Data Sets

Brunei

ASEAN

Hong Kong + Taiwanese — HK2 : 11

S1 = Taiwanese female
S2 = Hong Kong male

Context: They are talking about S2's name, particularly why he just uses a single syllable name, rather than the usual three-syllable Chinese name.

S2 : you know as there i don:’t really you know f- need you know the i mean the middle

Intended Words : need

Heard as : meet

Discussion : There is a glottal stop at the end of need, and S1 hears this as [t] rather than [d], partly because the preceding vowel is quite short (as would be expected before a voiceless final consonant). It is hard to detect whether the initial consonant is [n] or [m], so it is not surprising if S1 hears it as [m] instead of [n], even though meet makes no sense in this context. In fact, she insisted that she heard the word as meet even when listening to it repeatedly afterwards.