[x___diamond_eye]

Hello there.
Thanks for clicking this thread.

Anyway,
I'm currently a Junior in High School, and I've been recently thinking of majoring in Linguistics when I go to college. After reading into the major, I found it almost too good to be true. I've always been a sucker for foreign languages --- and language in general.

First off,
What college/university do you attend?

According to an article I read about using a Linguistics degree after undergraduate school, it said you could enter the computer/artifical intelligence field.

I was wondering what specifically in the field Linguists are used for.

And last but not least, how is it overall (with a bit of detail ) majoring in Linguistics?

Thank you in advanced.

[foxxx]

I am currently attending University of Manitoba and my major used to be Linguistics, but I found the courses absolutely mind numbing. Linguistics is the study of syntax, grammar and underlying similarities among languages in terms of word order, etc. I thought that would be beneficial for someone who loves learning foreign languages but it clearly went too indepth and barely kept me interested. I ended up switching to Asian Studies instead because that major allows me to study culture and foreign languages to my heart's content lol (I'm currently taking Mandarin, Japanese and Korean).

Not that I want to sway you from Linguistics or anything but from my experience and what I've learned from others, Linguistics isn't the ideal major to go into if you're interested in computer/artifician intelligence specifically. I have a few friends who were honours major in Linguistics who ended up switching to honours Psychology instead because of the llimited career choices in the field of Linguistics.

From my understanding, Linguistics is basically a strong background for someone interested in speech pathology or ASL. Otherwise, computer/artificial intelligence field is more of a computer science aspect I would think. My friend is an honours major in computer science and she is in her last year. She's specifically chosen courses that will specialize in computer/artifical intelligence.

I would consult with a career counsellor as well as check up with university websites for more information.

[Tamago86]

The problem is with linguistics is that it's still a relatively new field so the only serious job positions relating to linguistics are university positions which in most cases require at least a PhD in the field to get into.

However undergraduate major hardly equals career, these days you need a graduate degree to get taken seriously at most good jobs. You should do what you want, but just make sure you maintain good grades so you can get into a good graduate school in whatever you choose to study, be it linguistics or otherwise (it's of course possible to major in linguistics in college and then go off to law school, in fact taking legal courses in undergrad really doesn't increase your chances that much for it). Linguistics also makes a great minor or a double major if your focus is language, however linguistics deal more with the science of language, how it's formed and why. If you like just learning languages, and not analyzing them with a magnifying glass then you might just be better off majoring in a language or a cultural studies program which has a language as one of it's components.

I love learning languages too, just got back from living in Japan so I'm taking advanced Japanese (400lvl) in college as well as intermediate Chinese (200lvl), and some day hope to learn German too.

[parkie871]

linguistics is very good to do as a double major. linguistics does look at the science of language like the person above said, but in my university, it also looks at like, how media (ie advertisements, etc) use language to achieve their purpose. So if ur doing a journalism major or mass comm, or just want to work in the media, u should look into taking linguistics.