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.

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.

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.

Nocturnolinguistics

I’m a bit of a night owl. It’s not at all unusual for me to be up and working, talking with friends online, or even posting on this site well after midnight, and often, that leaves me in an interesting situation linguistically.

Let’s say that it’s 1:30am on June 9th. I’m speaking with a friend online, and we decide that we’re going to make plans for 4:30pm on June 9th, the same day. Our plans are finalized, and finally, it’s time to say goodnight. So, not thinking, I say “OK, see you tomorrow at 4:30!”.

Often, my friend will just go along with it, confirm the time, and move on. However, I have some friends who are really tripped up by this. “Wait,” they’ll say, “We’ve got plans for 4:30pm today, right? We said the 9th, not the 10th.” After a bit of clarifying chat, all is well, but these minor miscommunications seem to highlight an interesting difference in perspective among different people.

For me (and some other people I talk with), “today” is defined by sleep. I think that “today”, means, roughly, “between now and when I go to sleep for the night”. As you would expect, “tomorrow” then refers to “after I’ve gone to sleep and gotten back up, but before I go back to sleep the next night”. Sounds a bit complicated, but it seems to work in practice.

Until I’ve woken up on the day of the event, it’s not “today” yet. Thus, if I’m still up at 3:30am and I’ve got a meeting at noon, that meeting is still “tomorrow” to me, as I’m planning to sleep before that meeting starts. However, if it’s 3:30am, and I’ve already slept for the night and just got up early, a noon meeting becomes “today”. This is a very relative sort of system, and although it works fine for me, it does seem to confuse some of my friends.

For other people, “tomorrow” is, quite literally, “the day that follows this one on the calendar”. So, the moment the clock strikes midnight, yesterday’s tomorrow becomes today, and today’s tomorrow is yesterday’s “day after tomorrow” (I love that sentence).

So, for these people, if a meeting happens in the same calendar day, it’s “today”. Even if they’re still awake from the prior day and it’s only 12:01am, a meeting at noon is “today”. These people will dutifully make the switch at midnight, and doing so seems perfectly natural.

With these two ways of looking at the usage of “today” and “tomorrow”, it can sometimes be difficult to bridge the gap, especially when you’re not sure what system the person you’re talking to prefers, but there are definitely ways around it.

As before, let’s say it’s 1:30am on Monday, June 9th, and I’m confirming an appointment at 4:30pm on Monday, June 9th. The absolute safest way to express it would be with a qualifying statement, for example, “I’ll see you today, June 9th, at 4:30pm”. However, this can be a bit official or stodgy sounding. Another way to get around the ambiguity would be to say “I’ll see you in 15 hours, at 4:30pm.” The most common phrasing I use is something like “I’ll see you tomorrow/today at 4:30pm”.

A Call to Comments

Even though there are ways around this ambiguity, the fact that people seem to use “today” and “tomorrow” differently is very interesting to me. Calling on the wonderful interactive power of the internet, I’d really appreciate if some readers would let me know which usages of “tomorrow” and “today” they tend to use in the wee hours of the morning, and whether that’s the same in any other languages they might speak. It’s a fascinating phenomenon, and I’m wondering how widespread these usages are.

So, please, leave your comments. Although I’ll be off to bed shortly, rest assured, I’ll have a look at them tomorrow morning… err, today? In 9 hours? Oh, screw it, I’ll just look at them Saturday. It’s much clearer that way.

Ahh, the joys of Linguistically Justified procrastination.

However, in one of her recent episodes which discussed punctuating questions, she mentioned something that really mystified me: The Interrobang. I’ll quote her explanation below:

GrammarGirl said:
And finally, when you’re asking a question in surprise such as What? it isn’t appropriate to use multiple question marks or a question mark with an exclamation point. You’re supposed to pick the terminal punctuation mark that is most appropriate and use just one (1). Is your statement more of a question or more of an outburst?

