Well, for one thing – just in case those of you reading this don’t know – Linguistics is NOT the study of a single language (like Russian). It is also not a study of ‘literature’. Although it’s technically a Bachelor’s of Arts, a lot of people get blindsided by how math-like linguistics is. You have to go through Phonetics, Syntax and Semantics, all of which resemble algebra and calculus more than they resemble any humanities course.
So I guess for starters, I would say – make sure you’re prepared to deal with this:
and this
Of course, the point is to learn about a bunch of new stuff. But the stuff isn’t about reading novels and analyzing shakespeare. It’s about analyzing the structure of sounds across 90 different languages, 99% of which you’ve never even heard of.
And another thing is…
I encourage you, with all my heart, to go into linguistics.
I encourage you, with all my… brain… to think very hard about your realistic career paths.
I studied linguistics and I don’t regret it a bit, but it’s true that the fields you can go into are a bit limited. Speech Pathology is a big one, another one is actually computer languages… Aside from that, the future of a Linguist ends up being primarily research-based. Usually teaching in a University.
If I could go back and tell myself one thing, I think it would be ‘do something on the side that gives you an extra career opportunity’. For example, pick a language and focus on it in order to give yourself some translating credibility. Or double major to give yourself an edge.
Creator's Archive 