Schwa'ts happening on Wednesday?

I had my tutoring session this morning, and that went well. We are working on improving her accent and emphasizing the schwa sound. Remember the schwa sound? If you said, "Uh," that's pretty much correct. It is the most common sound in the English language. And it is not represented by any one letter. That's why they created that phonetic symbol to use in dictionaries. Weird. Of course, English spelling in general is only somewhat connected to the way words are spelled. Don't even get me started on English place names. Like Worcester is pronounced Wooster? Right!

You might think the schwa would be an easy sound to make, but then Spanish-speakers can't understand why we can't trill the double-r's in ferrocarril.

After our session on schwa-ing  -- the guy on the video, teaching English to Russians, always verbs the noun: "We schwa the last syllable." --, I helped her enter an address in her GPS. She has an appointment in Chicago tomorrow morning to renew her immigration papers. We spent time on the American pronunciation of Chicago, too. 

Then I helped her find the telephone number of a local lawyer to see if she and her husband can get legal assistance as they work through the INS again. When they did this ten years ago, they went to a lawyer in Madison. He took two thousand dollars as a retainer, then married and moved out of state. Send a prayer winging heavenward for her, if you do that sort of thing. If not, send positive vibes or just hopeful wishes into the universe. She is not overly concerned, but INS does not really stand for Immigration and Naturalization Service. It stands for It's Never Simple.

The corrected versions of Wicca have been accepted and are now available. Easy, peasy. I am starting to get feedback on Benjamin. Don't hold your breath on that one! Wacky in WhoVille may be moving up the pipeline.

I am cooking a modified version of Frito Pie for dinner. After Tom heads out for a meeting, I will get out the robot and mop our floors. The snow of the last few days means tracks across the parquet. 

(Parkay! Butter!) 

Sorry! That's the way my brain works in the middle of the afternoon some days.