Funny linguist-fetish

Press Language exam went amazingly well, passed with flying colours.

Actually, can’t even recall when was the last time I had an oral exam (we only had written ones at uni), but it was okay after all. In fact, I like them better: if you take an oral exam, you at least have a chance to pass, whereas you must fucking know *everything* by heart if you aim to pass a multiple choice test spiced up with fill-in-the-gaps bullshit and confusing essay questions. Technically speaking, written exams are harder to pass but far more comfortable when it comes to the practical side of things: you’re not completely at the mercy of the teacher (whether or not he/she is hungry/thirsty/tired or irritated by your hair colour), and you know how long the whole prodedure takes well in advance.

Basically, the exam covered pretty simple elementary stuff (what is standard language, dialects, loan words, foreign words, deteroriation, ameloriation, slang… stuff you basically learn in secondary school). The funny thing is that eleven people failed the exam (“how the hell can you fucking FAIL an exam at a bloody expensive media course, you may ask all honestly :D), thus the elderly professor who wrote the book is considered to be rather strict.  A lot of people dislike him, but I kind of have a thing for linguists, dunno why. I remember when I was 16, I read a book by Noam Chomsky and fell deeply and madly in love with him, talked about his theories and ideas day and night for weeks! Steve Pinker was another big love of mine, his book “The Language Instinct” made my heart beat like crazy for months, and I was extremely fascinated by the idea of meeting him in person one day. Then, there were Törkenczy and Nádasdy at ELTE… and my heart said BUMM BUMM BUMM again and I was literally down on my knees. I would do mad things for them like waking up at 6.30 every FRIDAY (!) or writing a 30 thousand character-long argumetative academic essay on the behaviour of schwa in various syllables. 

Anyway. We went into the lion’s cage in threesomes, and  had the following conversation with Bencédy:

B: Ah yes. how did you get prepared for this exam, dear Anita?

Anita: Well, I did “Communication” and “Media Studies” at the University of Szeged, and the topic of your book was my actual thesis title. I just revised the material and revised contemporary literature on the subject matter.

B: And what about you, dear… (looks up my name) Eszter?

Me: Well, hmm, let’s see. I read your book and revised the notes I’d taken at your lectures (in fact, not my actual notes as I haven’t been to too many of his lectures, but that’s not the kind of thing he really needs to know :D)

Then, just like that, Anita flashed the names of all her teachers and kept asking him “do you know XY? And KZ?” for a couple of minutes, so I decided to unfold my identity and reveal my background, too.

“In a way, in a small and insignificant way though, I’m also a linguist.”

Then he asked me which particular areas I’d actually fancied throughout my studies, and I told him I was into psycholinguistics. 

“All right, then let it be your subject for today.”

“Psycholinguistics? In general?”

 ” Yes, you need time to take notes?”

“Oh, no, I’m ready to get started now if you like.”

So, I just spontaneously made a lecture on the roots of neurobiology, Chomsky, linguistic relativism, common misbeliefs about the snow and Eskimos, and basic stuff like that. He asked me a couple of random questions like the innate theory or the critical period of language acqusition and then we had a nice chit-chat about bilingualism in early childhood, and a detailed analysis of the speech patterns of his 2 year-old great-grandson… my heart was about to melt :). It was entertaining and fun, he seemed to enjoy it, too.

Bah, shit… now, had I known that I wouldn’t even have to get into any of the compulsory items, I think I wouldn’t have spent 6 hours reading the course book the night before!        

 

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