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What do linguists do? | ||
Tags: Linguistics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6870 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 1 of 20 14 May 2006 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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What do linguists do? There are different kinds of them I imagine; those who try to preserve languages, or those who study them to find out where they came from, just to name two examples. It's a very wide field, is it not?
I know precious little about this profession, but I would love to find out more about it. Back when I was younger incorrectly said I wanted to be a linguist when I actually meant polyglot...perhaps some of you did the same thing, too. I also thought if were a trained linguist I'd learn some trick or short cut method to rapidly acquire fluency in a language. :-) Now I know a *little* bit more about linguists but I want to know more about to see if this would be a fun career option for me. Currently I'm in college, majoring in German and Global Studies (the same thing as international studies, I believe) but I'm a bit distressed over this. I don't know what I can do with my second major; aside from the classes I wanted, I know very little about it. I chose it because it sounded rather worldly, and would hopefully open doors for me to travel and live internationally (how, I don't know...). But I don't really know what I want to do with it specifically. I love studying languages, much like I would hope most of you do. And while I want to learn the "biggies" of the world, like Chinese, Russian, Arabic, etc (and I will, too, I believe) I am perhaps even more fascinated by the lesser-known/studied/spoken languages of the world: Navajo, Hawaiian, dead languages, Cherokee, Maori, Lakota, languages in Africa and Australia. The ones that are ever more different from English are inticing to me. I'm wondering perhaps I should be a linguist instead, where hopefully it would be my job to study these languages, and catalogue them, or whatever it is linguists do. I don't know of many linguists, but one I that I enjoy reading about is Kenneth Hale (I also started a thread about him in the polygots section) because he worked with a multitude of languages that are either endangered or extinct. Is there a need for people who are willing to learn this languages like the ones spoken on the Yucatan of Mexico (I hear Mel Gibson is coming out with Apocalypto shot entirely in Mayan), or where ever? As of right now they are just hobbies of mine that I hope one day to turn into a profession, but it seems that for outsiders to learn them, the materials are available only to linguists and missionaries who spend time there (I hope that I didn't make too sweeping of a generalization). I thought about majoring in anthropology because it sounded like that also would help open windows to living in other cultures and studying them, but the amount of research scared me off. Currently, I don't even like researching for papers, but I could spend hours reading grammar books just for fun, so maybe if I were researching something that really interested me I wouldn't mind. I'm curious as to what classes I would have to take to be a linguist. Isn't linguistics a branch of anthropology? Right now I'm an undergrad, but maybe I can do something in graduate school. I think it would be too late to change my major. Ok, I better stop there, this post is becoming a week long. But if anyone can help, especially if there is a trained linguist out there (Ardaschir is one, correct?) who can provide me with some answers or directions in where to go, I'd be very grateful. If you made it through this long post, thank you so much! :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| duffdude Groupie United Kingdom Joined 7195 days ago 75 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 2 of 20 14 May 2006 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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As far as I know there is no such thing as being a linguist as a job that involves learning languages. If you are a linguist by profession you would be an academic, probably university lecturer or researcher, whos subject is linguistics the study of language (semiotics etc etc). I know someone studying it and it is terrifying. It is only very loosely related to language learning and you can be a linguist without speaking a 2nd language as it is by no means a requirement. Maybe just a slight benefit if you happen to.
In english language if someone is a keen foreign language learner we seem to call them "a bit of a linguist" etc. Maybe this is a problem with English. The word has different contextual meanings. As a hobby it means learning foreign languages, and as a profession it deals with the subject of language in a far different manner! Anyone feel free to correct me though if I got anything wrong. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7317 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 3 of 20 14 May 2006 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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As duffdude said, most linguists who work professionally probably teach linguistics at a university, but some linguists gather and publish information on rare languages, some study the relationship between the brain and language, some teach people how to pronounce correctly, while others simply debate what the underlying stucture of language may be. I happen to be a linguistics major, and while I realize that linguistics and language learning are two entirely different subjects, I've also noticed some overlap between the two fields. In my opinion, knowing languages helps more with linguistics than knowing linguistics helps with language learning.
