In the past, your host has remarked on the unfortunate inevitability of meeting the linguistically naïve, and hearing "So you're a linguist? How many languages do you know?"
Apparently, biologists havethe same problem:
For instance, I worked in an insect lab during graduate school (investigating caterpillar digestive physiology) and we'd commonly get people calling or coming into the lab asking for information on some random insect they found in their yard, a park, or wherever. When we couldn't even tell them what type of insect it was, let alone the details of its life cycle ("Um, we think it's some kind of beetle larva, but we're really not too sure ..."), the disappointment was evident. Now that I'm teaching zoology it's even worse: any animal is fair game.
Wow. At least nobody ever calls SC to ask about languages he's never even heard of...
Some people in my family think that since I'm a linguist, I know every language in the world, so sometimes things happen like my grandmother asking me to translate something out of Arabic for her.
Posted by: Ryan Gabbard | March 19, 2004 at 02:12 PM