Hi, my name is [redacted] and I am a High School student. I want to major in Linguistics. I have always been interested in language, even as a child, and although I have only discovered linguistics recently, I have never had this strong sense of direction. Anyways I was wondering if there was any advice you could give me about studying linguistics.

Well, reader, thanks for sending me an email!

I’m delighted to hear that you’re interested in linguistics. As you point out here, for those for whom linguistics is truly a calling, it’s got quite a strong pull. Once you’ve found it and start looking more closely, it’s very easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole. If you’re anything like me, that pull might carry you through graduate school and beyond, so if you’re feeling that pull, well, hold on tight, you’re in for an awesome ride. Actually, though, that highlights what is the best advice I can give you at this point, both about studying linguistics and about life in general: Follow your passion.

Let’s face it, if you’re interested in studying linguistics, it’s not for money, power, fame, or prestige. It’s because you’re passionate about it, because you love the “work”, and because there’s some part of what it is that we do that appeals to you at a very deep level. My strongest advice is to take that appeal, that passion and harness it, and letting it guide you. As you start wading into the world of linguistics, you’ll realize that there are a great many subfields and areas of questioning, each of which has enough interesting questions for a hundred careers. Some of these fields will likely seem silly or boring to you. Some of them will feel pretty neutral. But sooner or later, you’re going to find a field within linguistics that you’re not only good at, but that you simply love. Although it’s good to know the basics of all the different subfields, and you’ll have to for most degree programs, it never hurts to put some extra time and energy into the fields you’re really passionate about.

So, if you find yourself fascinated by a topic, a sub-field, or even an individual question, take a related class and maybe write a paper about it. If you’re still fascinated by it after that, you may consider writing an honors thesis to explore the topic more deeply. If you’re still fascinated after all that, you’ve got yourself a Master’s Thesis. And if after all that, you’re still fascinated by the issue, well, that’s your dissertation topic right there. If that goes well, that might just be your niche, and maybe your career. All that, just for following your passion.

Pay attention as you’re reading for those questions that leap up and bite you. Pay attention when one particular topic puts you in your happy place. Know where you’re average, where you’re good, and where you’re incredible, and spend as much time as you can where you’re at your best.

People get into linguistics because they have a passion, and it’s vital that they keep a close eye on that passion and ride it for as long as they can. There are popular topics, lucrative topics, and interesting topics, but at the end of the day, you want to be studying something that you’re passionate about, something that keeps you up at night and wakes you up in the morning, and something that you can’t wait to find out more about.

So, reader, go forth, major in Linguistics and follow your passion from there, wherever it may lead you. You may not know where you’ll end up, but at the very least, you’ll know you’ll be enjoying yourself along the way.

I am in my 3rd year of a bachelor degree in Linguistics, and I love it! I am just wondering what I could actually do with the skills I am learning… I mean for a living.

What you can do depends on what you enjoy doing, and how advanced a degree you want to (and can) get.

If you want to start working after you get the BA, there are some possibilities for linguistics-specific sort of work. Lots of industries are using linguists for market research, especially doing things like data annotation and analysis on content and whatnot. You probably won’t be making many decisions at first, and you’re more likely to find jobs which just pay you hour-by-hour to do annotation. There is also the military/intelligence route, if that’s your style.

Mind you, with just the BA, linguistics-specific jobs will be scarce, you’ll be at a lower pay grade than an MA or Ph.D student, and the point of entry is going to be a bit lower on the totem pole, but of course, you can work up. If you’re going this route, I’d recommend trying to do an Honors Thesis, so you have an example of some research you’ve done in the field of Linguistics, and so you can show having some degree of specialization in the field.

If you’re able to get into an MA program and graduate, you’ve got many more options beyond the ones discussed above.

There are plenty of industry jobs out there for Linguistics MAs, especially if you’ve got a speech or computational bent. Google and big tech companies always want Natural Language Processing people, and places like Rosetta Stone are often hiring linguists for speech analysis, language analysis, and data collection. And every speech recognition place in the world wants more linguists and phoneticians.

