Things I Learned From My Required Reading

Possibly a continuing feature! Aren't you excited? I know my family, with whom I already shared a number of fascinating items, are totally thrilled.

Anyway.

1. No one should ever produce a design text book because students (meaning me) will inevitably spend all their time being snotty about the examples (as in - 'this example sucks!') rather than oh, say, learning anything.

2. Text books still say the obvious as though it were mind-shatteringly new.

3. 'Glottal Stop' is an amusing phrase and makes me want to work it into today's conversations.

4. If it's sort of late at night and you're re-reading your chapter on 'What is Language?' you will derail everything entirely if you arbitrarily decide to consider 'vowel' a euphamism. On that note, Linguistics is a dirty, dirty subject and if Pat Robertson is done looking for Satan under the rubble in Haiti he might want to check out the filth in my History of English text book.