I’ve always found that solution unsatisfactory, so I was thrilled to learn that there’s an obscure punctuation mark that was designed exclusively for asking questions in a surprised manner. It’s called an interrobang, and it looks like an exclamation point superimposed on a question mark.

You shouldn’t use the interrobang in formal writing, but I think it would be great if people started using it on blogs and in other informal communications. If you have the Wingdings 2 font in your word processing program, you can insert an interrobang as a special character, and there are unicode values that you can use to add the interrobang to your web site. I’ve put those in the transcript of this episode.

Although it’s a rather cool looking symbol, I think it’s a rather silly idea, and demonstrates one of the most frustrating aspects of prescriptive grammar.

So, the interrobang exists for a very distinct reason: Sometimes, you want to express that you’re surprised as you ask a given question, but you can’t use two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence.

My first thought when I read that was “How have I never heard of that rule?!”

…wait. Something’s wrong. I just used two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence. And… everything’s OK. The reader understood me, understood that the question carried a note of surprise, and most importantly, the English language didn’t collapse in on itself or explode in a blaze of punctuational pyrotechnics. That must mean that the inability to end a sentence with two punctuation marks isn’t a natural, grammatical rule (like “I have walked” versus “I have walk”), but instead, is an arbitrary, stylistic rule.

So, basically, the Interrobang was created because an arbitrary, stylistic rule has forbidden what most people normally do to indicate a surprised question, the “?!” cluster. They’ve broken the language by disallowing the existing punctuation system, then created this new mark to bandage the wound they created. Am I the only person who sees this whole process as more than a little ridiculous?

Keep in mind, though, I’m not against all attempts at expanding our system of punctuation. I think that the Irony Mark might come in handy from time to time, and a sarcasm mark would be very useful for online communications.

However, the Interrobang strikes me as a cute, interesting, but ultimately unnecessary bit of novel punctuation. The interrobang is only necessary if we accept one particular bit of nitpicky stylistic dogma. When you couple its questionable reason for existence with the relative difficulty of finding and inserting the symbol compared to the simple “?!” cluster, it’s no wonder to me that it hasn’t caught on.

That’s not to say, however, that the interrobang is without it’s fans, who need to be represented as well. After forwarding the article to a friend of mine online, she responded with excitement to the idea:

Make sure you talk about the convenience of only one dot. I know you may be against it, but you must talk about both sides and be fair. A dot may not seem like a lot of time to someone, especially if you are particularly crafty with a pen. BUT think about if you are hyperbole happy. All the time you will save over the years. It’s really staggering.

So, although the interrobang has a future amongst hyperbole-happy minimalists and time-savers, the fact of the matter is that for the majority of people, the interrobang is never going to fly. You’re welcome to interrobang your writing to your heart’s content, but just don’t be surprised when your proofreading friend hands you back your essay with a big red circle around your interrobang, and a small note, scribbled in the margins, reading “What the heck is this?!”.

Speak English, Your In America Now

We, the Legal American workers of the USA, need to stand together NOW, to keep English as our only native language.

Foreigners are saturating the USA & are slowly trying to modify our national language to include Spanish, so it will be easier for them to live & work in this country.

Qualified US citizens who need to support their families are being refused employment in their own country because they don’t speak Spanish. This is happening on a daily basis. The unemployment rate is up and the government offices are making suggestions that we learn Spanish so we can get jobs.

This is wrong & something needs to be done. If we do nothing, in 10 years we will all need to know Spanish and have to push 2 to hear it in English! Please help stop the madness before it goes any farther.

We can not allow any modification of our national language.

We need stronger laws which require resident & citizen applicants to learn English in order to live & work in the USA. If not, than these companies that deal with non speaking English patrons, need to hire an interpreter and pay them what the average interpreter makes. To force the “legal” US citizen to speak a new language is Discrimination based on language.

