Today was my first day of school. It went fine. Two new courses (not a strange thing given that this is my first year at UA, but still it’s both a challenge and a delight). I have high hopes. And as it’s the first day of the spring term of course course descriptions for the fall term are overdue. So I’ve been spending the evening scowling at that insufferable Office wedding episode and coming up with forms courses to teach. This led me to think about texts and, thus, texts, a word I’ve for years now savored the slow, slow enunciation of. Tek-ssss-tsss. Say it for yourself aloud a few times. Make it three syllables. And then in thinking more generally about sounds and consonants and plosives and such, came a new game. Or like a game to make characters in a novel play because anyone in the real world would find it, too, insufferable.
One person is the speaker, another is the listener. The speaker decides, on a whim or randomly, which of ch or j to utter. NOT “chuh” or “juh”, but ch and j. Just the initial plosive with some breath after it. (Is it a plosive, linguists? Or is that reserved for just like k and t? Or p and b?) And then the listener gets to guess whether what she heard was ch or j.
This, to me, is hilarious. I could play for hours.
UPDATE: Turns out ch and j are “affricates”.