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| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6870 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 4 of 20 14 May 2006 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I forgot to mention that I know linguists don't always speak another language, although, and maybe as mentioned above it might be a problem with English, but it seems to me that if you are going to study how languages work, speaking at least a second language would only make sense...unless I guess you were interested in how your own language works. Anyway, excuse that run-on sentence...I guess I'm trying to figure out what I can do with my interests at a professional level. I suppose I don't have to worry about it quite yet, as I still have a couple of years, but nevertheless I'm trying to keep my eyes open. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| winters Trilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 7046 days ago 199 posts - 218 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Serbian*, Russian*, English, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek, French, Hungarian | Message 5 of 20 15 May 2006 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Well... I want to be a linguist one day and further my current studies at university after I finish lyceum. So far, the linguistics field I am interested in the most is historic-comparative linguistics and reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European; i.e.indoeuropeistics in general is my interest, among which mostly slavistics.
Linguistics is an extremely wide area, but, as others have said, it has very little to do with the actual STUDYING languages - linguistics is more focused on the phenomen of language as such, on correlations between languages, their development and structure. Wikipedia has an article about linguistics and its fields here, so you may find the division in fields and more about each of them there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6951 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 20 19 May 2006 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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It seems that a popular option for linguists is to work with computer programming, if you don't want to go into teaching. And don't forget about law and business, which are generally options no matter what your undergraduate major is, but which go particularly well with a background in linguistics. Linguistics does requires as much research as anthropology does, though! And the people who document endangered languages are field anthropologists. Anthropology and linguistic anthropology are very different from theoretical linguistics and anthropological linguistics. (Yes, there is a distinction between linguistic anthropology and anthropological linguistics. One is more anthropology-centered, while the other is linguistics-centered.)
Linguistics is indeed a very wide field. In addition to computational linguistics, there's also sociolinguistic, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, etc, and then subfields such as pragmatics, semantics, discourse analysis, etc. My personal academic interests are historical linguistics (the changes languages make over time), synchronic linguistics (reconstructing a certain language as it was at a certain point in time), and bilingualism/ second-language acquisition. After taking a particularly interesting anthropology class, I'm also beginning to be interested in the gender differences in language. Definitely interesting, but probably not any more definitely useful than Global Studies. I do find that my instruction in linguistics has helped me in a few areas of language acquisition. It helps me reproduce unfamiliar phonemes, for example, and it enables me to read academic writings about the target language. More than that, though, it just makes the experience more fascinating. It's exciting to read about a certain phenomenon and then recognize it when you encounter it during your language learning. I do agree with the above opinion that language study contributes more to understanding linguistics than the other way around, though. In fact, all the universities I looked into required at least a year of language study for linguistics majors (mine requires three!). I'm only a second-year student, though, so don't rely too much on what I say. :) Everyone, feel free to correct my information and my terminology. As a supplement to the Wikipedia article, here are two more reliable resources to introduce you to the field. Enjoy! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6788 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 7 of 20 19 May 2006 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Yea, Linguistics won't help much in your language learning. Perhaps the most important aspect would be phonology which lets you figure out the sounds of a language clearly.
BTW, what's your global studies? The scope seems to be very wide indeed. I would choose "foreign studies" degrees if I aim at acquiring additional languages (right now, I'm heading for German studies) I don't know whether English-speaking countries would have similar programmes. In fact, I've browsed some Australian universities and see the "foreign studies" degrees... Polish studies? Ukrainian studies? something very strange and special for very pragmatic (and not willing to spend too much on academic things) people like me. Perhaps contrary to Linguistics programmes, do foreign studies ones let students TRY languages? Also, I'd like to share with you something about the reality I face... I DON'T think I can acquire languages so easily as previously expected. Does anyone know anything about universities in Western Europe? I wonder if any of them would provide me with a chance to learn (or at least glance through) a couple of languages. Here In Hong Kong, it's impossible to read texts of less popular or too-regional languages. For example, I can't find any texts of Slovak unless I surf on the Internet. Edited by Andy_Liu on 19 May 2006 at 5:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| braveb Senior Member United States languageprograms.blo Joined 7199 days ago 264 posts - 263 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 8 of 20 19 May 2006 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's a wonder why there aren't more linguists researching in language acquisition. This area seems to me to be the most important.
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