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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Pip Diglot Groupie South Africa Joined 6447 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: French | Message 1 of 13 22 November 2007 at 11:24am | IP Logged |
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Good evening Prof Arguelles, I noticed that you are a linguistics lecturer and I was wondering if you could give me some advice on the following: I would love to study linguistics and have a great interest in it, but am confused as to what jobs I could get with this degree. Secondly, I'm studying French at present, but would like to start studying Korean and as of late have found myself greatly attracted to asian languages (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and was considering studying in Korea, but in your experience what is the overall feeling towards foreign students in Korea and will it be possible to find a linguistically inclined english university in Korea ?
Thank you in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 13 25 November 2007 at 5:33pm | IP Logged |
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What do we mean by “linguistics?” The term “linguist,” meaning someone who speaks many languages, has been in use for centuries as a synonym for “polyglot.” The academic discipline of linguistics, however, does not have a long history. The science of comparative philology was born in the late 18th century and grew up in the early 19th century. Throughout the 19th century and even into the 20th century, philology was the only kind of linguistics there was. However, in the 20th century many other subfields of academic linguistics came into their own, each using its own highly specialized jargon—at times mathematical or computerized—for abstruse ratiocination about abstract theoretical modes of philosophic discourse regarding Language as the map of the human mind. Comparative philology is now known only as historical linguistics, and it comprises only an extremely minor portion of an undergraduate major in linguistics. The study of foreign languages actually plays very little role in the overall field of linguistics, and Noam Chomsky, the most prominent living linguist, has said something to the effect that he does not find them interesting. Linguistics is essentially post-modernist critical theory on the level of philosophy, not that of languages.
I myself once imagined that I would major in linguistics, but being a lover of languages, I was disappointed in the lack of emphasis that they received, and so turned to other disciplines where they were more alive, namely comparative literature and then the comparative history of religions, which is really the twin sister of comparative philology. All the time, I considered myself to be studying the already defunct field of comparative philology, and—just as certain languages such as Manx and Cornish have died only to be revived again—I dream of playing a role in resurrecting it, although perhaps under a different name, “polyglottery,” which describes more accurately the global scope of the endeavor. As to your question about studying Korea in Korean: you will certainly find a hospitable reception almost anywhere you might go in Korea, but you may find it difficult to get as much speaking practice as you would like because Koreans tend to insist upon speaking English with outsiders and using their language in-group. As for an English-language university in Korea that has both linguistic and language oriented tracks of study, I am happy to recommend my old institute, Handong University, whose president has a sincere vision of a truly international university that welcomes students from all corners of the globe. Korean Protestants tend to be extremely enthusiastic about their religion, but if you can accommodate yourself to this, you can get a rigorous and high-quality education there. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 13 25 November 2007 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
I share your scepticism about much modern linguistics of the post-Chomskyan sort. I studied the Romance languages at a Danish university during the seventies, - but still after the Chomsky revolution. My impression was the European linguistics scene was much more traditional, practical, historical and comparative than its companion in the USA. For instance I participated in a course whose subject was the comparison between modern Romance languages with the explicit purpose of making it possible to read them all. Besides we still had to learn Latin (though only passively), and I followed courses in both Old French and Old Occitan. We didn't learn the rigorous kind of historical linguistics (even if some of its fathers, such as Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner were Danes), but we were informed of the basic sound changes that lead from Vulgar Latin to French and (old) Occitan. I have not had any contact with the academic world since I got my final exam in 1982, and my present occupation with languages is purely a private matter. However my impression is that European linguistics still is more practically oriented that its American counterpart (apart from the American courseware producing industry). I would like to hear whether this is also your impression, or whether my views about European linguistics are hopelessly out of date. If transformational grammar had a practical use you would expect to find it in digital translation systems, but even here I have to impression that other methods are used with less emphasis on complicated theory and more on the use of brute force. An analogy might be the chess programs that now can beat any grand master, - they reach their results not by cunning use of chess theory, but by practical knowledge about lots of practical positions and by precalculating an insane amount of simple combinations of moves. In some of your old threads you have stressed not only that language families should ideally be studied in their entirety, but also that the study should if possible include older phases of the languages. As you can see from my language list I have followed this kind of plan quite rigorously, even to the extent of excluding all non-Indoeuropean languages. In doing this I do not feel