The main disadvantage to industry jobs is that you end up having to deal with lawyers, NDAs, and non-compete clauses. Some companies are very draconian, preventing you from publishing on languages you’ve worked with while working for them, and some of them even claim as proprietary any insights you might have about the grammar or functioning of natural languages. As such, you may end up working for a company that actually claims as proprietary parts of the grammar of the language you’re working with. By going industry, you’re often going to have to sacrifice the openness and dedication to spreading knowledge that’s omnipresent in Academia, and you certainly won’t be able to take as much credit for your research. Instead, you’ll be studying language to improve your company’s profitability and product, with much of what you actually do and discover hidden behind the veils of corporate secrecy, under penalty of lawyer. All that said, the pay will be better than in academia, and I strongly suspect that not all industry players are as draconian and litigious as some of the subjects of the horror stories I’ve heard from friends in industry.

Some places, usually private language schools or companies, will hire Linguistics MA students to teach English as a second language, especially outside of English speaker countries. If you enjoy living abroad, that’s a very good option, as some of those places are willing to pay handsomely for your expertise. So, definitely keep that option in mind.

In academia, an MA degree can definitely get you a job as a research assistant or researcher, helping with experimental linguistics and working in labs to help faculty members. It’s also possible that you’ll get a TA job, especially if you’re in the MA program at the time. Unfortunately, though, you’d be extremely unlikely to end up in a tenure track position with just the MA.

Also, it’s worth noting that many schools will also hire MA-level research assistants for the long term, who have specialized in a given area and participate in projects where they’re necessary. Here, you have some job security, and the possibility of being paid well, but without having to go through the Ph.D process.

If you’re accepted into a Ph.D program, many doors open. In many places, people admitted into a Ph.D program with support will automatically be given a job as a teaching assistant or a research assistant. This is wonderful because you get that experience, and you can earn enough to keep yourself afloat, at a part time basis, while you’re getting the degree. If you’re applying to Ph.D programs, apply to a bunch of them, and decide between the programs which offer you support, either as a stipend or as a TA/RA job. As my advisor told me during the Ph.D application process, “there are lots of places willing to pay you if you fit well, so you should never use your own money to get a Ph.D”. So, in academia, there are plenty of jobs for Ph.D students that an MA student would be less likely to.

Also, there are lots of industry companies that are happy to snatch Ph.D students away from academia, even if they’ve not finished the degree, and a few of my friends have taken this route. For them, they get most of the the benefits of somebody with Ph.D level education, but without having to pay the salary of somebody with a full on Doctoral degree. So, as silly as it sounds, even if you’re looking to go into industry after you get your MA, it might not hurt you to apply to Ph.D programs, and to accept an offer. You’ll likely get pulled in by other companies at a higher pay grade, and if you decide to return to academia later (and you kept publishing), you’ll have been accepted once.

Mind you, once you’re out of academia and a Ph.D program, it’s always tougher to get back in, and if the job you left for leaves you, especially if some time has passed, you risk having trouble there. So, unless you need the extra money right away, or you’re offered your dream job with great security, I’d highly recommend you work for the company as much as you can while still working on your Ph.D and dissertation, but keep working on that Ph.D and dissertation. They’ll pay you more when you graduate, and once you’ve got that magical piece of paper, everything will be just a bit easier in case you end up changing jobs down the road.

Finally, if you fight through and get the Ph.D, you’ve got your pick. Nearly all of the opportunities mentioned above will be open to you, and new doors will open besides.

Industry will likely want you, especially if you’ve got the right specialization for their programs. You’ll also be paid more than MA and Ph.D student candidates, and will likely come in higher on the totem pole. You’ll be more likely to be able to guide events, not just annotate or work on problems.

There are also jobs for linguists in other places that aren’t industry, but aren’t quite academia either. For instance, many linguists, some who are faculty elsewhere, can become known as being good expert witnesses in trials and lawsuits which deal with matters of language and communication. Some people end up practicing forensic linguistics in law enforcement and intelligence, analyzing language to learn about speakers. Of course, there are also plenty of opportunities in intelligence, defense, and working for the military or military intelligence services.

