Abstract
It is a common stereotype in Switzerland that speakers from Bern speak slowly and speakers from Zurich speak quickly. Are these differences in perception at all mirrored in production? We present a new method of crowdsourcing speaking rate through a free of charge iOS application. Astonishingly, results indicate that the temporal structure of a few words alone – as spoken by a few hundred speakers – are sufficient to tell apart the two dialects in speaking rate. In line with previous literature, females articulate more slowly than males. Further potential fields of application of the introduced method are discussed.
Leemann, Adrian