I was going to quote this, but the source is an image and I didn’t feel like transcribing. Read the first full paragraph of this page.
This has everything to do with what intrigues me and what I want to study. I need to buy this book (maybe after I finish some of the ones I already own)! My address is to the right, if I have any adoring fans that want to send me a copy.
I’m a huge language nerd.
That doesn’t mean I speak loads of languages, but that means I dream about doing so and I occupy myself about what a thought sounds like in someone else’s head. I can’t imagine what other people could be thinking about, but even wondering how it sounds in their heads, that fascinates me.
I think the diversity of language that we humans all have is more fascinating than the types of bodies we inhabit. You can be born of somebody and shipped to a faraway land because of an adoption, or you could be some donated DNA for a couple, or whatever and whatnot for suchworth and soforth… but that doesn’t represent who you are. Now before you jump ahead, the language you speak doesn’t represent who you are either, but it does carry a certain amount of the culture you were raised in and it is formed at least vaguely around what may have been important to the history of the culture you come from. There are exceptions to every idea. There are loads of people who feel as though they’re cultural misfits, belonging on the other side of the globe, but I’m sure there are some things you can pin down about them that is in their language. In fact, these cultural “misfits” probably have an urge to learn the language of where they feel they belong. Why? To sound like the people they might belong with? Maybe. Or on another level, they want to create an association those people – something possible through understanding the language.
Sorry, this is wavering off into linguistic diversity.
Linguistics is too vague a term to write about without going into things like that. Imagine writing about “science!” Linguistics is the most of what we can think of and utilize as a science for studying languages. Minds are what interest me, and since we have yet to be able to look into minds (debatable, depending on what you think of F-MRI, but) this is the doormat to the mind – as close as we can get. Until we can get inside, I’m content with being fascinated by who (what) comes in and out of that door. Am I losing you in metaphor?
