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sophia_sol) wrote2024-03-28 09:45 am
sophia_sol) wrote2024-03-28 09:45 am
five things: english vowels, twitter problems, chatgpt sigh, I love writing, omegaverse complaint
one
I really appreciate that on the lingthusiasm podcast, one of the two hosts is also canadian, so when they're talking about accent stuff then one of the points of reference will definitely involve canadian english
today I learned what the cot-caught merger actually entails, for example! and how most canadians have that merger but pronounce it distinctly differently from the US people with the merger, and so trying to figure out from written descriptions how to modulate your vowels to create the split doesn't make sense to the canadian ear when the explanations are written with a US accent in mind
(thank you also to the second host for being australian, without the cot-caught merger)
also! the bath-trap merger! which canadian english also has, and which specifically gets in the way of trying to figure out how to do british accents, lol.
because Gretchen, like me, knows that many varieties of british pronounce SOME "a" vowels more like "aw" but when you have this merger there's no sense of the distinction of which vowels get that pronunciation and which don't, so you're just kind of throwing "aw" at the wall when you're trying to imitate a british accent, without knowing which words to apply it to.
this makes SO much sense out of my struggle with parsing how british accents work. if you have a bath-trap split, there is a to-your-ear logical way of distinguishing which words get which vowel sound! it's not just random, and it's not that all of them are the same just with a different vowel sound than canadian english!
and then, the most interesting part of the recent episode about vowel sounds, they got into gender differences in how vowels are produced in english.
and cis straight men have less variance between their vowel spaces than all other populations - their vowels are mostly all closer to the middle!
so one of the features that makes a voice read male to english speakers is to not give your vowels any flair or flavour, lol
they also talked about trans men and women, gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, and nonbinary people, and how they approach their vowel sounds. (nonbinary people: we just do whatever we want!) I do wish they'd gone into more detail about EXACTLY what each of them does with their vowels, rather than what impressions people have of them and what other groups they're most like. because this is a fascinating subject. I also want to know more about the OTHER things these different gender and sexuality populations do differently from a linguistics perspective!
(and then I found a fascinating academic paper that covered a few more things about trans voices and it was great: http://lalzimman.org/PDFs/Zimman2018TransgenderVoices.pdf)
two
I briefly ventured a little back into the world of twitter and like, a) there's still some amazing fanart there! and cool people saying things! but b) dear god being psychically attacked by the sheer volume of ads/sponsored posts, plus the context collapse of graphic photos of rl atrocities next to cute fandom posts. all power to those of you who still make it work for you, but I don't know how I used to manage being there regularly.
three
there's a birding podcast where I've been enjoying going through the backlog of episodes, but I just got to an episode where the host and his guest of the week spend a large part of the episode talking about info they're getting specifically from chatgpt. they made a brief disclaimer that not all of it might be right, but then they went on to talk about it all at length without once doing any further research to back up what chatgpt told them, just taking it at face value. I found it so frustrating I had to skip the rest of the episode.
I was talking with a colleague earlier this week about chatgpt, and she's someone I both respect and like, but she had literally never considered that you can't trust the facts that generative ai gives you to be correct, and her mind was a little bit blown by that idea.
I think generative ai has applications where it can be a useful tool! providing facts is not one of them! I wish I knew how we could change the public discourse around what it is and what it can be used for .
four
I love writing fic, it's so much fun!!
five
like I get why that's hot and/or compelling to a lot of people, but for me as an ace person who has less than zero interest in having sex with anyone ever, it's such an othering universe to immerse myself in that it has a real lowering effect on my headspace whenever I try to read it
and I know that not all omegaverse does this, but so much of it does that it's a bit of a minefield to try to find the exceptions. and I have a mild to moderate dislike of sufficient other aspects of the omegaverse trope bouquet for it to not be worth it for me to try reading omegaverse fics
I really appreciate that on the lingthusiasm podcast, one of the two hosts is also canadian, so when they're talking about accent stuff then one of the points of reference will definitely involve canadian english
today I learned what the cot-caught merger actually entails, for example! and how most canadians have that merger but pronounce it distinctly differently from the US people with the merger, and so trying to figure out from written descriptions how to modulate your vowels to create the split doesn't make sense to the canadian ear when the explanations are written with a US accent in mind
(thank you also to the second host for being australian, without the cot-caught merger)
also! the bath-trap merger! which canadian english also has, and which specifically gets in the way of trying to figure out how to do british accents, lol.
because Gretchen, like me, knows that many varieties of british pronounce SOME "a" vowels more like "aw" but when you have this merger there's no sense of the distinction of which vowels get that pronunciation and which don't, so you're just kind of throwing "aw" at the wall when you're trying to imitate a british accent, without knowing which words to apply it to.
