Re: Just say no ?
Re: Just say no ?
- Subject: Re: Just say no ?
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 08:15:51 -0500
There is an astonishing variety of pronunciations of English even if
you limit the survey to native speakers, and the "long o" sound in
"no" is no exception. But if you just use the Latin "long o" sound as
found in the Romance languages, you'll be understood perfectly.
If you're going for a more authentic accent, then you have to pick one
to go for. The long o is pretty much universally a diphthong, but the
two sounds composing it differ. In General American, it starts out as
more or less the Latinate /o/, and finishes with an offglide into
either /w/ or one of the "u" vowel sounds (the one in "put" or the one
in "clue" being the usual suspects); in the UK Received Pronunciation
the first sound is more of an "uh" sound (IPA /ʌ/).
But none of this is on-topic for AppleScript. See Wikipedia for more
information. You might also want to look into J.C. Wells'
_Longman_Pronunciation_Dictionary_,
(http://eltcatalogue.pearsoned-ema.com/Product.asp?CallingPage=Catalogue&ISBN=9781405881180),
wihch has recordings of the headwords but also textual pronunciation
guidance gleaned from Professor Wells' extensive survey of
pronunciation across the Anglophone world.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Richard Rönnbäck
<email@hidden> wrote:
>> From: hd
>> Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 20:45:07 +0000
>> Subject: Re: Just say no ?
>>
>> To my UK English ear the second "no" in Richard's sound file sounds very close
>> to "now" and is distinctly different from the first.
>
> Which is what sounds strange to me, and it is definitely a change from
> Leopard.
>
>> Richard, try
>>
>> say "just say no" using "Bruce"
>
> Bruce's "no" sounds as I would expect
>
>>
>> "Alex" seems to be the worst offender, and from your sound file I'd guess
>> that's the voice selected in System Preferences - Speech - Text to Speech -
>> System Voice.
>
> Yes, you are right.
>
>> The ladies (Kathy, Vicki and Victoria) all seem to have had elocution lessons.
>>
>> You can make Alex talk proper like this:
>>
>> say "just say noe" using "Alex"
>
> That works, thanks
>>
>> HTH
>
>
> English is not my native language, so I certainly cannot claim to know the
> preferred pronunciation of "no", but regardless of that, Alex's second "no"
> is very different from his first, and also very different from Leopard,
> where Alex's "no" sounds identical on both these lines.
>
> Just out of curiosity, for those of you to whom my sample file sounds
> correct, is that because you do not distinguish a difference between the two
> lines, or because both pronunciations are acceptable to you?
>
> As someone still struggling to get a decent English pronunciations I thought
> I at least had "no" right but maybe I have to reconsider that :-)
>
>
>
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--
Mark J. Reed <email@hidden>
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