Because I already used “the other side” and “the opposite shore” sounds so poetic.

I took the big phonetics test that I was studying for all weekend. I think I did okay. I figure I got maybe seventy percent, which is a lot better than the previous test, where I got 11.5 out of 41.

I am not going to crunch the numbers to turn that into a percent mark because it would be too depressing.

But what the fuck. I can’t be good at everything. Linguistics is clearly not in my destiny. I never expected it to be. I only took it out of a general interest in language, and like I have said before, I had no idea it would be so brutal and so demanding. If I had know, I would have said “Nope! Nopenopenope. ”

All my other courses seem like nothing by comparison. So there’s that.

Ethics? Pshaw, that’s just a philosophy class. All I have to know is the basics of various people’s theories and some of the details. The rest is just thinking and writing, and I am awesome at both.

Creative Writing? As if. Frustrations with the prof’s communication style aside, as long as all we have to do is write, I’m a happy guy. I wrote like four poems in today’s class and enjoyed doing it. Give me a challenge and I will crush it into itty bitty pieces.

Canadian History Since 1867? That’s just remembering things. Plus the course is super easy. I have had one assignment so far and it was easy. There’s one more and then a final exam. That’s it.

And, last but the opposite of least, History of Popular Music, which is a class I could take forever.

So I am not too worried about all the Linguistics stuff. You can’t win every race. Part of college is figuring out what you do NOT like. Me no likey Linguistics, at least not how it’s been taught to me.

Pondering potential alternatives to another semester at KPU. I pretty much have to throw convenience out the window because there’s no schools worth going to which are as convenient for me as KPU Richmond. Odds are, no matter where I went, I would have a substantial commute.

That kinda sucks, but it’s also liberating, because it means I can go into the search process with options wide open. Maybe I could go to UBC or SFU. Or find some little art college with a good reputation for having a solid creative writing program. Or maybe I could enroll in the university of the road, traveling the world, opening my horizons, and probably dying of some preventable disease somewhere.

All that assumes that VFS is out of the question. It has first dibs on me. I emailed them a week ago regarding my prospects. Haven’t heard back. I assume it’s time to escalate. In this case, that means calling them and being benevolently insistent about getting some kind of answer.

I suppose I could just apply and see what happens. It would cost me the application fee, but what the hell, I have it. It would be worth it just to know I tried.

If I got into there, I would be a shining fireball of ambition. Writing for TV is something I want more than anything else in my life. I honestly think that I belong in show business. Not just that I have the talent, but that it would be a place where I would get along and feel like a part of things for once. I want to be someplace where I can harness my enormous creative potential and pour it into something truly amazing I can share with the world.

Back to Linguistics. The next test is the next class, and it’s on phonology, specifically the rules for how words get changed by usage.

Like, there’s the addition of letters, called epenthesis. That’s how an English word like “milkshake” (2 syllables) becomes “mirukusheku” (5 syllables) in Japanese. It’s also what causes people in certain places to turn “film” into “filem”. Some people just have a problem with consonant clusters!

Then, there’s elision, which is the dropping of letters. We all know this one. It’s how “suppose” becomes “spose” and how aspects is usually pronounces “aspecks”.

Then there’s metathesis , where the sounds just get reversed. Like how “prescription” turned into “perscription”, or how little kids can’t say “spaghetti” so they say “pasketti” instead.

Lastly, there is the most interesting and mysterious one, assimilation. That happens when the word is transformed into a form that’s easier to say. Like we all know it’s “you and me”, but most of the time, we pronounce it “you an me” or even “you n’ me”. “Writer” gets pronounced “rider”, “have to” turns into “have ta” or even “hafta”, and “sandwich” is pronounced “samwich”.

Must make it very hard for those learning English. And yet, English would sound very strange indeed if we pronounced each word precisely and separately. We’d sound like robots, or just incredibly stuffy and pretentious. I get the feeling that there are a lot more rules of this sort to come.

Where I come from, the local accent is highly musical and highly compressed. That’s how the question “did you eat yet?” can turn into “djeetjet?”. Or how “go away with you” turns into “gwaywichya”. I have pondered putting up signs in my homeland of Prince Edward Island with these transformations on them in such a manner as to suggestion that they are place names.

Imagine the fun. “Remember dear, we’re parked in the ‘Wassupwichu’ lot. ”

Then they go talk to a local. “Um…. wassupwichu?” “Namuch, you?” “What?”

And it amuses me that there are statements in the dialect back home that would be gibberish to most people in the world but perfectly understandable to me. It’s like speaking Cockney, Scouse, or Glaswegian. The language spoken is definitely English, but…. different.

I miss my home sometimes. I miss the salt air. I miss the town that will always be “home”. And of course, I miss the heck out of my family.

Maybe I can bus and air b’ n b home this summer.

Wheels within wheels….

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.