The Listening Post

* The macros got lost! And I'm sure you were mystified. Last Friday's "Listening Post" column dealt with the vagaries of English spelling and pronunciation; in an effort to precisely describe two of the most troublesome vowel sounds, I used the generally accepted phonetic transcription, framed in brackets, like this: [ ]. And that's just how the attempted phonetic transcription vowel of "black" came out, in the miraculous conversion process from Macintosh to DOS: as a blank. The second vowel I tried to transcribe, that of "luck," came out in the newspaper as [k ], which, if you attempt to pronounce as a vowel, might choke you. The sentence from the column should have read: "The fact that syllables are 'swallowed,' or a vowel is either eliminated or reduced to an indistinct 'uh' sound, is a nasty surprise for those who have begun their study [of English] with reading and writing." From now on, I conclude, I shall have to use the rougher but more reliable method of describing phonetics with normal (if imprecise) letters of the alphabet, and give examples. So much for the wonders of conversion across computer systems. * I promised to discuss the rhythm of spoken English; as "The Listening Post" is now appearing in The Jakarta Post on Fridays only (no more Tuesday column), I shall have to do so here. It's a subject on which more than a few doctoral dissertations and books have been written ; I'll give it to you in as brief a fashion as I can, within the limitations of the column. Here goes: it's nuts! Is that concise enough for you? No? * Well, you can say that every English sentence has one, and only one, strong or primary stress. In the sentence, "There are too many prepositions in the headline," the speaker would stress the word "head," and the pitch would fall at the end of the sentence. In brief, stress may be defined as (1) length in time, (2) volume in decibels, and (3) pitch in frequency. Thus, a stressed syllable is longer, louder and higher in pitch than a lesser-stressed, or unstressed, one. In the sample sentence above, the word "too" and the third syllable of the word "prepositions" would have a secondary stress. The words "there," "too" and "in" would probably have a tertiary, or weak, stress (but I advise students to pay more attention to primary and secondary stress in their study and practice of intonation). * Unstressed syllables may get swallowed or reduced to an "uh" sound. This is what tends to give English its irregular, "lumpy" sound. You can also hear this in the pronunciation of some English speakers whose Indonesian is not very fluent: the rhythm is all wrong. * Thanks to Tim Drown for his very thoughtful article in the Saturday, November 5, Jakarta Post, entitled "English language teachers should get to know to [sic] their students." Hey? Where did that pesky second "to" come from? I bet you didn't put it in, Tim! You can say "relate to," "accede to," "be kind to," but the verb "know" has to take a direct (and occasionally carnal) object. I truly appreciate Tim's thoughtful comments on "The Listening Post" column, and the way it is conceived and written; as with any "distance-learning" medium, the challenge is always that of targeting an audience, giving that audience what it needs and can use, and ascertaining whether its members have indeed benefited from the content. * Newspaper English is tough for beginners, so from the inauguration of the series in October 1988 we have been aiming for upper-intermediate to advanced-level learners @ people who can already use the language pretty well. And, this said, I must, alas, point out a major failing in Tim's discussion of "The Listening Post." Please, pretty please with sugar on it, always bear in mind that this newspaper column cannot be considered by itself. * As I've said only about a million times in these pages, "'The Listening Post' is an original English-language newspaper plus radio show distance-learning program"; this is what was decided back in 1988 when American Language Training, Radio Sonora FM 100.9 and The Jakarta Post agreed to start the series. I refer Tim, and any other interested parties, to the Friday, October 21, 1994, column: "...if you tune in to the show this evening, you'll hear Eric and me reading out many of the news stories, and commenting on photographs, and explaining idioms and structures, in the very paper you hold in your hands at this moment. That's the unique contribution of 'The Listening Post.'" * While some columns are meant for readers across Indonesia, others, like the one containing the "Car Guys" piece that Tim mentioned, include transcripts of, or commentary on, something that is broadcast over the air. For those Jakarta reader- listeners @ and out-of-town readers @ who go to the trouble of ordering audiocassette dubs of "The Listening Post" broadcasts (Rp 3,000 per dub from American Language Training, Jl. R.S. Fatmawati 42A, Jakarta 12430), the combination of an audiotape and that same day's Jakarta Post provides a complete listening and reading set.

-- Byron Black