Monday, October 29, 2007

Goal for the semester achieved

I meant to mention this last week, but I finally achieved the one teaching goal I set myself this semester.

I worked a Flight of the Conchords clip into a lecture.



(Used entirely for the pedagogical purpose of illustrating vowel raising in New Zealand English.)

6 Comments:

Shelley said...

Well done!

Anonymous said...

Excellent stuff.

I once went camping near Vancouver with one Canadian and one NZ friend. The Kiwi, being the only male, was in a separate tent with all the food.

Just after we went to bed (drunk), there was a very strange roll of thunder that sounded like growling coming from the forest.

The next thing we hear is "guys, guys, are there any beers?"

"No mate, you drank all the beers"

"No, not beers, beers! Are there any beers?!"

"You've had too many beers, go to sleep"

"NOT BEERS! Are there any" - and then he made a sound something like Brrrrrrs.

After we stopped laughing, the Canadian assured him there were unlikely to be any bears on such a small and relatively developed island.

(hello GB if you happen to read this, everyone still loves that story!)

Ianqui said...

Good job!

(I used a clip from Family Guy a while ago. Do you get to see that show there? Anyway, it felt like a crowning achievement.)

Anonymous said...

I love that clip! This pretty much sums up all the problems I have with North Americans understanding me! (I live in Canada at the moment)

Kelly said...

You are my hero. I want to be a linguistics student just so I can go to your class and learn the truth about NZ vowel sounds!!

I hope you are proud of yourself; this is a stunning achievement. :)

Unknown said...

You gotta love our high rising terminals?

Our kiwi waitress in Sydney told us her friend said to her "you look like you're dead" and she said "yeah, I'm tired, I'm hungover..." and her friend said "no, your Dad?"