In which I get my geek on

I don't know how I feel about this new idea to call the plosives /b/, /d/ and /g/ (well, apparently it goes for all voiced sounds) 'lenis' instead of 'voiced'. I'm very averse to change. /b/, /d/ and /g/ are voiced plosives, and that's that, just as /v/ is a voiced fricative. (And /ʒ/ is a voiced sibilant, but more on that later.)

It's almost as strange as suddenly having to think of /k/ and /g/ as velar sounds. "What do you mean, velar? They're palatal! Stupid book," was my intital reaction. Then I started saying 'car' and 'gone' to myself, and fine, maybe they are more velar than palatal in English.

I don't like this book much. They don't even mention sibilant consonants, I don't think. I can't find the term anywhere, anyway. And that's just rude to the poor sibilants. They shouldn't have to put up with just being lumped in with the all the other fricatives. They've deserved their subcategory.

The straw that breaks my back, however? The mandible isn't mentioned, either. *weeps* How can you write a book on phonetics and not take the opportunity to use an awesome word like 'mandible'?

Regardless of this, though, it really is a lot of fun reading about phonetics and phonology again. Brings back memories of revising madly for Pär's exams, hundreds of questions in front of you, trying to remember what the perturbation theory was about, to be able to tell the thyroid cartilage from the cricoid cartilage, and remember what the subglottic pressure is.

(7 cm water, in case you were wondering.)

When we first started with phonetics during that first term I never thought I'd say this, but I've missed it. A lot of it is different from the stuff we did then - clearly, since the sounds differ - but it's great getting to delve into it again.

Hear the cry of the righteous

LJ has rather a lot of those amusing blog thingies going around, and the latest one is to find out what your battle cry would be when going to war. Apparently, mine would be, "I'm seriously going to smack you until you pee fire!!!"

You know, I kind of like it. I could definitely see myself running towards an army, a crowbar in my hand - wait, did I not mention that my designated weapon was a crowbar? Well, it was. Where was I? Oh yes - crowbar in hand, crying about making people pee fire.

What? Can't you?

I wish I could audition for 'Idol' right now.

Man, I sound like a bullfrog with a really bad strep-throat. How very attractive.

Wrong.

I realised last night that I'd forgotten to register for our vocabulary exam on Saturday and promptly panicked. Not helped by the fact that I seem to have the mother of all colds, either, which is killing my brain. And then I discovered that if I don't take the exam on Saturday, the next opportunity to take it is in August. Cue more panicking.

But, I got up this morning and made a couple of phone calls, and managed to register over the phone. Cue relief.

And then, cue irony. I'm completely exhausted, sneezing and coughing all over the place and my eyes keep tearing up, and I have no energy to study for the bloody exam. And yet for some reason I panicked over the possibility of not taking the exam on Saturday and made it so that I will.

I'm dumb.

But not so dumb that I didn't pass with distinction both my grammar and my translation exams. Score!

In other news, Liverpool lost their first semifinal against Chelsea in Champions' League by own goal when there were two seconds left. Well, not 'lost' as such, it ended 1-1, but since Chelsea 'scored' on away ground, their goal is worth more and now Liverpool have to score at the Bridge to make up for it. 

Damn it. Own goal. Two seconds before the game ended.

Look! I post!

This is what I looked like for the sitting Friday night. And a couple of people actually did get who I was meant to be right away, so yay!


Awesome night.