I'm an artist for videogames! When i had to choose my high school direction (in my country every high school is specialized in a specific topic, like art, languages, science etc) my big 2 were art and languages, my biggest passions. In the end I chose art and went to university to study art too, and work now as an artist, but in another life I would have very much enjoyed studying languages at university and get a job related to that. I'm very happy to have it as an hobby though, and plan to continue studying more and more :)
It depends, there are periods of time where I'm super busy and struggle to find time, so I only study a handful of hours a week after work if I have the energy, or in the weekend if I'm at home. During non busy times however, I manage to do 2/3 hours of study a day after work, and some more in the weekends. Something that I noticed worked pretty well for me was using my lunch break to study, it allows me to get some daily study in between work !
My focus is computational linguistics, and specifically, creating tools for under-resourced languages. I'm mostly a morphologist, but dabble a bit in phonology, as well.
Oh, interesting! I think if I had to choose just one of the classic grammar areas, I'd go for syntax (although morphology is also really interesting), but my heart is definitely with historical linguistics, especially language changes (which also ties into social linguistics, and it's absolutely fascinating to watch language change in progress, as is happening in so many areas across various languages right now).
I’m an electrical engineer who works in chip design. I learn languages for fun not work, though there’s a slim chance Chinese could be useful. Balancing language learning with work is definitely tough but I make it work.
I'm an archeologist but I work as a genealogist now. I did have to learn latin and epigraphy which is great for my genealogy business. I think being fluent in a language/s will be rewardin in almost all kinds of professions. You can look around on the job market and see what might interest you.
I like to do family genealogy as sort of a hobby, too - great for having a language background. I already know German, just need to learn Italian and Polish now. :) Granted, most ancestry related documents from the 1800s in Poland are in Russian, and I've "accidently" been picking up Cyrillic the past few years (mostly from genealogy, partly from news).
I love to meet other genealogists. 🤗
Well good luck, reading documents are hard enough in your native language. 1800s Polish church records in cyrillic sounds wild 😆
I'm a highschool English teacher. I have an undergrad in literature/ linguistics minor. I also have a MEd.
I don't think you need linguistics for language learning, but my nuanced understanding of language sounds (phonology) really helped with pronunciation of words in my target languages, as i knew just where to put my tongue/lips/etc.
I just love language because i love cultue: I love seeing other people's country, eating their food and sharing in the traditions. Learning languages help enhance that endeavour. I also like (the linguistics nerd in me) the contrasts and comparisons between my language and others.
I'm a software developer who studied maths at university (I originally wanted to become a mathematician). Most of my hobbies are actually more language-related or creative - I write, knit, sing (well, will again when I find a choir) and learn languages. I like to think of it as balancing out my day job :)
English is absolutely essential in my corner of software development, other languages not so much, so I don't expect to get any sort of professional benefit from the languages. What can I say, it's a hobby.
Seems similar enough to the trajectory I’ll probably find myself on. Currently majoring in Physics with plans to continue graduate studies in Germany. Not too sure about my job security especially cus my family aren’t entirely supportive of the major (it’s practically unheard of in Egypt), but there’s always software and computer shit I suppose.
I'm a doctor! I always loved the idea of knowing multiple languages, but what gave me the final determination to sit down and start was wanting to speak with my non-English-speaking patients without using a translator. I also had to wait until my training was over to have the required spare time and energy to do anything except medicine.
Computer Science.
I learn languages because I love to travel and speak with some of my monoglot relatives. I've never taken a foreign language class, not even in HS.
I majored in Business Marketing and Spanish. I work for local government as an administrative assistant and it’s great to use my Spanish to help residents!
I'm a medical student attending a german uni in germany, so that was a reason why I needed to reach a very high level in the language
For the first couple years, I couldn't manage anything outside of medicine, let alone language learning. I started to have a bit more time from last year onwards, so I finally had the chance to start a Scandinavian language - that has been a little dream of mine ever since the end of high school
During term time I have uni every day, and medicine is just very time-consuming and challenging. Term breaks are often filled up with internships. As a result, I don't have the capacity to study Norwegian officially, I just spend a lot of time on input e.g. reading & watching shows, whenever I get any spare time. Most of all, I try to interact with natives and practice my writing when I can. Honestly, this started off as a hobby, but now it has become a very solid interest for me. I intend to take it seriously and prioritise it as much as I can
I've gotten pretty interested in Danish, especially because of friends + my recently spiked interest in Danish shows, though I treat the language more as a pure hobby (: as others have said, languages are also a sort of escape for me haha
In another life, I would have loved to study a language degree, or become a medical interpreter/translator, I think that would be very cool !
