Using Whatsapp for Linguistic Fieldwork

Whatsapp is a smartphone app that allows people in different countries to communicate over the phone for a very reasonable price. 

In addition, Whatsapp also allows the creation of Voicemail messages that can be used in linguistic fieldwork. Here are the basic steps for using Whatsapp for fieldwork. I thank Claire Bowern for some helpful suggestions. 

1.

Buy a smart phone and install Whatsapp.

2.

Have your consultant buy a smart phone and install Whatsapp.

3.

You should be able to call each other and write messages back and forth. 

4.

Install Google Drive as an app on your smart phone (using the Google Play Store app).

5.

You may also have to change the permissions on Google Drive. I went to the Google Drive app (installed on the smart phone), and disabled ‘Transfer uniquement en Wifi’. You may have to play with it a bit.

6.

In a Whatsapp message, write the word or the phrase that you want your consultant to speak. For example, “Say the word for ‘dog’ three times.” Send the message.

7.

Your consultant will create a voicemail message with the response to your question. To do so, they click on the mic to the right of the message window, and start to record. For example, your consultant will speak the word for ‘dog’ three times. Once the voicemail message is complete, they will send it to you. 

8.

When you get the message, press down on and select the voicemail. Then in the top right corner of your Whatsapp app, click on the menu and chose ‘share’.

9. 

Since you have installed Google Drive as an App, one of the options that appears should be Google Drive. Select it.

10.

Go to the folder (e.g., ‘Whatsapp Sound Files’) you have created in Google Drive, and download the voicemail (I clicked ‘Importer’ in my Google Drive app).

11.

You can also send the voicemail to your e-mail account. As in step (8), chose ‘share’. Then select Gmail from the options given. This process is a little more awkward, since you will need to open a new e-mail message for each sound file you produce (instead of just having them in a Google Drive folder right away).

12.

The file type will be .oga, which is not readable by Praat. So you need to convert it to .wav.

13.

Download Audacity to your computer (it is free).

14. 

Open the .oga file in Audacity, then save it as a .wav file.

15. 

The file name should be: XX_dog.wav, where XX are the initials of your consultant (e.g., CC for ‘Chris Collins’). Since you are using the file in Praat, there should be no special characters other than underscore.

16. 

You should now be able to open your file and analyze it in Praat (e.g., transcription)

17. 

Using these sound files, you can start to create a dictionary or a database of recordings for future use. 

18.

I do not yet know the size limitation on sound files, but you should be able to record three repetitions of a word, and any sentence. I am not sure whether you can record a five-minute long oral text yet. I need to experiment with that.

19.

I am not entirely sure whether the sound files are up to the standards of phonetics research, but they sound and look pretty good in Praat. Some verification of the quality of the sound files is needed. That is, a direct comparison is needed of sound files created by a ZoomH4n and by Whatsapp voicemail.

20.

I have yet to carry out a real project using this process, so it may have to be fine-tuned in the future.