one small gaffe for [a] man
October 2, 2006 – 3:18 pmAstronauts aren’t uncoordinated. They have to be able to moonwalk and chew gum at the same time. So it bothered Neil Armstrong to think that he had flubbed the famous first line from the floodlit stage of the moon: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Why, oh why hadn’t he said “one small step for a man?
Fortunately for Neil, Peter Ford, a computer expert from Australia, has resolved Mr. Armstrong’s angst, providing acoustically filtered evidence of a twangy “a” drawled slowly over the course of 35 milliseconds (approximatly 1/10 of the least discernable length for a vowel sound).
While it may sound like an inconsequential, classic case of “I don’t know what you heard, but I know what I said,” this discovery has important implications for the study of low-gravity vowel sounds, which are often so light and unpredictable that they seem to float off before the listener hears them. And it represents a belated yet satisfying vindication for English teachers everywhere, who collectively swore that before that decade was out, we’d put an English speaker on the moon.
One Response to “one small gaffe for [a] man”
I’m sure English teachers are glad about the “a.” But what about the linguists? Especially psychobabble linguists like Noamsky Chomp? He may take the “a” to new heights of political extrusion and tell Chavez how to make an “a.”
My big worry is that Armstrong was a mole from Canada. And what he really said was, “One small step for man, eh.” The Australian had better check his sequencing.
By Dabu Heebly on Oct 2, 2006