Today on America’s Next Top Linguist…

2007-11-21 DrMattDSW

So last night I flew down to NYC to spend the night at my cousin’s pad on 22nd and Lex. (it’s a dream apartment – he pays $500.00 a month, plus internet to babysit someone’s apartment for them and he shares it with them four days a month when they need it).

The reason I was staying with him on Monday Night is because on Tuesday (today) the two of us are going down to Florida to go get our Grandma and bring her up to New York for Thanksgiving (actually, I’m writing this on the plane as we head down there at the moment).

I had a headache (a really, really bad headache…just under migraine level) at the airport. My sleep cycle was off, I had been traveling for the past few days (during the holiday rush) and overall, I wasn’t feeling too hot and I was disoriented, While Mike (my cousin) and I were having Sushi (well, waiting for it) I went to the store in the airport and got some ibuprofen and took 800mg and waited for it to take effect (which happened as I was finishing my last avocado roll). Gathering our things we made our way to the gate and then the airplane and as I got into my seat and got myself buckled in and ready to get work done on the plane, I realized I didn’t have my field kit…fuck…for those of you who aren’t linguists, I’ll break it down for you:

I just lost all of my phonetics fieldwork – all of my data for a semester, we’re talking hundreds of hours worth of work – and I have a term paper (a very, very lengthy term paper) due on that data and the analysis of that data, and the correct transcription of that data (with full diacritics) at the end of the semester…which is in 17 days…and I’ve been working on this data, writing the paper based on this data, for over two months1

“Make it Work!”

So the project is to do a phonetics field assignment on a language we’ve never studied and one that we can’t speak (meaning that: Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Spanish, French, Classical Tibetan & English are all out). I was working on Tagalog with LIW so now not only have I wasted his time (which is embarrassing, professionally unacceptable and humiliating), but now I also need to find a non-monolingual on Long Island because I have to get this project done…this week.

As far as non-monolinguals go (or non-monolinguals who also don’t speak a language that I’ve either studied or can speak) the pickings are slim…but I do have Rabbi Antosofsky (Rabbi Emeritus from my Synagogue) who speaks Aramaic (among a slew of other languages) and Shulamit, while an Israeli, her L1 is actually Romanian as is her mother’s and they’ll both be at Thanksgiving.

So I need to hunt one of them down (probably Shulamit, since she’ll be coming to my Graduation party after Thanksgiving as well as for the meal) and then I have to hunt down or re-create the culturally neutral word list I’ve been using (I did 200 utterances with Jeruen, which means I need closer to 400 since I won’t have access to the speaker again and I won’t be able to fly back down if I notice a phenomenon.

But I’m making it work, and getting it done…I don’t have time to worry about something that I don’t have the ability to get back, it’s gone, I need to get my work done, and I’ll find a way to get it done that’s academically sound and significant.

1 this isn’t even addressing how much my field kit cost…the condenser microphone – which could pick up a cat whisker trailing a piece of glass, was $90.00, the HD MiniDisc was about 499.00…I’ll vomit about that sometime after I land and can take a nice, long, hot shower.

Update: Landed, at my Grandma’s Apartment, and using my mobile phone as a modem (thank you blue tooth)…now excuse me, as I go vomit.