Last February Ana Iriarte and Claudia Laaber spent a month in Lebanon carrying out their first fieldwork campaign on the Arabic Bedouin dialects of the country. They were warmly welcomed by various families across the country: Beirut, Khalde, Bekaa Valley and South Lebanon are some of the areas where linguistic and sociolinguistic data was collected. The members of these communities generously opened the doors of their houses to our two researchers, sharing with them many of their life stories over a cup of delicious ghawa. Claudia and Ana came back to Vienna by the end of March with their recorders full of useful data for the project and lessons learned, and their hearts full of gratitude to all the informants and people they found along the way, for without their kindness and willingness to share, the campaign would not have been the success it was!
– Ana Iriarte Díez
