Jun. 10th, 2003

fox: kit fox, blue background (fox)
i'm still working on [livejournal.com profile] darththalia's interview questions, but for now, the favorite songs survey )
fox: kit fox, blue background (fox)
these questions from [livejournal.com profile] darththalia (and in deference to thalia, i'll go ahead and use capital letters in this entry [g]):

1. How many languages do you speak?

Yeah, you think you're so cute. :-)

1. Did you get along with your parents when you were in high school?

For the most part, I did, yes. But wait! There's more! )
fox: linguistics-related IPA (linguistics)
so it ran closer to two hours than an hour and a half. 'tever. conversation practice, easy questions, handwriting drills -- utter review for someone like me; this is the stuff i haven't forgotten since i took russian six and a half years ago.

but! i did teach a wee college boy to roll his R's! poor kid couldn't seem to do the russian R and kept defaulting to the french R instead of the plain english one. i suggested that he say "butter" like eighteen times fast, and then "gutter," and then go from "gutter" into "gorbachev" without pausing for breath -- and damn if he didn't flap that R just like a native russian speaker. and he was so pleased! big beaming smile, high-fives, the words "you're going to be awesome as a teacher, dude! kick ass!", and much repetition of "gorbachev" in the "gutter-bachev" fashion.

in other news, we're told that russian V, Z, ZH, B, G, and D devoice word-finally (becoming F, S, SH, P, K, and T), but listening to our afternoon instructor, a native speaker, i don't entirely believe it in the case of the fricatives. the morning instructor, a second-language learner, quite carefully said "chekoff", but the afternoon instructor really sounded to me like she was saying "chekovf" -- not a V, but not a pure F either. also "garazhsh" (garage) and "jazs" (jazz). she was sure she was pronouncing it with an F, but she admitted that of course she was sure, and who knows, i could be right. i might try to hunt up some more native speakers and hook them up to a spectrogram, and see if i can't get a paper out of that. [livejournal.com profile] ellen_fremedon? any phonology-like thoughts?

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fox: my left eye.  "ceci n'est pas une fox." (Default)
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