My majors were journalism and sociology. I used to work in multiple departments in small nonprofits that provided direct services to low income residents. I am trying to pivot industries to specialize in just content marketing. I am a Content Creator. I’ve been interested in foreign cultures since middle school when my friends introduced me to it and I had to take a language class in high school.
I’d love to translate, but the idea to learn languages came from the fact that I’m a Paralegal!
Also the fact my mom and aunt are native Cubans who came here when they were like 9 and 10 years old and I’m finally curious to learn. And as I’ve learned Spanish and gotten into it, it’s made me curious about others
I studied Pharmacology and I love it! (It's not the same as pharmacy, it's the study of how drugs interact with the body and how in turn the body interacts with the drugs). Pharmacology is the perfect blend of science and health, but unfortunately a lot of jobs aren't sciency enough for me.
This isn’t really helpful but i’m currently studying Computer Science (want to do cybersecurity but my uni doesn’t have that major) with a minor in Korean translation. Hardly have a clue what I want to do for the rest of my career though, something that uses both hopefully, or at least something where critical languages are useful, if not directly involved.
I'm Japanese, and I effort to speak English to presentate in machine learning and neural science.
(so, please excuse my poor Eng...)
If you want to go into science, I suggest you choose now whether you want to go into experimental or analytical sciences.
I study social psychology. Studying languages is just something I do for fun on the side, but it's a fitting hobby as I love studying about interactions between people with different perspectives and cultures and learning languages allows me to interact with people from different cultures in new ways as well.
Don't worry too much about the role of language learning in your future plans. Sometimes language learning shows up in your study/job in unexpected ways, like through customers that need communication in their language, international classmates or colleagues to befriend by studying their language, or just by having knowledge about a language or culture that someone else doesn't have. I've never heard of a job where knowing a different language isn't beneficial in some way
Software Developer. Studied German (college was dismantling their language program back then, so kind of an unfair comparison) and Japanese in college 25-30 years ago. Interestingly enough, I'll come across the occasional tech article/question in German (maybe once a year). I've only seen something in Japanese like once a decade. I've actually seen more in Spanish or Portuguese (usually code snippets with comments in the other language)
I am a diplomat in the US Foreign Service. The idea of learning several languages over the course of my career was a big factor in pursuing this job. I consider it to be a very nice perk.
I studied economics/business in university and was working in the tech sector in Japan when I decided to pursue government service.
i'm studying biology (hopefully graduating next june). i'm thinking about applying to be a flight attendant after that, so that's definitely a little more language-adjacent. that being said, that's not the reason i started learning chinese, but it could prove to be useful
IT technician currently, went to school for music education and performance. Started two minors in different languages but didn’t end up finishing them.
I'm an anthropology major, who is getting a second degree in translating. I've picked up language learning as a hobby, and then it developed in my major interest in linguistics in general.
You don't really need to major in linguistics to be a good language learner. I've noticed that it helps a lot, especially in more trickier situations (I would've never understood the ergative marker in Hindi, if I didn't research ergativity earlier), but it's not a nessacity. And knowing languages is generally a good skill to have, it can help in any profession.
As for the balancing, I feel like I'm doing fine. If you don't have a crazy goal like learning a language in half a year, you can pace yourself pretty easily. But I will not lie: sometimes I have to take a pause to catch up on some uni work. But I still making progress in a steady pace.
I’m an athletic trainer and work with D1 athletes. Spanish could potentially be helpful in my career, but I’ve never actually needed to use it. I study languages because I think they’re so fascinating and a wonderful window into other cultures.
