BF Journal: 12/3 - 12/9

12/3

Not much of consequence today.  However, I did eat my first mango here.  It was imported from the Ivory Coast.  It easily put every other mango I have ever eaten to shame.  It was succulent and firm enough to chew.  Each bite sent nectar swirling around my mouth.  If there was a true ambrosia, this may have been it.  It was sweet and a little tangy.  The experience was so delightful that I swear it tasted…orange.  More orange than an orange ever could.  Jeff says he cannot eat Mangos in the U.S. after being here.  I am not sure how to feel about that prospect.

12/4

Today, I did my first interview with Bakary.  He answered all my questions in Viemoŋ.  I gave him a recording of the interview and asked him to transcribe it while I am in Ougadougou to get Jeff and attend the wedding.  I am curious to see what he comes up with.  I plan to get some writing done on the bus ride tomorrow, but we will see.  We are supposed to go out at some point according to Zaki.  I am sure I will have many tales of debauchery.  Or probably tales about how I spent the night in my room working on applications while Zaki and Jeff have a contest to who is the biggest lush (hint: the answer will be both of them). 

12/5

Zaki and I left for Ouagadougou today.  I did not get sick during the voyage this time.  It was pretty pleasant.  I worked on a grad school application some and listened to music from Mali (thanks again Laura).  I visited with Zaki’s family at his brother’s place a few hours after arriving.  They are all extremely pleasant.  Zaki’s father is still very interested it trying to give me alcohol poisoning.  Tomorrow should be fun at the wedding.

Had a traveler’s success story when two Italians jumped in our Taxi from the bus station (upon arrival).  I was able to chat with them in French and some Spanish and it felt pretty natural.  <<Pats self on back>>

12/6

Worked most of yesterday and today on an application.  This left me no time to see Ouagadougou.  I do not go to any sweet night clubs or experience Ouagadougou night life.  Maybe next time.  The marriage ceremony had really good food.  I definitely ate well.  It was over very fast though.  It was not what Zaki or I expected.  I had pretty much assumed that Zaki’s father was going to get his way.  Jeff’s plane arrived past midnight, so we all went straight back to the hotel and slept.  Exciting stuff, try to stay in your seat.

12/7

The bus ride back was uneventful.  It basically felt the ride out.  I worked on a different application and Floby (popular artist here) sung to me in Moree.  It was nice to joke with Minkailou again.  And actually be able to joke with him this time.  I suppose my French continues to improve.  He brought his soon to be second wife to meet everyone.  She does not speak French so I have limited ability to communicate with her.  I cannot wait to see what Bakary got done with his homework tomorrow.

12/8 – 12/9

Bakary did an excellent job transcribing our interview while I was away.  I haven’t had the chance to go over it with him yet, but it is seven pages of nothing but Viemoŋ transcribed by a native speaker.  It is pretty sexy.  The fact that he can do this with reasonable accuracy is encouraging for other reasons too.  I may be able to rely on him to transcribe texts after I leave the country.  This could be invaluable later.  I made some copies of it because it is quite literally the first time a native speaker of Viemoŋ has written something in that language.

I worked a lot with trying to pin down noun classes the past couple of days.  It may not seem like much, but I can tell you for certain that I have somewhere between two and five noun classes. This is narrowed down considerably from then dozen or so potential noun classes I thought I had.  What is holding me back is the interactions with adjectives (if there are adjectives).  I haven’t sorted out this system yet and until I do, I am not certain that I will have the answers I seek.

Linguists:

There are essentially two (or maybe 3) plural markers.  That tempts me to just arrange things under those plural markers as the noun classes.  However, phonologically distinct singular categories of each plural marker (usually having to do with labial consonants or rounded vowels) combine with different forms of the same adjective and I am not certain that it is allophonic or allomorphic variation.  Adjectives have nominal morphology and I am not actually sure if they are a separate grammatical yet or if they just understand what is noun is describing other nouns based on word order.  I am in the process of gathering data so I can get a bigger picture idea of what is occurring.