Well, I was one of the users who was eager to see this forum and here's my intended post. Are any fellow bsers studying linguistics at Graduate or Undergraduate level? Last year I was working and considering applying for school. I put it off and here am again, looking at applying this year to get in next. I got plenty of answers last time and wanted to start a conversation again - I'm planning on staying in the DC area for my master's. Who here has studied linguistics? What do you do now - is it rewarding, financially and professionally? Anyone in a linguistics program today? I'm eager to hear about all sorts of experiences.
I am not studying linguistics. But I did stay at a Holiday... just kidding. I took one linguistics class during my undergrad, and I loved it... a lot. It really piqued my interest in dialects and sounds. I don't know if there are a lot of linguistics careers, but I sure enjoyed my one class.
I enjoyed my linguistics class because it increased my appreciation of language. But I sold my Linguistics book (what was I thinking)! Would've been a nice reference.
My very last class for the English half of my major is a linguistics class. We'll be studying African-American English and the languages from which AAE ("Ebonics" if you'd prefer) was derived. The semester starts in about three and a half weeks. I'll let you know what I think then.
4 fluently - English, Portuguese, Spanish and French. I'm working n my German now - which I can understand ok, but not speak well. I can also get by in Italian but want to study it a little. I'm also studying Arabic - just a beginner though.
That's amazing! I really love languages and am currently studying French and German at school. Would like to do Spanish though.
there was a time when i really wanted to be a linguist for the USAF. however... i love learning languages (not quite linguistics in pure form but eh, whatever) though. right now im tackling swedish and norwegian. i want to take a re-fresher course for my german. i used to know it fairly well, but its been so long ive forgotten. i also know basic spanish. good stuff.
How much work does it take for a Portuguese speaker to become fluent in Spanish? I understand pretty much all, and read it well..but i really don't speak well at all.
I don't think much. I think with practice you'll get the hang of it. But yeah, once you know Portuguese, you can understand Spanish fairly well.
I took 2-3 linguistics class as electives. Should've at least minored in it, but was too far along after I discovered I liked it so much.
I never realized I had a knack for languages until the USAF stationed me in Germany back in '84. I learned German pretty quickly, and used to be fluent but have gotten rusty. I can speak Italian well enough to get by in Italy. Right now I'm trying to learn French using the "Pimsleur" method CDs. They're expensive but worth it. I'm genuinely fascinated by the evoltion of languages, which I guess is a pretty important part of the study of linguistics, right?
i really wish that i wouldve had some steady time in germany. i took like, 4 years (from 7th through 11th grades) of it, unfortunatley, around that time in my life my study habits were ********, so i have a rough, but fairly solid base (its incredible what i recall when i see german tv or something), but what still, and always has, frustrates me is german grammar. i had the hardest time with that. i MUCH prefer norwegian or swedish grammar to that of german. more fun to speak as well, although a lot less useful.
Historical Linguistics is a pretty large field - lots of field work involved in tracking language change and less-documented languages and researching past changes in the language and trying to build a timeline of language evolution and whether all the big language families can be connected together at some stage. There are about 30 language families that the 6000 current (and many past) languages on earth belong to. About 10,000 years ago Proto-Indo-European began to change into other languages that would be the ancestors of most Western languages today. Historical Linguistics is pretty interesting, but not a field I plan to concentrate in.
It sounds like something I'd really enjoy studying. I love history, and I am absolutely amazed in the way historical events drive language changes, and language drives history. For instance, English would not be what it is today if not for the Norman Conquest of 1066 bringing so many French words into the language. For instance, prior to William the Conquerer, the English word for "beef" was, more or less, "cow." The French brought the word "beoff," which eventually became "beef."
Lusophones tend to pick up Spanish faster than Spanish speakers pick up Portuguese, prolly b/c Portuguese has a bit more complicated grammar, so Lusophones find it easier to pick up the grammatical patterns in Spanish. In a traditional academic setting, in about 7-11 weeks (depending on age, amount of time studying, study skills, etc.) you can reach a decent level of oral fluency. By "decent" I mean having escaped from the morass that is "Portunhol". I took 2 quarters of Portuguese and had a wicked Portuguese level; alas, after 12 years, I'm languoring in Portunyol. If you live in a Spanish speaking country or region (like NYC, LA, Houston, Miami, etc.), you can become conversant in very little time. Conversely, for Spanish speakers, it takes about 9-12 weeks to reach a decent level of fluency in an academic setting. Once in a Lusophone country, it takes only a few weeks to become conversant. Unless you studied Brazilian Portuguese and then go to Portugal, in which case you're f'ed and it takes a hell of a lot of time to figure out what the hell is being said. Unless you're in the Algarve, where they speak slooooowwwlllllyyyyyyy.
And the social artifact deriving from the fact that the ruling class Norman's version refers to the cooked (beef and mutton) while the Saxon version, preserved by usage among those doing the work of herding, refers to the animal. I always loved that bit.
Yeah, me too. Hmm, anyone have good recommendations for linguistics books for laymen? While not exactly linguistics, I LOVE Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue."
Yep. Not to mention bungalow, pundit, thug, veranda, assassin, ghoul, jungle, juggernaut, and lots of others. That's one of the most amazing things about English. There's probably no other language in the world that borrows more foreign words and doesn't change them much at all.
Check my blog. EDIT: actually don't, I mention another unrelated book there and neither of these: I just finished Words and Rules, by Steven Pinker and can definitely recommend it to anyone interested in language and linguistics at any stage. It's a basic overview of the mechanisms of language - memorization/association and rules that produce regular forms. Using regular and irregular verbs as examples he goes over previous attempts at explaining how the brain eals with language until he reaches his current approach and how observations of brain activity that can be done now are beginning to strengthen our understanding of how language works. It's not very technical at all, it's easy to read and requires no previous understanding of liinguistics but gives a very good overview of the areas he touches upon. Now I'm reading Language Myths which is a collection of essays that address misconceptions in laguage learning/linguistics, such as "women speak too much", "English is being corrupted, becoming worse", "there's no such thing as a double ngative" and more. All the essays are fairly short and easy to read, (well, I haven't read them all, but no exceptions so far), but some are less "exciting" to read than others - depending on the author's approach of course. Nonetheless, it's fun to read these essays and be able to understand why these misconceptions a lot of people take for granted are entirely wrong.
A really late bump, but I would rather do this than create a redux just to get the same information. Anyway, I'm reaching the point where it's time for me to really get a good idea of where I'm going to college and what I want to do. I've always found language/linguistics fascinating, and am considering a career in the field of linguistics, since it combines my nature as a grammar nerd with my interests in history/sociology. So I just have some questions for those who might know, to give me an idea of the general nature of such a career path. How important is your undergraduate work? I assume that most linguists do their research via a position on university faculty, so graduate study is obviously required. I'm most likely going to go to a liberal arts school, and of the ones I'm looking at, none of them offer a major in linguistics, per se. Is it fine to pursue a course of study in one of the humanities, since linguistics itself is based on the study of numerous tangential components (depending on the type of linguistics you study), and then take a more focused study of linguistics in graduate work? What opportunities are there outside of Academia to pursue linguistics, or apply a degree in linguistics?