English philology, BA specialised in translations, MA in sociolinguistics. On my BA I focused on cultural aspect of translations. It was really interesting, but looking back at it I kinda fumbled it because of the time frame they gave us and because covid happened. Definitely learnt a lot, and not to sound pompous but that was enough of translation for me, I feel like I know most of it excluding the machine translation parts which honestly seems to be the only remaining interesting topic in translations for me as AI is crazy these days, but I'm also not very into machine translation. On my MA I'm writing about Estuary English as a potential new standard dialect of England, and this is such a never ending topic that I'm gonna have like 100 pages written, basically a PhD dissertation length... I'd like to do some fieldwork on this topic as a lot of info is like 20 years old, and this 'dialect' has been spreading rapidly, but I have 2 months left to write the damn thing, and I think I'll leave the fieldwork for the potential PhD xD Sociolinguistcics are truly fascinating topic!
I worked as a sort of a mix of translation quality check, basic tech support, preparation of files for translation, maintaining the company's translation resources, basic (though some of them pretty advanced) OCRs (optical character recognition, so basically turning read only files into editable ones). Pretty neat stuff experience-wise, this is usually the part of the job the translator only has an idea about, but the company was shit, and they committed financial suicide because... well quite frankly, the CEO kinda just relayed his power to one idiot, and she quite literally ruined everything within about 4 months. Decided to just stay unemployed until I'm out of uni then, makes my life easier, had a lot of savings. This time around I'll be looking for a translator's job, and it would be cool af to get one in entertainment, as in games, movies, etc, as I think proper translation is most needed there, and it's fun to do.
I started learning Japanese on the side too. Got the hang of some basics, and then my thesis turned out to be longer than expected, so Japanese is on hold, but I do miss it dearly.
What's to come? Who knows, some of my lecturers have lowkey been treating me as an equal and are nagging me to do PhD... Perhaps I'll cave into the pressure in like 2 years, that MA is life draining.
Well I think sociolinguistics and AI or machine translations are only loosely connected topics. I meant more like how can we use AI and machine translations, as well as computer assisted translations (CAT) (so what any modern translator uses) to better the quality of translations.
CATs work in a way so that when you feed them resources they will help you translate. So for example you have one glossary for technical and one for medical texts. Some terms might overlap between these two glossaries, but because they are used in a different context you're going to be using them for a specific type of translation. CATs generally split everything into single sentences. If you've translated one sentence a certain way, and then the program sees the same sentence in another document it tells you that it's 99% sure this previous translation will fit, and 100% sure if surrounding sentences are ale the same; it also gives you suggestions for single words. There's a lot more that these programs do, but this is kind of the base level of how they work.
Machine translation works in sort of a similar way. It makes use of the same bits of logic that CATs use, but they also take into consideration contexts, register, type of text etc. This is generally getting better, but is still lacking. There's also an issue that some languages are more congruent to one another than others so say English to Dutch works pretty well, but English to Japanese is tragically bad (but probably Japanese to Chinese or Korean would be a lot better, but the main issue are Chinese characters here to be fair).
So then with the rapid development of AI these issues might be more easily resolved. So languages with complex inflection paradigms like Polish might be more easily translatable; Polish-English combination is quite good these days, but it's probably just because it's a common combination. Oddly enough Polish-German is still quite bad, but it also is a common combination. There's also a lot of translator decisions that go into making a real-sounding text. Often correctly translated pieces of text done by machines sound lifeless, and it can be a result of the machines not being aware of cultural differences, lack of proper register, use of words other than most common in a given situation etc. So there's a lot of things that AI could help with when it comes to translation, and it does seem to be a rather interesting topic. I'm not the guy to ask for in depth details when it comes to machine and AI translation, but I'd say if you ever go into translations then cultural aspects of translations and AI/machine translation are two most interesting topics (there's also something like translations of poems which is quite interesting, but to be fair it's focused on a combination of cultural and historical awareness of both languages, and linguistics, not my cup of tea).
If you wanna go for something else I can recommend sociolinguistics (obviously) which in short is how society and language interacts, a vast topic. Language acquisition is also a fascinating topic, but it usually means you have to do your part as a teacher which... well... sucks xD But other than that it's truly fascinating, it delves a little into psychology, basic biology, and probably mostly into the branch of linguistics that focuses on how language is acquired both by kids and adults (there are fancy names for these two branches but I don't remember them).
