I’m very excited about a new face mask I designed.? You can order it online!
I was inspired by two tweets I saw within minutes of each other on July Fourth.? First, M?d?ric Gasquet-Cyrus, a professor at Aix-Marseille, posted a picture of? his colleague Pascal Rom?as wearing a “triangle vocalique” T-shirt designed by the linguistics YouTuber Romain Filstroff, known as Linguisticae. Gasquet-Cyrus’s tweet translates to “When you eat out with a phonetician colleague, you get a chance to practice your vowel quadrilateral!”
Quand tu manges avec un copain phonéticien ?.
— Médéric Gasquet-Cyrus (@MedericGC) July 4, 2020
Toute la soirée, tu révises ton trapèze vocalique ! @PascalRomeas pic.twitter.com/klPIwjPe4X
The vowel quadrilateral is one of the great data visualizations of linguistics: a two-dimensional diagram of the tongue height and position assigned to the vowel symbols of the Interneational Phonetic Alphabet, as viewed from the left side of the face.?? It is also known as the vowel triangle, depending on how much wiggle room you think people have for their tongues when their mouths are fully open.? It can even be plotted based on the formant frequencies extracted from acoustic analysis.
The second was a tweet by Emily Bender, a professor at the University of Washington, about face masks with a random grid of IPA symbols on them.? These are designed by the Lingthusiasm podcast team of author Gretchen McCulloch and professor Lauren Gawne, using the same pattern as in their popular IPA scarves.
Important update! @lingthusiasm has masks (in the same patterns as their scarves). https://t.co/tG97NZWebw
— Emily M. Bender (@emilymbender) July 4, 2020
Seeing the two pictures one after the other, I realized that rather than a random grid, I could put a vowel quadrilateral on an IPA mask.? Then I realized that if I placed the quadrilateral on one side, I could get it to line up with the wearer’s mouth.? I also had to make a corresponding chart for the right side.
I decided that I wanted the money to go to a charity that was helping with COVID-19.? Doctors Without Borders has been doing good work around the world for years, and with COVID they’ve really stepped up.? Here in New York they provided support to several local organizations and operated two shower trailers in Manhattan at the height of the outbreak.
From July 16 through 29, and then from November 27 through December 28, I ran a fundraiser through Custom Ink where we raised $430 in profits for Doctors Without Borders, and masks were sent to 32 supporters.
There’s another way to get masks!? I have made a slightly different mask design available at RedBubble.com.? You can even get a mug or a phone case.? This is the same store where I’ve been selling Existential Black Swan T-shirts for years.? You can get a mask with the swan on it, if that’s your style.? None of these part of a fundraiser, but you can still donate directly to Doctors Without Borders!
Update, February 1, 2021: There are more virulent strains of COVID spreading, so medical experts are recommending that people wear three-layer masks, or wear a single or double layer mask over a disposable surgical mask.? You should know that the white-on-black Custom Ink masks sold in the fundraisers in 2020 are single layer, and the RedBubble masks sold in 2020 are double layer.? They can both be worn over surgical masks.? Both services are now offering triple-layer masks, so I’ve updated the RedBubble links to the three-layer masks, and will use three-layer masks for any future fundraisers.? Stay safe, everyone!