I just found your blog, and I have to say, it's quite wonderful. I too am someone who aspires to study linguistics, and I'm thinking of majoring in linguistics or sociology. What first got you interested? What part of linguistics most interests you? It was so wonderful to find someone who's interested in the subject. Are there other blogs you would recommend?
— asked by crazyrobin7
Thank you very much!
I’d say my interest was first piqued when I found constructed languages (I can’t remember if I came across Lojban or Esperanto first). I, of course, always knew about other languages, but I never thought about communication solutions other than just having a bunch of people learn multiple languages. But with auxlangs it raised the idea of intermediate languages. I’ve since disillusioned myself to the realism of using these intermediary languages for international and inter-language communication, but I’d say the idea is what opened the linguistics door for me. From the idea of conlangs I started thinking, what truly constitutes a language? I suppose that to make one up from scratch, you really have to understand all the different aspects of linguistics.
As for what part most interests me particularly… I’m not quite sure. Perhaps I’m currently most intrigued by Semantics. I know it’s a broad field, but I love the idea that particular values of words are defined by how they contrast with other words in their respective semantic fields.
Other blogs? To be very honest with you, I’m not sure. I peruse the linguistics tag and a couple others and just hope for the best. I usually find some pretty interesting things. Off of tumblr there’s also the Language Log and reddit’s /r/Linguistics. Other than that, I mostly just bumble around. I’m more of a stumbling finder than a loyal visitor. :D