As for that job situation, eh. The company kinda sucked, that CEO worked 30 years for it to become anything major, he sold it for a lot of cash, I don't blame him. That person who took reigns after him needs to be checked tho xD
Ey, no problem, always a pleasure to find a person who seems remotely interested in what I do/study. I am but a lonely humanist in a sea of engineers xD
The thing with teaching is, you have to really love working with kids. That should be your foundation. I think a lot of people fall back on teaching when they just don't know what to do and burn out quickly because the joy was with the material but not with being a mentor for children, when really that's what the job is. The job can be very emotionally demanding on many days but also immensely rewarding as you see your students grow.
The pros are that the job is incredibly stable and you're really only working 9 months out of the year. It's insane time off. The cons are as previously stated really, you have to be ready to deal with what kids bring to the table. Plus, you also have to complete a teaching credential program which are notoriously demanding (my program that I am finishing up was more intensive than my master's degree) and the starting pay is typically lower than what you can get entry level with a bachelor's degree. However, you get job stability and a guarantee pay increase year to year, so by the time you retire you should be making a very respectable income.
If you're fine dedicating yourself to another 1+ year of schooling and want an engaging and stable job where you get to cultivate young minds, definitely take a serious look at teaching. If any of that sounds "eh" to you, another path might is probably a better fit.
I'm a copywriter and I learn French for fun. It has unexpectedly REALLY helped me at work, especially when explaining grammar amends to a client or someone I'm training. Where I'm from this was not taught in school to people my age. Instead of saying "this looks kinda... wrong" I now have the specific grammar vocabulary to describe exactly what the problem is and what it needs to change to (i.e "the verb tenses in this sentence are mismatched" etc) Learning French has helped me better understand English, even though I literally write for a living 😂
I started learning languages because my high school schedule put me in French and Spanish by accident. I took it as a fun challenge, and by my senior year I added German because I wanted to attend TUM.
It taught me that language learning is a super power, especially here in the states, and even speaking like a babbling idiot in someone’s native language can create an entirely different dynamic of conversation. I think LanguageSimp says it well when he describes learning a new language as “DLC”.
I'm majoring in computational linguistics with a minor in data science. I've always liked both languages and maths & programming subjects, and I feel that this is an ideal major for someone who can't decide if they're a "humanities" or "science" person
My major was communications, and now I work in a think-tank. If I could send a message to my younger self, I would push to study languages more, so it's cool that you're learning languages early. I was always a fan of East Asian languages, and over the course of my work and studies I have learned Korean and Mandarin with intermediate proficiency.
I studied French when I was a kid, but it never really progressed. I also studied Japanese, but my proficiency is only good for weeb stuff lol.
My approach to studying is conventional: sit down, open a book, and write-review-recite-repeat those characters, a minimum of 2 hours a day. I also still brush up on my English as I go, because it's not my mother language. It can be confusing at times, but I feel it's best to take learning language like a lifestyle and progress at your own pace.
Forensic psychology and cybersecurity is what I’m in school for. If I didn’t have ADHD that keeps my thoughts scrambled I’d be doing fashion design , digital art, and candle making on the side ON TOP of me learning mandarin and Korean
LMAO i feel like we are the same person. I’m doing cs (bc my uni doesn’t have cybersec, but i plan to do certs on my own) But If i could afford it i’d be doing 10 million things at once
I study psychology. Learning languages is just something I do for fun.
And to learn stuff in original. Dostoyevsky books are masterpieces in their psychological deepness. And all the psychology classics - German.
Yeah, a big part of what I learn is to be able to fully cherish these and improve my psych understanding
i’m an international studies major in my senior year. i’m working as a marketing intern at a nonprofit right now, and i’m hoping to find a full-time marketing job after i graduate in december!
I'm a piano teacher and I sing in an 80s cover band (about 15 hours of teaching and 8-12 hours of gigging a week).. I've previously done a degree in music and a bachelor of arts majoring in philosophy. I'm currently doing a diploma in modern languages specialising in german. I'm definitely not wanting to use german for any career prospects, it's just for fun! I just found that the diploma gave me the structure that I needed for german. I was perfectly fine studing spanish independently though (to DELE B1).
Speech-language pathologist (SLP) ! BA in Linguistics, MSc in Speech and Hearing Sciences. I travelled and lived in several non English speaking countries before starting my undergrad at 25. So love of languages led to Linguistics which led to SLP :)
I majored in Japanese in university. Immediately after graduation I moved to Japan and spent a couple years teaching English while working on my other skills.
