The airplane was very tiny, and the gentleman sitting next to me was not. Neither am I, so when he reached for his seat belt, his hand brushed against me.
“I’m not trying to do anything!” the poor guy exclaimed. “It’s the seat belt! I’m trying to get the seat belt!”
I understand his stress. At any moment one can run into a crazy person who would start posting TikTok rants about “feeling unsafe” on airplanes.
Entirely off-topic, but how does one learn to pronounce sounds one’s native language doesn’t have, when studying the language as an adult? I’ve been playing around with Georgian, trying to learn the alphabet at least, and the k vs k’ vs q distinction (among others) is kicking my ass – I can’t even hear the difference, let alone imitate the pronunciation – and my last time learning sounds Romanian didn’t have was 20 years ago when I was learning English, and I can’t for the life of me remember how I figured it out :))
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“trying to learn the alphabet at least, and the k vs k’ vs q distinction”
There’s no single approach that works for everyone.. but for some descriptions can help. Wikipedia has a page about the ejectives (lay description: close your throat say the sound and then open your throat again).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejective_consonant
there’s also a page for q’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvular_ejective_stop
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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