Monday I was supposed to officially start work at the Alaska Native Language Center (a wing of the Brooks building on campus), but I couldn't because the professor I work with couldn't get in town because of the freezing rain. I also had no classes that day, which was kinda nice as it was a day off, but also a little boring because I had gotten all my homework done already over the weekend.
Tuesday it somewhat started. It was decided that I would start in Aleut because the professor that was here (the other one who studies Athabaskan languages was stuck Anchorage) is very interested in that language and its dialects (Eastern, Atkan, and Attuan). I was given the spreadsheet with which to fill topics, words, glosses of those words, dialects that use those words (and if there is a difference in pronunciation), and times from which the words were attested.
At first I understood well the theory behind what our goal was: to document words in various Alaskan languages. Unfortunately, I didn't actually know the process of parsing the dictionary's entries and putting the information on a spreadsheet.
Eventually through trial and error and asking the professor what she wanted and how she wanted the info, I developed a system I think works. I think this is how it should look:
The columns above are Topic, Aleut Entry, Aleut Root (this one's blank and I'm not sure what I can put in here), General Gloss, Eastern, Eastern Gloss, Atkan, Atkan Gloss, Attuan, Attuan Gloss. You can click on the screenshot for a bigger view.
(I don't prefer to use IE, but Google gives me trouble when I have two different Gmail accounts open in the same browser).
I'm not currently really able to get twenty hours a week. I end up running into issues too often to get there, and I'm not sure how to manage my time to include that many hours in addition to what I already do. So I'd really like to get those twenty hours but I'm nervous about it negatively affecting my schedule.
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