It has been an eventful month. The absence of buttkicking posts (or any other posts for that matter) has been the result of being pretty busy actually getting things done. There have been some distractions, but I’ve generally been quite productive.

In the past 6 (!) weeks:

• I finalized a stimulus list. I know there are some remaining problems, including some items that are miscategorized because one syllable or the other has shifted tone category. I also have a monosyllable list that will allow me to identify most of these miscategorizations, as well as get monosyllable tone contours. Because the disyllable list is already so long, I am only collecting the monosyllable list from one person in each of the major locations.
• I’ve recorded over 20 people from the area, including half a dozen from the urban area, and 5 from one village nearby. The other people are students from villages scattered throughout the two county-like zones around Jinhua, and from Lanxi.
• It’s been harder than expected to find people from the same village, since this generation has moved around so much, and even the older generations often moved from somewhere else. And then older women rarely attended school long enough to attain a high level of literacy, and younger speakers, especially in the city, speak Wuyu rather little, and so have limited vocabulary and low fluency. But my friends here have been very helpful finding people who have that combination of literacy and fluency.

In this coming week, my last week in Jinhua:

• I need to record a couple more people from the city.
• I need to record the monosyllable list with someone from the city.
• I will otherwise be busy with logistics of moving back to San Diego.