#this is very welcome news indeed particularly as I am currently semi-comatose after the last covid jab and an emergency trip to the hospital

[meichenxi]

Life update: I’m going to Zürich!!

Switzerland here I comeeeee!!!!! I just got the acceptance email this morning~~~

it’s a 2 year program starting in February, taught in English and German. the courses are really cool, and it also has an opportunity to study abroad in loads of great unis in China and Taiwan for up to a year - which I will be SEIZING with both hands and maybe also feet

I’m focusing on DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS, which is essentially the recording and analysing of languages that have been little studied or not at all. This is the reason I chose this uni - there are only two universities in Europe that offer this specialisation!!! the rest are in Australia / NZ or America - no thank you

the core modules that I have to study before the masters thesis are:

- field methods: elicitation techniques - so when you’re sitting in a room with a dude who doesn’t speak any language you speak, and you don’t speak any language he speaks...how can you analyse the language?? this is the one I’m most excited about!!!

- grammar writing - so when you have spent three years analysing the dude’s language, how can you write in down in a way that makes sense?

- structures in language families: a detailed focus - I’ll almost definitely choose Sino-Tibetan for this, no surprise. this just means looking at this one language family in a lot more detail

- written paper - look this is in 2 years. I’m not thinking about this yet

- methodology, statistics, databases and programming: all of these courses I’ll have to take but they’re only available in the autumn semester so why worry now :))))

there are also LOADS of really cool electives that I am unsure about now. there are also languages!! the ones that look interesting to me are: 

- French / Spanish C1/C2 - boring but useful for a future academic career

- Hindi - this one is A2 level as the A1 course runs in autumn, so technically I can’t join but I do already speak a bit of Hindi, so I could maybe hastily reactivate it in the next two months. I REALLY WANT TO LEARN HINDI. Ngggggg if they don’t let me I’ll...well I’ll be sad I guess

- Chinese - obviously. this is the main one, and they have courses right up to very advanced level. let’s just hope they don’t make me write anything rip

- Turkish - and why not? it’s A1 so if I can’t join the other A2 course for Hindi and Norwegian, I may as well learn a totally different language. and you know me - I love anything verb-final. so immensely sexy.

- Norwegian - A2. I could definitely join an A2 course if I refreshed my Norwegian

What do you guys think??? which options sound good?? and if you’re in Zürich and want to hang out / go SKIING / talk about languages - lemme know

#meichenxi manages #life update #this is very welcome news indeed particularly as I am currently semi-comatose after the last covid jab and an emergency trip to the hospital #that was fun