Vocal samples thread: how do *you* say it?

[Sunspace]

Well! Lots of interesting sample activity going on!

NinetyWt sent me some samples, which I have processed into MP3s.

“Poor”, “pore”, and “pour”
“Marry”, “merry”, and “Mary”
“Don”, “Dawn”, “Aaron”, and “Erin”
And last,
“The dog went out and about.”

And from Spoons…

“Poor”, “pore”, and “pour”
“Marry”, “merry”, and “Mary”
“Don”, “Dawn”, “Aaron”, and “Erin”

Spoons has some interesting comments. He’s created two versions of each of these. He goes on to explain,

Now, what I also did was to create an N-file and a C-file for each…

[ B]ut N stands for “Newscast.” This is formal announcing: measured, modulated, and enunciated (but not
over-enunciated). C stands for “Colloquial” or “Casual,” and you can decide which. Anyway, these C-files are, as the name implies, more like what one
would speak and hear in everyday conversation.

So here we have:

“Poor old Paul pored over the book as Portia poured him some porter.”
N-version; C-version.

“Mary was merry as she married Terry, but then Scary Larry got carried away and chased Barry’s hairy dairy cattle through the ceremony.”
N-version; C-version.

“It was dawn when Don, Dawn, Aaron, and Erin took off, but Erin made an error in navigation.”
N-version; C-version.

“I put on my boots and left the house to talk with a man about a boat.”
N-version; C-version.

Lastly, there’s Fatwater_Fewl’s paragraph:Mary rarely rose at dawn, but did so on the day she was to marry Don in order to pore over details such as whether the weather would be fine or poor for taking pictures, who was to pour the wedding wines and pitchers of beer, and to be sure that her poor, overly merry cousin Aaron, visiting from Erin, would catch the last boat (a converted ketch) from the mainland and so would not arrive until about the time the honeymoon bags were put in the boot.
Spoken by Fatwater_Fewl.
Spoken by Sunspace.

Fatwater_Fewl and Spoons both have classic storytellers’ voices. And something about the way Cazzle pronounces “Don” and “Dawn” just makes me melt. [sub]I have Skype…[/sub]

TheLoadedDog, pronouncing “ceremony” with only three syllables is very different from the way we do it. There are a lot of words like that–“laboratory”, “secretary”–that we’ve made into four syllables with the strong accent on the third (losing the first O in laboratory, in our case), and you’ve weakened that syllable entirely. I wonder how that divergence happened.

[TheLoadedDog]

Sunspace, I pronounce both “ceremony” and “laboratory” with four distinct syllables, but the stresses are different to the North American ones, and the vowel in the third syllable is elided down to near nothing at all - there’s still a stop there though.

[TheLoadedDog]

Lah-BOH-ruh-tree

…rather than…

LAB-rah-TOR-ee

[Sunspace]

NinetyWt’s rendition of “Mary was merry as she married Terry, but then Scary Larry got carried away and chased Barry’s hairy dairy cattle through the ceremony”.

[Telperien]

@TheLoadedDog

Telperien, I could listen to you all day. I have broadband. You have a telephone directory?

blush

I could read you some John Donne or Robert Frost (assuming I could find the Frost book) or perhaps a bit of Terry Pratchett or Jane Austen, but I don’t know where the telephone directory is right now.

About the supposed Canadian “aboot”: I once dated a Canadian, and he and his roommates and friends that I met pronounced it more like “aboat” than “aboot.”

I’ve sent three more samples to Sunspace: Don/Dawn/Aaron/Erin, the wedding crashed by bovines, and NinetyWt’s “The dog went out and about.”

I love this thread. Hearing the way people sound is fun. Cazzle’s accent is especially lovely.

[tonedef]

Any Americans wanna try saying “collier” & “caller”?

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

This is a very interesting thread. I’ve read the posts of many of you before, but it’s the first time I hear your voice. If there’s interest, and if I can find a microphone – I think I have one at my parents’, and I’m going there this week-end – I’d like to record a few of these samples. It would be interesting to include the voice of a non-native English speaker.

[Telperien]

@Hypnagogic Jerk

This is a very interesting thread. I’ve read the posts of many of you before, but it’s the first time I hear your voice. If there’s interest, and if I can find a microphone – I think I have one at my parents’, and I’m going there this week-end – I’d like to record a few of these samples. It would be interesting to include the voice of a non-native English speaker.

I’d be interested to hear this.

[Spoons]

It’s interesting to hear everybody–we have some nice voices here. And it’s great to hear how we pronounce things.

Hypnagogic Jerk, I’d also be interested in hearing from a non-native-English speaker.

And Sunspace, I did a couple of versions of Fatwater Fewl’s “Mary rarely rose” paragraph. Check your e-mail.

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

Great. I’ll record a few samples as soon as I can get my hands on a microphone.

[fishbicycle]

I’ve read Fatwater_Fewl’s paragraph, and have an mp3 that’s 415 kb. If you’re able to host it, I’d be happy to send it to you if you can PM me with the details of how and where.

