Comments on: Alphabets of the world http://www.starchamber.com/2004/01/alphabets-of-the-world.html Ned Gulley's Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds. Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:15:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: BobG http://www.starchamber.com/2004/01/alphabets-of-the-world.html#comment-438 BobG Wed, 28 Jan 2004 05:19:53 +0000 http://starchamber.com/?p=777#comment-438 The speech archive is fascinating. It reminds me of demonstrations that my phonetics professor gave at university. He's a native Greek speaker, and has the accent to prove it, but can probably duplicate any of these speakers perfectly. Well, the men, at least. Here's an observation. I noticed that some of the speakers enunciated "we will" in full, while some contracted to "we'll." Is that a regionalism? Do speakers from particular regions tend to contract more than others? Or is it more of a "personal" phenomenon? The speech archive is fascinating. It reminds me of demonstrations that my phonetics professor gave at university. He’s a native Greek speaker, and has the accent to prove it, but can probably duplicate any of these speakers perfectly. Well, the men, at least.

Here’s an observation. I noticed that some of the speakers enunciated “we will” in full, while some contracted to “we’ll.” Is that a regionalism? Do speakers from particular regions tend to contract more than others? Or is it more of a “personal” phenomenon?

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