Retrospective #3 - The Universal Language

September 16, 2006

Medicine: The Universal Language

Learning medicine involves learning an entirely new language, complete with a new set of nouns, verbs, adjectives, phrases, grammar, etc. Your concept of directions completely change. For example:

Up becomes Superior
Down become Inferior

Then, because nothing in medicine can be desctiptive enough, you get the fancy words like Distal for when you're moving away from your body along your arm or leg or Proximal for the opposite direction, and so on...you get the picture...

As if this wasn't all bad enough (yes, I can feel the collective eye rolling going on right now from Yeretsgeen Paula, Jerry, and Arman), we have to deal with professors who don't exactly speak the English language the way we would like. As a result I have put together this list that I like to call:

"Words That I Have Come To Hate Because of my Candian, Australian, and New Zealander Professors"

I Say It: Cervical (SERVE-uh-kul)
They Say It: serve-EYE-kul
This one irks me the most. I don't know why.

I Say It: Vessel (VEH-suhl)
They Say It: VyEE-suhl
I can't even write out how they pronounce this.

I Say It: Out (owt)
They Say It: Oot
I just hate this word in any context now.

I Say It: Skeletal (SKEH-luh-tuhl)
They Say It: skuh-LEE-tuhl
You get the picture


This is not comprehensive at all, and I'm sure will be added on to when our Belgian professor of Histology begins lecturing. Stay tuned...