Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The fun begins!

I'm at Bangkok airport waiting for my flight to Kathmandu - and despite months of research, listening to supervisorial anecdotes and devouring the LP guide to Nepal I still don't really know what to expect when I arrive.

Sitting here, I'm reminded of dinner a few nights ago when my housemate J. asked me exactly what I'd be doing while away - which is a fair question. Despite living with me through most of under-grad J. really only gets to hear me talk about linguistics when it involves making terrible jokes about mugs being vases, Gnome Chomsky and the colour grue.

Bascially, over the next few months, I'll be trying to find some speakers of a language - I have a couple of potential languages in mind - and spending a lot of time asking them questions about it in order to document it. And yes, before you ask, it is possible to document a language you don't speak. Hopefully this blog will give some more detailed insight into that process.

But before we get to all that I'm just going to get there, get my land legs and find me some Nepali lessons and some decent daal.

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