We need new laws created to protect the English speaking citizens of the USA from any discrimination (like employment, housing, etc.)
Amnesty should only be given if the parties are willing to learn English and help change their family members coming over or who are already here.
Petition to NOT modify our native language to include any foreign language
Petition for stronger laws requiring all residents & citizens to learn & speak English in order to live & work in the USA.
Petition for new laws protecting US citizens who are refused employment in the USA simply because they do nospeak a foreign language.
Petition for new laws protecting the English speaking citizens of the USA from any form of discrimination (employment, housing, etc.).
We would like to thank Verizon Wireless for taking the first steps in realizing that we shouldn’t have to push one for English, it should be a given.

If you agree, take a stand & sign the petition.

Painful grammatical errors

Here at LinguisticMystic, I do my best never to mock people for grammatical mistakes. I’ll certainly comment on them, and when they’re particularly funny, I’ll share a laugh. However, in general, I think that one’s ability to adhere to an arbitrary set of “rules” set out for us by the richest group of language users shouldn’t be a category of judgment.

As many of you likely noticed, the author of this post mixed up the 2nd person possessive (your) and the identical-sounding yet differently spelled contraction of “you are” (you’re). This is often a problem because, as I said, they sound identical when spoken aloud, but in writing, there’s a very large difference between the possessive (“I saw your mom”) and the contraction (“You’re a mom”).

Now, I’m not pointing this out to attack the author as a person, or suggest that she’s uneducated. Instead, I’m pointing it out because this is a wonderful example of one of the few times when having impeccable grammar IS relevant and necessary. In some contexts, a badly placed grammatical error can significantly injure an argument, and the author’s your/you’re mixup here is one of these examples.

This error occurred only two words into a rather lengthy rant about how terrible it is that people aren’t using English and how English is going downhill. This particular error in this particular context is a lot like somebody standing up to give a speech on animal rights while wearing a fur coat. If you’re going to give this speech, you need to prove that you’re a good person to trust on matters of the English language, and this simple little grammatical error threw that all away.

However, this particular error isn’t the only thing of linguistic interest in this rant.

Official English sillyness

I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit when the author said that “in 10 years, we’ll all need to know Spanish and push 2 to hear it in English”. This is unrealistic for a number of reasons, but not the least of which is the assumption that the tide could turn in 10 years, in either direction.

I consider myself to be nearly fluent in Spanish. I suspect that, if dropped in the middle of Mexico City, I could likely survive quite well, albeit with the normal crop of grammatical errors. I’ve never lived abroad, although I’ve traveled to Spanish speaking countries on a few occasions and worked in a number of Spanish speaking environments. I’ve gotten this degree of language mastery the American way, by learning the language in isolation in classrooms from a young age. How long did this take? Roughly 8 years of Spanish through Middle school, High school, and College.

Now, keep in mind, I adore grammar. I love it. I truly enjoyed these classes, and didn’t particularly slack. It’s just that, well, getting good with a language takes time. Sure, it could be shortened with immersion classes and living abroad, but I’d like to think I’ve had a pretty average language education.

For me and my flexible young brain, it took me eight years. Just imagine if a monolingual fifty year old was “forced” to learn Spanish. According to Wikipedia, around 82% of people in the US speak English only at home. Even if an evil Spanish-speaking conspiracy literally forced everybody in the country to learn Spanish, it’d likely be at least 10 or 15 years before most people could use it as a primary language.

However, that’s not going to happen. An 82% majority doesn’t just drop their native language without a gun to their heads, especially when it would require years of expensive and difficult schooling. Not to mention that English is probably the fastest growing language in the world, and it’s a prestige-language for many.

So, I’m quite tempted to say that the author here is appealing to the “defend the fatherland” attack-when-threatened instincts of the masses, rather than to any sort of logic. These fear based arguments are (sadly) pretty common these days, but to a linguist, this one is just plain silly.

When it comes to sillyness, though, there’s one statement that takes the cake.

Enjoy your cooked circles of Freedom-Flour

In her little petition, the author proposes one of the most ridiculous ideas that I’ve heard in a while:

Petition to NOT modify our native language to include any foreign language

Whoa there, Mrs. Official English. This is a bit of a tall order, as forbidding any further borrowing of words from other languages is a bit ridiculous. As I’ve discussed before, English is ripe with borrowings from Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, and even Arabic.

