Often, the sort of things you study in Linguistics can seem really theoretical and abstract. One of the most notoriously abstract fields in linguistics is Phonology, or the study of the sound systems of a language. However, if you’re looking for it, even the most abstract bits of phonological theory can pop up in everyday life, and sometimes, with a vastly humorous result.

Phonology rules!

Phonology is the study of the rules and systems which govern the use of sounds in a language. Some of these rules in English, for example, tell us that a velar nasal can’t start a word in English, that “in-possible” has become “impossible”, and that the /t/ sound is completely different after an /s/ than it is at the start of a word (it’s unaspirated). All these effects, although cool when studied closely, happen at a subconscious level, and really don’t have much effect on the lives of speakers.

However, Phonology can get really fascinating when a person is speaking a language not their own. Although anybody can memorize words and grammar in a second language, it’s a long process to be able to disregard the phonological rules of your own language and use the ones of the new language.

When a non-native speaker has an “accent”, what’s actually happening is that they’re speaking your language, but using some of the phonological rules from their native tongue. With time (and practice), an accent slowly goes away, but it’s often the last stage of language learning, and is the culmination of years of work.

Let’s look at a specific example. In Russian speech, you can never have more than one long /o/ sound in a word. Even if the word you’re pronouncing is written with several ‘o’ sounds (like молоко, ‘milk’), only the one of them in a stressed position (explained below) will be pronounced, and the rest will be reduced into an /a/ or /ə/ (the sounds in ‘pot’ and ‘sofa‘). So, молоко is pronounced ‘mahluhkoh’ (/malə’ko:/), never “mohlohkoh” (/mo:lo:’ko:/). For more detailed information on this rule, see the Wikipedia page on Vowel Reduction in Russian

From Car Sales to prostitution

So, we’re sitting in my High School Russian class one day and we’re discussing vocabulary related to buying and selling. Our teacher, a Russian woman who still has a very noticeable Russian accent, is explaining the scenario for the next dialogue she’d like to do in class:

“Alright. So, Nick, I would like you to pretend to come up to me on a car lot. We will talk, and then, I will ask you if you would like to buy my Volva…”

Now, at this point, around half of the class either broke out laughing or was a bit too shocked to say anything at all. It’s worth pointing out that in her speech, the /ʌ/ sound in ‘but’ or ‘putter’ was always expressed with an /o/ sound, so to us, it sounded exactly like she just asked a student to buy her vulva.

At this point, she was looking around the classroom, confused, and trying to figure out what she had said. Some brave soul asked her what exactly she was selling, and she repeated, “I’m selling my volva!”. Another round of snickering coursed through the room.

At this point, she started to get frustrated. “No, it is a car. A volva!”. Slowly, the snickering began to calm, until finally, she went up to the board and wrote out “Volvo”, then pointed at it. “See! Volva!”

A chorus of groans of understanding rang out through the room, and she finally regained her composure. I’m not sure she ever understood what she actually said, but in a way, I think it’s better that way.

Although I didn’t really get it at the time, what my teacher was doing is actually perfectly understandable from a phonological standpoint. She was stressing only one of the O’s that she saw in the spelling, and the other vowel was reduced. Because she usually used a shorter /o/ sound for the /ʌ/ vowel, we understood her as saying “vulva”, not “volvo”.

Thus, directly because of a phonological rule, a normal day of class turned into a celebration of cross-linguistic hilarity. To this day, I can’t look at a Volvo without hearing my teacher saying “Would you like to buy my vulva?”, and it’s my favorite example of phonology gone wrong.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Humor, Phonetics and Phonology, Speech and Grammar Errors | 12 Comments


Recently, I’ve been listening to GrammarGirl’s “Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing”. I’ve generally found the episodes to be very interesting, and even though I thought I knew some of the subjects well, I’ve definitely learned something each time. I’d highly recommend giving it a listen.