In academia, you’ll have the opportunity to take a Post Doctoral appointment, doing research or teaching at a school for a few years before putting yourself on the market as a professor or researcher. This can be as part of a grant or a project, or simply as a member of a department who needs some help for a little while.

You can try for a research position, where you’ll have minimal teaching load, and instead, are used more to bring the department prestige, grant money, and publications. If research is your thing, then larger, research universities are where you’ll want to be, and these sorts of positions are definitely right up your alley.

You can also choose a lecturer or adjunct faculty position, where you’re not on track for tenure, and you’ll not have much in the way of job security beyond a few years, but it’s a job, and you’ll be at the helm of classes and getting paid for a few years. This is a great option if other factors in your life are preventing you from committing to a longer term stay in a given place, or if you’re simply not sure that you’re wanting to teach for the rest of your life.

Finally, some people, like me, eventually want to become full, tenured professors and pass on this knowledge in new and interesting ways to new and interesting people. To do this, you’ll likely start as an assistant professor, work your way up, and ideally, eventually win tenure. As a tenured professor, you’ll teach, do some research, publish, and participate in the workings of the university. You’ll be faculty, have the benefits and security of such, and be paid the salary of a full professor. It’s a pretty sweet gig, but winning such jobs can often be very competitive.

Mind you, this is just my perspective. I’m just a little Doctoral student, I have my own particular biases, and there are likely a zillion opportunities that I’ve never been exposed to or even heard of. I’d recommend that you talk to your advisors in the department, talk to other linguists, and watch sites where linguistics jobs are posted (like LINGUIST list).

Most of all, though, follow your passion. If you want to do research, take jobs that offer you that chance. If you want to develop new and interesting products, and make a good deal of money doing it, look into industry jobs. If you’re like me and you just want to teach, well, keep pushing, keep collecting the necessary degrees, and eventually, you’ll be able to get there.

At least, I sure hope so.

Program note: I’ve been getting a lot of very good questions from readers, and although not all of them are this involved, I’m going to try and start posting some of my responses. I make no guarantees that I’ll be able to answer every question, but if you send me a good one, I’ll try and respond, and who knows, I might even post your response here. Let me know if you’d like to be credited for your questions, if I do end up responding publicly. Thanks for all the feedback and email, even in my relative absence. It always makes me smile.

Edit:: I just got this email from a reader who wanted to contribute her story. You’re welcome to email your own story, and I’ll make sure it ends up here!

I’m a former linguistics student, hopeful future linguistics student, and forever in love with linguistics. I was reading your post on jobs and just wanted to say that having a BA in Linguistics has helped me get jobs as a private ESL tutor, but mainly as a tutor for high school level reading and writing skills, and also as a SAT Critical Reading/Writing tutor. Now, tutoring English for the SAT can be a somewhat tedious job, but it is related to language, I always find ways to sneak in excerpts from the Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, and I can often get kids thinking about language in general. Plus, I get to help them improve their scores and get into college, thereby furthering the education of a generation (while rhyming). I also get to tell them how wonderful linguistics is, if they’ll listen, and hopefully plant a seed in the minds of those who are unsure of what to study. So overall, I do find it a satisfying job, and one that required only a BA in Linguistics. Now, I do intend to go for a PhD in either Neurolinguistics or linguistic anthropology (endangered languages maybe, a la The Linguists), and one day teach at a higher level, but for right now tutoring is good work and is definitely a worthwhile job.

As you can all doubtless tell, I’ve been quite busy. I’m delighted to report that I was accepted into a Ph.D Program in Linguistics, and am now continuing my studies of Phonetics and Speech Perception at the Doctoral level. Although this is a wonderful thing for 98% of my life, it does mean that I’ve little time left over to update this site, and that alone accounts for the more than one year that has passed since my last post.

However, even despite my prolonged absence, the site is still shockingly popular. In fact, it’s getting upwards of 2000 unique visits a week, and has attracted more than 150,000 visitors in the last year alone.

