About me

Me, myself and I

My name is Jacob Menschel, I'm a linguist and fieldworker currently based at the University of Cologne. My research focus lies in Amazonian languages, through which I am currently working with the Andoke language and its speakers. This blog is meant to be a sort of archive containing my more or less coherent ramblings about Amazonian languages and cultures. Do not expect regular posts. Nevertheless I am trying my best to not completely abandon this project, so do let me know what you want a blog post about.

Some other things

You may be wondering what I am actually doing academically. I am an undergraduate student of linguistics. The next thing you may be wondering is probably: how on Earth does an undergrad student do fieldwork in Amazonia! Well, it's quite a long story that I will maybe post about some day, but to cut it short...

I have been interested in linguistics for a long time and I have been reading about linguistics for a long time.
I knew the right people at the right time. Pro-tip: emails are one of the best inventions man has ever made.
I have had a lot of luck.

Through the combinations of these three points I am basically doing "regular academia stuff", like writing papers, presenting at conferences, drafting grant proposals, and so on — while also studying linguistics at university. Yes, it is a bit boring sometimes, but I still enjoy every single part of it.

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The Caquetá-Putumayo Area I: Peoples

The Caquetá-Putumayo Area lies, as described in my most recent post, between the Caquetá and Putumayo Rivers in Southern Colombia and Northern Peru. It is a region of "relative cultural homogeneity", as put by Kasia Wojtylak in her 2020 grammar of the Murui-Muina language (Wojtylak 2020: 15). While this means at first that the people living in the area share traditions and other cultural elements such as myths, songs, and philosophies, it also bears implications about their languages. This series on the Caquetá-Putumayo Area consists of four parts: Peoples Cultures Histories Languages As you can see, I've intentionally pluralized these titles. In my opinion, while we like to categorize and generalize, lumping together ethnic groups and languages to further compare them and convey their similarity, every group, every community, and every individual has their own version of the story. When we speak about "peoples" and "languages", but talk about a singul...

Introducing Amazonianistics

Welcome to this blog! This post is meant to explain why I decided to start writing here, and what this is all about. Let us perhaps begin with its name: The Amazonianist. I generally refer to myself as an "Amazonianist", although this has led to confusion in the past — as I was misidentified as a linguist working with Amazon at one point at a conference in Athens. Considering the distance between Athens and Amazonia, I did not take it as overly insulting, but it was very funny nevertheless. The term "Amazonianist" itself is not quite parallel to the Spanish term "amazonista", while in German I would probably use "(der) Amazonist". I do not know why, but the flow of English "Amazonist" simply does not appeal to me as much. When an Amazonianist is a person studying Amazonia, then Amazonianistics is the field of Amazonianists. The name of this blog is purposefully set as the term referring to the person. In other words, it's my b...

Das Caquetá-Putumayo-Gebiet I: Die Bewohner

Das Gebiet der Flüsse Caquetá und Putumayo liegt, wie in meinem letzten Beitrag beschrieben, im südlichen Kolumbien bzw. nördlichen Peru. Die Region ist, wie Kasia Wojtylak in ihrer 2020 veröffentlichten Referenzgrammatik des Murui beschreibt, "kulturell relativ homogen" ["relative cultural homogeneity, Wojtlak 2020: 15]. Das bedeutet zunächst, dass die Bewohner des Gebiets Traditionen und andere kulturelle Aspekte wie Mythen, Lieder und Lebensphilosophien teilen; jedoch geht es hier auch um sprachliche Aspekte. In dieser Reihe von Beiträgen über das Caquetá-Putumayo-Gebiet wird es um vier Themen in vier verschiedenen Posts gehen: Die Bewohner Ihre Kulturen Ihre Geschichte und Geschichten Ihre Sprachen Wie in der Liste sichtlich, habe ich absichtlich diese Titel in die Mehrzahl gesetzt. Während wir meiner Meinung nach sehr gerne kategorisieren und verallgemeinern, indem wir Gruppen und Sprachen zusammengruppieren, um sie dann miteinander zu vergleichen und über deren Äh...

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