However, in one of her recent episodes which discussed punctuating questions, she mentioned something that really mystified me: The Interrobang. I’ll quote her explanation below:

GrammarGirl said:
And finally, when you’re asking a question in surprise such as What? it isn’t appropriate to use multiple question marks or a question mark with an exclamation point. You’re supposed to pick the terminal punctuation mark that is most appropriate and use just one (1). Is your statement more of a question or more of an outburst?

I’ve always found that solution unsatisfactory, so I was thrilled to learn that there’s an obscure punctuation mark that was designed exclusively for asking questions in a surprised manner. It’s called an interrobang, and it looks like an exclamation point superimposed on a question mark.

You shouldn’t use the interrobang in formal writing, but I think it would be great if people started using it on blogs and in other informal communications. If you have the Wingdings 2 font in your word processing program, you can insert an interrobang as a special character, and there are unicode values that you can use to add the interrobang to your web site. I’ve put those in the transcript of this episode.

Although it’s a rather cool looking symbol, I think it’s a rather silly idea, and demonstrates one of the most frustrating aspects of prescriptive grammar.

So, the interrobang exists for a very distinct reason: Sometimes, you want to express that you’re surprised as you ask a given question, but you can’t use two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence.

My first thought when I read that was “How have I never heard of that rule?!”

…wait. Something’s wrong. I just used two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence. And… everything’s OK. The reader understood me, understood that the question carried a note of surprise, and most importantly, the English language didn’t collapse in on itself or explode in a blaze of punctuational pyrotechnics. That must mean that the inability to end a sentence with two punctuation marks isn’t a natural, grammatical rule (like “I have walked” versus “I have walk”), but instead, is an arbitrary, stylistic rule.

So, basically, the Interrobang was created because an arbitrary, stylistic rule has forbidden what most people normally do to indicate a surprised question, the “?!” cluster. They’ve broken the language by disallowing the existing punctuation system, then created this new mark to bandage the wound they created. Am I the only person who sees this whole process as more than a little ridiculous?

Keep in mind, though, I’m not against all attempts at expanding our system of punctuation. I think that the Irony Mark might come in handy from time to time, and a sarcasm mark would be very useful for online communications.

However, the Interrobang strikes me as a cute, interesting, but ultimately unnecessary bit of novel punctuation. The interrobang is only necessary if we accept one particular bit of nitpicky stylistic dogma. When you couple its questionable reason for existence with the relative difficulty of finding and inserting the symbol compared to the simple “?!” cluster, it’s no wonder to me that it hasn’t caught on.

That’s not to say, however, that the interrobang is without it’s fans, who need to be represented as well. After forwarding the article to a friend of mine online, she responded with excitement to the idea:

Make sure you talk about the convenience of only one dot. I know you may be against it, but you must talk about both sides and be fair. A dot may not seem like a lot of time to someone, especially if you are particularly crafty with a pen. BUT think about if you are hyperbole happy. All the time you will save over the years. It’s really staggering.

So, although the interrobang has a future amongst hyperbole-happy minimalists and time-savers, the fact of the matter is that for the majority of people, the interrobang is never going to fly. You’re welcome to interrobang your writing to your heart’s content, but just don’t be surprised when your proofreading friend hands you back your essay with a big red circle around your interrobang, and a small note, scribbled in the margins, reading “What the heck is this?!”.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Speech and Grammar Errors, Tirades | 7 Comments


Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of becoming a linguist is the fact that as you study, it begins to slowly work its way into all aspects of your life. Although most people view linguistics as “obscure” and have trouble imagining how it could affect one’s life outside of academics, let me assure you, it can.

The different fields within Linguistics, once you’ve begun to study and ponder them, simply will not let you go. The reason for this is simple: When you study language, you’re studying one of the main aspects of human existence, something that we not only use constantly, but that we simply cannot avoid.