I’d like to thank all the readers who have emailed in to ask whether the site will be updated again soon, and all the people who continue to contribute interesting comments to existing articles. In addition, I’d like to make sure that people know that although I’ve not had the time to make new posts, I’m still accepting comments on all older posts, and in many cases, I’m responding to them as well.

Also, if you have any questions about anything you read on the site, about life in Linguistics, or about any housekeeping issues (broken links and whatnot), please always feel free to leave a comment or Contact me. I’m always happy to hear from readers, and usually am even happier to help answer questions people may have about the content here.

Is Notes from a Linguistic Mystic dead? Of course not! I hope to be able to start posting again once I’ve progressed a bit more within the Ph.D program. For now, it’s dormant, but rest assured, the heart of the site is still here and beating strong.

The Linguistic Mystic

PS: If you’re stumbling upon this site for the first time, here are some of my favorite posts that should give you a taste for the sorts of things discussed here. Take a look, and enjoy!

- Using IPA fonts with Mac OS X: The Comprehensive Guide (recently updated with new information)
- Cryptorthography: Hiding your writings in plain sight
- What can computer image processing teach us about language?
- im in mai blog, postin’ bout cats: The Cuteness of Grammatical errors
- im in ur programmz, codin in ur dialect: LOLCode and Feline Dialectology
- The glottal stop: your new Phonetic Phriend
- You can’t say “Phonetics” quickly without saying “fun”

The past few months have been a very exciting time in my life. In addition to classwork, I’ve been working on my Master’s Thesis, taking MA Comprehensive exams, and continuing the sorts of unrelated research that bring me joy. In addition, I’ve been going through the doctoral program application process, and, much to my delight, the process of formally accepting the offer that I received. Unfortunately, this has left little time for linguistics writing outside of class, and as such, this blog has been neglected in the process.

I’d like to apologize to my readers, to those interested in the Cryptorthography Contest (which I would still very much like to see happen), and to anybody who has left a comment without response. Much to my amazement, even in my relative absence, the site has consistently gotten upwards of two thousand hits per week, mostly from search engine recommendations, and the fact that my past writings are still useful to people brings me no small joy.

So, Notes from a Linguistic Mystic will stay up and functional for as long as I can maintain it, and I do hope to start posting more regularly again someday.

However, I can’t promise a return immediately. What I can promise, though, is a very bad Linguistics pun to hold you over:

So, the English definite article ‘the’ walks into a bar with his old friend, the English indefinite article ‘a’. They sit down, order some drinks, and then ‘a’ asks “so, what’re you up to now these days? Still marking noun phrases?”

‘the’ nods its head, taking a drink. “Definitely”

Thanks again for reading, and I hope to return to posting as soon as I can!

Although I’m still up in the air about the form of the contest, I’ve got a few ideas, but I’m open to suggestions for rules. Consider the comments thread to be a sounding board for format ideas.

So, start working on your systems, it’ll be only a matter of time before they’re put to the test!

Phonology rules!

Phonology is the study of the rules and systems which govern the use of sounds in a language. Some of these rules in English, for example, tell us that a velar nasal can’t start a word in English, that “in-possible” has become “impossible”, and that the /t/ sound is completely different after an /s/ than it is at the start of a word (it’s unaspirated). All these effects, although cool when studied closely, happen at a subconscious level, and really don’t have much effect on the lives of speakers.

However, Phonology can get really fascinating when a person is speaking a language not their own. Although anybody can memorize words and grammar in a second language, it’s a long process to be able to disregard the phonological rules of your own language and use the ones of the new language.

When a non-native speaker has an “accent”, what’s actually happening is that they’re speaking your language, but using some of the phonological rules from their native tongue. With time (and practice), an accent slowly goes away, but it’s often the last stage of language learning, and is the culmination of years of work.

