On The Rise

22 Ramadhan, 1442

I cleared my examination marking for IB over the long weekend, although I still need to check-in daily on my team to see if anyone needs help. Listening to tens of Individual Orals is somewhat wearing, but it was something of a change from marking written scripts. No difficult handwriting to have to figure out - but one or two orals that required a third listen-to to make sure I'd understood what was being said.

To my surprise the thing that I found most irritating was the number of candidates employing uptalk - the constant use of rising inflections at the end of statements so that they sound like questions. Initially I found this somewhat endearing in its hapless tentativeness, but it wears you down, especially if you get batches of it. I had to consciously avoid marking down out of annoyance. I suppose it was a good thing I was doing the marking in fasting month as I was unusually conscious of the need for charitable patience.

Thank goodness uptalk hasn't infiltrated its way into local patterns of speech. Not so far, at least.