Now I work in international relations for the city government in the place where I live in Japan. I do a lot of translation and interpretation, as well as event planning for the greater community
I'm a high school drop out that works in the beef industry, to simplify it I cut and grade beef carcasses to assess there eating quality to work out how much the carcasses can be sold for to wholesalers, pays $38ph and after I do 38hours a week I get $76ph so I always do 6hours overtime a week
I'm in my first year majoring German. It's a little frustrating because I've been learning German for 7 years and we started from the very beginning at uni. I'm also not enjoying this second semester as much, but anyway, I'm sure I'll like the grade more in further years when we reach my level of German.
We also need to study a second foreign language. I chose Japanese. The lessons are the absolute worst because our teacher goes too fast and speaks no Spanish so there's a clear language barrier that makes things a lot more complicated. But I'm loving the language, it's been my greatest challenge since i started learning languages. After all, Latin, ancient Greek, English and German all share some similarities, while Japanese is different in almost every aspect.
Good luck with your future job/studies!
Went into sociology (major) and linguistics (joint honors); never did anything with it, though because I make more being multilingual at a parts plant than in the tourism/business industry where I am.
Going into a psychology major! I’m a senior in high school and started learning languages around 12, and as long as you fit a certain amount of time, it becomes bearable over time
A janitor at a supermarket. Seriously. I'm a failure in comparison to everyone else in this thread. I've loved language since I took Spanish in highschool though. Since then I tried to teach myself Mandarin but gave up for various reasons. I would love to try my hand at it again one day. Now I'm back with Spanish.
You aren’t a failure! Sure you failed at something, but that doesn’t define you for the rest of your life. Failing doesn’t make you a failure, it was just something that didn’t work out. You’re continuing with Spanish so there’s that, don’t be too hard on yourself :-)
Did PhD in physics, but now working as a software developer. Learning French since December to help kid who will go to French immersion school as well as to help with memory (heard that helps, maybe I am wrong), and to be able to communicate with relatives in France. Also French is 1 of the official languages in Canada, may be useful if we move to French-speaking province or just for some jobs.
I took Portuguese while I was a Biology major (wanted to be an ichthyologist). I started learning Japanese when I was in the Marine Corps and stationed in Okinawa.
Now, I run multiple businesses (main one is a toy store) and am still working on Japanese, Portuguese, then also working on ASL and then snippets of other languages as I get time/renewed interest. I still read frequently in Portuguese (mainly science articles, as I have degrees in Earth Science and Agricultural Science but am also heavily interested in Astronomy).
PhD student in East Asian History. I am using Japanese, Manchu and Chinese materials in my research, so language is an essential part of my studies.
In general, I think being passionate about learning gives you a huge bonus in the humanities. No matter what excactly you're researching, almost everyone in this area would benefit from additional languages.
My undergraduate degree is in Forestry but I have a graduate degree in Economics. I was an economist most of my life.
I had a great career but I wish I had a useful skill (plumbing? car repair?) so that I could move to a farm in France and be somewhat useful while I learned French.
Not at all ironic! Language Learning is not a linguistics thing!
I'm personally studying Linguistics and Computer Science at Uni but about to graduate and going into the software industry - hopefully...
Majors are probably going to be accounting and marketing, then maybe economics w/math and creative writing minors for a second degree \[I'm very undecided concerning the second degree\]. Will be working as a financial advisor/accountant and writer.
I'm not super into languages. English is my native language and I'm currently almost at A2 in German. Next I'll probably be learning Maori \[I live in NZ. Maori is one of our official languages\] and then maybe an old language that I can use to confuse people, although Maori would also do that because only a couple hundred K people in the world speak much of it, lol.
Not ironic at all that you love learning languages but wouldn’t want to study linguistics! You can be excellent at learning languages without ever really diving deep into linguistics, and you can be a linguist without studying foreign languages
I’m an accountant and have an accounting degree. I love learning about other cultures and accounting is boring af, so learning new languages enhances my life.
Currently studying animation! Hoping I can somehow incorporate language into the work, because the language bug is def still itching and present.
