Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 20:14:19 -0700
From: Anton Sherwood dasher[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NETCOM.COM
Subject: Re: oj trial
Alan S. Kaye writes:
I would like to see the "expert" identify correctly out of 100 tape
recordings of, say, 100 different people born and raised in a southern
state, e.g., chosen at random, and identify blacks from non-blacks.
My guess is that this is next to impossible.
So the witness should say the voice "sounded Black-or-Southern" rather
than "sounded Black" -- a distinction without a difference, as either way
most Californians are excluded.
Bill Kretzschmar adds:
As it happens, the witness is a non-native-speaker of American
English, and so not able to make any such judgment in any case.
With practice, I can hear accents in French (e.g. Vaudois, Italian), though
not as subtly as a native (and I wouldn't attempt to speak French with,
say, an Irish accent); is Northern-vs-Southern a subtle difference?
*\\* Anton Ubi scriptum?