27.1959, Featured Linguist: Laura Janda

[The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST]

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1959. Fri Apr 29 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1959, Featured Linguist: Laura Janda

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Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 10:56:44
From: LINGUIST List [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Featured Linguist: Laura Janda

 
Dear LINGUIST List Readers,

We are pleased to present you our next featured linguist, Laura Janda, for
Fund Drive 2016.

Please support the LINGUIST List editors and activities with a donation:

http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/

----------------------------------------------

I became a linguist because I was rather obnoxious and rebellious.

I grew up in a little town in upstate New York where no languages were taught
before high school. In ninth grade I enrolled in my first language class:
French. But after about two weeks, the teacher was clearly fed up with having
one student wave her hand in response to every single question. I was handed a
pile of books and cassette tapes, pointed in the direction of the janitor’s
closet, and told to go work on my own. By June when I emerged from that
closet, I had completed all the assignments and tests from all four years of
high school French. I was told: “Ok, you’re done with language for high
school.” But I didn’t listen. The following fall I signed up for Spanish. And
the same thing happened. At the end of tenth grade I was told: “Now that’s
really enough, we don’t have any more languages to offer, go do something
else.”

Two years later I was signing up for courses as a Princeton freshman,
selecting biology, calculus, and the like, since my parents had told me that
there was no way they were paying for a university education unless I became a
doctor. There was a language requirement, and that made me unsure of what to
do. I didn’t want to go back to French and Spanish, since my “closet studies”
were but a distant memory by then and probably inadequate to get me beyond a
beginner course. I could try something different. Chinese? No, that conflicted
with the pre-med courses my parents demanded. An advisor solved my dilemma by
enrolling me in Russian.

(...)

Read more:

http://blog.linguistlist.org/fund-drive/featured-linguist-laura-janda/






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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1959	
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