Let’s look at a specific example. In Russian speech, you can never have more than one long /o/ sound in a word. Even if the word you’re pronouncing is written with several ‘o’ sounds (like молоко, ‘milk’), only the one of them in a stressed position (explained below) will be pronounced, and the rest will be reduced into an /a/ or /ə/ (the sounds in ‘pot’ and ‘sofa‘). So, молоко is pronounced ‘mahluhkoh’ (/malə’ko:/), never “mohlohkoh” (/mo:lo:’ko:/). For more detailed information on this rule, see the Wikipedia page on Vowel Reduction in Russian

From Car Sales to prostitution

So, we’re sitting in my High School Russian class one day and we’re discussing vocabulary related to buying and selling. Our teacher, a Russian woman who still has a very noticeable Russian accent, is explaining the scenario for the next dialogue she’d like to do in class:

“Alright. So, Nick, I would like you to pretend to come up to me on a car lot. We will talk, and then, I will ask you if you would like to buy my Volva…”

Now, at this point, around half of the class either broke out laughing or was a bit too shocked to say anything at all. It’s worth pointing out that in her speech, the /ʌ/ sound in ‘but’ or ‘putter’ was always expressed with an /o/ sound, so to us, it sounded exactly like she just asked a student to buy her vulva.

At this point, she was looking around the classroom, confused, and trying to figure out what she had said. Some brave soul asked her what exactly she was selling, and she repeated, “I’m selling my volva!”. Another round of snickering coursed through the room.

At this point, she started to get frustrated. “No, it is a car. A volva!”. Slowly, the snickering began to calm, until finally, she went up to the board and wrote out “Volvo”, then pointed at it. “See! Volva!”

A chorus of groans of understanding rang out through the room, and she finally regained her composure. I’m not sure she ever understood what she actually said, but in a way, I think it’s better that way.

Although I didn’t really get it at the time, what my teacher was doing is actually perfectly understandable from a phonological standpoint. She was stressing only one of the O’s that she saw in the spelling, and the other vowel was reduced. Because she usually used a shorter /o/ sound for the /ʌ/ vowel, we understood her as saying “vulva”, not “volvo”.

Thus, directly because of a phonological rule, a normal day of class turned into a celebration of cross-linguistic hilarity. To this day, I can’t look at a Volvo without hearing my teacher saying “Would you like to buy my vulva?”, and it’s my favorite example of phonology gone wrong.

However, there are times when you’d rather your writings not necessarily be understandable to others. Sometimes, like if you’re keeping a journal and detailing the various angsts and dramas of your life, you’d rather that the relevant parties not be able to read the entries. Similarly, if you’re keeping a grimoire (book of recipes and incantations), a book of shadows (for spells or other magical writings), or even just the list of top secret spices in your world famous marinara sauce, you’ll have a strong motivation to make sure that nobody else gets to to the information. In this sort of a situation, there’s a variety of different ways of going about hiding or obscuring your writing, even though you’re using the same language that everybody around you speaks.

Writing without being read

Now, assuming that you’re writing a physical document, the first, and most simple, is by hiding it. You could write your marinara sauce recipe out in perfectly understandable english, but if it’s locked in a safe at the bottom of the Atlantic, nobody will be able to read it. Similarly, if you keep your diary in a locked box, or even just have a lock on the cover, it’ll be safe from prying eyes.

However, hiding the document can fail. It’s really easy to go and answer the door, leaving your journal in plain sight for any offendable parties to find. Not to mention the fact that all locks are breakable, and if the only thing between your neighbor and your marinara sauce recipe is a cloth and cardboard locking journal, your recipe is practically already stolen.

So, the next step is to somehow hide the writing itself. Things like disappearing invisible ink or ink that’s only exposed with certain light sources are wonderful at this sort of thing. Similarly, you could use some sort of steganography (hiding information within other information), maybe putting a microdot on the page, or making the first letter of every word spell out your real meaning.

These methods have their downfalls too, though. Invisible ink and microdots require specialized methods or technologies, and aren’t really practical to everyday use. Besides, sooner or later, people will notice the UV lamp on your desk and start to wonder why you keep so many blank journals. If you do a “the first letter of every word” sort of thing, then you’ll end up having to write whole paragraphs of gibberish to communicate even the smallest of concepts, and even then, it’ll betray that there’s something else going on.

