My linguistic history
Before the FSF40 gathering, William Goodspeed checked my blog when receiving my inquiry email. When I opened the same website in person, he asked: ‹Are you into linguistics?› I was not sure what expectations an English major might have by ‹into linguistics›, so I awkwardly avoided answering.
The other day, I read a reflection on their linguistic journey from a linguistics guru. This guru’s encounter with language began with academic competitions and has since woven a marvelous double helix of career and language, an achievement I can hardly imagine. Their article, however, debunked my single-origin hypothesis of the linguistics community, as I had assumed the entire language circle stemmed from discussions on a BBS forum in the early 2000s. This prompted me to reflect on the role language and linguistics have played in my life.
Childhood
This series is taken from Lú Chānghǎi’s Retrospection. Only after being reminded by a classmate did I come to understand that Chānghǎi’s account of his unique experiences with his contemporaries was not accidental. I did not lament, for they at least had once been the chosen ones, whereas I was far from being someone at the forefront of the present age. No matter how difficult or arduous, or even how resentful, I was merely a country bumpkin, watching the spectacle from afar, unable to take part.
Though our choices varied greatly, my nostalgia was in many ways similar to Chānghǎi. My self-perception in high school was even based on the concept like ‘Muqliongism,’ but the distant past merely existed like still water in an old well, a phantom lodging in the present. The later misfortunes could not be blamed on the hometown; they were equally due to the limits of my nature and mistaken decisions.…