Linguistics

Linguistics is a pretty amazing study. You can write down what people say no matter what language they are speaking. It's awesome. I can look at a speech sample and tell what they are saying by the sound wave graph. Don't you wish you were me right now? Yeah you do. Ready for some IPA?

[go bi waI ju]

sorry can't post all the characters on a blog but thats pretty much what I do for fun now. Listen to people's dialects and transcribe what they are saying. For example, Dee used a pro-predicate 'do' the other day. Typical western us English. I said "Did your roommate go to Chilie on his mission?" he said, "Could have done." I laughed and told him about pro-predicate do's. Also did you know that most Americans don't pronounce a true b? usually we really pronounce a stronger p. But its ok because its just the voiced version of a bilabial consonant. And Craig Klecker always gets mistaken as saying his name is Greg. That's because [k] and [g] are both palatal stops its just the voiced and unvoiced pair. I can also tell you when we clip the vowel [eI] as in safe vs save. Say it out loud. One is a shorter vowel but its the same one. That's because we clip it before a voiceless consonant. Now say 'caught' and 'cot'. Can you hear a difference? If there is a difference you are from the east, if there isn't you grew up in the west.

There you go. Your linguistics lesson for today.