There is a legitimate reason for your doctor asking you to say “ah” when examining your throat. This particular vowel sound keeps your tongue low in your mouth (out of the doctor’s way) and like all vowels, its sound can be held for a long period of time due to the vocal tract being …
QC Voices
Change is Good
Words like computeresque (adj), ecomuseum (n), and ringback (n) weren’t around before I was born. Actually they were accepted into the English dictionary as new entries only as far back as 5 years ago, in 2008. They may have been used before then, but they are now three of the numerous new official entries …
Quintessential Queens: Interview with Paolo Javier, Queens Poet Laureate
I’ve always lived in Queens. I was brought up in Bellerose, Queens; I went to high school in Fresh Meadows; I do all of my shopping in Jackson Heights, and a lot of my dancing in Woodside. I’ve taken every … Continue reading →
Speech vs. Language
When you hear someone say “I’m a Speech-Language Pathologist” do you think, aren’t they being repetitive by saying both words: speech and language? I never really thought about the differences until recently. Language is the primary medium of human communication. It uses socially shared codes to represent concepts we want to convey to each other. …
Source Material
Art is not a leisure activity. Art is something we do – something we struggle with, something we form out of the raw materials of our lives. Art, simply put, is a process. Source Material is ostensibly an exhibition of still life … Continue reading →
Voiceless for a Day
Let me start by saying that I never want to lose my voice again and that I never realized how much I talk in any given day until I lost that privilege. After feeling what it is like to have laryngitis, I learned that verbal communication is extremely difficult to live without. Not impossible, just …
Creativity: it’s all in the syntax
Person 1: Tomorrow we are going to my mom’s sister’s dad’s granddaughter’s house for her birthday party. Person 2: Oh your cousin’s house. Person 1: Isn’t that what I said? Tracing through your entire family tree is completely unnecessary in the above situation, but nonetheless, the sentence is grammatically sound. This is one of the …
Misunderstood (in a wacky way)
How many times have we run into communication glitches with our friends? You say one thing but your friend understands something completely different. This often happens because either one word or the whole statement is ambiguous (has more than one meaning). Sometimes you just can’t avoid it and you come out with some really wacky …
Fast Food Failure-Reality of Dorm Life
Recipe of the week: Cup O Noodles. (See pictures for instructions.) I was one of the last to arrive that day. As all the cars were pulling out of the Summit parking lot, and parents were saying their last tearful goodbyes to their college bound children, I was just pulling up next to the side […]
QC Voices Bloggers
Thanks to all the fantastic writers who applied to be a QC Voices blogger for 2012-2013. We’ve notified the new bloggers already, and you should see them in action in this space in a few weeks. If you applied and weren’t picked, you can still get a free blog here: http://qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/log-in-sign-up/. Keep writing!
