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please call stella

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 4:19 am
by finlay
It's been a few years. What do you sound like? Make a recording of the passage from this page and post it up here.

Mine: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... a-2015.wav
(I also have ones from previous years if you ask nicely)

Re: please call stella

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 6:27 am
by Matrix

Re: please call stella

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 6:30 pm
by Rui
Here's mine: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0j6qq4OnoAx

I always hate listening to my voice >.< I sound so squeaky.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 6:09 pm
by alynnidalar
Here's mine, for what it's worth. :)

Re: please call stella

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 7:45 pm
by Buran

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:06 pm
by Pole, the
Who is stella? Why are you making me call her? Why me?!

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 8:08 am
by Alces

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 9:31 am
by Pole, the
Ok, mine. How do I sound for a non-native?

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:03 pm
by Viktor77
I could've redone my goof up, but I thought my first would be the most natural recording:

http://vocaroo.com/i/s064tVE3LccP
Pole, the wrote:Ok, mine. How do I sound for a non-native?
You sound good. You definitely can tell you were taught RP at school. You have a few intonation issues but pronunciation was as far as I recall spot on.
alynnidalar wrote:Here's mine, for what it's worth. :)
Hi, do I know you? :P Of course it's just your familiar accent, but I heard several friends in my head as I listened to you speak.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:07 pm
by marconatrix
Why have you got your head inside a tin bucket?

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:12 pm
by Alces
marconatrix wrote:
Why have you got your head inside a tin bucket?
Well, I don't have a microphone, and I don't know which part of my laptop receives the sound, so I probably wasn't directing my voice in the ideal direction.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:51 pm
by Pole, the
What about recording it using a telephone?

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 11:07 pm
by Travis B.
This is my recording of the Stella passage.

For the record, I am originally from the Milwaukee area.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2015 8:52 am
by finlay
Pole, the wrote:Ok, mine. How do I sound for a non-native?
A bit staccato and you have a lot of creaky voice but generally fine tbh.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2015 11:30 pm
by CatDoom
Here's mine. I had to try it a few times in order to get the level on my microphone right (the first couple of times it picked up too much ambient noise), so I might sound a little different than I would speaking entirely off the cuff. Also, I think I've got some slight nasal congestion. For reference, I'm from Santa Cruz, a town in California about two hours south of San Francisco.

It might be interesting to try this with a non-English elicitation text. Maybe Pole could provide us with one, so us Anglophones can all demonstrate how much worse we pronounce his language than he pronounces ours :P

Re: please call stella

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:15 am
by jmcd
I plan to do this but my recording device's SD card doesn't seem to work any more so I'll have to sort that out first.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 9:49 am
by Pole, the
CatDoom wrote:It might be interesting to try this with a non-English elicitation text. Maybe Pole could provide us with one, so us Anglophones can all demonstrate how much worse we pronounce his language than he pronounces ours :P
If you like. Should I make a separate thread for that? ;)

Re: please call stella

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:27 pm
by Boşkoventi
Pole, the wrote:
CatDoom wrote:It might be interesting to try this with a non-English elicitation text. Maybe Pole could provide us with one, so us Anglophones can all demonstrate how much worse we pronounce his language than he pronounces ours :P
If you like. Should I make a separate thread for that? ;)
Proszę! :-)

---

Here's a recording I made several (plus) years ago. I made a couple of changes to make it more natural to say, and to include a couple of phonemes / combinations of phonemes not covered by the original text:
Please call Stella and ask her to bring these things with her from the store:
Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese,
a can of whole string beans, some brown sugar, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob.
And we also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids.
She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we'll go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 9:46 am
by finlay
I find the whole passage a bit unnatural because it's invalid grammar in BrE, particularly "meet her Wednesday" (you need an "on" there), and I don't really know what snow peas are (the same as mange-tout?). There doesn't seem to be any concession made towards grammar variance, only phonetic.

Also, I didn't realize I was supposed to say "we will" instead of "we'll" at the end there. I pretty much have the whole thing memorized after all.

Anyway as promised, here's three previous versions of Stella:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... a-2007.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... a-2010.wav
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... a-2011.wav
(do you think my accent has changed?)

Two of me attempting German (different translations):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... e-2010.wav
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... e-2011.wav

And one of Swedish (I can't speak Swedish, as a heads-up):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... v-2011.wav

Re: please call stella

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:20 am
by Pole, the
Boşkoventi wrote:
Pole, the wrote:
CatDoom wrote:It might be interesting to try this with a non-English elicitation text. Maybe Pole could provide us with one, so us Anglophones can all demonstrate how much worse we pronounce his language than he pronounces ours :P
If you like. Should I make a separate thread for that? ;)
Proszę! :-)
Ole hyvä.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2015 4:21 am
by din
I forgot how awkwardly forced this passage sounds, haha. Why should I be the one to remind her to get her little brother something to eat? Am I her dad? If so, why am I not calling her myself? And, more importantly, who buys snow peas by the spoonful?


I'm Dutch, by the way, but I'd like you to guess where my husband is from, to see if his accent has rubbed off on me or not:

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0nWZa8GmqQW

Re: please call stella

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 8:46 am
by Risla
Revivin this thread. Here I am.

Re: please call stella

Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 3:09 pm
by fahrradkette

Re: please call stella

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:18 pm
by Io