You could certainly go all out and start using some sort of cipher. Switch z for a, y for b, and so on, until eventually you’ve replaced the whole alphabet with an alternative one. Perhaps you could even go deeper, using some of the more innovative sorts of cryptography out there. (For a great, understandable book on cryptography, check out Simon Singh’s The Code Book). But, encrypting your writing takes forever to encode and decode, and it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever be able to read and write in a cipher fluidly. Besides, those, too, are crackable.

Perhaps the most complex sort of cipher would be to just use the writing system (and even some vocabulary) from another language. If you’re, for instance, writing English using the Cyrillic alphabet from Russian, it’ll be pretty incomprehensible to your neighbor. However, if you come across somebody who speaks English and reads Russian, your system falls apart.

So, what option does this leave you?

Enter Cryptorthography

‘Cryptorthography’ is a word I’ve made up to describe the creation of secret writing systems. It’s a combination of cryptos (Greek for ‘hidden’), and then the linguistics term ‘orthography’, referring to the writing system and writing rules of a language. ‘orthography’ also comes from Greek, being a combination of orthos (‘correct’) and graphein (‘to write’)

So, how does one practice cryptorthography? It’s actually fairly simple. You just take a given language (or languages), and create a new writing system for it which only you (or a few select people) can understand. This way, you could leave even your most secret writings out on the kitchen table, but nobody would be able to understand them without a fair amount of contemplation or analysis.

By creating your own system, you’ll be able to write and read it without too much trouble, but it’ll be completely opaque to everybody else, no matter which language they speak. It’ll be far faster than coding or ciphers, and doesn’t need to be hidden or obscured to be secret, and since it’s all hand-written, it’ll be far less vulnerable to computer-based assaults because of the trouble of transcribing it into a computer.

Before you start writing all your personal secrets on your front door, it’s important to remember that, just like with the above systems of hiding your meaning, there are weaknesses and places where people could easily figure out what you mean. I’d like to discuss a few of these weaknesses that I’ve come up with, and offer some advice for how to harden your writing system against analysis.

Obscuring the obscure

The most simple way to do this would be just creating new letter forms for your language. If you just use a new symbol in the place of ‘a’, a new one in place of ‘b’, and so on, you’ll quickly have a text that’s unable to be read at first glance. The system would be easy to create, but I’d recommend against it. As soon as somebody started looking, they might well start noticing patterns. If they know (or suspect) that it’s English, they’ll start looking for certain patterns. If they see a single symbol alone, they’ll know, for instance, that it’s either ‘a’ or ‘I’. Similarly, two symbol words are far less common, and give them an inroads to further analysis.

If, on the other hand, you mix it up a bit, you’ll make their lives infinitely more difficult. For instance, if you were to use only the sounds of words and disregard how they’re written, it would instantly complicate analysis. So, instead of “rough”, you’d have ‘ruf’. “You” would become a two symbol sound (‘yu’), and ‘I’ would become two symbols (‘ay’). If you’d like to play it even safer, start marking all the different English vowels. With that step, you’ll confuse anybody who thinks that English only has a, e, i, o and u, and likely stop most casual inquiries.

Another good strategy is to include a few filler characters. If you include in your writing system a symbol or two that you know has no meaning, you can use it with single sound words (‘a’) to throw off analysis. Similarly, just dropping a few of those into random words will force people to try and find a correspondence for something that, well, just doesn’t exist.

While we’re being evil to any potential analysis, one of the advantages to creating a phonetic symbol set is that you can use it to write in other languages as well. If you start including random words in other languages, or substituting say, some Hindi word for their English equivalents, it’ll throw off any attempts to figure out what is what based on the phonology (sound rules) of a language.

For instance, somebody analyzing your system might know that if there are three consonants together in English at the start of a word, the first consonant is always an /s/ sound. Always. So, if they’ve decided what constitute vowels, and then find three consonants before one, they’ll know what your /s/ symbol is. That is, unless you use the Russian word “vsyo” (all) someplace in your text. Then, they’ll have at least two three-consonant clusters, and can’t use the phonology to work their way through it.

