Neil Armstrong’s ‘small step for man’ might be a distort, study says. In this article, I will investigate if he said: “a” in “a man” or not? So, was the first man on the Moon misquoted? When Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Moon, hundreds of millions of television viewers viewed this extraordinary event on television. Armstrong could be heard saying, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” So true, so brilliant, so inspirational, but was Neil Armstrong misquoted?
A one-lettered indefinite article is all it would take to turn this quote into the inspirational words our brains all process when we hear them. That article is “a”- “One small step for “a” man, one giant leap for mankind.” That is how most people interpret his words. And, according to Neil Armstrong, those are the words he intended to speak. But that’s not exactly what he said.
Was Neil Armstrong “a” not heard?
NASA’s official transcript of the quote still shows the “a” in parentheses, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” This is because the “a” is not audible in the broadcast. For years, both NASA and Armstrong insisted that static had obscured the “a.”
According to Neil, he was reasonably sure he stated, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” The “a” may have broken up on transmission, or it was obscured due to his speaking patterns.
Armstrong also stated that he would never make such a mistake (omitting such an important part). But after listening to recordings of his quote. He later conceded that it’s possible that he may not have said the “a.”
Did Neil say “a man”?
When he realized this, he stated, “I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been.”
An Australia-based computer programmer named Peter Shann Ford conducted a digital audio analysis to support Armstrong’s claim. He did say “a” and concluded that he did, in fact, say “a man.”
But the “a” was inaudible due to the technological limitations of the time. So was Neil Armstrong really misquoted? Linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote their digital audio analysis of the infamous quote on the Language Log blog. They concluded that “The acoustic evidence seems to be against Ford’s theory.” But that’s not the end of the story.
Was Armstrong’s Ohio accent to blame?
Support for Armstrong has been found in a team of researchers from Michigan State University and Ohio State University. Both concluded that Armstrong did speak the words he claims to have said.
But static or technological limitations are not to blame for its apparent exclusion of the letter “a.” According to them, it is due to Armstrong’s Ohio accent is to blame. A Michigan State University specialist in communicative sciences, Assistant Professor Laura Diller.
Because of his hometown’s dialect, if Neil Armstrong did voice the word “a,” it was short and fully acoustically blended with the preceding word “for.” The Acoustical Society of America’s article on this topic states. Dilley and her colleagues, who include MSU linguist Melissa Baese-Berk and OSU psychologist Mark Pitt, thought they might be able to figure it out.
And they should use statistical analysis of the duration of the ‘r’s sound as spoken by native central Ohioans saying ‘for’ and ‘for a’ in natural conversation. They used a collection of recordings of conversational speech from 40 people raised in Columbus, Ohio, and near Armstrong’s native town of Wapakoneta. Within this body of recordings, they found 191 cases of ‘for a’.
They matched each of these to an instance of ‘for.’ As said by the same speaker and compared the relative duration. They also examined the time of Armstrong’s ‘for (a’) from the lunar transmission. Using the Ohio speech data, the researchers found a large overlap between the relative duration of the ‘r’s sound in ‘for’ and ‘for a’.
How long was Armstrong’s recording?
The duration of the ‘frrr(uh)’ in Armstrong’s recording was 0.127 seconds. Which falls into the middle of this overlap, though it is a slightly better match for an ‘a’-less ‘for.’
In other words, the researchers conclude, the lunar landing quote is highly compatible with either possible interpretation. However, it is probably slightly more likely to be perceived as ‘for’ regardless of what Armstrong actually said. Dilley says there may have been a ‘perfect storm of conditions for the word ‘a’ to have been spoken but not heard.
Armstrong said, “I’m not particularly articulate.”
According to First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.
Armstrong said, “I’m not particularly articulate.
Perhaps it was a suppressed sound that didn’t get picked up by the voice mike.
As I have listened to it, it doesn’t sound like there was time for the word to be there.
On the other hand, I think that reasonable people will realize that I didn’t intentionally make an inane statement, and certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense.
So I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn’t said—although it actually might have been.”)
Armstrong claimed the statement was spontaneous. But his brother and others have alleged he had written it down before the Mission.
Conclusion
He actually might have said it exactly the way he meant to, but not the way people heard it. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please feel free to browse my website for more exciting facts about the Mission to the Moon, and especially Apollo 11.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please feel free to browse my website for more exciting facts about the Apollo Program and its Mission to the Moon.