I shoot my tequila with cardamom and kumquats
Ahoj!
Today's post title is from Chris' Saturday Tea Party. We were talking about how the traditional way to drink tequila is with lime and salt. Then I explained about the Mexican restaurant in Prague that serves it with orange and cinammon. Then we got pretentious and went with cardamom and kumquat. I wonder what it would taste like... ;)
Today's speech science lab was great. Having actually done the reading beforehand, I had some idea of what was going on, and had a great time. It's absolutely amazing to me that I can record you saying /i/ (like the vowel in "jeep"), and /u/ (like the vowel in "shoe") and be able to see it on a computer screen. Not only that, but just by looking at the visual, I can tell you what sound it was!
5 of us speechies are in a Bible study together that meets Tuesdays at lunch. Today Megs brought up an event that one of her churches held in the past. They set up different stations around the room, and each station hosted a different discussion question such as "God in the Arts," "God in the Sciences," "God in Culture," etc. (I hope I got the details right!). The idea was that students from different backgrounds could go to the questions most relevant to themselves and discuss the ways in which they were seeing God. I promptly felt inspired to post this:
Today's post title is from Chris' Saturday Tea Party. We were talking about how the traditional way to drink tequila is with lime and salt. Then I explained about the Mexican restaurant in Prague that serves it with orange and cinammon. Then we got pretentious and went with cardamom and kumquat. I wonder what it would taste like... ;)
Today's speech science lab was great. Having actually done the reading beforehand, I had some idea of what was going on, and had a great time. It's absolutely amazing to me that I can record you saying /i/ (like the vowel in "jeep"), and /u/ (like the vowel in "shoe") and be able to see it on a computer screen. Not only that, but just by looking at the visual, I can tell you what sound it was!
5 of us speechies are in a Bible study together that meets Tuesdays at lunch. Today Megs brought up an event that one of her churches held in the past. They set up different stations around the room, and each station hosted a different discussion question such as "God in the Arts," "God in the Sciences," "God in Culture," etc. (I hope I got the details right!). The idea was that students from different backgrounds could go to the questions most relevant to themselves and discuss the ways in which they were seeing God. I promptly felt inspired to post this:
God in First Year Speech-Language Pathology
I can't get over how much I'm learning this year, and gobs of it makes my jaw drop, and me say "Wow, what a God-thing." For starters, just the physical mechanisms of speech, and the physical process of hearing, blow me away. It's unbelievable how many TEENY TINY bits have to work together to get normal speech and normal hearing. There are SO many teeny bits that it amazes me that any of us work at all! But we do, and that's what's so incredible. We're amazingly complex, with huge potential for glitches all over the place, yet most of us function beautifully. That's God for you. :)
There's the whole speech/audition relationship thing. Most of the frequency of our speech is between 1 and 4 kHz. "Bizarrely" enough, that's just the range that our ears are best tuned to hear. Evolution? Could be. But even if it is evolution, I still believe that God's in charge, and that it's pretty awesome that we're programmed this way. Our larynxes and pharynxes are also designed to best promote sounds in that range, so everything works together to make speech as clear and easy to hear as possible. Wow.
When you look at the spectrum of our speech sounds (their amplitude plotted against their frequency) the graphic results are beautiful. Vowels are periodic, so you get these complex waves that repeat at constant intervals, and are just so pretty. Some consonants are both periodic and aperiodic, so you get this fuzzy waveform that repeats, and is also gorgeous. It's amazing what happens when you can see sounds, and I'm feeling half-tempted to get some black and white prints of spectrograms framed up for my room. Whether you break sounds down into their amplitudes and frequencies, or build them up into songs and symphonies, poetry and novels, the sheer beauty of them is staggering.
And that's where I see God in First Year Speech-Language Pathology.
Love,
E.
I can't get over how much I'm learning this year, and gobs of it makes my jaw drop, and me say "Wow, what a God-thing." For starters, just the physical mechanisms of speech, and the physical process of hearing, blow me away. It's unbelievable how many TEENY TINY bits have to work together to get normal speech and normal hearing. There are SO many teeny bits that it amazes me that any of us work at all! But we do, and that's what's so incredible. We're amazingly complex, with huge potential for glitches all over the place, yet most of us function beautifully. That's God for you. :)
There's the whole speech/audition relationship thing. Most of the frequency of our speech is between 1 and 4 kHz. "Bizarrely" enough, that's just the range that our ears are best tuned to hear. Evolution? Could be. But even if it is evolution, I still believe that God's in charge, and that it's pretty awesome that we're programmed this way. Our larynxes and pharynxes are also designed to best promote sounds in that range, so everything works together to make speech as clear and easy to hear as possible. Wow.
When you look at the spectrum of our speech sounds (their amplitude plotted against their frequency) the graphic results are beautiful. Vowels are periodic, so you get these complex waves that repeat at constant intervals, and are just so pretty. Some consonants are both periodic and aperiodic, so you get this fuzzy waveform that repeats, and is also gorgeous. It's amazing what happens when you can see sounds, and I'm feeling half-tempted to get some black and white prints of spectrograms framed up for my room. Whether you break sounds down into their amplitudes and frequencies, or build them up into songs and symphonies, poetry and novels, the sheer beauty of them is staggering.
And that's where I see God in First Year Speech-Language Pathology.
Love,
E.
posted by Elizabeth @ 16:01
3 Comments:
At 9:15 p.m.,
Karlie said…
I have to say, that when Sean becomes a professor I'm going to go back and audit a bunch of Ling classes and maybe take some speech path - the subject is fascinating! I also know what you mean about finding God in things (especially science). When you look at the intricacies (sp?) of crystal structures, or you find out that the mechanism that causes the colour of amethyst is so improbable it's "astonishing" it even occurs at all...well then.
At 12:25 p.m.,
Kristyna said…
hey hope ur doing well! im taking linguistics at the moment too and enjoying it! but have decided to major in psychology and management - a lil more useful i think;o) but i hope you like it and are having fun! if you ever visit prague again, let me know..or you could even come to scotland;o)
At 7:07 p.m.,
Rachael said…
Hi there, I'm a speechie in Australia in my second year out of uni - I somehow randomly discovered your blog one day. It's a good wake-up call for me to read about your enthusiasm as you learn about speech pathology - the enthusiasm can unfortunately be lost all too easily once you get out into the "real world"! I remember too from uni the joy of realising how God has constructed and wired us so perfectly to be able to communicate. Thanks for the reminder!
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