Smooth Moves in Phonetics

So I'm in my favorite class (Phonetics) on this dreary of a mundane Wednesday morning running on five hours of not-so solid sleep and my brain is dead from studying the works of Mill, Marx, Schopenhauer, Shelley, and Freud (Curse philosophers. By the way, one of those is not like others, I'll leave you to figure out which one.)

I spilled coffee on my hand at Starbucks, my contacts are sticking to my eyelids, and some one took my favorite front row, middle seat. I have a long day ahead of me, which includes God forsaken track practice and my ever favorite philosophy class (curse philosophers again.)

It is definitely not a happy hump day and, all things considered, I'm not on my A game. I'm not even on my B game. And if there were a C game, I bet I'd be absent from that one too. In fact, I got lost on the way to the ball park.

So we're learning Phonetic transcription, duh. And we were practicing our voiceless lingua alveolar fricatives...also known as the S sound.

So Prof. does what she does for every transcription, she asks us to shout out words that have the S sound in the initial and final position.

Words like "soup" and "super" and "cross" were shouted out. Normal words. Kindergarden level. Moving on.

I'm a little zoned out at this point...it's 9 am cut me some slack. So I tune back in like the superstar I am and decide to join in the little game.

She then asked for words with the S sound in the medial position.

Now being downgraded to the second row, middle seat, I decide to make myself known.

Want to know what word came to mind first and I blurted out?

Pussy.

No, not just pussy. I then tried to HIDE the fact that I just blurted out a crude word for vagina in the middle of my graduate level class by then saying "cat."

So it came out like, "Pussy!...cat. Pussy.Cat."

Thaaaaaat's good, Katie. Keep it up, I'm sure you'll get an A now.

Prof. thought it was absolutely hilarious and laughed the rest of class.

I think I'm still bright red.

Love love love,

Katie

Comments

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