Upon learning that I study linguistics...

...there are two questions folks ask, without fail. First, how many languages do I speak? And second, what do I  want to do with that?

(2) is fairly straightforward: I want what any liberal arts major wants and fears deep down in her heart of hearts may never actually happen – to be employed. I have no delusions of my chosen major actually directly getting me a job, unless I work as a professor or researcher, neither of which I am inclined to do. Here’s hoping that some of the problem-solving and argue-why-your-answer-is-better-than-the-other-possible-solutions training of linguistics are enough skills for future employers.

(1) is rather more complicated, and therefore more interesting. How many languages do I speak? Depends on what you mean by “speak.”

If you mean…

1. Speak with native proficiency : 1 (English, duh)
2. Could carry on a conversation/write a paper in: 2 (English, French)
3. Can read-to-understand with fairly decent accuracy: 3 (English, French, Tok Pisin)
4. Can read (say the words, not so much understanding): 3 (Spanish, Latin, Arapesh)
5. Have studied in a school setting: 6 (French, German, Spanish, Latin, Old English, Proto-Indo-European[1])
6. Can say 1+ word or phrase from: 12 (English, French, German, Spanish, Latin, Tok Pisin, Arapesh, Old English, ASL, Chinese, Japanese, Italian)

Other related answers:  How many alphabets have I studied (and had memorized, at one point or another)? In addition to those from (5), two [2]. (Greek, ASL) How many scripts could I recognize? Probably 5 (Romance, Cyrillic, Greek, various ASL transcripts, probably Tibetan). How many languages can I count to 10 in? 6 (English, French, German[3], Spanish, Tok Pisin, Japanese). 

Linguists despair of ever learning another language completely fluently; there is a certain essence of language that comes via life-long saturation in the surrounding culture and an early exposure to the intonations, various registers, and turns of phrase that late-acquisition learner can almost-positively expect to not understand.

This is depressing, to say the least.

But we plunge on with learning our languages and cataloging our systems and developing our alphabets, because the power and pull of words is too strong to resist. The joy of running across the just-right word in someone else’s language for a feeling that you’ve always had but could never name, the feeling of triumph when you finally learn the difference in sound between l’amour and la mort[4], having your mind blown when you learn that there are languages and cultures where the future is metaphorically behind (you can’t see that which is behind you, just like you can’t know the future) and the past is in front of you[5]. That there are some language speakers who can name 100+ types of tree, with their everyday vocabulary.

I study languages and linguistics because I want to understand why people do what they do, but mostly because the words. The words. They are power and beauty and poetry, love and hate and change. They soar, they sing. Words are our seizing of order out of chaos, our yokes to bind us to our loved ones and hold them tight. Words create community and systems, where otherwise would be unknowning solitude and tumult. Words are humans’ grasping for the ineffable.

Bliss. Serenity. River. Fizz. Cajole. Epenthetic. Loss. Veracity. Cumbersome.

L’aile. Promener. Laide. Majuscule. L'élision. Le roi. Bisou. Petit. Lapin.

xo, 

Devo

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[1]Also known as PIE – the class was called “Intro to PIE,” which is always worth a giggle

[2] If you count familiarity with IPA symbols, then three.

[3] This one maybe shouldn’t count; I get kind of lost between 6-8

[4] For a long time, I couldn’t hear the difference between the vowels of the second syllables. They were indistinguishable to my English-speaking ear. My French friend told me once that I would attract lots of French boys with that “cute” accent and confusing those particular words ('love' and 'death', respectively). This is the same friend who made a face when I said jaune the same as jeune, telling me with some scolding that that’s how they say it in the south of France…which, judging by her tone, was a bad thing? Anyway, l’amour has more of an “oo” sound in the second syllable, where la mort has more (but not quite) the vowel of caught or dawn.

[5] Tuvan, spoken in Russia