I had some more Baruch Spinoza in store for you for this month, but, as you’ll notice, I went with something a lot less challenging instead. This is, arguably, way more fun though, so there’s that this time around. This is also way shorter, so there’s that as well, in case you prefer the shorter essays over the longer essays (not that I care though, both are fine, I don’t really think in those terms).
Okay, so, to give you a bit of context, which is the keyword of this essay, the high school culminates in these grueling final exams in Finland. Technically it’s the upper secondary school that ends with the matriculation exams, but as that means … all to most people outside Finland, just think of high school and final exams. That’s the context of what we are dealing with.
Most of these exams are writing oriented. You are expected to read something and then respond to it in writing. Simple, really. Nothing surprising. Languages also test your hearing and whether you comprehend what you hear. While reading does have its challenges, as no text has only one interpretation, speech is tricky, because you are, most often, not dealing with complete sentences, but a series of utterances. This makes interpretation even more difficult.
Okay, okay, it’s nonsensical to compare writing and speech in terms of comprehension as each has its pros and cons. With writing, you can read the sentences over and over again, but you don’t have all the cues, such as intonation, as you do in speech. With speech, you do have those cues, but, like I pointed out, you are dealing with something rather free form, typically a series of half assed utterances that can go from one thing to another, only to swing back whenever, which then may make it difficult to follow. Plus, you need to familiar with the language variety in question, to know what’s what, and how it works, systematically, in order to avoid confusion.
So, there was this, no, I wouldn’t say uproar, but rather amusement over two questions included in the listening comprehension part of a recent English final exam. Students were tasked to explain what side hustles a speaker talks about in an audio clip. The speaker speaks in a British variety. There’s nothing special about that as that’s what you hear in schools, and you can expect the students to be familiar with it.
To give you a bit more context, it’s an audio clip that has been edited from a video posted on Youtube by The Humble Penny (Ken Okoroafor) ’14 HIGH PAYING SIDE HUSTLE IDEAS FOR 2021 to START TODAY With Little Money!’ (it starts at 12:23). I’d say it’s preferable to check out that segment first and then continue reading this essay. That way you won’t be led on by me. If you want to compare the clips, check the exam. It’s in part 1, task 4.5.
So, what was so amusing about those two questions? Well, apparently, some students had explaining that Okoroafor was talking about prostitution or, to be more accurate, about acting as a pimp. The key word here is ‘hall’. He says it a number of times in that segment which last for a bit over a minute. The way I hear it, he says ‘hall’, but it does come across as ‘whore’ or ‘hole’ a couple of times. The first time he says ‘hall’, that’s fine, but then it’s more like ‘whore’. Why? Well, because speech is messy. You have utterances, with these little pauses, here and there. So, the second time he says the word, it’s followed by ‘on’. This being speech, he is a bit sloppy with the pronunciation of ‘hall’, so that the final consonant sound just isn’t there. To make up for that, there’s a phenomenon known as an intrusive r. That means that in some varieties, such as this one, if a word ends in a vowel sound and it is followed by another word that begins with a vowel sound, there’s rhotic consonant sound that gets thrown in there, in between them, which causes it to sound different.
The example I was taught first year in English phonetics was how in Received Pronunciation, i.e., standard British English, there’s that rhotic consonant that intrudes when you say something like ‘law and order’. The first word, ‘law’, ends in a vowel sound and it is followed by another word, ‘and’, that begins with another vowel sound. You get that intrusive rhotic consonant between the two, so that it’s not ‘law’, but rather ‘lawr’.
This is the same in this case. The key word, ‘hall’, does not end in a vowel sound, but people being people, the final consonant sound gets dropped, and because the following sound, the word initial sound of ‘on’ is also a vowel sound, you get that intrusive rhotic consonant sound added to the mix. That’s why it does indeed sound like he is saying ‘whore’, instead of ‘hall’. It’s not a very distinct rhotic consonant sound, but it’s there alright. You can hear it.
You do not get that phenomenon the first time he says the word, because, firstly, he does articulate the word carefully, and, secondly, even he didn’t articulate it that carefully, dropping it like he does the second time, that word is followed by ‘that’, which has a word initial consonant sound. It’s the same thing the third and fourth time around. It’s ‘hall’. When he says the word the fourth time, he is careful with the articulation, so that you do get the word final consonant sound there and, even if he wasn’t that careful, he has a clear pause before the next word ‘and’, which prevents that rhotic consonant sound from being thrown in the mix.
The fifth time he says the word, it is, once more, followed by a vowel sound. He is speaking fairly fast and I have trouble figuring out what the following sound actually is, but it does start with a vowel sound. I’d that there’s no intrusive rhotic consonant there. Strangely, the sixth time he says the word, there’s that rhotic consonant sound, even though the initial sound of the following word, ‘through’, is a consonant sound. Why? Beats me. That’s people for you. That’s real speech for you.
The seventh time he is, again, more careful with his articulation, so that you do get that word final consonant sound in ‘hall’, so that it doesn’t matter that it’s followed by a word with an initial vowel sound, ‘and’. The eight time, there’s careful articulation and a word that starts with an initial consonant, ‘to’. The ninth time, it’s a bit there and there. The articulation of the word final or, rather, stem final consonant sound isn’t quite there, and it does sound like there’s a rhotic consonant in the end then, before the consonant sound that makes it a plural, so that ‘halls’ ends up sounding like ‘whores’. It could also be that his voice is a bit raspy, like having a bit of vocal fry at that point, which then makes it sound like there’s rhoticity there, even though there isn’t.
