LANGUAGE
I Am a Linguist and No, I Don’t Obsess Over “Correct” Grammar
3 facts you didn’t know about linguistics. Told in comics.
As a linguist, I often get asked what linguists do. I also came across many misconceptions about linguistics. From “speaking a lot of languages” to “being very good at grammar”, I usually have to explain why none of these apply to me. So here it is! Below I debunk a few myths and I support these explanations with my Lego comics.
One thing to note though is that the word “linguist” is used in a somewhat different way in industry, or non-academic fields, where it can refer to almost anything: from translators to copy editors and language teachers…But here I am talking about linguistics as an academic field, as in what you would study in a linguistics course at the university.
1. No, you don’t need to speak a lot of languages to be a linguist.
A question I get most often from non-linguists is how many languages I speak. I happen to be fluent in three and a half languages (German is still lagging behind the first three…), but the reason for this is just because I live in Europe and English is not my native language. It is basically a necessity in Europe, especially if you move around a lot. It is not because I am a linguist.
