What do I do when I have a cold and can't sleep?

 Why, I read about Spanish phonetics and phonology, of course! Then, because of some linguistic differences I've noticed during my month of listening to Spanish and Spanish-accented English, I start researching comparisons and contrasts between Spanish and English phonemes so that I can write a paper on the subject for my Spanish advisor. I find linguistics a fascinating area of study! I wish I had my notes from my linguistics class with me. I thought that the English pronunciation of "r" is a velar phoneme, while the Spanish /r/ is alveolar. I was wrong. The English "r" is an alveolar approximant /ɹ/. I've noticed that a lot of Spanish-speakers have trouble pronounching the /ɹ/ in the back of the throat as opposed to the /r/ that's produced by touching the tongue to the palate or dentals (the sound of "r"s in Spanish). I was looking up differences in pronunciations between Spanish and English because, since I started teaching here, I noticed that some of the most difficult words for native Spanish speakers to pronounce in English are words like "their," "here," "her," "ear," "hair," etc. This is because in Spanish, the "r" sound is produced with the tip of the tongue touching the top of the dental plate or the back of the top teeth, while in English, the "r" sound is a very strong, straight sound produced by arching the tongue in the back of the mouth, but without the tongue touching any part of the palate. I think it's important to study linguistics if one is going to teach languages because it helps the teacher to understand why students might be having such difficulties learning and speaking the new languages. I mean, I know many native English speakers who are trying to learn Spanish, but have extreme difficulty pronouncing the trilled "r" (phoneme: /rr/) because that's a phoneme that doesn't exist in English. 

Additionally, there are a lot of words in the English language that end in glottal stops- that is, that the closing consonants aren't clearly articulated. For example, when we say "cat," we don't say "caT," but it comes out sounding like a soft "d" at the end, like "catd." It's difficult to describe without using linguistic symbols are actually saying the word out loud. Anyway, this concept manifested itself the other day when Lacey was trying to help Moises articulate the difference between "thing" and "think." She was emphasizing the closing consonants very strongly, and so Moises started saying "thing-ah" and "thin-kah." It was a little difficult to try to explain that the ending consonants aren't QUITE so strongly articulated. "Think" is closed with a soft /k/ sound, a sound that releases air through the mouth, while "thing" is closed with a velar sound /ŋ/ which is sound that causes air to release through the nose. The difference is barely audible, but Moises wanted to know how to say the words. 

Words like "their" are double-whammies for English language learners whose first language is Spanish, because there are no Spanish words that have a "th" combination in them. Thus, not only is the hard "r" difficult to pronounce, but so, too, is that tricky little "th!" As Victor Borge puts it, "how does one know how far to thtick out the tongue?" 

In my first month here, I've learned a lot. Not only have I learned a lot more about Spanish, but I've also learned a lot more about English, and just how dang tricky it can be to pronounce! I think it's imperative for foreign language or ELL teachers to study at least the basics of linguistics because knowledge of how the language sounds and is produced will help teachers to be a little more sympathetic to the struggles of their students. Learning linguistics may also help teachers to be able to better explain and demonstrate language pronunciation. 

My light reading for my sick days. :)