Mark Norris Reports On His Time in Estonia
Mark Norris has been in Estonia all Fall quarter. As he prepares to come home, he sends us this update on his experiences.
My three months in Estonia have flown by! As with all adventures, there were some difficult times, but overall, my time here has been great. My Estonian language skills have gotten a lot better in addition to my general knowledge about the language. I worked through the “beginner-intermediate” textbook that I have, met with friends at coffee shops, met with a tutor once a week for the last six weeks, watched Estonian TV and listened to Estonian radio. I think the most memorable experience I had actually came during the first weekend here, when my roommate, Külli, invited me to come with her to her family’s farm in the country to help with the harvest of their potato crop.
Work-wise, I finally got some experience doing fieldwork (and later realizing all the things I forgot to ask), I gave a guest lecture to some Intro to Syntax students, and I gave a presentation in English to a group of 10-15 Estonian linguists. The presentation was in English, but there were many lively conversations about the data between audience members in Estonian, much of which I understood. The linguistics community in Estonia is quite vibrant, but also not generative. Apparently, I was even able to bring some new data to the discussion. I also had the pleasure of meeting Mati Erelt, who is basically the father of modern Estonian linguistics.
While Estonia has been very good to me, I have really, really missed all the friendly and intelligent (non-restrictive) members of the UCSC linguistics community! Looking forward to lots of good conversation in the new year, both work-related and not!
Anyone who wants to take a look at pictures and some random discussion of what I’ve been doing here can check out my tumblr.