Well, as ever I have been rubbish at LJing while in Oxford, but I've finally found some time to blog a little. Or a lot, as there's quite a bit to cover; unfortunately I wont be able to go into as much depth as I'd have wanted.

Contents:
Picnic
Chinese ambassador
April 30th
Linguistics Pub Crawl
Cinema Paradiso
Age of Empires
Punting
Staying awake
AI - asylum seekers
Sushi
Headington
Eurovision
General

Picnic - This will sound more exciting when photos happen, but after our tests upon getting back, we went picnicking in a park about 5 minutes from where I live which I knew nothing about. It was good, and there were strange trees.

Chinese Ambassador - I went to see the Chinese ambassador in first week; she's more or less the only good person to come to the Union this term. She talked on whether China is a power, and it was interesting to listen to her. Obviously what she said had to be taken with a pinch of salt - she claimed that China wouldn't be a hegemon, but couldn't quite explain why - and there was one point where I knew she was lying (she claimed the Dalai Lama wanted independence for Tibet - he wants autonomy). All in all, though, I am becoming increasingly sinophilic in all ways of life. Although human rights are a serious issue, I think the level of state control has been helpful in improving the lives of the average Chinese citizen when compared with India. I particularly approve of the one child policy, which has been a significant factor in improving the lives of the Chinese; India, on the other hand, continues to have massive problems with poverty (not to mention associated issues of illiteracy, disease etc). At the end of the talk, I was given some free propaganda - a "China Encyclopedia, supervised by the State Council Information Office, P.R.C." in CDROM form. I haven't explored it in much debt yet, but it seems both informative and amusing so far.

April 30th - In Oxford, there's a tradition of staying up all night so as to go to Magdalen Tower at 6am on May 1st, whence some kind of prayer is sung and festivities ensue. I went last year and found it fairly dull, so instead we went to Port Meadow, a common meadow to the North of Oxford, where there was a bonfire and happiness. It was pretty cool - there was a guy who had a stick and firedanced with it and general amazingness. Then we went off and stayed awake til 5am for no real reason, going to bed just before the festivities that are the whole point of the day. We also drank a bottle of the mead I brewed on this day; it was delicious. There are two left now.

Linguistics Pub Crawl - As a Linguistics Society committee member, I had to organise all this. It was pretty fun, considering linguists rock.

Cinema Paradiso - As part of an Arts Festival, this was screened outdoors. If you have seen it, you will know why this is amazing; if not, go watch it. I was freezing throughout, but well worth it.

Age of Empires - My friend Kristian from Norway figured out how to make it work on my laptop. This has slightly ruined my life, and I am obsessively playing campaigns as opposed to, you know, socialising or working. Apparently the college chaplain plays, so we're considering inviting her to a multiplayer game - it would be interesting to say the least.

Punting - i.e. pushing oneself along a shallow river by means of a pole, the most counterintuitive form of river transport imaginable. But an Oxford tradition, and good fun - there were goslings, some good graffiti (I hope it comes out on my rubbish camera phone) and a pleasant pub at the end of it all. Definitely worth the effort.

Staying awake - Since May night, I couldn't really sleep at night because I'd gone to bed so late and my circadian rhythm got fucked up. Until the 10th of May I went to bed between 4 and 5:30am each night. To get my body back in order, I stayed awake through the night on the 10th. I felt fine as well, so perhaps I should do this more often...

Amnesty International: Asylum Seekers - Amnesty stuff goes on as ever. We had a really interesting workshop on Asylum seekers which got me so angry that it deserves its own post as some point, possibly on facebook. Sometimes I really can't believe this country... bring on Norway.

Sushi - My friend can make it. I can eat it. This happens frequently enough for me to be happy.

Headington - I had a fairly exciting day yesterday. I got 4 and a half hours sleep, woke up at 8:20 and went cycling to the outskirts of Oxford, where there are numerous charity shops and a SHARK, which I took photos of. We also posted a note through the letterbox thanking the creator for his shark's existence, and taping a small plastic narwhal to it in tribute. We went through loads of charity shops, whence I bought an Atlas from 1934. It's interesting looking at the pre-war, imperial years; also, I lolled at the Anglo-centricness of it. Then we went to a Chinese shop, whence I bought plum wine (mmm) and chopsticks. My friend and I simultaneously and independently had the idea of using chopsticks more often in non-Chinese settings (although I will of course use them for Chinese food). I find a knife and fork can be annoying and ineffectual; stab and slash are not very useful when consuming, for example, salad. Grabbing, however, is possible with most things. My friend also argues that they are more elegant, which is also true. After this I climbed my first tree in several weeks, which involved scooting along a branch upside down. :D Curse that tree.

Eurovision - I have never followed Eurovision before, but we had a party this time in the TV room, which was delicious and awesome. I do not understand why the UK received any points at all, nor why Ukraine received so few.

General - I am happy. This is meant to be the best term of my University life (no exams, summer, not too much work) and I think I am making the most of it. Spanish has foundered a little as I suddenly find myself lacking time to do half an hour of study a day, but I bought a Teach Yourself Norwegian book, which seems pretty good. Tonight we're celebrating the National Day of Norway with traditional Norwegian cuisine (and less traditional plum wine...) which should be fun.

This is not really going to be an interesting post. I felt like writing and didn't want to tackle some of the other stuff I could be blogging about. So, here is how my language learning is going, including French, Spanish and a long section on the linguistic state of Norway which might interest you if you like collecting pieces of irrelevant and useless knowledge.

