Vocal Folds

Great Song: "Big Ol' Chad and Alina"

We all know someone named Chad. Google's most popular "Chad" today is "Chad Murray" (that's an image of Mr. Murray on the right). I've never heard of him. Maybe some of you have. How many of you are familiar with the Chad Mitchell Trio, though?

Google's most popular "Alina," today is "Alina Simone" (that's Ms. Simone above on the left). Again, I had never heard of her before I just did that search.

I had never heard of someone named "Alina," until I heard the following song by the Steve Miller Band about a woman named "Alina" who is apparently dating a large, old man named "Chad" ("big, ol' Chad," as they call him). She doesn't want him to take her too far away.

I was an adult before I realized that this song is my own personal "Mondegreen."

Mondegreen?

According to our good friends at wikipedia:

"The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term mondegreen in her essay 'The Death of Lady Mondegreen,' which was published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.^[3] In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the final line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad 'The Bonnie Earl O' Murray.' She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Murray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

Check the comments section of this post to find out what the actual fourth line is:

Afternoon Delight

Is there a glottal "t" here? What do you think?

Cockney loves Glottal Stops

Click here to what a speech expert from the British Library in London has to say about Cockney.

Think this guy's an expert?



Practice sentence #1: When my little brother's got a bottle, he's very happy.

Anchorman

I got the Anchorman clip figured out but I have no idea how to upload it to here so I'll just save it to my flash drive and bring it to class Monday. And I put the "Afternoon Delight" clip on there as well because I love it and think it's hilarious...also, I believe it showcases linguistics because they pronounce the "t" in Afternoon more as a true "t" when they sing than when it's just spoken...so there's the linguistic proof we need! I'll see y'all Monday!

My mother is scolding my horse

Learn how to say it in Chinese (a tonal language).

Throat Singing

Behold what the human throat is capable of:

Have you oscillated your uvula today?

Making music on the intake

Listen to Bobby McFerrin using his ingressive sounds to make music.