Shake It

As the mid-trip frivolity continues, I'm going to make a few more not-so-work related posts. Obviously, the theme will still be linguistic; this is "Lozguistics" after all. "Loz eats her way through all the cafes in Thamel", or "Loz buys outrageous amounts of clothing and books and makes herself feel better by telling herself she's just helping the local economy" would be whole blogs in themselves.

Before I dedcided it was a great idea to take up field-work on a Tibeto-Burman language - with no real experience in either fieldwork or Tibeto-Burman studies - I did a lot of undergrad work with gesture. Although the only work I do with gesture now is try and convince my supervisor to publish papers so I can get my name on them, I still have more than a passing interest in the field.

In Nepal, acsent is deomstrated by shaking the head from side to side. I've decided to get in on this, to varying sucess. Firstly, it made me feel dizzy for quite a few days. Secondly, I occationally get confused and shake my head to mean 'no' instead of yes. Thirdly, I still feel like I'm signaling ambivilance, which is what I'd use the gesture for at home.

Still, it's been rather fun, now I just have to get used to saying 'la' instead of 'yeah' while back-channeling.