So, to categorically forbid the borrowing of new words into English from other languages would be inconvenient and juvenile. We’d be forced to come up with new words for all the items we might absorb from other cultures. Thus, rather than being able to simply use the word “tortilla” (from Spanish), we’d have to come up with a new word for it. Perhaps we could just use a compound word (“Thin flour-bread”). Maybe we could just make a new, English-sounding word for it. Or, maybe we can take a page from the US House of Representatives’ playbook and come up with a nice, jingoistic name for them. I suggest “cooked circles of Freedom-Flour”.

However, even if we were to start creating English words for everything, it really wouldn’t help what she’s afraid of. As Shakespeare points out, a rose by any other name will smell just as sweet, and no matter what you call a new idea or item from another culture, it’ll still affect our own culture. Sure, you’ll avoid having any foreign words, but if you’re still importing foreign items into our society, I suspect she’d still think our culture was “in danger”.

So, sure, you could try and bind the language (impossible) in such a way that it won’t absorb foreign words (unfortunate), but really, all you’d be doing is halting the progress of English, and weakening the language. Really, if this author succeeded, she’d probably just end up hurting English and making other, less hogtied languages seem more attractive.

Relax, Breathe. Your English is safe

I’ve used this quote several times before, and I’ll use it again: A language user trying to prevent language change is like a gardener trying to prevent continental drift. Every time these official English people stand up and yell, it becomes more apparent that it’s completely futile. English is going to do precisely what it’s going to do, and all the ranting and cute little laws in the world aren’t going to change that.

Even disregarding that futility, the fact remains that English isn’t going anywhere. Sure, more and more, it’ll be beneficial to be bilingual. Barring major wars, though, I don’t think there are any Native English speakers alive right now in the US who will have to completely switch to another language to survive here within their lifetime. Sure, English will change, but it’s not going away any time soon.

So, why do they keep arguing these points? Well, as I’ve said before, when people say nasty things about another language, it’s generally because they want to say nasty things about the people who use it, but are afraid to do so. I suspect that this too is another little bit of anti-immigrant or even racist sentiment that’s been dressed up in a little suit and clip-on tie and paraded around as a linguistic issue. Luckily, there are people who oppose it (notably including Senator John McCain and the Mayor of Nashville), and the proponents of these ideas remain on the fringe.

Next time you hear one of these people pop up yelling about saving English from those mean, nasty other languages, take a second to realize that it’s a really a linguistic non-issue. Make up your own mind on the subject, but just make sure that you rip off the false linguistic premises. Only once you’ve done that will you be completely aware of exactly what this sort of argument and mindset is supporting.

That might be expected, given that alchemy itself is of Arabic origin, both the practice and the word itself (from al-kimiya), but there are a surprising number of Arabic words which have found their way into English. I’d like to share a few of the more interesting or unexpected ones. As a simple disclaimer, I’m not an Arabic speaker, so I’m relying on other sources for transliterations and word meanings. Corrections are always welcome. Unless otherwise noted, all etymologies are from the Oxford American Dictionary included in OS X.

All about al

Very frequently, Arabic loanwords into English will begin with the letters “al-”. This is because, in Arabic, al is the definite article marker, just like “the” in English. Thus, in Arabic, “the art of transmuting metals” would be al-kimiya, al ‘the’, and kimia ‘art of transmuting metals’. As is frequently the case with word borrowings, this definite al has been combined with the original word, giving us ‘alchemy’.l-ġawl

However, there are many other loan words in English that begin with the Arabic al:

