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.
Posted by linnea at July 19, 2006 1:37 AM