As some of you know, I am spending my summer doing reasearch for the linguistics department at My Venerable New England College ™.
What I’m doing right now is looking at the behaviour of quantifiers cross-linguistically using Dryer’s 200 language sample.
What that actually means is that I’m looking through all sorts of old books about all sorts of languages that I’ve never heard of trying to figure out how words like each, all, and every behave in languages that in some cases are spoken by about twelve people. (Okay, I exaggerate, but isn’t that NEAT?)
The fun thing that I’ve discovered- one of them, at any rate- is that one of the perks to being a linguist is that basically nobody else is going to casually pick up, say, that book on Lepcha or Hmong Njua that I need. Go figure. That, and I get to say “Oh, I’m researching Hmong Njua.”
I love my major. Pardon me while I have a geekgasm.
Also, the first one of you that makes that one joke will face my sweet sweet wrath. It officially became not acceptable to say to me when my father made it.
Just so you know.
(And yes, that was a horrifying moment in my life.)
I love linguistics. My linguistics professor, however, said I shouldn’t major in it unless I wanted to teach linguistics. Your post implies that he may have been being overly pessimistic! I think I’ll change my major right now. Or whenever I finally go back to school.
On second thought, just finishing the damn English major would be a real triumph for me. But it does my heart good to hear linguistics stories.
I actually do intend to teach linguistics, so I’m not sure if I’m the best example out there.
Travel to foreign countries is another perk! I hope to do preservation work at some point and be able to tromp around the world in little-known places. Or maybe well-known places. Either way, tromping will be involved.
What’s the joke? I read Greek, and whenever this comes up in conversation, people think they’re really clever and original to say, well, you can probably figure it out.
That is so cool! I really wanted to minor in this subject when I was in college, but the relevant courses were only offered on even numbered years when a democrat was in office (or something weird like that.) So, I never got the opportunity but the classes that I did take, I enjoyed immensely.
A fun OP, andygirl, and I envy you the fun of that research. Your presence is requested here, along with lauramarlane and others who might be interested.
Just to show off my own geekery, Hmong is the name of the people and the language spoken by the non-ethnic-Vietnamese residents of the Annamese highlands in Vietnam (and IIRC adjacent Laos) – the ones usually referred to by the French term Montagnards. Njua would be one dialect of Hmong, if I’m right.
but the classes that I did take, I enjoyed immensely.