Up-date!

Ashley's posts were looking a bit lonely, so I decided to give ya'll an update on life.

I'm loving Michigan and graduate school, but finding that the amount of reading I have to do is absolutely insane. I've had several interesting linguistics discussions with people in my program, but none of them seem to be as interested in it as I am. The graduate students in linguistics here have a club, and I'm tempted to join. There were presentations on syntax a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I was swamped with work.

I'm dating a guy from Australia, who has the greatest accent ever. I enjoy listening to him talk, and in my mind I often phonetically transcribe the things that he says. He doesn't know this, and I think I have a problem. Anyways, I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the last year at Iowa/Korea. Ann Arbor is wonderful, but the drinks aren't nearly as cheap, Michigan football sucks, and there's no smelly EPB to travel to.

heyoooooo!

I just wanted to let you all know that I willingly read a paper on Syntactic ergativity and accusativity yesterday.

What are y'all up to?

mewwwwoooow

Which articulatory organ is used in a cat for purring? Do they have a special part for this? It's pretty wack.

Pronunciation: Oregon

I need some backup. At my place of work we call people all over the country, and a caller was speaking with a prospect from Oregon. After the call, we had a heated debate as to how to pronounce the name of this state. Other callers joined in, and we never arrived at a definitive conclusion.

[oʊrɪgɪn] [oʊrɪgan] [oʊrɪgən]

Which one is it?

more fun!

In the car, once reaching Arizona, I constantly heard 'cactuses' besides the true plural form, 'cacti'.

euoy.

Into the Abyss . . . It's a Small World

Tomorrow I leave for Disney World. Tomorrow I officially descend into American kitsch. If only Regina Spektor had an album called "American Kitsch". It would be like the cold war, only with music. Wish me luck kind fools. Hopefully, when I return I will have many fun and frightening stories of improper pronunciation and sheer cultural intolerance. This will be a whole new kind of culture shock. I'll let you know if I go through the four stages of acculturation.

Ashley, your pronunciation is correct!

Pronunciation Fun: Ashley's version

Or not so fun.

Being in Arizona can lead one to learn new Spanish words. My mom and gramma, however, are pronouncing them all wrong and it's driving me up the wall.

Examples:

La Quinta Inn. Michelle, you probably know the correct pronunciation of orthographic . I'm no expert on romance languages, but I'm pretty damn sure that it's [ki], not [kwI] (that's a large i...I don't have ipa characters right now). They are continuously saying 'La Qwinta'. No matter how many times I correct them, they roll their eyes and continue to say it incorrectly. The only satisfaction I get out of being right in the whole situation is mumbling 'Quinta' the correct way underneath my breath.

Secondly, again Michelle, correct me if I'm wrong....but they pronounce orthographic such as in Javelina, as [ʤ], rather than [h]. '[ʤ]avelina?!' Are you fucking kidding me? I just---I don't understand! And I don't even speak Spanish.

It makes me crave nicotine. How ridiculous is that? Craving cigarettes because people don't pronounce shit right? What's going on? Does this mean that I'm truly becoming a linguistics major? When I crave nicotine due to ridiculously wrong pronunciations?

Must be.