infundibulum

An opinion piece from the Japan Times:

The most dangerous civilian job in Iraq.

Being an interpreter, of course.

Interpreting is the most dangerous civilian job among employees of private contractors with the U.S. Labor Department. Interpreters’ deaths accounted for more than 40 percent of the more than 300 death claims filed by all private contractors operating in Iraq.

One interpreter said if he were caught by insurgents his head would be cut off because imams say interpreters are spies. This interpreter has been threatened 15 times, including by a neighbor. One female interpreter was shot execution-style at her home in front of her family.

Yikes.

A few nights back I spent a while talk a friend of mine into starting a blog about her studies of Occitan and thereabouts. I even hacked up a personalized blog layout to persuade her… to make a long story short, I think we may have a new linguablogger on the block ☺

Check it out: Blòg d’Oc.

As she’s just dipping her toes into the blogosphere at this point, she’s adopting the penname of Jo, which is the Occitan word for “I”. Her recent work has consisted of studying Gascon dialectology as well as general theoretical linguistics. She tells me that the blog will be multilingual: English, Occitan (the Gascon dialect, right Jo?), German, and perhaps some French as well. So give her the official linguablog welcome!

Er… is there an official linguablog welcome? There should be. ☺

(By the way, anyone know of other blogs in Occitan?)