Annals of lenition
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What do you hear?
…or here?
The context is a clip from the British TV series Taskmaster, presented in "'Your mum's just like…' or 'Your mum's a slag'?", r/TASKMASTER 10/25/2024:
The source appears to be episode 172, aired 9/12/2024.
The speaker is Babátúndé Aléshé, and what he's saying (in conventional orthography) is
You're sitting at home, right,
and now your mom's just like
would you like some dessert?
Here's an aligned spectrogram of the first clip:
And the ambiguous audio:
An explanation of the ambiguity would be a good intro phonetics exercise.
And as usual, translation into IPA is not an especially helpful part of the story.
[h/t Daniel Sterman]
Update — some more context here.
Chris Button said,
October 16, 2024 @ 7:38 am
This made me chuckle.
There's nothing remarkable in his pronunciation at all though. Again, i don't see why IPA can't handle it.
In addition to the part selected for the "ambiguous audio", it's probably worth noting the standard lack of voicing that would occur in the voiced "g" of "slag" if it were actually being said–hence the confusion.
David L said,
October 16, 2024 @ 9:42 am
I understood it immediately, and your alternate interpretation didn't occur to me. But then I'm from England.
Benjamin E. Orsatti (& family) said,
October 16, 2024 @ 12:26 pm
Data point from W.Pa.Am.Eng — I heard "[…] mum's just like" in both cases. The word "slag" hadn't even occurred to me, as, in my vernacular, the byproduct of steel manufacturing is typically not a word applied to human beings.
Daniel Barkalow said,
October 16, 2024 @ 12:35 pm
The tone of the last two syllables indicates that they're not introducing new information, so either this is something everybody is expected to have heard and not find controversial, or it only has a grammatical function and doesn't mean anything by itself. It could be all sorts of things, but "your mom's just like" is the only one that fits the tone.
Cervantes said,
October 16, 2024 @ 12:43 pm
I heard "jus' lahyk' very clearly. The "j" is articulated, although the "k" is reduced.
Terry K. said,
October 16, 2024 @ 1:30 pm
Am. E. speaker here, and in addition to "slag" not being something I know at all as applying to people, my little familiarity with other meanings of the words doesn't allow for "a slag. So not something I thought of on first listen. However, I can definitely hear the ambiguity after it's pointed out.
David Deterding said,
October 16, 2024 @ 4:23 pm
I am British, and the ambiguity did not occur to me until it was pointed out.
I just downloaded the second clip and looked at the spectrogram on Praat with the formant tracks overlaid; and the final vowel has a quite distinct diphthong, as one would expect with /ai/. The first formant decreases from about 750 Hz in the middle of the vowel to 520 Hz at the end, clearly indicating a closing diphthong.
I wonder if there is greater tendency for people in America to produce /æ/ as a diphthong, giving rise to the possibility of /ai/ being heard as /æ/?
David Deterding said,
October 16, 2024 @ 4:51 pm
Further to my previous comment, I would like to add something: now that the 'slag' possibility has been suggested, when I listen to the clip again, I can't hear anything else. And this illustrates a serious issue for transcripts used in courts: a transcript that is provided by the prosecution may distort the perception of the jury, so they may be led to hear something that was not said. Indeed, this kind of miscarriage of justice has in the past been quite widespread, and a strong case can be made for not providing transcripts of recordings.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 16, 2024 @ 5:15 pm
Even for those familiar with the relevant sense of "a slag," that interpretation makes no sense whatsoever (as best as I can suss out, as a non-Briton?) in the context of the words immediately preceding and following the "your mom's *** ***" bit. So maybe one of the takeaways is that cherry-picking very short segments of a recording w/o context makes ambiguity and/or deliberate bad-faith misconstrual easier?
Terry K. said,
October 16, 2024 @ 7:16 pm
@J.W. Brewer
But this isn't just something misheard (by some) when out of context. It's something that was misheard by the people there.
Peter Taylor said,
October 17, 2024 @ 4:33 am
@Terry, probably misheard by at least one of the people there. They are comedians putting on a show.
FWIW I saw the episode without having been primed. I couldn't hear "a slag" either the first time or when he had a second go at the scenario and I was primed to listen for it. I'm a British speaker from the south-east of England who is familiar with the offensive usage of "slag", although mainly hear it used in the context of people doing impressions of Eastenders characters.
Guy Emerson said,
October 17, 2024 @ 5:25 am
There's also a sociolinguistic aspect here, because Babatúndé has /aɪ/-lowering, which is typical of Multicultural London English. This brings his pronunciation of "like" closer to Greg's pronunciation/perception of "lag".
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
October 17, 2024 @ 7:53 am
Is this "court transcript thing" a red herring, or is it something that happens outside the U.S.?
I've never heard of it in 20 years of practice.
In my experience, you have a trained, qualified court reporter transcribing the testimony, and then a draft transcript goes out to all the lawyers, who then submit an "errata" sheet if they think the CR got something wrong. Then, everybody has to agree on the final version before it becomes part of the docket.
