Finally it takes a sassy Singaporean girl who is secured enough to give us the ultimate iPhone review on video.
Now for the readers who aren't so crazy about YouTube video but prefer cartoon, animation and white text on black background 1990's style pre-blog web page, I have good news for you. This is by far the most objective review, bar none.
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She's a typical Singaprean girl, with all the stuffs in her arms and her neck
ReplyDeleteVery funny video, and she made a very good point about iPhones being designed by guys who have no clue whatsoever about how long fingernails should interface with their touchscreen. I just couldn't get over her accent though. Arrgh, spare me the Singaporean pidgin ("I'm bored" not "I'm board"!!). Of course, some species of Irish accent are not any less hard to fathom so perhaps I shouldn't be the one to talk.
ReplyDeleteSnowdrops: If you're talking about RP or BBC English, the words "bored" and "board" happen to have the same articulation, i.e. they sound exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteI'm not Singaporean and I know a little about IPA [International Phonetic Alphabets] or English phonetics.
The thing about Singaporean English that nags me is the addition of "la", "ah" or some other intonation/exclamation endings at the end of English sentences.
Hi Sidney, thanks for responding to my rather boring comment, but I'm sorry I have to beg to differ: "bored" and "board" sound really different even in Received Pronunication / BBC English, or English with a posh accent, as we say here. The former requires the lengthening and emphasis of the "-re" sound so that the word almost reads like two syllables; the latter does not require such lenghtening and thus sounds harsher to the ear (and in fact the emphasis is at the beginning rather than at the end of the word). "Welcome on board" does not, and should not therefore, in any way be made to sound like "Welcome on bored".
ReplyDeleteActually, I think I was being generous when I wrote that the girl spoke "bored" like "board", as in reality she made it sound more like "bord", which is even worse. Basically I found "Singlish" means pronouncing everything with a much harsher sound than normal English, conflating syllables and compacting sounds so that much of the musical quality of English is lost, and everything is made to sound Chinese because of such phonetic shortening.
But yeah, I very much concur with what you said about the addition of "ah" and "la" filler words in Singlish, combining the English sentence structure with that of conversational Chinese, which drives me nuts also.
Anyway, I know I really shouldn't be the one to talk seeing how the Irish accent is much maligned everywhere!
Thanks, Snowdrops, for telling me that. I can understand that sounds of words may be articulated in a different way in real life situations from what dictionaries tell us.
ReplyDeleteFrom your description of on-the-ground articulation of the word "bored" [in Ireland], I pictured in my mind a somewhat American way of pronouncing that word, with certain emphasis on the /r/ sound immediately after the [RP] long vowel "or" - /ɔː/ [You must switch font type to Lucida Sans Unicode or whatever font type ending with "Unicode" in order to see this IPA symbol properly].
I'm not in a position to argue with that since I've never ever lived, worked or studied in a foreign country although I visited LAICHUNGLEUNG twice in 1989 and 1993.
Suffice it to say that I've got the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary [7th Ed], the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English [www.ldoceonline.com], the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary [dictionary.cambridge.org] and the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, on my side.
If the dictionaries above represent the RP or BBC pronunciation of English, then there must be some truth or correctness in saying the two words - "bored" and "board" - sound exactly the same.
I've enjoyed our discussion here, Snowdrops. And thanks, LAICHUNGLEUNG, for providing the forum.
I spoke Hong Kong English, I have watched a YouTube Video saying that Canadian English is different from American English, Canadian English "About" as "about", not Amercian English as "a boot", I am not sure ? American English speakers or Canadian English speakers, please comment
ReplyDeleteThere's not much to comment on except to say that the sounds of Canadian English are closer to the sounds of British English irrespective of the fact that Canada is closer to the US geographically.
ReplyDelete