Algebra – From Arabic al-jabr ‘the reunion of broken parts,’ ‘bone setting,’ from jabara ‘reunite, restore.’
Albatross – From late 17th cent.: alteration (influenced by Latin albus ‘white’ ) of 16th-cent. alcatras, applied to various seabirds including the frigate bird and pelican, from Spanish and Portuguese alcatraz, from Arabic al-ġaṭṭās ‘the diver.’
Alcohol – Either from Arabic al-kuḥl, a powder of Antimony Sulfide, or from al-ġawl, ‘spirit’ or ‘ghost’ (which is apparently the same source from which we get the words “Spirits” (referring to alcohol) and “ghoul” for a ghost). See the Wikipedia article for the fascinating etymology.
Aldeberan – This star is named after the Arabic word al-dabaran, ‘the follower’

Unexpected Arabic

However, not all Arabic words have the telltale al-. There are a number of words that I found while researching for this article which I would never expect to have derived from Arabic. Here are a few of them:

Arsenal – from French, or from obsolete Italian arzanale, based on Arabic dār-aṣ-ṣinā’a, from dār ‘house’ + al- ‘(of) the’ + sinā’a ‘art, industry’ (from ṣana‛a ‘make, fabricate’ ).

Orange – Orange, as I’ve discussed before, is derived from the Arabic nāranj

Apricot – from Portuguese albricoque or Spanish albaricoque, from Spanish Arabic al ‘the’ + barḳūḳ ‘Apricot’

Assassin – from French, or from medieval Latin assassinus, from Arabic ḥašīšī ‘hashish eater.’

Magazine – from French magasin, from Italian magazzino, from Arabic makzin ‘storehouse,’ from kazana ‘store up.’ The term originally meant [store] and was often used from the mid 17th cent. in the title of books providing information useful to particular groups of people.

Sofa – from French, based on Arabic ṣuffah. A full explanation can be found here.

Sugar – from Old French sukere, from Italian zucchero, probably via medieval Latin from Arabic sukkar.

Zero – from French zéro or Italian zero, via Old Spanish from Arabic ṣifr ‘cipher.’

We’re all one big family

As corny as it sounds, this is proof that in this world, no one culture or language is an island. No matter how distant a culture or people may seem, there’s usually some small thread that ties us together.

Right now, tensions between Westernized countries and the Arab world are mounting and people are starting to question if these cultures have anything at all in common. That’s a silly sentiment, though. Next time you want to reassure yourself that we’re all cut from the same cloth, just grab yourself an Arabic speaker, hop on the sofa, and have yourself some oranges and sugar. You’ll find yourself communicating better than you could have ever imagined.

Update: A number of readers have commented and emailed to expand upon the etymologies here as well as to mention a few other Arabic derived words that I’ve missed. So, make sure to check out these wonderful comments, and feel free to add your own.

The different fields within Linguistics, once you’ve begun to study and ponder them, simply will not let you go. The reason for this is simple: When you study language, you’re studying one of the main aspects of human existence, something that we not only use constantly, but that we simply cannot avoid.

If you’ve got a real passion for language and its analysis, you’ll find yourself constantly analyzing the flurries of language that are constantly surrounding us. However, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

502 Error: Linguist temporarily overloaded

My friends have all noticed a certain tendency that I’ve developed since the start of my Linguistics training, affectionately referred to as “the blue screen of linguistic death” or “Linguist moments”.

Periodically, I’ll be carrying on a normal conversation with people, and then suddenly I’ll stop dead in my metaphorical tracks. Often, I’ll start drawing little trees in the air with my finger, or mouth words over and over again under my breath, and always, I’m pretty much catatonic.

The scary part is that really, I seldom notice when I do. I’ll be going along in conversation, and then somebody will make a speech error, make a strange sound or pronunciation, or just say something that “needs” further analysis, and I’ll just dive straight into linguistic analysis. Sometimes it’s a quick little thing (“Oh, she just combined the first two words into one…”), but from time to time, I’ve been known to actually pull out a piece of paper and do actual analysis complete with word-stress grids and IPA transcription. Generally, I’ll figure things out and pop back into the conversation down the way, but sometimes, these little moments will keep me thinking all evening.

