form-a-formant

Have you ever wanted to visualize your own personal idiolect? Amaze your friends by showing them your precise vocal range? No? Look no further. Using this simple minute-long test, you can create your own personal vowel chart!

All that is needed is to record yourself saying each of the following words three times, WITH CLEAR, DISTINCT BREAKS INBETWEEN THE WORDS:

1. heed = '/hid/'

2. hid = '/hɪd/'

3. head = '/hɛd/'

4. had = '/hæd/'

5. hot = '/hɑd/'

6. hawed = '/hɔd/'

7. hud = '/hʌd/'

8. who'd = '/hud/'

9. hood = '/hʊd/'

10. how'd = '/haʊd/'

11. hoyed = '/hoɪd/'

12. hide = '/haɪd/'

13. hoed = '/howd/'

14. height = '/hajt/'

15. hayed = '/hejd/'

16. herd = '/hɚd/'

17. ahead = '/əhɛd/'

As in: "heed, heed, heed, hid, hid, hid... ahead, ahead, ahead"

Then the program will automatically detect the average formant values for each of your monophthongs, and the trajectories of your diphthongs!

Monophthongs: /i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ɔ, ʌ, u, ʊ, ɚ, ə/

Diphthongs: /aʊ, oɪ, aɪ, oʊ, aɪ-t, eɪ/

Finally, it will plot out your vowel sounds on a dynamic vowel chart, which will look something like this:

Pretty cool? You can even see how the diphthongs draw out the Vowel Triangle!

Not perfect, but alright.

This project is possible thanks to the plotly and parselmouth libraries, and the almighty Praat software.

Plotly: plotly.com/python/

Parselmouth: parselmouth.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

Praat: www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/