From Sudan to Scotland - Dr Remijsen

In Starbuck's again and bumped into my friend Bert. Bert is Dutch and a Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics. He is married to Alice who is a Professor in the same subject - and they have two delightful children, M and J. They are just back from sabbatical in the US - and I missed having them around.

Stand by - this is what Bert does. He works on languages that have stress and tone as independent phonological distinctions in their sound systems. (No I don't really understand either.)

So he is sitting in Starbucks working on Shilluk. He tells me the language is spoken by 300,000 people - who live where the branches of the White Nile come together in Southern Sudan, one branch from Lake Victoria, the other from Ehiopia.

There is something mind-blowing about the fact that Bert is sitting in a coffee house in Edinburgh codifying a language spoken by a few in the heart of Africa. What an amazing world.

The MAGIC LANTERN! A local museum has bought it for £75. It seems it would fetch £125 or so on the market - but I like the museum idea.