So our big project for this course is a language survey proposal - the paper and presentation. We basically take a language about which very little is known, do a lot of research, and write a proposal to carry out a survey that will help answer basic questions about the language situation. The idea is that we are in touch with an actual person on the ground in the country who can direct our studies.
The language I'm researching is... actually I can't tell you. What I CAN tell you, though, is that I have had some cool breakthroughs during the course of the project. Which means that I have learned information directly from an observer of the language who has done recent research in the area but has not published it yet. It's pretty sweet to be on the inside. Maybe I can do this whole academic thing.
It's also cool to think that if I hadn't been here to do the research and send the emails, it is likely that some people who are in a position to make decisions about assisting language development efforts would have inadequate information on which to make decisions. Which I guess doesn't say much, but the little it does say speaks volumes. Here's to the bookshelf warriors.
In other news, I recently uploaded some video of a conference I helped lead worship at with Ishq, an Ethnodoxology group that plays music from an array of different cultures. Here we sing some snippets of an Arab Christian worship song from South Africa, and a jubilant rendition of 'How Deep the Father's Love'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA_TimiEPNU
