Sources:Audio Analysis of Episode 9

Webisode 9: Unclear Dialogue

When Jammer leaves the detention, he asks Tyrol how did he know. Tyrol's response has caused some debate in the the various online communities, including "Boomer told me.", "Rumor told me.", etc. Really not important unless it is "Boomer told me." Thanks, --FrankieG 11:31, 3 October 2006 (CDT) And "Ol' Frank told me", "little bird told me", etc. Quite a lot of variations. Noneofyourbusiness 12:48, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

Actually we've analyzed it now and are confident that it's "Boomer told me". Noneofyourbusiness 19:41, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

Your analysis is correct. - Bradley Thompson 17:27, 5 October 2006 (CDT)

Peter Farago Analysis

Origially from Talk:Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance

Okay. Let's do a quick run-through. A narrow transcription of "Boomer" reads [pumɹ̣] , "Rumor" reads [ɹumɹ̣] , and "A little bird" reads [elɪɾḷpɹ̣d] . "A little bird" in very fast speech would probably be realized as "Lil' bird", [lɪlpɹ̣d] , or maybe just "Bird", [pɹ̣d] . What are the salient differences here?

"Boomer" is distinguished from "Rumor" by a bilabial stop [p] vs. a retroflex approximant [ɹ] . The [p] is clearly audible to me in the recording, but unfortunately there's too much white noise to make it out in the spectrogram. However, we can ascertain whether or not [ɹ] is present, as that would drag down the second and third formants of the following vowel.
"Boomer" is quite clearly distinguishable from "Bird". "Boomer" has two vowels, high back rounded [u] and r-colored [ɹ̣] , interrupted by a bilabial nasal [m] . "Bird" has no nasal and a single vowel, [ɹ̣] . Thus, if we see a nasal and a vowel that is not r-colored, we can safely rule out "Bird".

So, what we actually see looks to me like:

There is clearly a nasal breaking the vowel formants into two regions. Thus, we can eliminate "(a little) bird" as a possibility. The first has a fairly low first and second formant, as we would expect for [u] , and its third formant, while barely visible, does not appear to be lowered be a preceding [ɹ] . Additionally, the bilabial plosive [p] is clearly audible in the recording. In the second vowel, the third formant can be seen to lower, which is suggestive of r-coloring. Thus, "Boomer" seems to be the only possibility. --Peter Farago 17:48, 3 October 2006 (CDT)

Here's the clip, if anyone wants to listen (listen • help • info) --Peter Farago 18:06, 3 October 2006 (CDT)