Andean Aymara

Greetings from Moquegua. Arrived here yesterday from Ichuña where I am working on the comparative phonology for this project. Although Ichuña is inhabited mainly by Quechua speakers, I have a handful of Aymara-speaking friends there who are interested in participating in this aspect of the research. In Moquegua for a brief one-night stay before returning [...]

[Read more →]

Greetings from Tacna. I just thought I’d take this opportunity to make a quick update about plans here in Peru. About three days ago I left Muylaque for Moquegua. Yesterday I arrived in Tacna to do a quick visa run into Chile, and spent the night here. Today returning to Moquegua before heading off to [...]

[Read more →]

Thanks to the generosity of Alyn Thayer and Noreen LeMieux, in mid-Oct all of the roughly 50 children of Mulyaque lined up in front of the grammar school to receive a small package from these donors. Each child was given a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar of soap, two educational activity books, a set of pens, [...]

[Read more →]

As look would have it, my first night in back in Moquegua after nearly two months in Muylaque proved to be an especially difficult one to sleep through. Last night, first at around 9pm and then, much stronger, at 3am the tremor of a 6.3 earthquake in northern Chile arrived in Moquegua and traveled as [...]

[Read more →]

Greetings from Calacoa (3436m, S16°44.341’, W070°40.999’). Just arrived here after two weeks in Muylaque in transportation generously provided by the Mayor Rogelio Vizcarra Taco, a man who also kindly offered me a room in the visitor’s center.  The main purpose of this visit is to charge up my laptop, camera battery, and other equipment as [...]

[Read more →]

Edwin Banegas Flores, my principle linguistic consultant, and I have just traveled from Lima to Puna via Arequipa by bus. We’ll be in Puno for the next few days while we arrange transport to Moquegua and hopefully get a chance to see the floating islands. This visit is made all the more interesting given some [...]

[Read more →]

In any earlier post, I mentioned the importance for fieldworkers (and everyone really) to have backup software. Although I leave it to the tech experts to compare the variety of different resources which exist, I throw my two cents in for Mozy.  This software will backup and encrypt 2GB for free (or an unlimited amount [...]

[Read more →]

In this entry I will list some of the most useful programs I’ve found to help with the language documentation-related aspects of this project.  I will focus more on three programs which you may not have heard of but which are definitely handy. I’ll leave Elan and Praat for a different entry.
1.  Wavosaur - This [...]

[Read more →]

In just over a month I’ll be returning to Peru to continue the Moqueguan Aymara documentaiton project.
I’ll leave Amsterdam on 22/7 and fly from Boston to Lima to attend a conference. From there I will make my way to Moquegua, probably by land. This trip will focus on filling in some gaps in the data [...]

[Read more →]

Greetings from Amsterdam! As I begin to go through all the data and photos from the last trip to Peru, I will start putting some of the highlights online. So, there’s a new page under [images] about an interesting place near Muylaque called Utaparqi. Check it out here.

[Read more →]