Corey Bramblett said,
October 17, 2024 @ 12:04 pm
I definitely heard it as "your mom's just like" every time. (Southern USA speaker/listener) .. pegged it immediately as multiethnic London accent. Never thought "slag" but maybe that is because I'm less primed to hear the word slag in the first place
Speedwell said,
October 17, 2024 @ 3:55 pm
American expat resident on the Irish border for a decade. I not only heard "mum's just like" both times, I could tell immediately it was Babatunde (heh). oo much length on the transition from "mum's" to "just" for it to be "mum's a"
Speedwell said,
October 17, 2024 @ 3:56 pm
I'm not apologising for the premature post. You apologise for no edit functionality.
David Deterding said,
October 17, 2024 @ 6:03 pm
Benjamin E. Orsatti said: "Is this "court transcript thing" a red herring, or is it something that happens outside the U.S.? I've never heard of it in 20 years of practice."
In fact, faulty transcription in courts does occur, even in the U.S. I would like to quote the abstract of a paper by Jones, Kalbfeld, Hancock and Clark, in the journal Language, Volume 92, Number 2 (2019):
"Court reporters are certified at either 95% or 98% accuracy, depending on their certifying organization; however, the measure of accuracy is not one that evaluates their ability to transcribe nonstandard dialects. Here, we demonstrate that Philadelphia court reporters consistently fail to meet this level of transcription accuracy when confronted with mundane examples of spoken African American English (AAE). Furthermore, we show that they often cannot demonstrate understanding of what is being said. We show that the different morphosyntax of AAE, the different phonological patterns of AAE, and the different accents in Philadelphia related to residential segregation all conspire to produce transcriptions that not only are inaccurate, but also change the official record of who performed what actions under which circumstances, with potentially dramatic
legal repercussions for everyday speakers of AAE."
Furthermore, this research published in Language involves clear recordings. When the evidence consists of indistinct recordings, sometimes made covertly, the problems of incorrect transcripts influencing the outcome of a case are exacerbated.
Martha said,
October 17, 2024 @ 7:20 pm
I listened to the first clip twice and heard "your mom's just like" as clear as day. But then I thought it must not actually be what it sounds like or why the "test." The third time I heard "your mom's a slag," but the fourth time I heard "your mom's just like" again. (This was all before listening to the second clip or reading further.) But I'm American and "slag" isn't part of my idiolect.
Christopher J. Henrich said,
October 18, 2024 @ 12:48 am
When I play these audio clips on Safari, I notice a curious visual effect. The graphic display for each clip includes a horizontal "progress bar", with a short vertical bar that moves across the display. Normally, this vertical bar moves from left to right, pretty smoothly. But on these two clips, it moves about three quarters of the way, then jumps back to about the halfway point, then moves to the right end of its travel. I get the impression that the clip is being read partway, then somehow rewound a short distance, then started forward again. It appears to be a clever hack that doesn't quite succeed in concealing itself. Am I making a mare's nest?
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
October 18, 2024 @ 8:39 am
David Deterding said,
[Even U.S. court reporters sometimes have trouble with non-standard American English].
So stipulated, Counselor. But I still don't see how that can't be corrected by the procedures already in place, namely, a draft transcript goes out to all the lawyers (or pro se parties), who then submit an "errata" sheet if the transcript doesn't reflect what was said.
David Deterding said,
October 18, 2024 @ 3:02 pm
Benjamin E. Orsatti suggested that problems with faulty transcriptions can be corrected by both sides analysing the transcripts and submitting an errata sheet.
The problem with this is that they may not be aware of the errors. Once one has read a transcript, one's perception is influenced, and this influence affects lawyers on both sides. In the "your mum's just like" example, my perception was shifted when I read the "your mum's a slag" alternative, even though I knew it was wrong. And this kind of shift can occur in legal contexts, especially with the transcription of indistinct recordings. In this case, I knew that the influence on my perception was flawed; but sometimes listeners do not know.
Anyone who is interested in issues such as this might look at the material in:
https://forensictranscription.net.au/
Although much of it is from Australia, the same issues arise in legal contexts elsewhere, including the USA.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
October 18, 2024 @ 3:45 pm
David,
I'd agree that there are all manner of noetic/semiosic failures that befall the minds of judges and juries.
…and that's why the world needs lawyers!
Tomoda Ginzo said,
October 23, 2024 @ 11:42 pm
For what's it's worth, I heard the second of the two short clips distinctly as, "Your mum's a slag." The first one, with its "now" and different intonation was obscure: it was the second one that convinced me (wrongly) that I had understood what he was saying.
I grew up in England, but not in multi-ethnic London and haven't lived in that country for a long time now. In the context of the full clip with video, his intended meaning was immediately clear and I felt the presenter was milking the moment rather laboriously for laughs rather than genuinely mis-hearing what the original speaker had said.