1. The Talk of the Toon Mystery Words & Objects
School of
English Literature, Language & Linguistics
The Talk of the Toon
Mystery Words & Objects
Listen to the clips of people talking. Some of their words are missing.
Can you work out what they are talking about?
How did you work it out?
See:
DECTE is funded by:
The Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English

2. What are they talking about?
The Talk
of the Toon
Words and Objects
What are they talking about?
Which of the pictured objects are the people talking about? (left click mouse to play audio and again to reveal answer)
and I like a game of you know. Not for money you know ... but I’m good at playing
cards
Picture Credits: [1] Train – Peter van Broekhoven (2006, CC BY-ND),
[2] Playing Cards – Philippa Willitts (2008, CC BY-NC),
[3] Skipping Rope – ‘pistruiatu’ (2011, CC BY-NC-SA),
[4] Doll – ‘dog.happy.art’ (2009, CC BY-NC),
cards

3. What are they talking about?
The Talk
of the Toon
Words and Objects
What are they talking about?
Which of the pictured objects are the people talking about? (left click mouse to play audio and again to reveal answer)
And eh, we used to have, ehm, great big , you know [...] And they all used to ... used ... about nine or twelve used to uh-huh, I mean there was no traffic, nothing like that you know.
ropes, skippy ropes
Picture Credits: [1] Train – Peter van Broekhoven (2006, CC BY-ND),
[2] Playing Cards – Philippa Willitts (2008, CC BY-NC),
[3] Skipping Rope – ‘pistruiatu’ (2011, CC BY-NC-SA),
[4] Doll – ‘dog.happy.art’ (2009, CC BY-NC),
skip

4. What are they talking about?
The Talk
of the Toon
Words and Objects
What are they talking about?
Which of the pictured objects are the people talking about? (left click mouse to play audio and again to reveal answer)
and my brother wanted the Oh and there was quite a to-do because my brother wanted the
doll
Picture Credits: [1] Train – Peter van Broekhoven (2006, CC BY-ND),
[2] Playing Cards – Philippa Willitts (2008, CC BY-NC),
[3] Skipping Rope – ‘pistruiatu’ (2011, CC BY-NC-SA),
[4] Doll – ‘dog.happy.art’ (2009, CC BY-NC),
doll