Vignettes

So, I’m taking a new elective in China Studies and I’ll be having a full year’s preparatory language studies (propædeutik in Danish). Mandarin is hard. Right now, I’m trying to learn some basic pronunciation – tones, all four of them and especially the retroflex consonants ch, zh, sh, r. However, I really like the sound of Mandarin and learning such a radically different language is absolutely fascinating – especially since the last language I studied for some time was Finnish, which is just the opposite of Chinese – no tones and a much much flatter pitch than English or Norwegian, even the Swedish spoken in Finland has lost its pitch-accent (Anden and anden, “the spirit” and “the duck” thus becoming homonyms) .. and off course, it’s intricately inflected with outrageous amounts of cases, verbal conjugations, more suffixes and infixes than I care to imagine, and also, it has no fricatives, while Chinese has tons.

So I’ve been listening to podcasts from ChinesePod, which is more like talk radio than education. It’s fun, has some quality banter and it’s very pedagogical, using English examples and slow-motion recordings to illustrate the tones of Chinese. It’s great – and free :) – here’s the link

What else? I’ve had a birthday and I’m now 20 years old. Happy Birthday me :). I had a nice dinner with my mom, sister, uncle and grandmother at a local Thai restaurant, got presents (webcam, digital camera, special magnifying glass with a built in light, a luxurious foot treatment gift card and I’m even getting book from my uncle, he said. I’m a happy camper :). Then yesterday I went to the Diary of Dreams concert in Albertslund, which was undoubtedly worth the 150dkk. Such a great atmosphere, fantastic music, it was just great. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in Finland, I had a lecture on political anthropology mostly based on fieldwork from Taiwan. I can’t tell you how interesting it was. He talked about game and other perspectives on politics, sovereignty and the legitimation of power and of course, about China, both the mainland and Taiwan. I was fascinated. I had been interested in China as a possible location for future field work and study, and this quite inspired me to look more into it.  So, it seems as if I might be taking a minor in China Studies and Standard Mandarin this year. It’d be 2 years – or perhaps just one and a half. I’m really hoping I can find a way to make it work with my studies and plans.  I’ll keep you posted. Right now I just have a lot of ideas and thoughts and I need to work on some more concrete plans…