Re: CHAT: Steg's wonderful .sig (and a question)

* Boudewijn Rempt (bsarempt@rempt.xs4all.nl) [991105 21:03]:
> On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>
> > Kristian Jensen skrev:
> >
> > > What really surprises me though is that folks studying linguistics
> > > at the university have never even heard of the word 'conlang'. Many
> > > of the students in my batch seem to be taking linguistics cause they
> > > don't know what else they should do.
> >
> > Yes! That's exactly my experience as well! Last term we were
> > about 50 people in my class at uni. (first term of linguistics).
> > None of them were really interested.
50?! Jeez, that's many!

> General linguistics tends to be taken for the wrong reasons, though,
> as an aside to specific language studies, by people more interested
> in literature. I don't know whether that's true in Scandinavia, too,
> but you might try to draw them on the literatures of their choice,
> to see whether they "are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will
> spue thee out of my mouth.", or are capable of enthousiasm.
I don't know how it is in Sweden but in Norway, linguistics is seen as
nerdy and irrelevant. In Ling101 there was 10 students, myself included,
last year. In the obligatory class on Akan, only I did the exam!

Ppl who don't know what to do tend to pester CS, anthropology and
pedagogy hereabouts, that's how I see it anyway.


tal.
--
"Better living through conlanging"