sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Acceptance of the decline of voice quality

key word.....Verizon

I stand corrected. However, no one I know involved in the production or usaged of microphones uses that spelling. It doesn't make sense to spell it with a k, much less adding an e at the end.

Richard

Phonetics.
Pronounced according to the rules of the English language (what rules there are) mic would have a soft i sound (pronounced Mick). In standard English, the only way to produce the long i sound in a word this short is to place an e at the end. Without changing the c to a k, this gives us mice. Hence, we have mike.
Just my Monday morning ramble....

No kidding! The English language doesn't make sense. Ask anyone in the business of languages and they'll tell you that English is the absolute worst to try to learn. Such as the weird rule: "I before E except after C, or if sounded like A as in Neighbor and Weigh."

What with multiple words for the same thing and single words having multiple meanings it is amazing we ever manage to communicate effectively. As repairmen our first hurdle is finding out what the customer is actually complaining about -- especially when half the time they don't know, all they know is that it is broke.

This is exactly why the English teacher told us to pay attention when we were goofing off in elementary school. That's also why our parents told us that a "C" on our spelling test wasn't acceptable. The ones who listened are doing OK with the complexities of the language today.

By the way, I also got "C"s (usually lower) until my parents corrected that issue with discipline.

The students today who are too busy sending text messages on their cell phones are also the ones chopping our language into "wtrudoing" becoming a language that the rest of us are expected to understand.

My hat's off to the English teachers of the world, even the ones I hated when I was in school. I really appreciate their contributions now as I am being forced to learn a new dialect of our language. Their job is more difficult today than ever. I wouldn't take their job for a million dollars, and if I did, I would probably be staring down the barrel of a .45 after about a month on the job.

The discussion has swerved from The Acceptance of The Decline Of Voice Quality to The Acceptance of The Decline Of The English Language.

I have a 12 year old who is a literal genius. Advanced classes, Gifted and Talented program... She, like all of my children are very articulate. They were raised with out "baby talk".
However, the spelling skills are terrible. They were taught phonics (home schooled) from day one. I think they know better but with the advent of Text Messaging and IM all language skills take a back seat to being cool.

Richard

Richard,

It's all the same thing, whether it's written, spoken, compressed or convoluted.

There seeems to be a greater acceptance now.

wus_ jp

I think that says "What did you say, John P?"


This is just an attempt to head back to the original subject. We seem to be increasingly willing to accept poor voice quality as being the norm. We have become so accustomed to using cell phones that the idea of a quality phone call has become a luxury. "Let me call you back when I can get a better connection from my office" is perfectly acceptable.

This poor quality isn't necessarily due to the wireless/cellular networks' shortcomings, in fact most of them are perfectly-engineered and work well.

It's the $19.00 cellular phones that include a camera, a pager, a laptop, a microwave oven and a 19" flat-screen television (sorry, I meant a monitor with built-in tuner) that make phone networks "bad".

Our present communications networks are handling the traffic that they were designed to carry decades ago. If that was all we were trying to do, we wouldn't be discussing this subject. This topic is more of a matter of carriers trying to sqeeze more traffic through uncharted waters in an effort to snag a few more customers, regardless of their legal age.

Who ends up looking bad? The small company selling the office phone system on these same networks and techologies because the calls don't sound so great.

Would low water pressure be blamed upon the guy who installed the sinks? Just a question that people should ponder.

well I have always been good at spelling..my mom is a librarian so i grew up reading. i won a lot of spelling bees too