that I have ever had any use for the prevalent 'scientific' kind of linguistics. On the other hand the good old old sound shift mechanisms are immensely practical for making educated guesses about forms in related languages, and the likewise oldfashioned way of thinking about sentence constructions in terms of subject, verb, different kinds of objects, predicats (in the narrow sense) and other elements of a phrase is the one that occurs naturally to me when I analyze utterances, and I also formulate my observations about differences in the syntax of different languages in these classical terms. The main difference between my linguistic world view and the traditional kind of linguistics is that I tend to see things in the shape of graphical constructs rather than through the usual assortment of traditional Latin terms. But this doesn't alter the basic fact that the whole Chomskyan revolution has passed me by without leaving any noticeable trace. And I don't even regret this. For me the main problem of linguistics should be to organize all kinds of practical knowledge about every single language of this planet in the most economical and pedagogical (= simple) way possible. And that's a purely practical consideration, where mathematical constructs don't play any role. Niels Johs.Legarth Iversen Edited by Iversen on 10 March 2008 at 6:34am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Scott Horne Newbie Canada Joined 6226 days ago 34 posts - 38 votes | Message 4 of 13 25 November 2007 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
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Especially in the English-speaking countries, academic linguistics is rapidly becoming the study of English alone. One would think that the preservation, or at least the documentation, of the thousands of languages that will die out in this century would be of high priority to linguistics. But it isn't even deemed to be a valid subject of research.
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| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 5 of 13 02 December 2007 at 4:54pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Iversen, I do not know if there is any real difference in “linguistics” on these two continents, and I imagine the contrast you are wondering about is more due to the passing of the decades than to any geographic divide. My passport notwithstanding, I am European in orientation and tend to prefer Europe to America in most respects, but I have to say that when it comes to universities, I was very unimpressed with those that I haunted there in the mid-1990’s—in no respect could they compare with the learning environment from which I had just sprung. All the linguistics and language related institutions that I witnessed were just as fragmented into isolated, hyper-specialized, purely abstract and theoretical sub-fields as their American counterparts.
Mr. Horne, I could not agree more with you on both points that you make. “Linguistics” is now almost always an obsession with English semantics and discourse analysis. How on earth has it come to pass that “linguistics” has nothing to do with languages??? Sadly, Swift could all too easily transfer the current state of affairs to Laputa and Balnibari. I believe that the language die-off within the lifetime of most of those writing here will be massive, and within another generation, if current conditions of communication and connection remain as they are, many more languages that currently have many millions of speakers will also have gone extinct. Under these circumstances, the major activity of real/ideal linguistics departments should indeed be the documentation of languages in pedagogical form. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6317 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 6 of 13 02 December 2007 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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Professor Arguelles,
You bring up a very good point about linguistics: That it quite ironically does not have much at all do with languages. For the past two years I've been set on majoring in and possibly completing post-graduate study in the subject, and as a direct result of reading your comments in this thread, I've turned my attention to comparative literature, where I've now discovered my interest in languages would best be complimented. Quite surprisingly, I had never thought to investigate the area until just now. Better late than never I suppose! The only downside at my particular university, is not being able to major in the subject, but rather take it only as a minor alongside German (now my single major). Thanks, and all the best! Christopher Button 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7029 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 13 03 December 2007 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
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I deliberately chose to use the word Linguist to mean someone who speaks more than one language, in my own book about language learning called "The Linguist". I have also used that name as part of an online language learning approach.I have said that the world is full of potential linguists, in this sense, as long as they are liberated from traditional language teaching methods.
My question is, in how many languages can linguist be used in this way, or could one get away with using it in this way, even if this is not the conventional meaning of the word? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 8 of 13 09 December 2007 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Button, you should indeed be freer to formally study foreign languages majoring in comparative literature than in linguistics at the undergraduate level. When it comes to a doctoral program, you might even find greater freedom in departments entitled “comparative religions” or the “history of religions.” Many of the founding fathers of this discipline were also equally eminent in comparative philology, and their emphasis can still be felt in the need to directly access and analyze a variety of texts, whereas at the doctoral level in comparative literature you are more likely to be pushed towards exclusive specialization.
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