Analysis of Romans Dialect

For our transcription project we decided to transcribe a conversational passage from

Roman, a 23 year male from Ukraine living in America. After analyzing and transcribing the
sample conversation we found several rules of his dialect. The biggest rule we found was his
substitution of the // and // with the fricative /z/.. For example, he pronounced the words
those and that as /v zos pipl/ and /j zts wa/. Another rule of Romans dialect is his
deletion of /d/ when it followed /n/. For example, in the utterance /tu spn zm/ he left of /d/ in
the word spend. Whenever he went to say the words and he instead said /n/.
A third rule for Romans dialect is his deletion of /t/ when it follows /s/. In the
utterance / /d In we lak Its / he completely cuts off /t/. He also did it when he said /hi ds
gn lak dmp n mi/; each time he went to say the word just he left off /t/. Another thing
we noticed about Romans dialect is that he will substitute // for /t/ when it precedes /r/. In the
utterance where he told how old he was he said /twnitri jis ld/. Another thing we noticed
about his dialect was how he pronounced the word favorite. Many people who speak Standard
American English pronounce the word /fevIt/. However each time Roman said it he
pronounced /fevoIt/. He pronounces the word with two diphthongs (/e/ and /o/) as opposed
to just one (/e/) like many speakers of SAE.
While these are only some of the dialectal rules we found there were many more that we
were not sure how to capture in writing. It was fascinating to listening to the differences in his
Ukrainian English dialect compare to our American English dialects.

Summary of Experience/Report of Interjudge Reliability

Overall, it was a challenging project. While transcribing a consensus report was fairly
easy as we agreed on many things, the actual transcribing of the recording was difficult for both
of us. For example, even though we agreed that Roman produced // and // in a couple of
different ways we discovered that we both had to frequently replay the tape when trying to
discern the sound he made. Also, we had a five minute recording which had much more than 50
utterances so transcribing it took us each a few hours (though we shortened it to 50 utterances for
the consensus transcription). We both decided that transcribing more than we needed to made for
good practice.
In terms of our procedure for transcribing Roman we looked over both of our
transcriptions at each utterance and if there was a discrepancy we played the recording over so
we could listen to the utterance in question together. We only had a few discrepancies, including
Romans use of the word the and how he pronounced it. Sometimes we were unable to figure
out what sound he was starting the word off with. One of us used the schwa to describe the subtle
// sound and the other used // every time. After listening to the recording together many times
we decided that the th sound was voiced although it was very soft. We transcribed the th
sound as voiced. Another disagreement we had was whether or not we were hearing // or // in
certain words. For example, in the word and it was hard to distinguish what beginning sound
he was using. When we listened to the recording together we had it on a higher volume than we
did when we listened to it individually and we agreed that we heard // instead of //. These two
sounds are similar in placement; // is an open-mid vowel and // is an open vowel. No wonder it
was so hard to discern!

After transcribing Romans dialect in great detail we both realized that it almost seemed
easier to transcribe someone whose first language is one other than English. In class it is
sometimes hard to transcribe the subtle differences that can result from speaking English as a
first language and living in different parts of America. A foreigners dialect seemed much easier
to transcribe because the differences from SAE were more obvious to hear. Overall we enjoyed
the project. We were able to practice both our listening and transcription skills.