“Much pioneering work in documenting the languages of the world has been done by missionary organizations (such as the Summer Institute of Linguistics, now known as SIL International) with an interest in translating the Christian Bible. As of 2009, at least a portion of the bible had been translated into 2,508 different languages, still a long way short of full coverage. The most extensive catalog of the world’s languages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of Ethnologue (published by SIL International), whose detailed classified list as of 2009 included 6,909 distinct languages.”
I have always been interested in languages. When I was young, I wanted to learn Spanish because of having contact with it on the playground (not to be confused with true immersion). Later on, I also got the desire to learn French as well. I wished that I could pursue German and Japanese and Chinese at one point. Later on, I instead set my sights on the dead languages of Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew, both of which I have since pursued in actuality. Whether it be modern languages or ancient languages, I am still fascinated by language.
How I first heard about linguistics
Most people have an innate idea of what language is, and possess at least some interest in it. But most have never even heard of the discipline of linguistics – something with a much broader meaning than just knowing a lot of languages. (Although that is an accomplishment in and of itself – believe me, I know!) When I was a young child, I didn’t know what linguistics was, either; and didn’t discover it until I read a book about personality at age 10 or 12 (I don’t remember exactly when). This book discussed the typical academic interests for one personality type versus another. My type was said to like math, science, technology, philosophy, communications, or linguistics (among others).
When I first heard the word, I didn’t know what “linguistics” was …
At that age, I’d already had enough exposure to math and science to know what they were, and could guess from the familiar word “technology” what that academic subject was all about. But the last three subjects – philosophy, communications, and linguistics – were subjects that I didn’t really know much about. I didn’t even really have a solid understanding of what they were. I’ll leave the definition of philosophy to another post, and not even go near the definition of communications in this post. But as far as the discipline of linguistics goes, I could guess from the name that it was about languages, and I somehow knew that I had some interest in this even then. Only later, however, did I discover what linguistics really was.
Scan of the human brain, which is of great interest to linguists
So what is it? (Basically, it’s the scientific study of language)
So what is linguistics, you might be wondering? In the words of the Linguistic Society of America, “Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and many topics are studied under this umbrella.” (Source: LSA website) In the common usage of the word “linguist,” this word means someone who knows a lot of languages; and people who study linguistics as their formal education often do know a lot of languages. Nonetheless, an academic degree in linguistics is broader than a knowledge of any particular language or group of languages – it is the scientific study of Language generally. This is something that interests me greatly, and I could tell even in my early encounter with just its name that it was something that I was interested in. I’ve since pursued it in more depth, making up for my lack of formal training somewhat with a propensity for independent study. I will recount some of my experiences with that independent study now.
Signs for “ASL” (or “American Sign Language”), which I admit that I have no familiarity with
By the time that I started studying linguistics, I already had a degree in another subject
I had already graduated with my bachelor’s degree before I even started to study linguistics. My degree was in an unrelated subject – namely, business. I admit that I chose this major partly because of money and career potential. (Gotta pay the bills somehow … ) But I had long possessed an interest in other subjects (including linguistics); and I have often thought that if I had chosen my major on the basis of something other than financial stability, I might have studied linguistics instead. This was not the only field whose knowledge I coveted – I also had interest in many others. But I had already been exposed to foreign languages through my study of French and Spanish (both subjects which were quite engrossing to me), and I knew that I wanted to study language analytically as well.
The start of the journey, and studying historical linguistics (as well as Spanish linguistics)
So some time after graduation, I got myself an introductory textbook in the subject, and started to learn about this interesting discipline – gaining new respect for it in the process, and the diverse nature of the topics that it covers. Since I already had a degree in a practical subject – namely, business – I didn’t see much point in going back to school for this, since it would be a lot of money to study something that wouldn’t pay the bills (or even pay for itself). Thus, I thought that I would just stick with my business degree for purposes of formal education. But I still wanted to pursue linguistics in more depth, and thus got myself some additional textbooks in the subject – especially in the fascinating area of historical linguistics, or the study of how languages change over time. I read a general textbook about this subject, which was especially focused on what are called the “Indo-European languages.” (More about these here.) This was a great introduction to this subject. I also got a book about the general linguistics of the Spanish language, of which the language’s history is just one part. This was an aside from the historical linguistics, but it was still a great read for me.
Other kinds of linguistics that I studied, including the psychology of language
Then I returned to historical linguistics by reading Rafael Lapesa’s “Historia de la lengua española” (“History of the Spanish Language”) in the original Spanish. (More about that here.) This took me three years to complete. I also got a book about the psychology of language, by the psycholinguist Steven Pinker. This was a shorter work (and another aside from the historical linguistics), but it was a good read for me. After that, I yet again returned to historical linguistics by reading “The Story of English,” which covered the history of the English language. (More about that here.) I had seen the first few episodes of a television program based upon that book, hosted by one of the authors. But most of my prior experience with this specific subject was from a completely different television series, which was Melvyn Bragg’s “The Adventure of English.” This was another television history of the English language, which I have reviewed here. Regarding “The Story of English,” I never got to watch the entire series, but I did get to read the book (as mentioned earlier). It was a good read for me.
The value of learning non-Indo-European languages for American students of linguistics
And finally, some American linguistics programs have incentives for learning non-Indo-European languages. They reason that because English is an Indo-European language, their English-speaking students would benefit from studying a language that is not Indo-European, and thus radically different from English. The Indo-European language family, it should be noted, is a broad family; as it includes the Germanic languages (like German and English), the Romance languages (like Spanish and French), and Hellenic languages (like Macedonian and Greek); among many other branches of this family. To get outside of this family, I would need to choose something even more different from English. The language that I chose for this purpose was actually Biblical Hebrew, which is in the Afro-Asiatic language family – a family that encompasses Semitic languages like Hebrew. At the time that I write this, I’ve barely started learning Hebrew, and have so far just scratched the surface. But I imagine that I will long be glad that I’m learning Hebrew, because it will prove a helpful pursuit for my study of the Bible. I also feel that it will give me the broader understanding of language that I so greatly wanted in my young adulthood. Incidentally, studying dead languages like Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew has much overlap with historical linguistics, in that it uses the techniques of linguistics to gain a variety of insights about history. This may be especially true of studying Biblical Hebrew, since you see many centuries’ worth of change in the time span of the Hebrew Bible, moreso than with the shorter time span of the Greek New Testament. Historical linguistics is focused on these kinds of changes, so Biblical Hebrew may provide more abundant data with which to study this kind of thing.
Linguistics has given me a broad-based liberal arts education, when my business major didn’t
I still don’t have any formal training in linguistics, and my study of the subject is probably somewhat second-rate for it. But I now have some basic education about certain parts of linguistics, and wouldn’t trade its interesting insights for anything.
Footnote: Most languages belong to a family
“A family is a group of languages that can be shown to be genetically related to one another. The best known languages are those of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs. Considering how widely the Indo-European languages are distributed geographically, and their influence in world affairs, one might assume that a good proportion of the world’s languages belong to this family. That is not the case, however: there are about 200 Indo-European languages, but even ignoring the many cases in which a language’s genetic affiliation cannot be clearly determined, there are undoubtedly more families of languages (about 250) than there are members of the Indo-European family.”
If you liked this post, you might also like:
Part of a series about
My own experiences
My passion for linguistics
Note: These posts do not have to be read in any particular order. Since time periods overlap, there isn’t much chronological order to observe here.
See also this series about
Modern languages
Note: These posts do not have to be read in any particular order. Since time periods overlap, there isn’t much chronological order to observe here.
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