Talk:One small step

I would say that this page should not be merged, because this quotation is an important topic unto itself, to which I wish to add my own ear-witness testimony:

As a boy who had just turned 11 (on July 11), I watched the Apollo 11 mission very closely. When the great moment of that first step came, I myself heard "One small step for a man ...". It made perfect sense. The next morning I bought all the newspapers and was puzzled as to why I didn't see the "a" quoted.

Today, as a linguist, I would remind everyone about the phenomenon in which unstressed words are often barely heard in the transition between other words. Ordinary speakers do this all the time. Speech sounds that would be heard clearly in a stressed syllable are often barely heard in weaker syllables that are further weakened in the flow of a quickly spoken phrase.

Hence, it is no surprise that the unstressed word "a" might be only barely heard in the transition between "for" and "man". Thus, someone looking to write the quotation down would be trying to get it right by paying attention to the words they're sure they heard, while we regular talkers and listeners are communicating just fine on an informal level. Hence, Neil Armstrong, a highly qualified guy in several fields but probably not in the study of English, spoke like any one of us normal, average people, and I, a normal, average listener, received all three words, even though the middle one was barely there in the audible stream of sound. It's amazing the little tiny details that we ordinary people can hear but an analyst might miss; that's why we linguists have to develop such minutely sensitive recorders and analyzers.

My ear-witness testimony, therefore, is that Dr Armstrong did not err.

J Paul Sank, June 20, 2012

Variants and references
Does this need to be here? There are only three listed and I have a suspicion a gag by Darkwing Duck is not notable enough to be listed as one of the three.


 * No, as discussed at Talk:Neil Armstrong, I do not think any of the three allusions to Armstrong's quote are notably quotable in themselves. I will go ahead and remove the section from the article. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:56, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Merger proposal
See discussion at Talk:Neil Armstrong. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:58, 7 January 2013 (UTC)