[Sunspace]

More samples have arrived. Here is a compendium of what we have so far.
“Poor”, “pore”, and “pour”.

Pronounced by Sunspace
Pronounced by Telperien
Pronounced by Cazzle
Pronounced by NinetyWt
Pronounced by Spoons

“Marry”, “merry”, and “Mary”.

Pronounced by Sunspace
Pronounced by Telperien
Pronounced by Cazzle
Pronounced by NinetyWt
Pronounced by Spoons

“Mary was merry as she married Terry, but then Scary Larry got carried away and chased Barry’s hairy dairy cattle through the ceremony.”

Pronounced by Sunspace
Pronounced by Telperien
Pronounced by Cazzle
Pronounced by Spoons colloquially
Pronounced by Spoons more formally, as for a newscast
Pronounced by NinetyWt
“Don”, “Dawn”, “Aaron”, and “Erin”.

Pronounced by Sunspace
Pronounced by Telperien
Pronounced by Cazzle
Pronounced by NinetyWt
“Boot”, “boat”, “about”, and “house”.

Pronounced by Spoons
“The dog went out and about.”

Pronounced by NinetyWt
“Mary rarely rose at dawn, but did so on the day she was to marry Don in order to pore over details such as whether the weather would be fine or poor for taking pictures, who was to pour the wedding wines and pitchers of beer, and to be sure that her poor, overly merry cousin Aaron, visiting from Erin, would catch the last boat (a converted ketch) from the mainland and so would not arrive until about the time the honeymoon bags were put in the boot.”.

Pronounced by Sunspace
Pronounced by Fatwater_Fewl
Pronounced by Bambi Hassenpfeffer (Bambi, I must apologise. There’s some kind of weird glitch that cuts off your sample just after ‘ketch’ every time I normalise it and then export it as an MP3.) Here’s the original.
Pronounced by Spoons colloquially
Pronounced by Spoons more formally, as for an audiobook
Pronounced by GorillaMan
“Poor old Paul pored over the book as Portia poured him some porter.”

Pronounced by Spoons colloquially
Pronounced by Spoons more formally, as for a newscast
“It was dawn when Don, Dawn, Aaron, and Erin took off, but Erin made an error in navigation.”

Pronounced by Spoons colloquially
Pronounced by Spoons more formally, as for a newscast
“I put on my boots and left the house to talk with a man about a boat.”

Pronounced by Spoons colloquially
Pronounced by Spoons more formally, as for a newscast

[Sunspace]

@fishbicycle

I’ve read Fatwater_Fewl’s paragraph, and have an mp3 that’s 415 kb. If you’re able to host it, I’d be happy to send it to you if you can PM me with the details of how and where.

No prob! PM sent.

[Sunspace]

I’d be interested in hearing from non-native speakers of English as well.

@TheLoadedDog

Sunspace, you sound like a Sesame Street character:

1. I note your location, so I realise that doesn’t make sense.
2. I forget which character it is (I suspect it’s several of the minor parts - so maybe one guy doing them all).
3. Take this as a compliment - I’m a big Sesame St fan.
4. I love your “herry derry cattle”.

I’ve been told I sound like Kermit the Frog by a number of people.

[fishbicycle]

OK, e-mail sent. It’ll be from my Yahoo account. Ought to be there now.

[Fatwater_Fewl]

Ah, this is great stuff. I think I’ll try some of the sentences when I get up tomorrow. And I too would like to hear fishbicycle and other non-native speakers of English have a go at recording themselves.

Also, it would be good to know where each of the speakers grew up and/or first learned English. For me, that’d be a village near the centre of Prince Edward Island.

[Fatwater_Fewl]

Just had another thought, Sunspace. If all these audio-files begin to take up needed space on your server, you could always create an account at the internet archive and use it to host them.

[chaoticbear]

Bambi and I sound very similar, even down to the inflection, but I think he made a little more differentiation in the word “poor” than I do.

[Bambi_Hassenpfeffer]

@Fatwater Fewl

Also, it would be good to know where each of the speakers grew up and/or first learned English. For me, that’d be a village near the centre of Prince Edward Island.

I grew up in Pinellas Park, Florida. My mom was born in Evansville, Indiana (as was I) and left when she was 14 for Anchorage (AK), Dover (DE), Tampa (FL), Atlanta (GA) (twice!), and Allegheny County (PA) before returning to Evansville as a young adult. When I was very young (birth - almost 3) my babysitter was from western Tennessee and sometimes when I get to yelling I sound a lot like her, but I have lived here in Florida for the last 25 of my 28 years.

[Sunspace]

Where did I grow up? Born in Peterborough, Ontario (pronounced “Peederburl” ); moved to Whitby at age 7, grew the rest of the way up in Whitby and Oshawa, now live in Toronto. In short, I couldn’t be any more Southern Ontario if I tried.