If I could go back and get my doctorate it would absolutely be language-based. I find etymology fascinating. It's one of the (many) reasons I respect Tolkien so much. I'm also really interested in language extinction (although I feel not enough other people are). When I was doing research for my novel and was living in Oaxaca with a group of other NEH scholars, we met an indigenous language speaker who was down to 4 people who could still speak their language and one of the 4 had terminal cancer. It makes me want to be sick and cry at the same time. Once a language like that dies, so does any ability to access and preserve their history and culture. It surprises me that more people aren't up in arms about the problem. It's nice that Old Norse and other languages like Old English survived with sufficient oral/written record that it's not all lost to us - can you imagine the tragedy of a loss of that magnitude? Okay, off the soapbox. Can't wait for book 2 🙂🙂
If I could go back and get my doctorate it would absolutely be language-based. I find etymology fascinating. It's one of the (many) reasons I respect Tolkien so much. I'm also really interested in language extinction (although I feel not enough other people are). When I was doing research for my novel and was living in Oaxaca with a group of other NEH scholars, we met an indigenous language speaker who was down to 4 people who could still speak their language and one of the 4 had terminal cancer. It makes me want to be sick and cry at the same time. Once a language like that dies, so does any ability to access and preserve their history and culture. It surprises me that more people aren't up in arms about the problem. It's nice that Old Norse and other languages like Old English survived with sufficient oral/written record that it's not all lost to us - can you imagine the tragedy of a loss of that magnitude? Okay, off the soapbox. Can't wait for book 2 🙂🙂
I love "If you scold me, please do so in Old Norse."! That's so funny 😄