![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stop thief!
Oct. 20th, 2003 05:45 pmWe talked about phonetics again today, which is better than diagramming. What's been commonly known as "my grammar class" is actually Grammar & Language, and we're now getting to the language part.
Well, Janet did walk in the room today, write a sentence on the board, and say, "Diagram." As we all reached for our pencils and paper, she said, "Oh, maybe I should say 'good morning' first," and laughed. After we talked about the sentence (whose purpose was, apparently, to illustrate a point or two that a lot of people got wrong on the midterm we took last Friday), we talked about phonetics again. Phonetics is alternately terribly boring and rather interesting to me.
We think a lot about the sounds we use, which usually results in people saying them. Someoen walking by the classroom might be confused to hear thirty people all repeating sounds carefully and drawing them out. "Say 'I,' " Janet tells us, so we all do. It's a diphthong; there are two sounds. Something like "Ah-ee." That's cool! "Try to do it without moving your mouth," she tells us. It comes out sounding kind of like "Uhhhh ... " and we all laugh. Try it! This part is fun.
We talked about language families; she had us count to five in all the lanugages we could and then showed us how they're related. Someone knew Finnish; she told us that wasn't like any of the other European languages we had on the board--it's apparently only related to two or three other languagues, things like Estonian and Hungarian. All kinds of Indo-European stuff goes back to Sanskrit; you can tell in just the ways they count to five. People knew Japanese and Thai and Chinese, and they sound related as well. "And there's one," she added, standing at the board about to write it, "...oh, I'm drawing a blank. They live in northern Spain ..." The Basques? I suggested. "Yes!" she said. Yet another instance of me knowing something useless: the Basques live in northern Spain. Anyway, she told us their language is related to nothing else at all! This part is interesting.
We had to do phonetic transcription, too. This part is no fun. There was a point to it; she was showing us how inconsistent English spelling can be. "People," "suite," and "valley" all have the same sound in them, but terribly different spellings. Another line had "boil," "enjoy" and "Freud." All of these share the same sound, a diphthong (I love that word, diphthong, it's so fun to say) that sounds like "oy." It's three different spellings, she said, underlining the vowels in those words.
"But they stole that from German," I said, pointing to Freud. I know it's the name of a German guy, but I've taken German; I know that 'eu' always makes the sound we usually write as 'oy' or something.
Janet laughed at me. (Fair enough; I laugh at things she says all the time. English is silly, amusing, or ridiculous most of the time; I can't help it!) "English does that," she said. "It steals things. It is a thief language!"
I can't fail to enjoy myself when learning a thief language.
Well, Janet did walk in the room today, write a sentence on the board, and say, "Diagram." As we all reached for our pencils and paper, she said, "Oh, maybe I should say 'good morning' first," and laughed. After we talked about the sentence (whose purpose was, apparently, to illustrate a point or two that a lot of people got wrong on the midterm we took last Friday), we talked about phonetics again. Phonetics is alternately terribly boring and rather interesting to me.
We think a lot about the sounds we use, which usually results in people saying them. Someoen walking by the classroom might be confused to hear thirty people all repeating sounds carefully and drawing them out. "Say 'I,' " Janet tells us, so we all do. It's a diphthong; there are two sounds. Something like "Ah-ee." That's cool! "Try to do it without moving your mouth," she tells us. It comes out sounding kind of like "Uhhhh ... " and we all laugh. Try it! This part is fun.
We talked about language families; she had us count to five in all the lanugages we could and then showed us how they're related. Someone knew Finnish; she told us that wasn't like any of the other European languages we had on the board--it's apparently only related to two or three other languagues, things like Estonian and Hungarian. All kinds of Indo-European stuff goes back to Sanskrit; you can tell in just the ways they count to five. People knew Japanese and Thai and Chinese, and they sound related as well. "And there's one," she added, standing at the board about to write it, "...oh, I'm drawing a blank. They live in northern Spain ..." The Basques? I suggested. "Yes!" she said. Yet another instance of me knowing something useless: the Basques live in northern Spain. Anyway, she told us their language is related to nothing else at all! This part is interesting.
We had to do phonetic transcription, too. This part is no fun. There was a point to it; she was showing us how inconsistent English spelling can be. "People," "suite," and "valley" all have the same sound in them, but terribly different spellings. Another line had "boil," "enjoy" and "Freud." All of these share the same sound, a diphthong (I love that word, diphthong, it's so fun to say) that sounds like "oy." It's three different spellings, she said, underlining the vowels in those words.
"But they stole that from German," I said, pointing to Freud. I know it's the name of a German guy, but I've taken German; I know that 'eu' always makes the sound we usually write as 'oy' or something.
Janet laughed at me. (Fair enough; I laugh at things she says all the time. English is silly, amusing, or ridiculous most of the time; I can't help it!) "English does that," she said. "It steals things. It is a thief language!"
I can't fail to enjoy myself when learning a thief language.