What's Linguistics about anyway?

Linguistics - a field that has held a lifelong fascination for me. But I do catch some flack from family members and friends for pursuing my interest in this somewhat esoteric subject!  ( A few typical comments from them include, "Linguistics, what's that?", "Spare me the details!", and "Get a life!")

Allow me, if you will, to attempt to convince you that Linguistics is an essential part of our everyday lives, because Linguistics is, simply put,  the scientific study of language. Unfortunately, the more expanded definition of Linguistics is a bit more intimidating.

The first four topics in the definition, morphology, syntax, phonetics and semantics, all seek to explain the workings of your mind when language is created or comprehended. You may never stop to consider what is happening internally with language, but then we seldom analyze what is happening when we walk down the street, wave to a friend, or open the car door . All of these activities are, under normal circumstances, automatic.  

Let's get the basic topics of Linguistics out of the way.  Morphology deals with how words are formed in the mind, for example, how we acquire the mental rules for forming plurals. (Did you know that plurals are more complicated than just putting an "s" at the end of words?) Syntax deals with how words are put together to form sentences.  ("Man bites dog" is more newsworthy than "Dog bites man."  How do we comprehend the difference?)  

Phonetics deals with the sound systems of languages. (My English speaking upbringing did not allow me to develop the Spanish trill sound, unfortunately!) And semantics deals with meaning. Ah, now there's a deep philosophical subject.  I can understand why a friend of mine once observed, "Linguistics is a bit dense, isn't it?"  Dense yes, but I still say well worthy of the effort to study.

For the less masochistic learner, the specific branches of linguistics named in the definition have more of an interface with ordinary life. Have you observed that people speak differently when chatting with friends than when giving a formal presentation? (Sociolinguistics)  Are you fascinated by different varieties of English?  Scottish dialect is one of my favorites. (Dialectology) 

Are you a mom or dad observing your child acquiring language? (Psycholinguistics)  Are you fascinated as I am by  Isaac Asimov's talking robots?  (Computational linguistics) Do you wonder why you have trouble reading The Canterbury Tales in the original English?  (Historical-comparative linguistics)  And would you like some guidelines about how best to acquire a second language?  (Applied linguistics).  Is the field of Linguistics sounding any more appealing now?

 I think I can prove that I am not alone in my interest in language.  I have a very useful app on the iPad called Flipboard that allows me save articles of interest to me in my own digital magazines.

And since I have chosen to share my Linguistics magazine with the world, these are today's statistics:  3,227 viewers, 57,452 page flips, 1,029 followers and 154 articles.

Someone else besides me is a  Linguistics nut!  That feels really good.  

Is 'casual language proficiency' enough?

Let's say you have finally taken the leap and made the decision to acquire another language. Would you be satisfied with the goal of "casual proficiency" in the new language?  I read this term recently in a Profhacker blog, "Learn Another Language During Your Commute with Duolingo."

The reference to  Duolingo in the title is what caught my eye.  Duolingo is an online language learning program. I'll admit that I have been addicted to it for about a year now.  As a matter of fact, I  have a 357 day streak going, which means I have used Duolingo every day without fail for almost a year! Whenever I run across an article about Duolingo, which is getting great coverage in the news these days. I read it with great interest.

The Duolingo Owl keeps me motivated!

I have often thought that one of the most difficult aspects of language acquisition is the "stick-to-ivness factor."  Lots of people claim they want to learn another language.  But when it comes to the daily effort required, most of us give up before we reach our goal. 

And this is where the concept of "casual proficiency" may be of benefit to language learners.  The idea of setting a reasonable but not overly ambitious goal for language acquisition sounds great to me!  After all, the idea that I am learning a new language to be a translator for the United Nations may be a bit unrealistic.

I signed on to Duolingo practice with the goal of maintaining proficiency in Portuguese, which I had been teaching at a local state university.  Then I added Spanish, because my college major was Spanish, and I live on the Texas-Mexico border where daily opportunities to use Spanish exist. Next I added French because I have taken lots of French courses in the past, and also because I have French Canadian friends whose bilingual ability puts me to shame.  And finally, I added Irish Gaelic.

My profile on Duolingo

Why Irish Gaelic, you may well ask. I'm not sure myself except to say I have always been drawn to Celtic languages. And let me tell you, Irish Gaelic is not an easy language for a native English speaker to learn!   But  the concept of "casual proficiency"   keeps me working on Irish every day.

I am certainly not going to be recruited by the European Union as a translator.  I will not have any college credits in Irish Gaelic on a transcript. I will not be able to understand Irish on radio or television or read an Irish language newspaper. If I were fortunate enough to travel to Ireland in the next year, I still would not feel confident enough to strike up a conversation in Irish in one of those lively pubs.

Irish pub

  

And yet, just the mere fact that I can now recognize some Irish words, find the verb at the beginning of the sentence, and maybe understand a familiar word spoken in the lilting accent is enough to keep me slogging through the Duolingo lessons. And I shouldn't say slogging. Duolingo lessons are one of my favorite entertainments.

After all, I can find comfort in the fact that "casual proficiency" just about describes the relationship I have with my iPhone 5s.  And I'm certainly not going to give up on it anytime soon!