Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!mcvax!inria!imag!csinn!grossi From: grossi@csinn.uucp (Thomas Grossi) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: natural language examiners Summary: native fluency is more than just sounds Keywords: dialect turing Message-ID: <733@csinn.UUCP> Date: 14 Dec 87 11:19:50 GMT References: <1882@pdn.UUCP> Organization: Cap Sogeti Innovation, Grenoble, France Lines: 22 > I suspect that the only way to pin it down would be to plot the > frequency spectrum of each spoken sound, and judge an entity to > be speaking the standard dialect iff it does not deviate from > some standard for each spoken sound by more than a set amount and > if the speech rate does not deviate...etc. > -- > Colin Kendall Paradyne Corporation fine, but mastery of a language goes far beyond being able to pronounce all the sounds of a language. Intonation is extremely important, not only because if you don't get it right you'll sound "strange" but also because of its semantic content -- it's often impossible to tell when a "foreigner" is trying to sound sarcastic! Another aspect that I was completely unaware of until I came to live in a foreign country is that not only must you learn an entirely new vocabulary, you must also learn to say completely different things in the same circumstances. (for example, if someone steps on your foot and apologizes -- "Excuse me" -- an appropriate response in English would be "certainly" whereas in French you would say "Il n'y a pas de mal" -- "no harm done" in the closest translation) Thomas Grossi ...!mcvax!csinn!grossi Cap Sogeti Innovation Grenoble, France