this makes SO much sense out of my struggle with parsing how british accents work. if you have a bath-trap split, there is a to-your-ear logical way of distinguishing which words get which vowel sound! it's not just random, and it's not that all of them are the same just with a different vowel sound than canadian english!
and then, the most interesting part of the recent episode about vowel sounds, they got into gender differences in how vowels are produced in english.
and cis straight men have less variance between their vowel spaces than all other populations - their vowels are mostly all closer to the middle!
so one of the features that makes a voice read male to english speakers is to not give your vowels any flair or flavour, lol
they also talked about trans men and women, gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, and nonbinary people, and how they approach their vowel sounds. (nonbinary people: we just do whatever we want!) I do wish they'd gone into more detail about EXACTLY what each of them does with their vowels, rather than what impressions people have of them and what other groups they're most like. because this is a fascinating subject. I also want to know more about the OTHER things these different gender and sexuality populations do differently from a linguistics perspective!
(and then I found a fascinating academic paper that covered a few more things about trans voices and it was great: http://lalzimman.org/PDFs/Zimman2018TransgenderVoices.pdf)
two
I briefly ventured a little back into the world of twitter and like, a) there's still some amazing fanart there! and cool people saying things! but b) dear god being psychically attacked by the sheer volume of ads/sponsored posts, plus the context collapse of graphic photos of rl atrocities next to cute fandom posts. all power to those of you who still make it work for you, but I don't know how I used to manage being there regularly.
three
there's a birding podcast where I've been enjoying going through the backlog of episodes, but I just got to an episode where the host and his guest of the week spend a large part of the episode talking about info they're getting specifically from chatgpt. they made a brief disclaimer that not all of it might be right, but then they went on to talk about it all at length without once doing any further research to back up what chatgpt told them, just taking it at face value. I found it so frustrating I had to skip the rest of the episode.
I was talking with a colleague earlier this week about chatgpt, and she's someone I both respect and like, but she had literally never considered that you can't trust the facts that generative ai gives you to be correct, and her mind was a little bit blown by that idea.
I think generative ai has applications where it can be a useful tool! providing facts is not one of them! I wish I knew how we could change the public discourse around what it is and what it can be used for .
four
I love writing fic, it's so much fun!!
five
personal complaint about omegaverse
I don't want to yuck anyone's yum around omegaverse, but for me.....ugh I HATE how it's a universe that is usually predicated on a notion of "the instinctual biological drive towards sex or need for sex is so powerful it cannot be overridden or denied"like I get why that's hot and/or compelling to a lot of people, but for me as an ace person who has less than zero interest in having sex with anyone ever, it's such an othering universe to immerse myself in that it has a real lowering effect on my headspace whenever I try to read it
and I know that not all omegaverse does this, but so much of it does that it's a bit of a minefield to try to find the exceptions. and I have a mild to moderate dislike of sufficient other aspects of the omegaverse trope bouquet for it to not be worth it for me to try reading omegaverse fics
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It helps to be able to read IPA notation. Not the letters, which... I'm iffy on for vowels... but the descriptions. (Though to be honest, when I tell people what the difference is I only bring up the lip rounding. That'll get you close enough.)
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Or, honestly - it's *not* a linguistics textbook, but if all you want to do is get a start on the subject, you can do worse than to read the online version of The Language Construction Kit. (There's also a print version and a sequel.) It's geared towards conlanging rather than a serious introduction to linguistics... but it's free, and written in an accessible way.
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(* Actually I think this part is perfectly fine and a legitimate use of generative AI)
and then I'm not going to read it over even once to make sure it hasn't introduced any egregious errors."
Because so many of these funny stories that get passed around make it painfully clear that no human so much as glanced at the thing until after it was published (or read out in court, or whatever).
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I've merged cot/caught, but I'm going to break out of it for a minute to say oh my GAWD, imagine being so foolish as to admit you're using ChatGPT info like that on a podcast. When Cornell LoO is right THERE.
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well, the info that this podcast was getting from chatgpt was more stuff like, nicola tesla's relationship with a pigeon. which isn't going to be information cornell's bird resources contain lol. but there ARE plenty of other historical resources easily available for accessing reliable information about that kind of thing! but I think that this podcaster thought it was fun/funny? like they even talked about how they got into an argument with chatgpt about something or another (idk the details, I tuned it out and turned it off), as if this is somehow compelling content....and to them I guess it is. and a listener even made fanart of something that came up in that segment so I suppose other listeners also find that compelling???? I do not understand.
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