Can Text Be Made to Sound More Than Just Its Words? (2022)

In Akan languages it is not difficult to conceive of how the same word can be written in different ways to convey another dimension.

Anyone who speaks an akan language will understand that each of these words below means good but with a slightly different emphasis.

papa papaaapa papapapapapa

What is the linguistic term for this concept?

I don't know if 20% is correct, but I feel it's very close to it. I also think a lot of internet arguments happen as a direct result of miscommunication. Emojis are great, but they get abused to the point that HN filters them out. Perhaps allow readers to toggle if they want to see emojis or not?

I would load up audio files in Audacity and look at them to see how the audio "looked", as a function of how intense each frequency is over time.

You can even set a track to spectrogram while recording which allowed you to see the sound in real time.

Music also tends to be very beautiful in the spectrogram! And birdsong also. Sometimes I would see a bird first, and only afterwards notice it in my field of hearing.

I noticed while analyzing a podcast that I began to recognize common words like "you." I also noticed that I was able to easily distinguish between different people's voices.

I had to wonder if I were deaf, or if I become deaf, I would suddenly have a strong motivation to learn how to read these things. To develop some kind of device which would show them to me 24 hours a day.

I have not done this, but the project has remained in the back of my mind for over a decade.

Does anyone else know more about this? Does such a device exist?

I think that only some linguists learn how to read spectrograms. But it seems like something that might be extremely useful to any hearing impaired person?

Relating to the article, I think one could quickly learn to read them fluently (e.g. as subtitles, perhaps overlaid on real life), and of course you get the tonal information built in for free—that's what a spectrogram is!