, and I still can't hear any differences in the way they speak when compared to the white speakers.
Some of the speakers were obvious, for example, the indian speaker. Indian speakers sometimes say their "w" with a "v" sound, which is what the speaker did with "white". The middle eastern speaker was easy to distinguish because of the pronounciation of the "r" in "Mary" and "sure". The "r"s were rolled to an extent, but differently than the hispanic rolled "r". I'm not quite sure what is different within the black accent, but I know I can identify it. One of the black speakers was very easy to distinguish. However, the one with some sort of a Caribbean accent was more difficult to pinpoint. For the "white" accent, I just listened for "standard" sounding English, which is in itself, also a stereotype. I turned out to be right, but it made me realize the kind of rash assumption I can make.
When it comes to how I knew the answers to the quiz, I'm not sure, I just did. I based it on prior experience, but I still don't really understand the linguistic differences within each accent. Picking up on accents is just something we do automatically, without thinking about it.
This quiz made me realize that even if we try not to discriminate on accents, sometimes we do without realizing it. I made assumptions in this quiz that were not well founded and could lead to real problems if I was speaking with these people in everyday life. This quiz made me realize I need to be more careful in jumping to conclusions about someone just by hearing them talk.
Implications of accent discrimination and stereotypes can be seen in the article from overlawyered.com. There are clear cases of discrimination because of accent. In the article from WashU, I was surprised to see how explicitly accent discrimination occurs. The study was kind of disheartening, it made me tell myself not to ever discriminate against accents.

Trying out Praat with Butter on a Cot

After learning how to use Praat in class, I was ready to experiment with accents and compare spectrograms. I thought that the way our accents could be manifested in series of up and down squiggly lines was awesome.
I first began with my "natural" accent, a Midwest one I guess, and said "The butter spilled on the cot" to the computer. I seemed to say "butter" with a "d" sound as opposed an actual "t". Also, I said "cot" in the same way I say "caught". Also, I said "spilled" with an "eh" short vowel sound. In general, I thought I was speaking at an average pace.
Then I attempted a Southern accent, or what I thought sounded like a southern accent. I added a sort of drawl to the words. For example, I extended the "uh" sound in "butter". Also, instead of hearing the "eh" sound in spilled, I used more of an "ee" sound, but not quite. The word cot sounded different, although I'm not quite sure how to explain the difference. In general, I noticed that I spoke a bit slower.
These differences could easily be seen in the spectrograms of the different accents. My natural accent had much shorter wavelengths. The wavelengths of the southern accent were about twice as long. I'm assuming this is a result of my attempt at a drawl. The basic pattern and location of the words is generally the same, the southern one is just more spread out. This might mean I didn't do a very good job trying to distinguish the southern accent.
Perhaps next time the differences in my spectrograms will be more distinct. Overall, this task was fun. I even went around asking random people in my dorm to say "the butter spilled on the cot" and I notice differences. A New Yorker said it way different than a girl from Wisconsin. Perhaps next time I'll ask themselves to speak into the computer for Praat to compare spectrograms.

Cool Articles and Regional Accents

While we all know that different regions have different accents, it's sometimes hard to pay attention to the specifics of each region and what distinguishes them. Until everyone in the class actually starting comparing how they said words like "hot" and "father", I never really saw some of the intricacies of each region's accent. Another thing that was interesting is the varience in the accents of each region. One region may be identified with a specific accent, but there may be many sub-accents that differ from the main accent. Also, some people in the designated region simply do not speak the accent in the "proper" form even if they have lived there for ever. So I guess there are limits to assigning regional accents. They serve more as guidelines and not necessarly the norm in each region of the US.
In today's technological age, I think it is easier for regional accents to mesh together and be less distinct. This maybe a result of uniform media as seen in tv shows, movies and news. These avenues of language may have a much greater impact on us than we realize. Listening to such uniform language on TV may make American accents much more similar than they used to be.
We learned a lot about regional accents in the articles we read for last week. I found many of the articles to be very interesting. We read the article about Mountain Speech in class and I found it to be really funny. I found myself trying to replicate the accent after reading nearly every sentence, but realized I couldn't do it. It was also very interesting to see how this accent was specific to a very small area and how it has survived through the years. My favorite article by far was the Trini Talk poem. It conveyed a lot of culture a cool poem as well as an interesting accent which I also tried to replicate(unsuccessfully though, haha).
Overall, I found the study of accents to be very interesting, especially their evolution over time. I look forward to learning about many more cool accents through the IPA and Praat. Can't wait to begin Praat in class tomorrow!