I realized through taking the survey that I tend to pronounce vowels rather distinctly, and it seemed some options were missing. For instance, I wish I'd had a third choice - eh as in pet - instead of being limited to the vowel sounds in pit or Sarah. Same with the vowels before the letter r. The available choices didn't quite work for many of the words. I do find it fascinating, though. I could imagine several of my friends and family members saying those words, and they say them differently depending on where in the US they grew up. I've thought about it a lot, and because I moved around a lot in my childhood, I think I have a non-specific American accent, or perhaps a vaguely Midwestern US accent but it would be difficult for an average person to identify where.
2 months ago | 15
Going through this is how I imagined stroke recovery to be like. I think in some parts it was checking for rhoticity and the cot-caught merger, but others were downright confusing and took a lot of soul searching to carefully phrase out and answer these questions accurately. Some of my vowels feel really weird because the "e" in "belong" usually, but not always rhymes with the vowel in "Peter" and "police" but I saw no options there. Oh well, have fun with results.
2 months ago
| 12
I don’t know if I misunderstood, misread, or am misinformed about something(s), but those last “tricky questions” were baffling. The question sounds had no correlation to any of the options, and even words lumped together in each option seemed to have no sounds in common.
2 months ago
| 17
really making me realize how lackadaisical my southern californian vowels are lol
2 months ago | 3
Those words that sounded like “ore” were nothing like broad or though, and those that sounded like “air” did not sound like bread or paid. The vowels of “air” and “edd” are similar, but distinct.
2 months ago
| 19
Maybe I just don't know enough but I kept feeling like I was answering a lot of "neither" when it came to R-vowels. edit: I realized that it felt like what was missing a lot was a choice for the vowel in Grr.
2 months ago (edited) | 22
I noticed that in the demographic data collected, education was left out, but in the video, it was mentioned that education was a factor in the development of English standards in the US. I will say that as a kindergarten teacher, I can see how reading curricula try to make the language standard with varying degrees of success. The phonetic spelling of my students, once they learn to sound out even simple cvc words, reveals how unstandard our pronunciation can be due to accents or personal speech patterns.
2 months ago | 11
This was fun, and i wonder how the survey is going to need to account for misunderstanding our own behaviors. When asked how one says a word, we often say it in a way we THINK we speak. Or in a way we think we should. And not how we actually enunciate.
2 months ago | 2
I began saying some of these words in context of sentences to try and get into a 'natural' mindset, then to realize that context shapes my pronunciation in some cases. For example, in the phrase "grab an umbrella," the first vowel in umbrella disappears and it just sounds like I'm saying mmm (as in mmm...delicious) whereas the uhm vowel is more distinct after say, "pass me that umbrella." Choosing to go for the word in isolation in cases like this. No sentence. Just umbrella
2 months ago | 1
That was a lot of effort to put in! I'm glad I could participate.
2 months ago
| 5
This was a fun survey! It was somewhat difficult because, to me, all the R-words really threw off figuring out how I pronounced their vowels. It took me a few moments to really sound it out. I don't think that changes the vowels, really, only that I'm a very rhotic speaker and any word with R in it is going to kind of eat the rest of the word, making it hard to distinguish. I also tend to let dark Ls really eat a word, which made it hard to figure out what kind of vowel was there - oftentimes just schwa! I really notice it when I say something like "Coldwater" or "calling."
2 months ago | 0
Reset almost at the end. Also. The page doesn’t scroll back to the top for each section. Maybe for long surveys like this, let us save part way through so we don’t waste time.
2 months ago | 4
Already did it (and either I did the fixed version or I didn't notice). It was very enlightening. I can now point to what vowel sound I make probably because I grew up in Indiana. Also it turns out my schwas are weird.
2 months ago
| 3
I’m at section 9 and this thing is way too long. Well past 20 minutes, I must not be the target audience cuz audiating these syllables to figure out how I say stuff takes way more time than I think it does for the study designers. I’m gonna finish it but this sucks
2 months ago | 3
My wife thought I was going crazy hearing me make these sounds from the other room.
2 months ago
| 3
The survey stopped me after I didn't answer the section on 'how many sounds' bc I really didn't understand that instruction - and I didn't want to guess. I wish there had been a way to continue bc I'd already spent at least 90 mins. on the survey up to that point (w/several long comments). I hope at least some of all my work up till then had been recorded/submitted somehow.
2 months ago | 1
It was difficult. I had to create sentences and act like I was talking to my kids (ultra casual) and realized that I pronounce words differently in speech than I do in my head.
2 months ago | 0
Some of these questions were hard for me, a non-linguist, to parse. I'm not accustomed to studying vowel sounds, and moreover, I'm not sure how different two sounds have to be to count as separate. If I make the same noise, but with a slight jaw drop, is that different? The last question, in particular, grouped a bunch of things together that sound NOTHING like one another. "Said" and "could?" Do "wed" and "wood" sound the same to you?
2 months ago | 0
Dr Geoff Lindsey
THE NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH SURVEY www.englishspeechservices.com/survey-north-america…
Apologies for the display problems that a few of the early survey-takers had with some of the options. These are now fixed. If you abandoned the survey, by all means go back and do it again. But if you already completed the survey, please don't do it again! THANK YOU, and please share the survey around 🙂
2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 342