1. Try to make your own recording of the posted sentences. You can use the internal microphones on your computer if you have one. If you have no way to record, please let me know. Upload your recording to the Acoustic Phonetics group on altiplano.

2. Listen and transcribe (in the IPA) your recording and the posted recording. Then, using Praat, segment (identify the IPA sounds in the spectrogram/wave form) the sentences. Choose a three word 'chunk' to analyze closely. If the recording you posted is not adequate, use the posted recording.

Two sound files: (1) We show speech and (2) Shall we chase those cowboys

An example of self-recording using a Shure condenser mic w/ a built-in single battery preamp.
The microphone cord has a pin jack for computer input but needs one size-down adaptor. Not bad quality.

Conceptualizing

More transcription practice. Watch for minimal pairs!

This is a 'lexicon'. Primarily nouns followed by a phase 'we call that' which varies by gender and number. For example, [?abbaa jedhamma]: 'we say father'. (Liberties taken w/ transcription symbols.) We are going to work on transcribing and categorizing the sounds of Oromo (rather than English for right now).

This is a recording I made in 1995 at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison, using an analog tape recorder, with the speaker in a sound proof booth using a
boom microphone. The input to Praat is from a Marantz analog Field recorder. Take a listen and think about transcribing what you hear. The language is
the Shewa dialect of Oromo, the indigenous language of Ethiopia. It is also spoken in Northern Africa. The fate of the language is heavily connected to the
political and social aspects of this region of the world. It has some interesting phonetic and phonological features--see if you can hear any of these.

Old Sound file