Final Post

I can't believe this quarter is already almost over! This has been by far my most engaging and interesting class of this quarter, and I'm very sad to see it over already. It has definitely made an impact on my life, however. I never would have thought that the study of linguistics would make me a more perceptive person, but it certainly has. In just 10 short weeks, I've already become much more sensitive to accent differences as well as lexical ones. I am never bothered by a misunderstanding anymore, instead, I find myself intrigued and thinking about how that person's vowels are shifted in comparison to what I'm used to. At Stanford, I've come to enjoy listening to the international students in my dorm, like Ben from London and Oliver from Bermuda, because I can always relate it back to this class. It's so fun to be able to take something I never used to think about, accents, and apply all the new knowledge from this class to them.
One thing I've noticed about Stanford that really stands out is how quickly my vocabulary and way of speaking has adapted. In just one quarter, I've already found myself talking in the same manner as the rest of the people in my dorm, and I can see some of my speech mannerisms displayed in them as well. I catch myself saying that things are "mad cool" like the guys from Boston and Brooklyn upstairs, and hear others using the NorCal "hella" that I often find myself using. The entire dorm has picked up on the word "twisted" from the guy from Malibu and "sick" from the kids from Colorado.
Another thing I've noticed that I never would have before taking this class is how quickly people can adapt to the accents of others. I always used to assume that the person with the accent was simply losing their accents when I began to understand them better, but after taking this class, I really think that it is the listener that adapts to the accent. The fact that we have so many international students and professors on campus illustrates this phenomenon. My friend Anne has a statistics professor from Africa. The first day, she called her mom after class and said she was going to fail because she couldn't understand a word he said in lecture. As time has gone on, however, she has adjusted to his accent, and now she can understand him just find. I had a similar experience with my chemistry professor, who is Chinese. At the beginning of the quarter, the whole class was worried because he was very difficult to understand. Now, however, I find myself hardly noticing his accent at all.
This class has really changed my outlook on speech in general, and I hope I can take more linguistics classes in the future. I really enjoyed having the small class atmosphere and getting to know everyone else in the class. I would like to say thank you to Meghan, the class was so fun and interesting because of the topics we discussed and the readings we had. All of them were relevant and interesting and I never felt like we were just doing busywork like I have in other classes in the past. Also, the final project was actually really enjoyable and I can't wait to share my results with everyone later!