Yes, there is a perfectly good reason why I have paper taped to my nose, and you get a gold star if you can tell me why…
Yep, I’m making sure that my [p], [t], and [k] aren’t aspirated–no puffs of air! Not everyone in Phonetics tapes paper to their face, mostly, I just thought it was easier to practice without having to hold the paper up to my mouth the whole time. In Spanish and Indonesian, they never add puffs of air to those sounds. English speakers aspirate all of the time and can barely hear the difference. Now, a few weeks later, it seems silly that we’d have to practice those as we’ve moved along to harder sounds. But, not everything is a breeze…
This is Payton after we practiced tone for over an hour…tone makes both of our brains hurt. Neither of us are great at transcribing tone, but we have gotten better with practice. Oh, and we’ve learned some interesting facts about “tone-deafness,” also known as “amusia.” Only about 4% of the population suffers from this and it has more to do with small pitch changes (like in music) rather than pitches/tones used in a tonal language (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc). I guess that tonal languages usually have changes that are expressed in intervals of half an octave or more, which are easier to hear and reproduce. Here’s one more nerdy fact about tone. Tone is not just a note on the musical scale that you add to a word, but instead is unique to your vocal range (register). So, if someone says a word that has a low-high tone, they may be hitting C then G, but you may have a higher register and may need to produce E then B for it to sound right! Your normal voice pitch/tone–that’s your “middle C,” if you will. I’m not sure if that made any sense at all, but I thought it was fascinating! We’ve also been watching a series called, “The Hearing Ear and the Seeing Eye” from Answers in Genesis, which goes in depth about how amazing our ears are. It’s well worth the hour!
Today, we took the long-awaited Word Craft Test, which will determine whether or not we have the hard-wiring to do the analysis part of language-learning, also known as Linguistics! If either of us tests high and does well in Grammar next semester, we will have to decide whether or not to stay for the extra two training segments before heading overseas. It’s hard to explain the wonderful world of Phonetics and contrast it with Linguistics or language-learning abilities. God made each of us with differing capacities and skills. Really, much of our ability to succeed at learning two more languages down the road will have to do with diligence and teamwork. But we are hoping that the linguistics test will give us a little more direction as we choose a country in the next few months.
Thanks for your updates. It’s late and I should be brushing my teeth rather than commenting, so I haven’t read all your recent posts, but it’s fun to hear your voices again, even if it’s only in my head while I read :). It sounds like you guys are enjoying Roach, and gaining a lot from your studies. Keep it up.
Junior semester is about to explode all over me since I keep on procrastinating on my Soteriology final project, but I’m having a generally good time. We’ll see you guys in MO in less than a year!
Ps. Wow, acronym tags are fun! Have you ever tried to identify the antecedent for every pronoun you use? Might be an exercise for grammar class…
Very interesting Grace, I hope you guys did well on the word craft test. Keep up the writing, its always good to hear what you are up to.
Loved the blog! Hannah is a language nerd and is taking piano lessons, so all of this middle C, pitch and tone, airiness stuff is right up her alley. Love you and we are praying for you. We are excited to see your family a little later this month. Really missed not seeing you guys for Amy & Paul’s wedding.
keep up the good work guys! 🙂 It’s super fun to hear about! Praying for you!
Thanks! We need the prayers for sure. What are your plans looking like? ‘Cause it’d be awesome if they involved you here at MTC!
Sounds fun to me! We always just put our hand in front of our mouths to determine aspiration when I was in college. I like the paper too though 🙂
Hi Grace! I think this is all very interesting. We prayed for you and Payton on Sunday night at youth group. You’re missed!
Kate, I feel like I say this a lot, but we truly do need prayer!! There is so much going on here and so many things to consider as we keep adding to the training. Tell everyone thanks for praying 🙂
Grace – you explained all this very well; I was fascinated by it!
Melissa, it took a long time for me to condense what I wanted to say and get my facts all straight. I ended up reading a bunch of articles on Amusia along the way. Good to know it made sense 🙂