John Rennison's web pages
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How I left EnglandAfter that I was either at Oxford (St. Edmund Hall -- here some mementos) or somewhere in Germany or Austria up to the age of 23, when I moved to Austria. There I taught English for a year at the BG&BRG Tamsweg, in the extreme south of the Province of Salzburg. I also learned to ski and type -- two inestimably useful skills. From 1974 to 1979 I did my Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Salzburg, and got married in 1975. My first daughter, Barbara, was born in 1979. So I just managed to become a doctor and a father before the age of 30. How I got my job in ViennaAt the Austrian Linguistics Meeting in 1978 I gave a talk on umlaut in Austrian German and ran into fierce resistance from Viennese linguists. In particular, Ulli Dressler bombarded me with questions. After the session his questions continued. I gave him a lift to the mayor's reception in my stuttering VW beetle, through the Graz rush-hour traffic, with a headache coming on. The questions continued. One question was: "There's a job coming up in my department. Are you interested". I said: "Yes, very interested." He made a note on a piece of scrap paper. The questions continued. Twenty years in ViennaI started work in Vienna on 2nd May 1979. My second daughter, Jennifer, was born in 1981. Then came Christina in 1988 and Julia in 1991. Thank goodness the last 2 were girls; I couldn't have borne the responsibility of having a son with so many elder sisters. Off to JohannesburgMy (first) wife decided to throw me out in 1997. The divorce was a long drawn-out process because she wasn't speaking to me at the time, and so the official divorce only came through in 2000. Being foot-loose and fancy-free (against my will, but you get used to it), I applied for the Chair in Linguistics at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I started in July 1999. Paradoxically, going to Johannesburg was almost like going back to England, with a bit of Holland and West Africa thrown in - though actually far more complex. Back to ViennaChairs aren't always what they seem to be, and sitting on the linguistic one at Wits turned out not to be what I had hoped it would be. So I decided to go back to Vienna at the end of 2000. Grandad JohnOn the Austrian National Holiday, 26th October 2005, my eldest daughter, Barbara, gave birth to my first grandchild, Caroline. (Photos) Idrissa KonféSince 1980 I have worked on the (Lorom dialect of the) Koromfe language (see my Burkina Faso and Koromfe Dictionary pages). In 1997 I became a member of the Konfé clan (the chief family), and in 2006 I adopted the first name Idrissa, in honour of the Idrissa Konfé who recorded many stories and other material for Willy Staude and Annemarie Schweeger-Hefel in the early 1970's. This man went to Vienna for several months and on his return to Pobé-Mengao used his earnings to establish the (still flourishing) system of donkey carts that transport barrels of water at an affordable price; then a few weeks later he died. Amsetou KonféOn 3rd January 2006 I married my "younger sister", Amsetou Konfé, in Pobé-Mengao ("I" being Idrissa Konfé). Here are some photos. The registry-office wedding in Vienna was on 30th May 2006. (Photos) |
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These pages were last updated on 2006-12-30 at 14:21
by John Rennison |
