Re: Bostonites. *ZAP*

John Fisher wrote:

> In message <3.0.6.32.19990326110820.007b1370@glad>, Brian Betty
> <bbetty@...> writes
>
> >So when people repeatedly give me linguistics 101 to correct me for
> >something I didn't say, that's not treating me like an idiot or a newbie or
> >a linguistic illiterate?
>
> An irrelevant aside - what does "Linguistics 101" mean?  I've often seen
> people say "X 101" to mean "the rudiments of X", but I don't understand
> the derivation.
It has to do with the way in which university classes tend to
be labeled in the United States.  Every class is both assigned
a proper name, and a alphanumeric code, to designate the
relative difficulty of the class.  For example, the historical
linguistics class I took was called "LIN 345:  Language
change and Language variation".    Here at the University of
Texas, the first number (the 3) indicates it's worth three
credit hours, while the second two numbers indicate whether
a class is upper division or not (greater than 20, here, indicates
it is).  But UT is somewhat strange in that respect;  other
universities (or so I've seen) who don't have so baroque a
system, usually just assign a number, the lower, the easier.

I think the system originated, however, simply in what room the
class was being held, which might explain the variation between
schools.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
proletariat that I have a problem with. - Alfred Wallace
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