je m'appelle l'amour.

I'm still alive; it's just that this mid-semester season is pretty crazy.


Just some personal things that you might not care about:



So I've declared a second major in French. So now I'm double-majoring in Linguistics and French.

I think the thing with French is that... I don't necessarily like it, but I sure am good at it. So I'm going to take advantage of my talent.

But I am in love with my primary major, Linguistics, and hope that I'm good at it.



And additionally! I realized that I have room to squeeze in a minor; yes, in ADDITION to the double major.

I thought about doing another language minor, but I think that'd be kind of boring.

So I had this brilliant idea of perhaps minoring in Cognitive Science, with an emphasis in language.

And it might just work, too.


Eeee! I hope it does. I'd love to study psycholinguistics and human perception while I'm in college.


I love college!!!!!


Damn, high school kids, take those AP classes. That way you can take the classes you want to take, not those boring "core" classes.


SOD:


Another pair of cotton tabi socks. This one in navy with Japanese flower print. Made in Japan.

Half-erased entries restored. Thank goodness for my old blog page.

A more objective approach to the question.



"Language makes us uniquely human... language provides us with a unique window through which we can investigate a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human." (Language Files)

If only we can speak languages, then by inspecting it, we are sure to find out something interesting about our society.


And further more...

We use language everyday. We can't live without communication.

Language will never disappear from our society.

So it's gotta do some good to study it, right?


We all speak a language, but all languages are variable. Even within one language, each of its speakers has his own identity. No one possesses the same speaking style.

By studying language, we can communicate better. We can understand better.



Some practical usages of language studies:

- developing better teaching tools for language instruction
- artificial intelligence and communication
- treating speech and language disorders
- application of linguistic analysis in judicial settings
- advertising
- translation / interpretation
- language preservation

I took a Speech Pathology seminar my first semester in college, because I saw it as a practical application of Linguistics. It was a nice little seminar... I learned much. I did my final research project on bilingualism and language disorders.


Did you know that every year, many kids developing with bilingualism are wrongly diagnosed with language disorders? Elementary school teachers confuse, for example, bilingual overextension/underextension of vocabulary or code-switching as a sign of a communication disorder.


Increasing education in Lingusitics can potentially prevent such errors.


And did you know that language is one of the fields that are least affected by technology advancement?

Our language instinct is something extremely hard to replicate by technology.

A single word, tone, or sound can change the meaning of a statement. Artificial intelligence can't catch all that (yet*).

*I kinda doubt that we'll ever communicate fluently with computers, though. Ever try to translate crap on "online translators?"

A factory worker can be replaced by a machine, but a translator/interpreter can't be.

So, we always need a human being, in flesh, inspecting language. That's pretty much guaranteed.



I don't think I'll go into any"applied" career like Speech Pathology or ESL instruction in the future, because I like the actual field of Linguistics too much.

But surely my studies will contribute to those fields, and much more.

This came in the mail today.






I receive A LOT of misspellings with my name, but this is by far the worst. Hahaha!

What am I, Russian? :P


One time I received mailing address label samples and my first name was spelled "A.I."


I'm a robot!


Should've sent letters with that label.

Part I focuses on my personal response to this question.



One online bulletin with Linguistics majors career information optimistically starts off:

"While there are no jobs waiting for Linguistics majors as there might be for engineers or nurses, employers do value the Linguistics major."

Woot.


So after I explain to curious people what my major is about, I often receive a further inquiry:

"So, what do you intend to do with that?"


Yeah good question.


According to the same bulletin,

"Exposure to languages promises communication skills, and the technical aspects of the study of language suggest that majors will be able to cope with technical materials; technical writing is one field in which Linguistics majors are likely to find employment. Students with extensive computer training will find that Linguistics may offer them an edge for jobs in the expanding field of natural language processing and artificial intelligence. For those students who wish to continue their studies, the Linguistics major can provide a good foundation for professional programs or for graduate programs in Anthropology, Cognitive Sciences, English or another modern language, Psychology, and other fields besides Linguistics itself."


So basically, you can't do crap with just an undergrad degree in Linguistics.


Well duh, I know that.


Then why do I study it?


Well one, I do intend to pursue graduate studies, thank you very much.

Further, in high school, my initial major options were: Music, Art, French.


Well damn, sounds like a starving artist in Paris.


I said good-bye to the first two options, because of that "starving artist" fear. And realistically, I wasn't sure my huge passion for the arts matched my technical skills.

As for French. Yeah frankly, I'm good at it. At what standards? Who knows. I received 4th place in nation for a national French examination contest; 3rd in the state. I never studied over 15 minutes for a French exam in high school. Even in college now, maybe I'll give it 30 minutes, compared to a week's worth of studying for American history.

I mean, how do you study for a foreign language test, anyway? I think the best you can do is review vocabulary. For the rest, you have to have had participated in class to do well. Cramming really doesn't work for languages. It's a constant progress. Each and every aspect you learn in a foreign language class relates to everything you learned there yesterday.

I think that's why I liked my French class so much.

Plus I'm bilingual. That makes SLA much easier in many cases.


But back to my point-- despite my apparent talent in the French language, I did not want to major in it.

Even my high school French teacher recommended NOT majoring in a foreign language. It's a good minor to compliment any major. But majoring in it's a tad risky. A friend's friend majored in French and graduated. She's fluent now. But she doesn't know what to do. Yeah.



I needed something else besides just one language.

So how about all languages? That's an idea.


I targeted my general appreciation of language, and conducted research--very professionally, on Google and Wikipedia.

So I considers these aspects about myself:

Whenever I meet someone, the first thing I notice about that person is his speech. Eye contact. Tone. Pitch. Presence of verbal hesitation. Vocabulary. Pronunciation. Grammar (incorrect grammar bothered me a lot and still does to an extent, but I'm trying to appreciate the human linguistic errors lately...trying).

I loved English class, too. In literary analysis, I loved targeting syntax and semantics. Everyone else hated them. The power of sentence structure on the overall presence of the literary work was of awe to me. The greatness of the work depends on how each word governs the sentences.

And comparing languages fascinated me as well. Of course I had the advantage of exposure to three languages. What made Japanese different from English? English from French? Why does miscommunication of ideas happen when you transfer to another language?


So I wondered, is there a field of study that focuses on stuff like this?



And there was!


And they call it Linguistics, or the study of languages.




Language is what makes humans, humans. Linguistic communication is an aspect unique to us human beings. Everyday, you use language. Even as you read this weblog entry, you are using your innate language ability. We cannot function without language. The world would not function without language.



And that is why I study Linguistics.



To be continued to "Why Study Linguistics? Part II."