Language learning and linguistic fieldwork: the excitement of the puzzle

Will I ever learn Chinese

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I love puzzles, be it crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles or the puzzle that is learning or analysing another language. My PhD thesis, for example, is a grammatical description of the small Amazonian indigenous language Mosetén. I was working with speakers of the language to record and then analyse the language and its structures. During that process, I learnt to speak Mosetén as well. I realised that I was using many techniques I had learned during my fieldwork in the Amazon when learning Chinese. Should we, perhaps, approach language learning from the perspective of linguistic fieldwork? Should researchers working on languages make an effort to learn those languages? This episode is a celebration of the wonder that is figuring out how a languages works, solving a gigantic puzzle.

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