Interest meme

[cactuswatcher]

from masqthephlsphr

Meme-age:

* Scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd to you.
* I'll explain it.
* Then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests.

Comments

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask you about the tenor banjo. ; )

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

What do you want to know about it?

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Why it's on your list. ; )

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Actually that's the one I don't know about either, so I'll ask instead about historical linguistics--actually it's one I share. One of my favorite courses, but not what I went on to pursue, sadly. I thought of you as a Slavic linguist, but now wonder if I'm wrong. What kind of historical linguistics, when/where did you study, have you published?

Answers not required!

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I only ask because I could talk for days about anything on my interest list. I started playing the mandolin when I was in graduate school instead of writing my (fill in the blank) or studying for my (fill in the blank) test. Just one of those things that kept me sane, as I'm sure you understand.

Fast forward to 2004. I have a great urge to get a better mandolin. It's called MAS (Mandolin Acquisition Syndrome.) I go to the local huge music store and find one I like, and buy it. On the wall they also have a used tenor banjo (which is a little unusual to see these days). Over the years I've learned a little about them so, when I got home I looked up a few things more about them. Turns out they are tuned similarly to, but not exactly the same as, a mandolin. I go back to the store and ask to try it. The folks in the store don't even know how to tune the darn thing, but I'm still interested enough to buy it. I get it home put a new set of strings on it tune it up, and ... Good Lord! Not only can I play it right away, it sounds good! I learn more things like in Ireland, the celtic music, I like playing, is frequently played on tenor banjos. So I'm very happy with what was a somewhat risky purchase. ;o)

Incidentally, (for those who may not know) a tenor banjo is not the 5-string banjo most of you have heard played with country music. It's the 4-string instrument that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

That was a risky purchase. Glad it worked out. Was it expensive?

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Linguistics is a big deal in Slavic studies. So even if I wasn't interested in it I'd have had to study it.

I didn't take any linguistics courses till I was out of college, but I did study both German and Russian. I also had taken an overview anthropology course that had a section on linguistics that was helpful later. I became good friends with the faculty in the Russian department although it wasn't my major. To keep up with what they were talking about I read Chomsky and a few other things, but not very seriously.

My senior year in college was one of those big crises. I realized I wasn't happy at all with my major, and it was the spring of 1970 with all that meant. I decided I needed a change. Once the military decided it didn't want me, I took an extra in-between year of school to basically fill out most of a Russian Language major before going to grad school. I liked the literature, but found that year I really liked linguistics a lot.

I went to graduate school at Ohio State (they offered the most money). I really felt like I'd have a better chance at a job in literature, but I have to admit I was better at linguistics. The first two linguistics course I took dealt with the development of the slavic languages from Proto-Indoeuropean all the way to the basic phonology of the modern languages. In those days nobody took Russian as their first foreign language, so there was a lot of discussion in our classes of what happened in the other language families as well. I just loved it. I found out I wasn't nearly as interested in synchronic linguistics, but I could put up with it. After writing my master's thesis on a topic in Russian historical phonology, I wanted to go on in literature, because of the job situation. But I was pretty much forced to go on in linguistics, because there were better literature students available at the time. At any rate, I studied mostly Slavic historical linguistics toward a PhD. My dissertation was on a development in historic morphology. About the point it was time for me to look for work, I got a job offer in an entirely different field outside of academics, so it all became just a hobby again.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

It was more than I should have spent on a whim, but a lot less than I'd spend on a new computer for instance.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Sometimes whims are good. They end up being what makes us the most having.

But that is a big "sometimes." ; )

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

My purchase of a mandolin back in grad school was relatively a bigger financial gamble. I couldn't play any musical instrument then, though I could read music. That was probably my best whim ever! I try not to think about the bad ones. ;o)

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

"greek music" What is it that grabs you? Is it the music of Theodorakis and the like? This interests me because I lived in Greece and love the musicality of the people.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like Mikis Theodorakis, and Manos Hadjidakis. In high school I dated a girl whose family came from Crete. She got me started. Good bouzouki music has a little of the middle eastern sound you don't hear much in Europe north of Serbia and Bulgaria. But, it still has melodies that aren't as strange to me as pure Turkish music might be. Bad bouzouki music sounds like it belongs in dives I'd be afraid to walk into, but it still sounds fun.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I really liked historical linguistics. I'd been interested in Anglo-Saxon while a lit major and had studied Latin before the Romance languages, so had a little background. Working out theoretical old forms was as fascinating to me as an archeological dig--sort of felt that way. I did some papers on the development of modals from AS to Modern English, but didn't pursue it partly because I didn't want to devote myself to the particular person who taught it at my university and partly because I was administering a writing program at the time and thought discourse analysis was a better fit with what I was doing. But still find myself getting side-tracked into speculations about historical morphology when I'm studying a new language.

Oddly I first encountered Chomsky as a political figure (why are you not surprised) when I was in the English Education program at Berkeley but did go to one of his linguistics lectures, back in the early days of TA and of course it might as well have been in Japanese for all I understood at the time. It was fun much later when I took syntax courses to speculate on what I might have been hearing. But to be honest, I did my linguistics at the local university just because I was here and it was easy, and didn't think much of the program, although my dissertation director was excellent. One of my good friends in graduate school was in Slavic languages and I really understand the fascination.

Just from a purely academic standpoint, I really regret not having recognized how interesting linguisics was when I was younger and could have studied at better school, but then linguistics itself changed so much from the 60's to the 80's that I'd have missed some great things. And life, of course, going its own way.