French

I became kind of worried a couple of weeks ago at the prospect of going to live in France soon. I can read very well, but my speaking and listening are still not that great. To remedy this, I decided to watch some films in French without subtitles, something I'd never done before but knew I'd have to do before long. I started with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King because I already knew the plot, making it a bit easier. I understood about 90% of what was said. Then I watched La Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet), which I hadn't seen before - comprehension was worse, perhaps 75%, but I still managed to understand what was going on. Encouraging. Incidentally, I received confirmation of a teaching assistant position in France next year, but will not be told where I'm assigned to until May.

Spanish
Spanish is going well. I find it hard to believe how easy it is... perhaps I have spoken too soon?

The Linguistic State of Norway
I've finished my 10 lessons of Norwegian now, so anything else I learn from now on is down to myself. I therefore decided to research Norwegian a bit more.

Before I started learning Norwegian, I knew there were two languages, not one, in the country. The majority use Bokmål [bukmɔl], meaning 'book language', while about 10-15% use Nynorsk [nynɔʃk], meaning 'New Norwegian'. To understand why this is, some historical context is required.

For most of its history, Norway has been a subject nation, only gaining independence in 1905. Until then it had variously been ruled by Denmark and Sweden. This meant that the written language, Bokmål, was basically a slightly Norwegianised form of Danish. In the 1800s, a man called Ivar Aasen therefore invented Nynorsk, a 'New Norwegian' based on indigenous dialects and Old Norwegian. Thus the existence of two languages; in the image to the right you can see where Bokmål is prevalent (red) and where Nynorsk is prevalent (blue).

To complicate matters further, the Norwegian government had a policy of slowly merging Bokmål and Nynorsk into a single unified language, which they only abandoned in 2002. Therefore, there are various types of each of the two languages based on how much they have been changed from the original. The older, more conservative type of Bokmål is called Riksmål (language of the country), while the older, more conservative type of Nynorsk is called Høgnorsk (High Norwegian). Joy.

To complicate matters even further, I recently discovered that all the above are written languages, not necessarily spoken languages. In Norway, there is no standard spoken language - each area has its own dialect with its own peculiar pronunciation, grammar and whatnot. While you might write in Bokmål or Nynorsk, you would speak something fairly different.

As an example, my Norwegian friend lives in Trøndheim in central Norway. The dialect spoken there is Trøndersk. I'll highlight the differences (based on what I understand from Wikipedia). In Bokmål (which is what I'm learning) one might say:

Jeg vil ikke ha noe å spise og drikke. Pronounced:
[jæi ʋil ikə ha nuə ɔ spisə o drikə] Meaning:
I want not to-have something to eat or drink. i.e. I don't want anything to eat or drink.

In Trøndersk, as I understand it, this would be pronounced:

[æ ʋil itj ha nu ɔ spis o drik]

This is just one random sentence I have chosen in one dialect because I can handle it, but you can see there are significant differences.To make it even worse, there is of course social variation in dialects. So my friend, who goes to Oxford and is therefore rather well-spoken, claims to speak "Fin-Trøndersk" which is half-way between Trøndersk and Bokmål. But more or less everybody's speech will vary depending not only on social position, but also on circumstances - in a more formal setting, people will be more likely to speak in a less dialectical, more Bokmål way, and vice versa.

The overall impression I get is of a linguistic diversity which is difficult to impress on an English speaker. If I do ever make it to Norway, I'm sure I'll be rather hopeless.

In any case, I'm finding Norwegian, or the version I'm learning (Standard Østnorsk, Standard East Norwegian) an interesting language to learn. The pronunciation is hard and I am slightly terrible at it, but the rest of it seems alright. There are only two genders (except in the dialects with three, which is most of them actually), which is manageable, and only two cases (except in the dialects with three...), which is also fine. There is no conjugation of verbs for person, which is like heaven for a linguist! Additionally there aren't too many tenses. The language also does some interesting stuff which is new to me, such as tones(!), of which there are thankfully only two and which don't seem to be that important anyway, and marking definiteness as a morphological suffix, which is kinda cool. All in all it does seem an interesting and not overly challenging language to learn - my main worry is dialects, but I'm sure this will never be a problem as 1) everyone speaks Bokmål anyway and 2) everyone speaks English anyway. :D

Despite my best intentions, I failed at updating regularly while in Oxford... sigh... In my defence, it was a manically busy term. Here's what I was up to:

I brewed mead in my room. I found a recipe on the net and kind of had to do it... so when I get back, I'll have 3 litres of mead ready to drink. I've sampled some and it's not bad. Also, it's really easy to do, so I encourage you to experiment with brewing.

I went to see the following people speak: Romano Prodi (ex-PM of Italy), Vuk Jeremic (Serbian Foreign Minister) and Ko Aung (former political prisoner in Burma). Prodi was too quiet to hear properly, Jeremic seemed like a reasonable guy, Ko Aung is amazing.

Amnestywise, Letter Writing Week went awesomely well. Also, we had another week of action shortly after, focusing on political prisoners in Burma ( which is why Ko Aung came to speak at the Union). I'm on the committee again next term as Liaisons Officer, should be good.

Last weekend I went to a kind of Amnesty activism/training event in London, basically teaching us how to run a better group and all that. Ko Aung was there and I got to speak to him. He told me how, when he was in solitary confinement in prison, the actions people committed and the letters they sent from far flung countries really had an effect on his situation - not only did they give him hope (which is important in itself), but after receiving several hundred letters, the junta ordered the prison guards to stop torturing him. That was incredibly inspiring, seeing in the flesh somebody whose life had been changed by the simple writing of letters.

I am now learning Spanish and, Rune might be interested to know, Norwegian! Unlike former broken promises to learn Quenya/German, I will actually do these because I have audio courses. That means my lessons are structured for me, w00t! Spanish is going well, Norwegian I will only develop to a basic standard and seems alright at the moment.