A. J. West

Danny Bate @dannybate.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 08:43 UTC

Looking at President Higgins differently after reading that the Irish surname Ó hUigínn is etymologically 'descendant of a Viking'

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 11:55 UTC

My motto in life!

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 11:02 UTC

Anyway! Not an interesting thing to be talking about. Today I'm going to work a little on a glossary of an extinct language and then head out into one of the most beautiful cities in the world for the afternoon, so I suppose you could say that I'm living my best life.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:51 UTC

Boring and frustrating. So I've pivoted away from the medieval-y thing entirely. I'm now writing about entirely different topics. I'll tell you more about those once I've finished the draft of my book, which will probably be in the next couple of months...

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:48 UTC

And I found that incredibly boring, particularly as the comments and questions were always the same. I should have printed an FAQ to distribute to the audience before each talk. No excitement there at all, nothing new to be gleaned from any of it. Just dull.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:41 UTC

There's no sense in spending so much time trying to convince others of such a basic proposition. That was so much of what I ended up doing. If I were invited to contribute to a volume or attend a conference, it was always to talk about the 'Hemispheric Middle Ages'.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:35 UTC

I'd written 4000 words or so by the time I pulled out of the volume after a meeting with all the other authors. The person I was collaborating with finished the piece in the end. I said I was happy for my words to be used but I don't know if they were. No idea what the resulting article looks like.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:31 UTC

This has been my experience. I was supposed to collaborate on an article for a volume on nature in the Middle Ages (or something like that) last year and pulled out when some of the other contributors failed to understand what I was going on about. That was the last thing I did in the field.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:21 UTC

"Ah yes, The Global is very important, and Mali was totally richer than France in the Middle Ages, and we should all learn more about Africa and Asia. Anyway! Back to Chaucer [or whatever]."

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:17 UTC

It seems to me that the (European) medieval studies people are quite happy to remain within their circumscribed discipline and don't *want* to be asked to consider learning Asian or African languages (or something like this). The 'Global Middle Ages' thing is a smokescreen.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:15 UTC

This was the essence of my talk at one of the Silk Roads things at Cambridge last year. And at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo a couple of years ago. And a few other bits here and there. Always received extremely well — and followed up on by absolutely nobody.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:13 UTC

My view is that the term 'medieval' ought/can most usefully be made to pertain to all of Afro-Eurasia before the Columbian exchange — so a book about 'medieval women' would look at patterns in women's lives across Africa, Asia, and Europe before 1492-ish. Very useful idea, if you ask me.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:08 UTC

At the same time, in spite of the 'Global' Middle Ages persisting as an expression, 'medieval' is still used to refer to medieval *European* things. So you'll see books about 'medieval women' which are actually about women in medieval Western Europe. No consistency there at all.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 10:06 UTC

I think we're in a worst-of-all-possible worlds situation with 'medieval' terminology these days. 'Global Middle Ages' is still a popular term even though the world before c.1500 wasn't global in any meaningful sense — that's practically its defining characteristic!

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 21:06 UTC

I'll take it

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 20:20 UTC

I'm not going to say which brandy it is because then you'll know how cheap the usual stuff I buy is. But it's a bagaceira made from Alvarinho (a vinho verde grape from the north).

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 20:13 UTC

I opened it early because the overall result is a foregone conclusion. But I'll be sure to drink *more* of the stuff if Sunak, Duncan-Smith, etc., are out. And much more if Braverman's gone. I'll probably have to down the bottle if the Lib-Dems are the 2nd-biggest party.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 20:09 UTC

I bought a bottle of brandy today to celebrate the election results. It cost about 5x more than the usual rubbish I buy at the supermarket, and I regret to say that it really is that much better.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 14:07 UTC

I think it's more the fact that these guys never seem to drink water. This chap was here from 09:00 this morning and just left (at 15:00) and he's had two beers total and no water/coffee/tea and he's fine. Seems like a real feat of endurance to me

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 13:27 UTC

When you emigrate your idiolect fossilises. My wife left Russia in the late nineties and speaks an old-fashioned form of Russian. I'm starting to feel the same about my English. Lots of change occurring over there in Britain but my speech is stuck in place, influenced a bit by Portuguese (and Dutch)

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 12:57 UTC

When did the term 'Brit' go from pejorative to neutral? This might be the Irishness of my family speaking but I find it odd that Britons now seem comfortable referring to themselves as 'Brits' ('BritBox' etc.).

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 10:57 UTC

Tea? Coffee? Ah, obrigadíssimo, no, but a Sagres would be nice

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 10:53 UTC

Portuguese tradies run on beer. I'm sure beer has plenty of electrolytes in it but a few hours of physical activity in 30-degree weather without air conditioning on a single beer *probably* isn't healthy.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 09:19 UTC

I voted by post a while ago. Genuinely excited to find out the results.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 09:18 UTC

Because of boundary changes I'm registered to vote in the parliamentary constituency of Eastleigh, a grotty place best known for the death of its MP, Conservative Stephen Milligan, by autoerotic asphyxiation back in the 1990s.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 08:55 UTC

Leeds is a fine city but this is really something else!

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:40 UTC

Ah, good to know. No species ID in any of the media reports, which is a shame.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:20 UTC

This animal is identified as a 'pig' in all the reports I've seen in the media, but presumably -- as with some of the other Pleistocene rock art from Sulawesi -- it depicts a babirusa (*Babyrousa* spp.), which is only arguably a 'pig'. I might be being pedantic here though.

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A. J. West @ajwphilologist.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 15:51 UTC

A few years ago the Bodleian came out with a facsimile and interpretation of the Codex Bodley, a different Ñuu Dzaui manuscript (probably 15th century), and it's one of the most fascinating and beautiful books I own. The MS has been digitised but having the whole thing in book form is great.

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