Research & Books

Well, the academic side of things is going kinda rough. I'd hope that I'd be meeting with professors who work on Akan, and so far I've been introduced to prefessors who work on Ewe, Buli, and Ga. I hadn't even heard of Buli before, and felt pretty dumb. Some of them have been helpful, but I feel like it's only because they've read a bit more than me. And as for secondary sources, there are some great ones here in the linguistics library, but not as many as I'd hoped. I spent all of yesterday sitting in that (fabulously air conditioned) library, copying notes by hand-- there's no photocopier, as least not one that I'm allowed access to. So I took pages and pages of notes until my hand was about to fall off. Even Jefferson wrote down two pages of data from a big table in Kwesi Yankah's BA Thesis Appendix. So it was a satisfying day of work, but that I finished with all of the library's resources in just one day, which was disappointing.

On a nice and sort of funny note, the library is very well stocked with linguistic books, including Penny & Sally's language and gender book, and Eve's language acquisition book! Today in Accra, Jefferson and I went to a used book store and everything was American (unfortunately). It was amusing to see my 9th grade literature textbook on the shelf. On the flip side, the University of Ghana bookstore has some great stuff; I've bought four books that I definitely couldn't have gotten anywhere else!

I like the country better than the city when I'm in foreign countries. Accra is interesting to look at, but I feel like all the car exhaust is giving me early lung cancer. I'm really looking forward to going to Koforidua next week, even though it'll mean more limited internet access!

Thanks to those of you who have emailed, and I'm sorry I haven't replied to all of you. Do stay in touch! (And read Jefferson's post, below...)