Pontius Pilates, Static Palates

The first half of this post's title refers to the name of the hypothetical pilates studio that I would run if I had any knowledge of or interest in pilates. (On a similar note, "charades" should almost certainly rhyme with "pilates.") The second half refers to static palatography, which I saw and experienced for the first time today. If you aren't familiar with static palatography, please go look it up on Google Images. If you do know what it is, you should do the same, if only to vicariously experience the guaranteed surprise of someone who doesn't realize it involves the insides of people's mouths.

One of the most useful things I learned at the demonstration of static palatography was that it can be recreated as a party trick! All you need is burned toast (a toaster and bread can bring this about), olive or other vegetable oil, some sort of receptacle, a sharp utensil, a blunt utensil or Q-Tip, a mirror and a camera.

Using the sharp utensil, scrape off the burnt part of the toast into your receptacle; a cup could fulfill this function. With the blunt utensil, mix the oil into the charred fragments of bread. Once it is sort of pasty (paste-like, that is, not Pumpkin Pasty or pale-pasty), coat your conversational partner's tongue in the paste. Have the subject say a word or syllable incorporating only one phoneme that will make contact with the inside of his or her mouth. While the charcoaled person holds a mirror to reflect the marks made by the contact between his or her mouth and his or her articulators, take a photo.

Ta-da! Blamo! Lumos! Now you know how the subject articulates some consonant!