Using similar symbols to the existing system can be a double-edged sword: it can both help and hurt you. If your symbols are too similar, your system is far too easy to crack. However, I highly recommend using one or two symbols that are at least close to an existing symbol, however, I’d recommend assigning them a different sound. For instance, one might use a ‘v’ to represent the /k/ sound.

This has the wonderful effect of creating a cognitive mismatch between the system they’re trying to analyze and the system they’re using. As any English-literate learner of Russian will tell you, at first, it’s very tough to see a ‘p’ and hear an ‘r’ sound, even though that’s what Cyrillic does. It won’t stop them, but it’ll certainly make analysis that much more of a pain.

There are other ways to make life difficult for anybody analyzing your writing. If you write from right to left, you’ll create a great many problems for them, just as if you were to write vertically. Along those lines, if you remove spaces and familiar punctuation, it’s even more difficult, both for you and for them.

Also, remember that you don’t need to create an alphabet per se. You might create a syllabary like in Japanese, where the symbols each represent a different syllable (‘ra’ might have one symbol, whereas ‘re’ would have a completely different one). Also, if you’re feeling ambitious, you could make a character set, where each word has a symbol. It’d be a great many symbols, but it’d be very difficult to crack.

Finally, as common sense dictates, throw away the key. Once you’ve created your system and learned it well, hide or destroy your handy reference guide, or else understanding your writing is as easy as looking up the symbols.

It has to make sense to somebody

However, if you spend all your time trying to make reading your system tough on other people, it’s easy to make it tough on you too. There are a few easy ways to avoid this.

Perhaps one of the toughest parts of the process is actually designing the symbols. For that, I highly recommend that you make a trip over to Omniglot, a wonderful website which discusses writing systems around the world and has lots of examples. It’s a great place to blow a few hours, and will show you all the variety of systems out there.

Once you’ve got symbols, make sure you’re combining them in a way that makes sense to you. For instance, I might use a system based on phonetics, where high vowels (like in beet and boot) are marked above the baseline, and low vowels (bat and bot) are the same symbol, but marked below the baseline. However, you can go much more personalized. If a symbol reminds you of the shape of Cape Cod, you might use it for a ‘kay’ sound. Basically, if it makes sense to you, go for it.

Finally, keep in mind the difficulty of writing the symbols you pick. Don’t use anything more complex than necessary, because it’ll only slow you down. Similarly, if you often write with a fountain pen, try to avoid symbols with right to left strokes (assuming you’re writing left-to-right). If you’re going to use this a lot, any corners you can cut now (without making it more difficult to read) will save you a massive amount of time in the future.

Your thirteen spices are safe

If you take the time to create your own writing system and take a few easy steps to harden it, you can sure that nobody will be able to casually peruse your secret recipes and writings.

However, as with all security measures, your secrets are never completely safe. All that locks, encryption, ciphers and even cryptorthography can buy you is time. If somebody has a sample of your writing system, it’s very likely that, given enough time, they’d be able to figure it out.

So, if the CIA wants to find out the secret thirteen spices, chances are, they’ll be able to. However, a little bit of cryptorthography will go a long way towards keeping your recipes mysteriously delicious.

(PS: If this sounds interesting, stay tuned. I might well be holding some sort of a contest where people create secret writing systems and then have other people try and crack them. I’ll announce more details later, but if you’re interested, leave a comment and we’ll be in touch!)

If any pages, links, or other functionalities are broken, please contact me and I’ll try and get things fixed up. Otherwise, it should be the same LingMystic that you know and (hopefully) enjoy.

Thanks, as always, for your readership, and I hope that this new server will allow me to expand the site and make it something even better both for me and for those who stumble across it!

There are a great many words that are used all the time in Academia, but seldom outside of a scholastic context. Many of these words aren’t particularly useful outside of their specific academic context. An example of a word of this type from Linguistics might be fricativization, which is the process by which a stop consonant becomes a fricative over time (for instance, /t/ goes /s/). However, there are a few words which are definitely handy even outside of linguistics and academia, but really never seem to fall out of the ivory tower into everyday use.

