Thursday, August 12, 2004
While watching test cricket today, I was struck by the fact that the white Bajan commentator sounded Welsh. Some time ago, I worked with a white Bajan doctor, and she too sounded strangely celtic to my cloth ears. Obviously if I heard Brian Lara speak, I would never mistake him for a welshman. There are two possible hypotheses for this auditory illusion:
1. White-caribbean and afro-caribbean people have different accents, and the white accent is actually similar to the welsh accent.
2. A deep seated sub-conscious racism prevents me from accepting white people with Bajan accents as actually being caribbean, so I am transmuting their accent to the nearest acceptable "caucasian" accent.
I would never want to be thought of as racist, so I propose a small experiment. While looking at the picture below of Ron Davies, disgraced welsh politician, listen to the samples of caribbean speech available here (Jamaican) and here (Bajan).
Now perform the experimental control by staring hard at the picture of Brian Lara, while re-listening to the above linked speech samples.
Unfortunately the Speech Accent Archive has no examples of Welsh accents for comparison, but I think the experiment is effective. To my ear the Bajan accent is easily interpretable as welsh even when associated with Brian Lara. The Jamaican accent however is resolutely caribbean even paired with Ron Davies. Please report your findings via the comments. Am I inherently racist, just deaf, or the discoverer of hitherto unknown trans-atlantic phonetic connections?
Sneaker Vending Machine, ideal for midnight moments when you crave that Deadstock hit.
fish, plant, rack is an AI project that uses a blind elephant fish to control a robot, that in turn maintains a hydroponically grown plants.
Homeland Insecurity Advisory System is like Hot Or Not for policy decisions in the War on Terror™. Voting so far has led to an alert level of: "FRIGHTENED; significant risk of government failure."
Insane japanese (of course) animated gifs. Where else would a giant pink teddy bear gnaw out the jugulars of an infant?
The Seinfeld FAQ (SeinFAQ) is better than I could possibly imagine. Especially the list of fictional movies the characters have watched.
The latest beekeeping news is that following a further incredible harvest yesterday (no stings, yippee-kay-ay motherfuckers) a further 26lbs of sweet sweet honey have flooded the market. Unfortunately since demand still far outstrips supply, the price remains static at £3 per jar.
From woz.org, Steve Wozniak's blog:
"A Reader Asks: Dear Woz, When you call Apple to order stuff and you give them your name, do people recognize you and say "Hey, your (SIC) that dude that created Apple!"
Woz: I order Apple stuff online. I doubt that any human ever sees the names. But once I ordered a gigabit ethernet option. Apple noticed two months later that only two of these had been ordered, both by me! I do get noticed every time I buy shareware, and that brings me a lot of T-shirts that I get good use out of."
Contrary to the informed articles you might have read, RFID chips are an evil tool of Satan/Rumsfeld (delete as appropriate). I needed one yesterday, after one of my brother's gerbils escaped over the garden wall. Fortunately August is National Microchipping Month. Heck since the perks are so good maybe I'll get one while I'm at it. (For those concerned, the rodent was safely rescued and re-united with its mate after 8 hours of freedom.)
1. White-caribbean and afro-caribbean people have different accents, and the white accent is actually similar to the welsh accent.
2. A deep seated sub-conscious racism prevents me from accepting white people with Bajan accents as actually being caribbean, so I am transmuting their accent to the nearest acceptable "caucasian" accent.
I would never want to be thought of as racist, so I propose a small experiment. While looking at the picture below of Ron Davies, disgraced welsh politician, listen to the samples of caribbean speech available here (Jamaican) and here (Bajan).
Now perform the experimental control by staring hard at the picture of Brian Lara, while re-listening to the above linked speech samples.
Unfortunately the Speech Accent Archive has no examples of Welsh accents for comparison, but I think the experiment is effective. To my ear the Bajan accent is easily interpretable as welsh even when associated with Brian Lara. The Jamaican accent however is resolutely caribbean even paired with Ron Davies. Please report your findings via the comments. Am I inherently racist, just deaf, or the discoverer of hitherto unknown trans-atlantic phonetic connections?
"A Reader Asks: Dear Woz, When you call Apple to order stuff and you give them your name, do people recognize you and say "Hey, your (SIC) that dude that created Apple!"
Woz: I order Apple stuff online. I doubt that any human ever sees the names. But once I ordered a gigabit ethernet option. Apple noticed two months later that only two of these had been ordered, both by me! I do get noticed every time I buy shareware, and that brings me a lot of T-shirts that I get good use out of."
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