If you’ve got a real passion for language and its analysis, you’ll find yourself constantly analyzing the flurries of language that are constantly surrounding us. However, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

502 Error: Linguist temporarily overloaded

My friends have all noticed a certain tendency that I’ve developed since the start of my Linguistics training, affectionately referred to as “the blue screen of linguistic death” or “Linguist moments”.

Periodically, I’ll be carrying on a normal conversation with people, and then suddenly I’ll stop dead in my metaphorical tracks. Often, I’ll start drawing little trees in the air with my finger, or mouth words over and over again under my breath, and always, I’m pretty much catatonic.

The scary part is that really, I seldom notice when I do. I’ll be going along in conversation, and then somebody will make a speech error, make a strange sound or pronunciation, or just say something that “needs” further analysis, and I’ll just dive straight into linguistic analysis. Sometimes it’s a quick little thing (“Oh, she just combined the first two words into one…”), but from time to time, I’ve been known to actually pull out a piece of paper and do actual analysis complete with word-stress grids and IPA transcription. Generally, I’ll figure things out and pop back into the conversation down the way, but sometimes, these little moments will keep me thinking all evening.

Of course, the problem with this is that you can never really explain it to the satisfaction of the people around you. If somebody asks you what you were thinking about, there’s no graceful way to say “Oh, I was just trying to figure out why the stress pattern varies among the acronyms in the organization’s different regions.” Best case scenario, they’ll find it mildly interesting (although not worth the hour of discussion needed to actually explain), and worst case, they’ll just write you off as somebody who really needs a hobby.

However, linguist moments aren’t always a bad thing.

“Oh yes, please go on. Tell me how your dog got his name again?”

One of the most wonderful side-effects of taking phonetics is that any conversation can become fascinating. You see, when people are talking, we generally just listen for meaning, and the actual sounds never cross our minds.

However, with a little bit of phonetics training, we can make ourselves pay attention to the actual sounds and the little details inherent in them. When you sit back and actually listen, it’s shocking how many corners people cut in speech, how many little tiny speech errors we make, and how complex speech really is. So, even though the subject of discussion might be completely uninteresting, you can always find something of interest, even if it might not be that interesting to somebody without a passion in the subject.

It’s not just phonetics, though. Sometimes, little speech errors or unusual constructions will trip me up, just begging for analysis. Sometimes the analysis yields nothing more than the minor satisfaction of figuring it out, but sometimes, it’ll lead you to help solve a major problem in your own linguistic work, or give you a major insight into the way that language works.

“Wait… what?”

Finally, there are times where constantly having one’s ear to the ground for interesting language use is just mildly amusing, but not much else.

For instance, being obsessed with speech and speech sounds, I’m constantly listening to my friends’ speech. I’ve started to pick up on little interesting speech changes that they all make and that nobody notices. For instance, I’ve noticed that one of my friends (also a speaker of Korean) will pretty frequently replace Eth sounds (ð) with unaspirated t’s. It’s completely irrelevant to life in general, and most English speakers don’t even notice the swap (or just think he’s saying “da” instead of “the”), but it brings me a little bit of joy from time to time.

If you’re passionate, the sword isn’t double-edged at all.

When you become passionate about Linguistics, you’ll quickly find your passion spilling into the language use of your every day life. Whether it’s in the form of sudden bouts of near-catatonic linguistic analysis, sudden insights from random bits of conversation, or just subtle-yet-interesting observations about the world, it’s very difficult to leave your work at the office, so to speak.

However, the beauty of it all is that if you’re like me, and are truly passionate about linguistics and language, then it’s not work at all. You’re constantly surrounded by something that you’ve dedicated part of your life to understanding, and you’re always only a step away from your next insight. Sure, the occasional “blue screen of linguistic death” might be embarrassing, but in the end, it’s definitely worth it.

No matter how passionate a mechanic is about their work, they can only really explore their passion when they’re under the hood of a car. One of the true joys of being a linguist is that no matter where you go or what you do, you’re never far from your passion.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Notes, Phonetics and Phonology, Speech and Grammar Errors | 9 Comments

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