What’s the common point between the 1. classics – Literature, History, Philosophy, – the 2. explicative ones – Translation and Interpretation, – the 3. communication relatives – Journalism and Media – and the hottest 4. new disciplines like Neuroscience? You don’t know? Linguistics of course!
Linguistics: Expert Advice
The Study Abroad Portal always aims to provide international students with the best piece of advice for their studies abroad, so for all those attending our Online Open Day on Linguistic Studies by Leiden University, we invited our good friend, Maria Ahn Rios – PhD in Latin Philology and Early Modern History, to give us some insight about Linguistics!:
You like it or you love it?
Learning a language is challenging, yet extremely rewarding. But studying it, reaching into its core, is a very different and amazing thing. Yes, it is fun learning how to speak in another language, and what’s best, putting it into practice while travelling, but if your intellectual curiosity takes you beyond ‘just being fluent’, becoming a Linguist would probably be a suitable career path for you.
What is Linguistics about?
But what does it mean studying ‘Linguistics’? It means finding out every single aspect about a language: its origins, its structure, phonetics, sounds and pronunciation. It also explores questions like why do we have different accents depending on where we come from, our vocabulary and its variations of usage, and most importantly, establishing a connection between the sounds coming out of our mouths and what we mean. In a nutshell, it is the study of a language as a tool for communicating with others.
Linguistics Studies
During your linguistic studies abroad, you’ll approach interesting issues, such as how language relates to thought, how a child first encounters and assimilates a language, and how our communication is similar to or different from that used by animals.
The Linguistics Degree modules include:
- Phonetics and Phonology: the study of speech sounds and the systems for combining them
- Syntax: the study of grammatical structure
- Semantics: the study of meaning
- Sociolinguistics: the study of how social factors relate to language variation and change and
- Psycholinguistics: the study of how the human mind learns and processes language
But, what do I do with it?
Maria Ahn Rios, PhD in Latin Philology and Early Modern History
The linguistics career has many applications and paths to be followed. My favourite is Historical Linguistics, which explores how a language is born and how it has evolved over time. Of course, there are more branches you might be interested in: Eco-Linguistics, the language dynamics between men and the environment, Sociolinguistics, the language interaction between men and society, and for structure and biology aficionados: Neurolinguistics, the study of how our brain works its magic to convey grammar and communication!
But the fun does not end here! A Linguistics graduate may go onto so many different fields:
- Politics – speech and policy writting
- Education – teaching a foreign language
- Culture – specialising in cultural heritage or even training actors or singers in their pronunciation!
- Advertising – making up catchy slogans for a brand, becoming a publisher, an editor, or a journalist
- Technology – artificial intelligence and computer language processing
- Translating – working for an international NGO or similar institutions
Are you interested in exploring this so rewarding area and you are looking to study abroad? You are warmly invited by the University of Leiden in the the Netherlands to discover a lot more!
Learn more on the Online Open Day!
We could go a lot more into detail, but guess what? You can hear all about it in our Online Open Day on 26th of April!
READ MORE: Are you looking for a great student finance opportunity? Check this out: The Netherlands: Student finance options help young people to pay for their studies.
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