Of course, the problem with this is that you can never really explain it to the satisfaction of the people around you. If somebody asks you what you were thinking about, there’s no graceful way to say “Oh, I was just trying to figure out why the stress pattern varies among the acronyms in the organization’s different regions.” Best case scenario, they’ll find it mildly interesting (although not worth the hour of discussion needed to actually explain), and worst case, they’ll just write you off as somebody who really needs a hobby.

However, linguist moments aren’t always a bad thing.

“Oh yes, please go on. Tell me how your dog got his name again?”

One of the most wonderful side-effects of taking phonetics is that any conversation can become fascinating. You see, when people are talking, we generally just listen for meaning, and the actual sounds never cross our minds.

However, with a little bit of phonetics training, we can make ourselves pay attention to the actual sounds and the little details inherent in them. When you sit back and actually listen, it’s shocking how many corners people cut in speech, how many little tiny speech errors we make, and how complex speech really is. So, even though the subject of discussion might be completely uninteresting, you can always find something of interest, even if it might not be that interesting to somebody without a passion in the subject.

It’s not just phonetics, though. Sometimes, little speech errors or unusual constructions will trip me up, just begging for analysis. Sometimes the analysis yields nothing more than the minor satisfaction of figuring it out, but sometimes, it’ll lead you to help solve a major problem in your own linguistic work, or give you a major insight into the way that language works.

“Wait… what?”

Finally, there are times where constantly having one’s ear to the ground for interesting language use is just mildly amusing, but not much else.

For instance, being obsessed with speech and speech sounds, I’m constantly listening to my friends’ speech. I’ve started to pick up on little interesting speech changes that they all make and that nobody notices. For instance, I’ve noticed that one of my friends (also a speaker of Korean) will pretty frequently replace Eth sounds (ð) with unaspirated t’s. It’s completely irrelevant to life in general, and most English speakers don’t even notice the swap (or just think he’s saying “da” instead of “the”), but it brings me a little bit of joy from time to time.

If you’re passionate, the sword isn’t double-edged at all.

When you become passionate about Linguistics, you’ll quickly find your passion spilling into the language use of your every day life. Whether it’s in the form of sudden bouts of near-catatonic linguistic analysis, sudden insights from random bits of conversation, or just subtle-yet-interesting observations about the world, it’s very difficult to leave your work at the office, so to speak.

However, the beauty of it all is that if you’re like me, and are truly passionate about linguistics and language, then it’s not work at all. You’re constantly surrounded by something that you’ve dedicated part of your life to understanding, and you’re always only a step away from your next insight. Sure, the occasional “blue screen of linguistic death” might be embarrassing, but in the end, it’s definitely worth it.

No matter how passionate a mechanic is about their work, they can only really explore their passion when they’re under the hood of a car. One of the true joys of being a linguist is that no matter where you go or what you do, you’re never far from your passion.

The difference between having an issue in your chest and having a chest full of issues

During the course of this bout of illness, I (unfortunately) developed a mild case of Costochondritis. Costochrondritis is a sharp pain in the chest that happens after trauma, strain, or sometimes for less-than-clear reasons. In my case, an unusually rough bout of coughing in a very strange position did the damage. However, this is a language blog, not a medical blog, so let’s take a look at the word “costochondritis”.

Medically, costochondritis is an inflammation of the Costal cartilages, and actually, that’s well reflected in the Etymology (origin) of the word. “Costo-” seems to pretty straightforwardly reference the Costal cartilages. “Khondros”, the Greek root for “Cartilage”, is the second element of the word. Finally, “-itis” indicates an inflammation. Thus, we end up with a word which, when you translate the roots, means, literally, “Costal Cartilage Inflammation”. Makes sense.

When I first heard the “-chondr-” root in the middle, my mind jumped to the only other word I knew with that root, hypochondria. Hypochondria is a condition where somebody constantly believes that they’re ill or is always preoccupied with their health. It’s a legitimate (and serious) psychological illness, but it’s a very, very different sort of problem than costochondritis (and has nothing to do with cartilage), so I was having trouble figuring out how they could be related linguistically.

