Linguistics and such

Made a critical mistake last night: I tried to right an insignificant wrong in the world by politely correcting the New York Times’ usage of the word “linguist.” They wrote me a rather sharp reply and pointed out that, in fact, numerous dictionaries support false meanings as primary (“speaker of multiple languages,” which is really a “polyglot”). Meanwhile, Linguistics 200 homework has just consumed two more hours of my life – it didn’t teach me anything; it just provided some useless brain-teasers which are slightly subjective, not highly intellectually satisfying to crack, and more than a bit weakly linked to the material at hand, usually. Glad I’m not majoring in LING – this might be a tad late to switch tracks… (Somebody did that freshman year – two weeks before graduation, declared a change of majors from Biochemistry to Political Science, requiring an extra two years of school. WOW.). Anyway, I’m off to bed now. No more linguistic torture today…