Okay, so, I’d say that it’s possible to hear him as talking about ‘whores’ instead of ‘halls’, even though he is definitely talking about ‘halls’. It’s in a high school final exam, so the chances of that being the case are slim. You have to ask yourself: would the exam board who came up with the exam ever do that? I’d say no.
The thing is, however, that when you are there and then, listening to a short clip, only twice, with average headphones that may not reproduce what he says that accurately, I guess may start to wonder. Like, what if? What if he is actually talking about ‘whores’ instead of ‘halls’. You probably don’t think that the exam board would never pick such an example. You just think that you have to go with what you’ve heard.
Now, what else would make you think that he is talking about ‘whores’ and not ‘halls’? Well, let’s turn to pragmatics, which the study of language in actual contexts, involving actual people. In short, we need to know the context.
The issue with the audio clip is that it is taken from a longer video that involves not only one way of making money on the side, but 14 ways of making money on the side. Being one among that many would tell you that it is highly unlikely that someone give other suggestions, all legal, and then, bam, how about something illegal. The exam does seem to have included other audio bits, but it doesn’t cover the whole video. In other words, while unlikely, it is possible to think it’s the case, that something illegal is indeed suggested. The clip is also from a video published on a streaming platform, which doesn’t allow any illegal content. The thing is, however, that he isn’t introduced as presenting this on that streaming platform, but merely as by his name and as someone who is providing personal financial advice. Now, if you are familiar with him, then you’d be like ah, no, he’d never even suggest such. But, if you aren’t familiar with him, if his name doesn’t ring any bells, this could be anyone, anywhere, anytime, on any platform, or simply, a made-up example, involving a voice actor who reads a script, and thus it might be the case.
If we limit this to the actual clip in question, it’s a shorter version of the corresponding segment of that video. You’ll hear him talking about having found a … and hired that … monthly, for fairly insubstantial sum of money in terms of salary. Now, in the British context, that word, ‘hired’, is used not only for when a person is hired, but also when something that’s not a person is hired. Nothing peculiar here. In the US context, however, ‘hired’ is typically used only when involving people, whereas ‘rented’ is typically used in cases not involving people. For example, you ‘rent’ a car in the US, but you ‘hire’ a car in the UK. Again, if you know this, that this is how it is, typically, then this isn’t confusing. But if you don’t know this and think that it is people who are ‘hired’ and things that are ‘rented’, this might contribute to you thinking that he is talking about ‘whores’ and not ‘halls’. The small amount of money per month also contributes to that interpretation as, to my knowledge, the ‘whores’ aren’t paid well in such arrangements.
What about other contextual cues? Well, he is talking about offering ‘party services’ and how it is advertised online as having to do with ‘party venues’. Pricing is based on the time that the venue is used. Now, if you are hearing it correctly, ‘hall’ and ‘venue’ are used interchangeably. But if you are led to think otherwise, going for that other interpretation, then you might be tempted to think that those words, ‘party services and ‘party venues’, are used to express an illegal activity in a roundabout way. Then there’s the bit where he talks about running a bar in a party, within a venue, which is, once again, totally fine, totally legitimate. But, by this stage you may think that as part of the whole thing, like how that bar makes the business seem legitimate, you know, like a front for the other business. Had they not shortened this segment, you would have heard him mention that these parties can be any kind of parties, including kids’ parties, which would have flipped your script, had you been thinking all this time that he is talking about ‘whores’ and not ‘halls’. That may seem like a minor thing, but it isn’t.
So, in summary, I’d say it is totally possible to interpret him as talking about ‘whores’ and not ‘halls’. In a couple of instances, it does come across as him saying the word ‘whore’ or ‘whores’ and not ‘hall’ or ‘halls’. There’s that. Not knowing the context, that this is an actual person and not someone reading from a script created for the exam, is also an important factor. It’s highly, highly unlikely that a real person would go on record to even suggest such, but it’s possible in a made-up scenario involving a script and a voice actor. Then there are all these contextual cues that you’d associate with prostitution and especially pimping, how it’s all hush hush, with all these roundabout ways of soliciting it, and involves some place where it all takes place, and it has a bar as well, which you might think as having to do with there being a front, so that the business looks legitimate.
What’s my interpretation? Well, I think he is talking about ‘halls’. I don’t think he’d ever even suggest the other option. Then again, I came to this example through having read the news, how people had, in fact, been confused by this, so I knew the correct answer, that he was talking about ‘halls’ and not ‘whores’. I wasn’t there and then, listening to that shortened clip, only twice, on some headphones that may or may not be faithful to his voice, which may also have been made less clear by the processing of the clip and converting it to audio. I had the luxury of listening to it many, many times, on my own, without pressure of being in an exam, on high quality headphones, so it’s different story. In that case, not being sure which one it is, ‘whores’ or ‘halls’, I would have opted for the latter instead of the former, not because of what’s said in that audio clip, nor because of the context that I’m imagining for it, but because it’s just highly unlikely that the examination board would opt for the former. I mean, they are probably middle aged, so I don’t see how they would even allow such.
In short, this is a good reminder that language is mostly about the context.
References
- The Humble Penny (2020). 14 HIGH PAYING SIDE HUSTLE IDEAS for 2021 to START TODAY With Little Money! Youtube. https://youtu.be/brAvEZCl0ys?feature=shared&t=743
- The Matriculation Examination Board (2023). English, advanced syllabus level. Helsinki Finland. https://yle.fi/plus/abitreenit/2023/syksy/englanti_pitka/index.html