In high school I studied French, but was interested in language in general. I remember doing some SAT vocabulary lessons in my 11th grade English class and we came upon the word "vanquish." I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn't sure what the word meant, and I said to the teacher "Well, in French, 'vaincre' means to conquer, so I'm assuming 'vanquish' has a similar meaning." She told me that I was correct, and I remember thinking that I don't know what field of study lets you study things like this, but whatever it was, that was for me. (Nerd alert: in 2nd grade we had one of those language arts books that for some reason, we didn't use all that often enough to finish it. We were supposed to turn in our books at the end of the year, but I took mine home and finished the book for fun over the summer. If this doesn't seem shocking to you, this blog is for you.)
Fast forward a couple years, and in my introductory linguistics classes in college (where I ended up majoring in Anthropology with a concentration in Linguistics...) and we had a fabulous text book called "Language Files;" addition to it just being great fun (2nd nerd alert), real-life examples of a given linguistic construct were often given. After learning about certain terms and constructs in classes, I'd often start to notice them in newspapers, the Internet (which I had just learned how to use that year), food labels, etc. I began to clip or print out these things, mostly just for my own fascination and enjoyment, and labeled the folder "Mara's Unofficial Language Files," later turning into "Mara's Language Tidbits."
Many years later (never mind how many!) I'm still collecting these fascinating linguistic tidbits, and among my small cohort of linguistics professionals who are also frighteningly just as obsessed with discussing this stuff, discussion came up that perhaps others might enjoy the Language Tidbits as well.
Just a couple of disclaimers:
1) I do not work for the publishers of Language Files, nor am I officially endorsing the purchase of the book. If you however are interested in seeing what the heck I'm talking about, go here http://linguistics.osu.edu/research/publications/languagefiles/ to read about the latest (11th) edition and see the table of contents.
1a) I do plan in this blog to reference this book as well as mention other linguistics texts I have read, as well as case studies/ethnographies/general books written by linguists whose work I enjoy. Additionally, as those who know me can confirm, I enjoy perusing the Internet in search of items to add to the Unofficial Language Files. I do plan to post links to things I find that I think belong in the blog, with full credit given to the site or sites on which I found them.
2) This blog is for fun - yours and mine - and I in no way claim to be a linguist or professional. I just like (love) linguistics, have some educational and professional experience with it, and enjoy talking about it so much that I wanted to share it. I am in no way claiming to be an expert and I apologize in advance if I offend any true professional linguists out there.
2a) My experience with linguistics boils down to this: a BA in Anthropology with a concentration in Linguistics, an MA in Applied Linguistics, 11 years experience teaching adult-level ESOL/Adult Literacy/ABE/Pre-GED/U.S. Citizenship, professional development activities in Applied Linguistics areas, and general reading of non-fiction topics in the many areas of the field of Linguistics.
That being said, come back often, and enjoy!
Mara
