Just a quick note: My absolute favorite phonetics instruction software is sndpeek by Princeton Sound Lab, a real time Fast Fourier Transform and Waveform display program. Unfortunately, because Apple deprecated a bunch of old audio methods, it was broken with the update to Lion. However, some kind soul has updated the software to be Lion compatible, and it’s back to working like a charm. To download it, visit the sndpeek website and click on the “mac (mac osx lion) binary”.

To install, download the tgz file (the below code assumes you’ve downloaded it to the desktop), double click it to expand, then open a terminal and type:

cd ~/Desktop/sndpeek-1.3-exe

(then hit "enter")

sudo cp bin/sndpeek /bin/

Once you hit enter after typing the above command, OS X will then ask for your OS X administrator password (to copy the file deep into the filesystem), and once you’ve done that, at any point in the future, you’ll be able to just type “sndpeek” into a terminal and it’ll pop up a window displaying whatever sound source is selected in your Sound input preference pane. I usually give a more complex command to produce a prettier output, “sndpeek –logfactor:0.5 –lissajous:OFF –features:OFF –depth:150′”

I encourage you to play with the software as there are few better tools to help understand what a spectral slice is, how it works, and how spectrograms can be made. Enjoy!

Tagged with Computers and Software, Conventional Linguistics, Followups, Phonetics and Phonology | Leave a Comment


Just a quick note. For those of you who are early adopters moving over to OS X 10.7 “Lion”, the method described in my previous tutorial on using IPA fonts with Mac OS X still works and produces good results on Lion.

For what it’s worth, Praat (5.2.29) works just fine as well. :)

So, go forth and Lionize your Mac without phonetic phear.

EDIT: But Lion does hide the library folder. In order to install the keyboard layout, you’ll need to unhide the ~/Library folder or to access it using the Finder’s “Go to folder” option.

Tagged with Computers and Software, Followups | 2 Comments


Hello everybody!

As you can all doubtless tell, I’ve been quite busy. I’m delighted to report that I was accepted into a Ph.D Program in Linguistics, and am now continuing my studies of Phonetics and Speech Perception at the Doctoral level. Although this is a wonderful thing for 98% of my life, it does mean that I’ve little time left over to update this site, and that alone accounts for the more than one year that has passed since my last post.

However, even despite my prolonged absence, the site is still shockingly popular. In fact, it’s getting upwards of 2000 unique visits a week, and has attracted more than 150,000 visitors in the last year alone.

I’d like to thank all the readers who have emailed in to ask whether the site will be updated again soon, and all the people who continue to contribute interesting comments to existing articles. In addition, I’d like to make sure that people know that although I’ve not had the time to make new posts, I’m still accepting comments on all older posts, and in many cases, I’m responding to them as well.

Also, if you have any questions about anything you read on the site, about life in Linguistics, or about any housekeeping issues (broken links and whatnot), please always feel free to leave a comment or Contact me. I’m always happy to hear from readers, and usually am even happier to help answer questions people may have about the content here.

Is Notes from a Linguistic Mystic dead? Of course not! I hope to be able to start posting again once I’ve progressed a bit more within the Ph.D program. For now, it’s dormant, but rest assured, the heart of the site is still here and beating strong.

The Linguistic Mystic

PS: If you’re stumbling upon this site for the first time, here are some of my favorite posts that should give you a taste for the sorts of things discussed here. Take a look, and enjoy!

- Using IPA fonts with Mac OS X: The Comprehensive Guide (recently updated with new information)
- Cryptorthography: Hiding your writings in plain sight
- What can computer image processing teach us about language?
- im in mai blog, postin’ bout cats: The Cuteness of Grammatical errors
- im in ur programmz, codin in ur dialect: LOLCode and Feline Dialectology
- The glottal stop: your new Phonetic Phriend
- You can’t say “Phonetics” quickly without saying “fun”

Tagged with Followups, Notes, Recommended Links, Site News | 2 Comments

Read older posts »

All content © Linguistic Mystic 2006-2012 unless otherwise indicated.
Please contact me for permission to reprint or repost.

Site Information

  • Categories

  • Latest Non-linguistic Posts

  • Archives

    • Site features