Has my generation been negatively impacted by emoticons and texting? No, not everyone has. Emoticons do come in handy sometimes I got my first cell phone in eighth grade. It was a simple flip phone that took forever to text with. But then again, that was the era when ppl made txts short. I don’t …
#qc
NSSLHA- One Step Toward Our Future
I’m sitting in one of my first college classes last Fall, LCD 100. After going through the syllabus for the semester, my professor draws our attention to the announcement on the chalkboard…NSSLHA Meeting, New Members Welcome, Free Pizza. Free pizza is always good, right? I knew going into college that I wanted to get …
NYC Makes 21 the Magic Number
Yet again NYC is a pioneer in the world of smoking limitations! The New York City Council vote was held on October 30, 2013. The amendment was passed—35 to 10– to raise the sales age of cigarettes and tobacco products from 18 years old to 21 years old. It will also establish that 21 …
Vocal Folds and… Airplanes?!
Yep. Those things in your throat that open and close to allow you to speak have an interesting commonality with airplanes. It’s all about the airflow. (*side note: vocal folds and vocal cords are the same thing—they are referred to as vocal folds by SLPs and vocal cords by medical professionals) Bernoulli’s Effect states …
Vowels in IPA
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
