Taivo, If my college only offers linguistics as a minor, can I stil become a linguist?

Question

Where are you Mr. Taivo? Why haven't you been answering my questions lately?

Answer 1

I'm not Taivo, but I'm a linguist, so I'll try to answer your question.

The answer is yes, since majoring in linguistics basically makes you a linguist.

However, please be careful that there is sometimes a difference in terminology. The army, for example, calls its interrogators and translators linguists. Many people in general don't seem to know much about what linguistics is, so they seem to think that linguistics is just learning many languages. This is one of the most frequent assumptions I get about my career, for example. When I say that I study linguistics, people ask me, "Which languages do you speak?" or "How many languages do you speak?" frequently.

Linguistics is not learning how to speak many languages. Linguistics is the scientific study of langauge. In other words, linguists use examples from many languages to help us understand how language works in general. So, while many linguists enjoy learning languages, learning languages is not the main goal of our field.

So if you want to become a person who speaks many languages, you might not want to major in linguistics, although you could, but you should be aware that you would learn other things besides just how to speak the language.

If you are interested in being a linguist, then, by all means, major in linguistics. If you have any more questions about careers in linguistics, feel free to e-mail me through Yahoo! Answers.

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification. I realize now you wrote "minor" in linguistics. As I mentioned in my e-mail it depends on what profession you want to go into, and what the degree requirements for employers in that profession are. Please be more specific about the particular kind of job you are interested in and I'll try to help you.