I can start a poll too! When I was watching Benny learn Chinese, I remember seeing videos by Steve Kaufmann. His Chinese is very good. But last night I read has never studies linguistics. So why can he call himself a linguist? I know bigdog will call me cdc again, but I don't care I found these definitions in wikipedia for linguist: So my question is, can he call himself linguist? I am asking because I'm not a native english speaker and I seen people arguing about this before. I speak Chinese and English. Am I a linguist?
Before linguistics came to be considered a science that encompassed more than just philology, the primary meaning of "linguist" was simply "someone who has learned or studies many languages." It is in that sense that Kaufmann insists on referring to himself as a "linguist." Nowadays, I think most people use the term "linguist" to refer to academics engaged in the scientific study of language itself, and sometimes also to people who translate or interpret professionally (e.g. military linguists).
In my opinion linguist can be used for the people who learn the foreign languages and the people who study language (the native one). But I find it very bad when a person find himself a linguist but is monolingual. Like when you say you are a footballer because you watch and study all the matches LOL. I think that he can call himself a linguist. I think also that he know about the languages, probably better that the ones who are officially the univeristy linguists but who are monolinguals. I think that it seems more usual to say mulitlingual, not linguist, and use the adjectival form. Linguistic is used for the talent in my feeling.
Oh, I would never do that Steve Kaufmann calls himself a linguist, so it's sort of a moot point. Sounds a little strange to me. But I'm not going to go into a caps-locked rage over it. Christophe Clugston might though. I can see someone who has a degree in linguistics, and is working in that field, being upset about it.
It's not a problem that he calls himself a linguist, but it's extremely irritating that he calls himself the linguist. On the internet, there are a great many linguists....
Some people use the word "linguist" about polyglots, and that's irritating because we need those words for two different notions: those who study languages using scientific methods and those who study languages because they want to use them. You can be basically monoglot and still be a linguist, like mr. Chomsky, or you can be a polyglot (or an unusually brillant user of a few languages) without even knowing what an adverb is. But from my own time at the university long ago I remember that every single language researcher spoke a fair number of languages. Here in Denmark, where we can't avoid dealing with foreign languages due to the size of the country, it would be almost unthinkinkable for a person who is seriously interested in languages NOT to pick up a few af them along the way. But in the Anglophone world it seems to be possible because there is so much material in English. Steve Kaufmann is definitely an accomplished polyglot, and his videos and his homepage shows that he has worked hard and thought a lot about language pedagogics. But as far as I know he hasn't described any scientific research behind (or based on) his LingQ system - it seems to be based on simple common sense plus personal observations. And maybe a good teaching system is more worth for society than one more dissertation about abstruse details or vague theories, supplemented with a long literature list stuffed with obscure references to other people who have written about something similar. But it ain't science.
I think speakers of multiple languages have a frankly better claim on the term "linguist" than do students of the science of linguistics. When I think of the phrase, "He's a talented linguist," I immediately imagine someone skilled in multiple languages, not someone writing research papers on linguistics, and the phrase, "The people of country X are better linguists than people of country Y," immediately invokes a relative propensity for language learning. A "military linguist" brings to mind someone who learns languages in service to the army. Calling himself the linguist, on the other hand, is probably questionable, unless he's planning on becoming a language-themed Batman villain or some such.
In the latest blockbuster movie from Hollywood, The Linguist and Irish Polyglot team up and pretend to "go good" in order to capture the Conjugated Crusaders, who decline to fall into the trap of false friends.
