I think this is where I’m supposed to write something witty.

Unfortunately I’m not smart enough to do that, and I’m far too dour for an accurate description of me to be entertaining all by itself, so I’ll get this over and done with without much by way of fanfare.

I’m Tim, this is my blog. With a bit of luck, I’ll be doing a PhD at Leicester University before too long. I’ve somehow come up with some crackpot idea that links language and political economy.

My academic background is in economics, but my real pleasure is languages. I speak a fair few of them. That’s a qualified speak, by the way, since I’m a Brit. My linguistic prowess is only good when I’m associated with my contemporaries. Compare me with non-Brits, and there’s nothing special about me really.

I speak French near enough fluently. Well, I’ll never know the names of all the trees or all the birds that live in them, but I can discuss anything that I want to … with l’acceng toulousaing

After French, there’s Italian, though I’ve rarely used it. And I have a broad overview of other Romance languages and have read material and books in Spanish, though it’s not something I could throw into a conversation.

And here’s something you won’t encounter every day: I speak Esperanto. The premise behind it is simple: it was created to be a neutral second language. You’ll probably not believe me (especially as I’m sceptical about other constructed languages) but I can attest that not only is it possible to become fluent in it, but it’s also perfectly expressive and works just as well as any natural language. I’d recommend anyone with a passing interest in language at least have a look at it. I did, it took up about ten minutes of my time, and then I was reading bits and pieces and answering simple questions.

I’m fortunate enough to be in a steady relationship with the duck-mad Radio. You ought really to visit her site: it’s a lot more entertaining than mine.

We met via Esperanto actually, though we rarely spoke about it. We were both members of JEB, the youth wing of the Esperanto Association of Britain. We became friends first, met in person about three months later, then got together about six months after that. She won’t believe it, but I got very lucky

Oh … since people are bound to ask “What does Meddysong mean?”, I’ll write it here.

I needed a unique name and was chatting it over with a friend. We both find The Iron Sheik really funny, so toyed around with the idea of using one of his expressions. Well, one of them is to refer to drugs as ‘medicine’ since “our country, we no haffa doctor, only mother nature, herb.” Ask him why he got fired and he’ll tell you, “Well, I be honest witchoo sir. I didn’t pass da medicine test again.”

Well, that was it for me, as soon as I thought about it. His pronunciation is not a million miles from medisong, so I Googled an alternative spelling, hit the holy grail of zero hits, and thus was born the name. Simple as that.