Snapshots in time

The origins of words capture not just the history of a language, but the history of the people who speak it as well.

Sometimes, this is fairly obvious. Spanish has a very large number of words derived from Arabic, so one could pretty safely infer that Spanish-speakers have had a great deal of contact with Arabic speakers throughout time.

Sometimes, words can be relics of past cultural movements that have since been supplanted. The term “Yule” (which now refers to Christmas) is actually the old term for the Pagan winter solstice celebration which is the foundation for the modern Christmas holiday. In a widely accepted term for a Christian holy day, its Pagan origins are kept just a scratch beneath the surface, held forever by etymology.

Finally, sometimes, words reflect a past understanding of the world which we might not still have today. If a disaster area is described as being “pandemonium”, we understand it to mean “it was chaotic”. Literally, the world comes from the Greek roots “pan-” ‘all’ and “daimon” ‘demons’. Back in their day, such chaos might have been viewed in the metaphor of rampaging demons, whereas we might not see that.

A very humor-ous origin

So, what do Costochondritis and Hypochondria have in common?

Well, it turns out that hypochondria is, in fact, derived from the same root, and is a combination of “hupos” (‘under’) and “khondros” (‘cartilage’). It literally means “below the (chest) cartilage”.

It came to mean what it did because back when the word was formed, the predominant medical theory was Humorism. They believed that there were four bodily fluids (‘humours’), Blood, Yellow Bile, Black Bile, and Phlegm. Because hypochondria was considered to be a sort of melancholy, it was associated with an imbalance of black bile, produced at the spleen, which, tying everything back together, is located right below the chest cartilage.

So, even in a modern medical term, vestiges of this ancient Greek theory of medicine still show up. Similar sorts of effects from this theory have persisted in the older psychological terms referring to somebody as sanguine (‘full of blood’), bilious (‘full of bile’), or phlegmatic (‘phlegm-ful’).

Embedded history

Languages are always changing, as are the cultures that use them. However, when new words are created, they often provide a snapshot of the culture at that time. With time, people start to forget how exactly these words arose, but a little bit of digging for these origins can help you see not just the past of the word, but the past of the people who created it.

However, a recent edition of “Comedy Goldmine” is simply too magnificent not to feature here. The theme? Foreign Language Screw-Ups.

Although they’re all pretty funny, it seems like most of them can be broken down into a few different categories of speech error.

False Cognates

A foreign language word is considered to be a “cognate” if it’s similar in both sound and meaning to a word in one’s native language, and they both descended from the same source, either from a mother language or through borrowing. For instance, in Spanish, the word for ‘computer’ (computadora) is a cognate, as is the word for ‘volunteer’ (voluntario). These cognates happen frequently when two languages borrow heavily from the same language. In this case, English and Spanish both have many words with Latin roots.

However, it’s not uncommon for foreign language students to accidentally use a “false cognate”. These are, as you might suspect, words that sound very similar in two languages, but have different meanings. The textbook Spanish example is assistir (‘to attend’) and atender (‘to assist’). Sometimes, the mistakes can be innocent, but sometimes…

Frog writes…

Last year on a vacation to Cuba I rented a moped and managed to break it. When I returned it to the rental place I used my awesome high school Spanish to say I was ‘embarazado’ about what happened, meaning to say embarrassed. Turns out ‘embarazado’ means ‘pregnant’. I’m a guy.

Note, it’s not just English speakers who can make this mistake:

Dark Chicken writes…

This brother and sister I knew grew up in Mexico and were eating at a restaurant in the States. Well, the brother kept on bothering the sister, so she finally yelled, “Stop molesting me!” The restaurant went dead silent and everybody stared.

This comes from the false Spanish cognate, molestar, which means (completely innocently) ‘to annoy’ or ‘to bother’.

False cognates can make for some wonderful communication issues, but they’re not the only source of interlingual hilarity.

