ABSTRACT
One thing led to another. I suspect there was a ‘Crystal will do it’ assumption in the outer office. Otherwise, how did I end up working with a central European gentleman who was writing up his PhD thesis on Germanic sound-changes, and who wanted its English expression checked, word by word, before he sent it in? It’s not a task which would bring out the volunteer in most people, after all. I expected it to be dull work, but it turned out that he wanted reasons for every little change, and that made it interesting, as often I had to go hunting for the answers. There is nothing more infuriating (and at the same time motivating) than to have your linguistic intuition challenged with a ‘why is it so?’ I well earned the extra few pounds these jobs brought in. And he got his doctorate, too, which was a relief. It would have been rather embarrassing if the thesis had been referred back on linguistic (rather than on philological) grounds.
