Phonology

When you combine an awesome Harry Potter reference with Spanish phonology, you get a winner. This has got to be the funniest thing I’ve seen in the recent past: Since this is Linguistrix, let me add a few lines about the points of linguistic interest in this gag. Spanish pronunciation is delightfully easy and predictable with a very regular spelling system. Words usually have only one stressed syllable, and it is the last syllable, except when the word ends in N or S or a vowel, in which case it's the penultimate syllable (Michel Thomas calls this rule the Nose Rule).

Since everyone and their grandmother is busy listening to Why this Kolaveri Di for the 4157th time in 3 days (What! You haven’t heard it yet? Get out from under that rock already!), I thought I’d write this short note on a couple of points of linguistic interest in that song. Apart from the extremely catchy tune that refuses to get out of your head even when you are asleep (I am sure loads of people have this song running like a sinister background score in their dreams), one of the things that make this song fun is of course the strongly Tamil accented English.

[I am writing a series of articles on Languages and Linguistics for a magazine for school kids, EducationEdge, that a friend of mine has started recently. These articles are targeted at students of classes VIII to XII. I will keep posting those articles on Linguistrix once they are published. Here's the first in the series.] “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Every human possesses an innate ability to acquire language.