Language is the dress of thought- Samuel Johnson
Language is a funny thing, especially the english language. But I never really knew how funny it was until this semester when I decided to take a Linguistics course at the University. And amidst my other classes on auditing and control systems...well it provides for the most entertaining couple of hours my entire week.
But yes, things are very different in the English writing system. Imagine a new word comes into the English language that is spelled 'ghoti'. How would this be pronounced? In an attempt to demonstrate the inadequacies of the English spelling system, some famous playwright argued that the word could be pronounced as 'fish'. How so, you may ask?! Well just take gander!
enough --> f
women --> i
nation --> sh
And any writing system that could possibly pronounce the string of letters ghoti as fish is in desperate need of reform. But that is just one of the many interesting things I have learned.
For the first part of the semester we have been learning the International Phonetic Alphabet. I think it looks sweet! The following is a paragraph about my life as of late that has been transcribed into IPA....see if you can read it! This kinda thing is what I have been doing all month long!
How'd ya do?!?! Well this is what I said just in case you had no clue what that was....
Close to what you thought? Kinda cool though huh! Ha I know I will never use this in with my accounting degree but that's ok! It is the only fun I get to have this semester!!
