Friday, April 18, 2008

Voice box

Big news of the week is that scientists have, using fossil fragments and a synthesizer, replicated a vowel used by Neanderthals. The ultimate aim is to replicate an entire sentence - which may be interesting given nobody today speaks Neanderthal. But an interesting aside to this story is how people pronounce the word "Neanderthal". On a report I listened to on ABC Radio yesterday, scientists repeatedly did not pronounce the "h", ending the world with "tal" (as in shall ... where's phonetics training when you really need it?). Today, in general news reports and interviews, the "h" was back. (H)mmmmm.

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