Secondary Meanings

In many languages, it’s common for words to have several meanings. Just like the English “cock” can either denote a male chicken or the male sexual organ, languages are littered with minefields of multiple meanings.

When a non-native speaker looks up a word in the dictionary, especially a small dictionary, it’s not uncommon to see several options listed. So, if a Spanish speaker wanted to tell a woman “You have a pretty cat” and looked the word up in a dictionary, there’s a decent chance that, quite innocently, he’ll use the word “pussy” instead and he’ll end up complimenting her genitalia. Here’s one wonderful example of a hilarious alternate meaning:

QueenOfMistakes writes…

The only thing I can think of was when I was in my German class and we’d been having a heatwave. I said “Ich bin heiss” (meaning “I am hot”), which made my teacher laugh.

Apparently, saying “Ich bin heiss” is one way of saying “I’m horny” in German.

This can also work the other way around. Sometimes, a language will have a word with two meanings, and in the other language, each meaning has a distinctive word.

Luebbi writes…

When I was in London with my class (German students), something hilarious happened at the airport. We where standing in a queue and some Brits came around and started to cut in line. A friend of mine yelled: “You can’t come here! There’s a snake here!”, which not only baffled the British couple, but made everyone else, including our teacher, laugh out loud.

The German word “Schlange” is used both for snake and queue, and he used the direct translation.

Grammatical Errors

Sometimes, you can have all the words right, but a little tiny grammatical error will get you.

Fhqwhgads writes…

Back in High School, while on a class trip to Italy, one of the guys was hitting on a local chick. He was doing well, until he used the word “bello” (instead of “bella”). She slapped him and walked away. Never call an Italian girl handsome.

Here, the writer failed to take into consideration the fact that in Italian (as well as in many other languages), adjectives are marked for gender. In English, we have separate words (a girl is “pretty” and a guy is “handsome”), but in Italian, that little tiny morpheme (unit of meaning) is able to completely derail even the most persuasive of pick-ups. The gender distinction can also change the meaning of words…

Mortanis writes…

Back in high school French, we had to pair off and interview your partner, then relate their day back to the class in French. A friend of mine interviewed a girl, and promptly reported to the class “She likes to play with her cat”.

But used the feminine for cat, which is slang for pussy. Was pretty enjoyable to watch our fairly attractive French teacher start snickering over something like that.

Misleading Mispronunciations

Nearly any foreign language one studies will have some sounds that are different from those in your native language. As a phonetics student, this brings me great joy, but when speaking another language, these differences can lead to some wonderful errors:

Ayreon writes…

“Cook” in Dutch is “kok” which is pronounced “cock”. A friend of mine once tried to “thank the cock for the nice meal” at a restaurant.

A co-worker of my dad’s name is Dick de Cock, which is a perfectly normal name in the Netherlands. However, when he got a promotion and suddenly had to travel all over the world, he got a lot of weird looks.

Here, I suspect that the Aspirated/Unaspirated distinction might be causing problems:

sewid writes…

Walking around crowded night markets in Taiwan after getting a taste of my first giant chicken schnitzel I asked my girlfriend how to say chicken schnitzel in Mandarin which she told me was “gi pai”

Much to her amusement when I misheard her, thinking she said it “gi bai” i loudly proclaimed in Mandarin to all around that I loved “gi bai”

Which I found out shortly sort of means I love vagina.

All it takes is a simple change in the voicing of a consonant to go from loving sausage to loving the polar opposite. Scary, huh?

Conclusion

There’s no shortage of ways to mess up in a foreign language. Between treacherous false-cognates, deceitful second meanings, grammatical gaffes and malicious mispronunciations, sometimes a second of speech may seem like an ocean of opportunity for offensive communication.

However, the beauty of it all is that generally, people laugh when such speech errors are made. If somebody knows you’re a foreigner, you often get the benefit of the doubt.

The moral of this story: Next time you’d like to compliment a girl’s pussy, you’d better have an accent, or else you’re going to be very, very pregnant.