Back to Square One, Funke was asking whether they are playing the reruns anywhere these days, and I don't think they are, but that did start me thinking about where to get old television shows and I found this clip on YouTube.
The Mathematics of Love:
This was actually one of my favorite Square One songs when I was little. I really wish I could find the Probability music video ("probability, don't you mess with me, let me make the most of a chance") or the Infinity video.
This morning I drank a lot of coffee and got way too excited about syllables in phonology. Did you know that in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber they have words like "tftkt" where the "f" and the "k" are the nuclei of the syllables? So cool. And in English our longest syllable combination is CCCVVCCCC, like the word "strengths" with a long vowel (which is what "VV" means). Yeah, I know it doesn't mean much to you now, but drink a lot of coffee then read it again. Syllables, man! And then in phonetics we finally got to Ejectives! (I feel that that word should always be spelled with an exclamation point). Ejectives are sounds made using only air from your glottis, so you cut off the air from your lungs and then you use the trapped air to make a "t" or a "k" or whatever. They sound pretty funny, especially in a class of fifteen people who are overly prone to finding hilarily in phonetic noises. And in sociolinguistics we had a long, heated discussion of taboo and euphemism. Which is always cool with me.
Since studying syllables, I was also wondering about Tolkein's "cellar door" phrase, and why it's so beautiful. Haven't come to any conclusions yet.
time for another exciting installment of "Why I Love Wikipedia:"
I seriously think that SIL has purposely warmed up North Dakota and cut us off from air conditioning to give us a feeling of what linguistic fieldwork will be like. Wouldn't want us to get used to writing lexicons in the air conditioning only to be discouraged by the added factor of heat once we get to the jungles of the Philippines. Oh no. Much better that we get hit by everything at once. Okay, man, I have to stop typing now because touching my computer is making everything hotter.
Feeling the irony of listening to a band named Beirut as Lebanon is being destroyed. I really haven't paid much attention to the news this summer, but when something consistently fills all the headlines on CNN.com I start noticing. I know if I was still in Boston there would probably be conversation about this. Being in North Dakota, though, and in a very sealed-off linguistics world, I have heard nothing but what I've found out myself.
And on a completely different topic, the band Beirut is definately worth paying attention to. I encourage you to order the CD from the record company, there's nothing quite as endearing as a label that is so small they still write personal notes at the bottom of the receipt. Even though they don't send stickers. And as for the music itself, think instrumentals from Neutral Milk Hotel mixed with the crazy-folksier Decemberists. Vocals are there, but they definately take a back seat to the surreal/dreamy type music.
I've been meaning to put up another "what I'm thinking about linguistically" post, but haven't gotten around to it, mainly because what I'm thinking about linguistically is not as important as what I'm supposed to be doing linguistically. The phonology take-home test put me into a very paranoid state on Wednesday night. After I finished it I just had to go to sleep to stop myself from second guessing everything it had just taken me nine hours to write. Syntax is getting more complicated, too. I decided I'm more of a morphologist than a syntactician. Although I really like the word "syntactician," probably because it sounds like magician.
. . . and this is what my phonology prof said yesterday:
"what I think might be easier would be if we take a look at the vowel system of Mongolia." Yeah. first time I ever heard that one.