I Break for Linguistics

There was a bug in my room a few minutes ago. I sort of wandered away (deathly afraid of it flying at my face or something) and wandered the halls until I finally grabbed Eyrun and made her get rid of it for me. She's such a good friend. ^_^ I was actually considering spending the rest of the night in the study room....

Anyway, on to linguistics. One of the Korean kids in my Japanese class has the hardest time making the z-sound, it's adorable. He also doesn't distinguish between ch- and sh-, so instead of saying 'chigai' (different), he says 'shigai' (corpse). But the best thing is that he really really tries to pronounce it well, and when he says a word with a z- or ch- sound he smiles and sort of looks around at us and repeats it to make sure he got it right. It's adorable.

It's easy to hear the differences between Japanese pronunciation and non-Japanese pronunciation of Japanese words in other foreign students, but it's difficult to hear it in my own speech. It's been brought to my attention, though, that my most blatant give-away (not that I could pass for Japanese, but anyway) is my pronunciation of d- in the middle of a word. American English (standard and most non-standard dialects) replace the d-sound with a flapped r in the middle of words -- consider the difference in the d's between the words dime (hard d-sound) and puddle (flapped r). Unfortunately, in Japanese the flapped r-sound is practically identical to the actual r-sound, so I pronounce words like 'kudasai', 'kurasai'. It's physically difficult for me to make the d-sound in the middle of the word! It just seems like an odd problem to have, since the d-sound is such an easy one to make. It sure isn't he French r- or u-. I just naturally do the flapped r-.

You Are All Free

"I am not afraid to keep on living
I am not afraid to walk this world alone
Honey if you stay you'll be forgiven
Nothing you can say can stop me going home."
~MCR

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

"Your ignorance is measured by the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

"You are free to smile in the midst of massive tests and challenges knowing that you have chosen to play this game."

"You are all.
Free.
To do.
Whatever.
You want.
To do."
~Richard Bach