(no subject)

[highlyeccentric]

I quote niamh_sage: This story is a bit weird: I can grasp the idea of driving without a licence, or practicing medicine without a licence, but operating a university without a licence? How very odd. It makes me curious as to the process for obtaining such a licence. "Hello, I'd like to get my university-running licence." "Ok, well first you need to hand over some cash, and then you have to do the theory test, and then some lessons and a practical test, including parallel-parking and reversing a university around a corner..."
When you look at it, it makes more sense- it's about dody and exploitative "western" unis in Uganda. But nevertheless, isn't Niamh's an amusing image for the day?

Oh, geez, lets just quote Niamh all day... Next she moves on to the tragedy of lost Indigenous Languages in Australia, and the exiting fact that some schools are now teaching indigenous language in NSW.
And then I get a reprimand... I have one Anglo-Saxophonist on my flist (actually, I don't know if she is one, but I just wanted to say that for the silliness value, and she knows who she is :P ), and it strikes me that learning ancient Aboriginal languages must be just as rewarding and fascinating as plumbing the history of ancient European languages. Actually, quite a bit more challenging since there are (so far as I know) no historial written texts beyond what Europeans might have recorded in the early days of settlement. Instead, there's an oral history, and that's fast dying out.
*Salutes* point taken, Ma'am. She's right, though. All the same arguments about history and language and language being the soul of a people, which i like to trot out in favour of Anglo-Saxonism, all apply triplefold to indigenous languages and surviving indigenous peoples.

aaand... one final quote from her husband, arnimus_prime: To err is human, to arrrr is pirate.

Quote from Kate, just now: I often wonder if Dr Seuss was on LSD....
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Meanwhile, Dr Nokes offers some counselling for those suffering from Beowulf Anxiety Syndrome.
Which reminds me, I got a long lecture from both Alex Jones and Gabrielle today about how I should appreciate Beowulf. I'm thinking I may have to actually read the dratted thing right through before the movie comes out, so that I can be righteously angry at it (it being the movie, although epic poetry tends to annoy me as well)

Comments

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

I was all prepared to quote you something magnificent from Heaney's translation of Beowulf, but it is all just too magnificent. I can't pick a lone passage.

...and, damnation, now I'm reading it again.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

yeah, well. it has been declared that tonight is Geek Out Night, on the couches in the common room. you will be pleased to hear that i am tucking up with Beowulf, Chaucer and The Hobbit.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

I thoroughly approve. That is a very cool spread.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

gah. someone nicked the couches. so now we're in here.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Let me know what you think of Beowulf.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

Oh bother, I knew that would come across all wrong :P I didn't mean that as a reprimand at all - it was more that it just suddenly occurred to me that it would be an interesting field of study, and given that (e.g.) Anglo-Saxon is already an established field, it might be interesting to base the study of Aboriginal languages around a similar framework (but without the reliance on ancient written texts, obviously). I wonder if anyone's doing that, actually? It's one thing to learn a bit of Aboriginal language at school, but imagine a university course in, I dunno, comparative oral traditions of Aboriginal history or something.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i know it wasn't a real reprimand. note the sarcastic salute?

i believe anthropolgists are the people who learn indigenous languages, incidentally.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

Oh phew *wipes forehead* Wouldn't like to think I'd inadvertently sparked off a highlyindignant :P

Do anthropologists study indigenous language through the same kind of lens as you guys do, though? I would have thought the focus would be a bit different (but maybe I'm wrong).

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

highlyindignant! hehe!

i've no idea, that's just a vague concept i have.

[phrasemuffin.livejournal.com]

ooh! ooh! I want a university-running license!!

... do you think you need to own, or have plans to conquer, a university to get the license? *ponerful*

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

hello random david!