Sadly, in an everyday social situation when one of these terms would really work best, you’re left with two bad options.

Your first option is to just use the term in whatever context you’re in, even if the people you’re talking to might not be familiar with the term. Unless you do this with an incredible degree of social grace, you’ll seem very much like an elitist, or like you’re trying to thrust your academic background in somebody’s face. Going on to explain the term is helpful, but even then, you’re still going to seem like you’re playing professor, not hanging out with friends. That’s just not cool.

Your other option is to circumlocute, or talk around, the word. Here, you’d just describe what the word means in context, without ever actually using it. So, for instance, rather than saying “I’m a phonologist”, you might say “I study the sounds of language and the rules that go with them”. This is much more socially acceptable and doesn’t have the same air of “look at me, I’m an academic”, but it can get awkward if you want to use the word multiple times in a conversation.

So, today, I’d like to create a new option.

To Posit

One of these academic terms that I think is quite handy in everyday life is the verb “to posit”. This means, roughly, “to assume something for the basis of argument”, or in other situations, “to hypothesize”. In Linguistics, we use this term pretty frequently when trying to justify a certain analysis. Here’s an example of its usage from a recent assignment of mine on the history of Polish:

In order for this jeste —› ješcie change to have any sort of naturalness, I must first posit an isolated (at least, based on this data) vowel epenthesis [Epenthesis is the addition of a sound between two other sounds], whereby an /i/ was inserted between the the [t] and the [e] of the 2pl form (jeste —› jestie).

Ignoring the rest of the specialized vocabulary and examples, I’m basically saying that for the rest of my argument to make any sense, I’m going to hypothesize (and to a certain extent, assume) that a vowel pops up between those two sounds at some point. Here, it’s in a very academic context, but there are definitely situations in everyday life where this word could come in handy.

For instance, you’re near campus and your football obsessed school is having a home game. You’re talking with a bunch of friends before heading off to have a tasty burrito, trying to plan your route through the pandemonium:

Friend: What’s gonna be the best route to take? Do you know which streets they’re gonna block off to let the drunken fans crawl home?
You: Not a clue, but based on the past few games, we can pretty safely posit roadblocks on Euclid and Regent.
Friend: Yeah, good call, let’s try University… or… You know, let’s just order pizza.

Now, for me, “posit” really is the best verb for the job here. If you said “we can bet on roadblocks…”, it would imply a great deal more security in your guess. If you said “Let’s assume roadblocks…”, it would make it sound like there’s no other option. Finally, if you said “well, let’s hypothesize that they’ve set up roadblocks…”, you’d sound like you desperately needed to get off campus more, and further than just the burrito shop.

Let’s posit further usage by readers of this site

As many of you have already figured out, posting these obscure words on your blog isn’t really a better way to use these words in conversation. Unless your friends are all avid readers of your site (and mine aren’t, for the most part), you’ll still have to explain these words or work around them.

However, I have a wonderful dream. First, I’ll talk about “positing” on my site. Then, maybe you will, because it’s much less confrontational when you use an obscure word oline. Then, your friends friend might use it. People will start bumping into it, and more and more, it will enter the collective consciousness of society.

Eventually, this effect will cascade until my final dream is realized, and I can walk into a bar, sidle up next to a very attractive woman, and say that “given the fact that you’re talking to me, that you’re expressing interest, and most importantly, that I find you very attractive, I’m going to posit a wonderful end to this evening”.

Unfortunately, even if I use the perfect verb in the perfect context, in that situation, I still posit a quick, firm slap to the face. It’d SO be worth it.

Program Note: Due to a recent plague of comment spam, all comments are currently set to await my moderation. If you don’t see your comment there immediately, don’t despair, I’ll see it and approve it shortly.

I just wanted to let you all know that I’m going to be on sabbatical for a few weeks from making LingMystic posts. Between classes restarting and work, I’m not going to have much time, and I don’t like to just leave things silent.

As always, I’ll be available for emailing (contact link in the top right part of the page) and you’re still welcome to comment, but there just won’t be much new.

So, enjoy the end of your summer, and keep looking out for awesome language!