Reading Aloud

The Harvard Sentences are hundreds of sentences that have been used for many decades to test technologies in which understanding speech is essential, like telephone systems and hearing aids.I came across the list recently and was charmed by it.Some sample sentences: It’s easy to tell the depth of a well.

The hogs were fed chopped corn and garbage.Help the woman get back to her feet.

The harder he tried the less he got done.It caught its hind paw in a rusty trap.

Write a fond note to the friend you cherish.Most of the news is easy for us to hear.These sentences weren’t chosen for their meaning but for their “phonetic balance,” the way their frequency of sounds are similar to spoken language.

They’re tools, not advice or koans.But reading them I felt moved as when reading a poem.

I found a site where you can listen to people read the sentences in different accents and tried to see if it was possible to hear a series of lines aloud without them gathering meaning.These narrators were particularly skilled at reading without affect, but it’s impossible to listen to even the least emotive person recite: “The stray cat gave birth to kittens.

The young girl gave no clear response.The meal was cooked before the bell rang.

What joy there is in living,” and not detect some poetry.Is there a person on earth who doesn’t love to be read to? Children get storytime, nightly if they’re lucky, but once we know how to read we typically do it by ourselves.Last year I wrote about audiobooks as bedtime stories for adults, how they can tap into that desire that’s maybe dormant in all of us, the desire to have our sleep treated as a project worthy of coaxing and custodianship.

Every few months I let Joseph Brodsky reading his poem “A Song” lull me to sleep.Recently a friend and I read each other portions of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Reading to someone is different from simply speaking to them.

The words aren’t yours, so you don’t own the ...