This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

這里是美國(guó)之音慢速英語(yǔ)教育報(bào)道。

Steven Weinberger is the director of linguistics in the English

Department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Professor

Weinberger says students in his beginning phonetics class are mostly

interested in teaching English as a second language. They wanted to

study how non-native speakers pronounce different sounds.

史蒂文·溫伯格（Steven Weinberger）是喬治梅森大學(xué)英語(yǔ)系語(yǔ)言學(xué)主任，該

校位于弗吉尼亞州費(fèi)爾法克斯縣。溫伯格教授表示，語(yǔ)言學(xué)入門(mén)班級(jí)中的的學(xué)生

大多數(shù)有意教授非英語(yǔ)母語(yǔ)人士，所以他們想要研究非母語(yǔ)人士如何發(fā)音。

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "So we sent the students out to record non-native

speakers, and we compared those speakers to each other and to native

speakers of English."

溫伯格：“于是我們派學(xué)生給非母語(yǔ)人士錄音并相互比較，同時(shí)還和英語(yǔ)母語(yǔ)人

士比較?！?/P>

Professor Weinberger wrote a paragraph for all of the speakers to

read. The paragraph uses common words but contains almost all of the

sounds used in English. Here is that sixty-nine-word paragraph read by

our own Bob Doughty:

溫伯格教授寫(xiě)了一段短文讓所有人朗讀。這段短文使用一些常用詞，但卻包含了

英語(yǔ)使用的幾乎所有的發(fā)音。以下是由我同事Bob Doughty朗讀的這段69個(gè)單詞

的短文：

BOB DOUGHTY: "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with

her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of

blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a

small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids.She can scoop

these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at

the train station."

Bob Doughty：“請(qǐng)致電斯特拉，讓她從商店購(gòu)買(mǎi)這些東西：六匙新鮮荷蘭豆，

五大塊藍(lán)紋奶酪，有可能再給她弟弟鮑勃買(mǎi)點(diǎn)小吃。我們還需要給小孩們買(mǎi)一條

塑料小蛇和一個(gè)玩具大青蛙。她可以把這些東西裝進(jìn)3個(gè)紅色袋子里，我們周三

將去火車站接她?！?/P>

In nineteen ninety-nine, Professor Weinberger put the recordings

online. The Speech Accent Archive is for anyone who wants to compare

and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

1999年，溫伯格教授把這些錄音放到了網(wǎng)上。這份語(yǔ)言口音檔案提供給任何想對(duì)

不同英語(yǔ)朗讀者的口音做比較和分析的人士使用。

For example, here is a thirty-two-year-old Iraqi man:

例如，這是一位32歲伊拉克男子：

IRAQI MAN: "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her

from the store."

伊拉克男子：“請(qǐng)致電斯特拉，讓她從商店購(gòu)買(mǎi)這些東西?！?

And here is a twenty-three-year-old woman from Eritrea:

而這是一位23歲的厄立特里亞女子：

ERITREAN WOMAN: "Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of

blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob."

厄立特里亞女子：“六匙新鮮荷蘭豆，五大塊藍(lán)紋奶酪，有可能再給她弟弟鮑勃

買(mǎi)點(diǎn)小吃。”

Some people think the archive would be better if it included natural

speech -- people talking freely, (not just reading the same words. )

Professor Weinberger recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of his

site.

有人認(rèn)為如果這份檔案包括人們自由交談的錄音，而不僅僅是朗讀同一篇短文就

更好了。溫伯格教授知道他的網(wǎng)站的長(zhǎng)處和弱點(diǎn)。

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "The biggest plus, of course, is that it is so

uniform that you can immediately compare a Kiswahili speaker to a

native English speaker. But the downside is that a less-than-skilled

reader will have difficulties with the paragraph that might not

demonstrate their true phonetic abilities."

溫伯格：“最大的長(zhǎng)處當(dāng)然是這份檔案如此統(tǒng)一，你可以立即對(duì)斯瓦希里語(yǔ)朗讀

者和英語(yǔ)母語(yǔ)朗讀者做比較。但其短處是，缺乏訓(xùn)練的人對(duì)朗讀這篇短文可能存

在困難，可能無(wú)法表現(xiàn)出他們真正的語(yǔ)言實(shí)力。”

People often use sounds from their first language until they can

reproduce the ones used in the language they are learning.

人們通常使用其母語(yǔ)的發(fā)音，直到他們能模仿正在學(xué)習(xí)的這門(mén)語(yǔ)言的正確發(fā)音。

Professor Weinberger says the site gets a million visits a month.

溫伯格教授表示，這個(gè)網(wǎng)站每月訪客高達(dá)1百萬(wàn)人次。

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "We get notices from speech pathologists, from

computational engineers who do speech processing, from PhD students

who want to do research on bias and accent judgments, from actors who

need to learn a special part."

溫伯格：“我們得到了來(lái)自語(yǔ)言病理學(xué)家，語(yǔ)音處理工程師，研究偏好和口音鑒

定的博士生，以及需要學(xué)習(xí)特定地方口音的演員們的建議?！?/P>

The archive contains more than one thousand five hundred recordings.

These can be searched many ways, including by place of birth and the

age at which the speaker began to learn English.

這份檔案包括1500多份錄音，它們可以通過(guò)多種途徑搜索，包括使用出生地和朗

讀者開(kāi)始學(xué)習(xí)英語(yǔ)的年齡搜索。

Professor Weinberger would like more people to send in their own

samples of the sixty-nine-word paragraph.

溫伯格教授希望更多人給他發(fā)送自己朗讀的這段69個(gè)單詞的短文的錄音樣本。

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "Right now we only have samples from about three

hundred fifty languages, including English. You know, there are six

thousand languages in the world today, so we need lots more. That's

why the archive work will never be finished."

溫伯格：“當(dāng)前我們只有來(lái)自以350種不同語(yǔ)言為母語(yǔ)的朗讀者的錄音樣本，其

中包括英語(yǔ)。而你知道當(dāng)今世界上有6000種語(yǔ)言。因此我們需要更多錄音樣本，

這就是為什么這項(xiàng)檔案工作永遠(yuǎn)無(wú)法結(jié)束的原因?！?/P>

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. You can find a

link to the Speech Accent Archive at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm

Christopher Cruise.