Phonetic Variation Quotes

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.

In writing, you discover interior sonorities in words. Dipthongs sound differently beneath the pen. One hears them with their sounds divorced.

I think moving from Ireland to Australia, you couldn't get a more different accent on the palate. The Irish accent is very muscular and involves a lot of tongue and cheek-muscle work, whereas the Australian accent is really flat; the palate is quite broad. They're at almost opposite ends of the scale, so I feel it was good training.

But as my voice coach keeps saying, if we actually spoke the way they imagine the Elizabethan voice might have been, we wouldn't be able to understand it.

I love mispronunciations. I love when people mispronounce things.

The best scheme of Phonetics is a stiff uncertain thing.

The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

Many words are in a state of mutation, the pronunciation being unsettled even in the best society, a result that must often arise where language is as variable and undetermined as the English.

I'm sometimes asked 'Can you lose the accent?'and I say 'No, but I can put on another one'.

You're sonically racist, Americans. You think we all sound the same, whereas I have definitely a mongrel accent.