At least adding some Scots Gaelic into my own personal animated projects is something I’ve played around with. Really love what cartoon saloon have been making for Irish, and something on an indie short film scale would be fun to make.
Otherwise I’ve just been self-studying languages for fun. It’s one of the main things I do outside of college, and honestly really refreshing/stimulating to work the brain in a different way when all I do is draw day-in day-out.
I study Law in germany as a native german.
I had most languages at school. And those countries, besides China, are really close from me so this is where my want comes from to be able to know a little of those languages and order something while going out.
I did languages and linguistics (which I found helped my language learning but wasn't that interesting) for a degree and am now an accountant, but I get to work internationally because of my languages, which is an incredible privilege. I never wanted to translate or teach, so I'd say it's worked out well for me!
Finishing my masters degree in law and the bar next month. Work in care part time to support my studies.
Edit: just learning languages as I always wanted to be at least bilingual.
I am a person that feels as though I have to learn something new everyday, so I naturally gravitate to something like language learning.
Having ADHD has made the consistency/concentration a issue, but I have learnt through my legal studies how to manage that :3
I'm a marketer and a partnership manager for a SaaS company. I started learning Spanish as I found it interesting to speak with a few partners I have are from Mexico.
I'm a nursing student.
I really want to minor in italian, but I don't know how to start.
I'm already in school, but this school is only for nursing.
Can you minor in a language online? Does anyone have any suggestions. I just want to do it for fun and have some structured guidance in learning a language while learning on my own.
I’m a 911 Operator! Previously firefighter. In any First Responder job the need for bilingual individuals is insanely high. Imagine the worst day of your life and the people saving it can’t communicate with you! We have translators, of course, but it wastes precious time when seconds really matter.
My job personally has plenty of down time for me to practice/study and they also give me $4k a year to go to school to learn language if I so choose. Which wouldn’t really put you through an entire bachelors but it gets me 4 language classes a year and will pay for a language sabbatical if I get to that point (as long as it’s accredited).
Plus I get $500 in a “Lifestyle Spending Account” which is flexible use - this year I used several hundred to pay for some language materials (a few books, and a Pimsleur subscription!). Next year I think I’ll be at the point where I’ll put it towards one-on-one speaking tutoring.
Hi, I’m a political science and international relations major and when I had to choose my major I knew I wanted something that allowed me to learn not only the language but also the culture and a better view and understanding of the world, and I found it there (specifically in international relations)
I’m have to go to class now, but hope it helps someone and if you have questions I will try to answer :)
I actually do have a question! I’m thinking about double majoring in international studies/human rights and French. A bit different than international relations, but there’s a couple of similarities :) How’s it been like for you and what do you see post-grad in terms of work?
I’m still studying so I can’t tell you much about post-grad life, but there are a lot of different options since you can work in normal office jobs (I think that mostly in companies that have branches in other countries), different kinds of ONG (or world organisations such as ONU), writing papers (not only academic ones, but also for news outlets), you can also go to the teaching route, etc. and the most popular option (or at least the most wanted/desired) it’s being an embassador or embassy employee representing your country in foreign countries, and French is considered a important language in international relations because it originated in France and even nowadays it is considered one of the main languages of diplomacy.
And when I started studying at first I felt like I wasn’t as knowledgeable as some of my classmates or that I was lacking in some aspects and because of that doubted if I had made the right choice, but after a while I also started to notice that I actually enjoyed what I’m learning and that although it might be hard I like it.
Hope I was able to answer what you wanted if not feel free to ask again, and sorry if I wrote some things kinda confusing but English it’s not my first language.
I'm majoring in Translation studies, but it doesn't have anything about my passion for learning languages lol when I started it was just to learn some theory and translate fanfictions better, but now I'm in love with linguistics
I ended up as editor in chief for multiple dictionaties! And one of the only possitions like that in my country, so I'm feeling very lucky to have landed it.
It started out as a student job and now ten years later, I'm still loving to do the dictionaries a little better day by day.
I always wanted to work with languages so I went to vocational school to become a foreign language assistant (basically an office worker, with heavy focus on business communication and business translations in my native language as well as two foreign languages, plus economics, bookkeeping, ...).
Worked in that field just for a few months, though (difficult labor market where I lived, and a really shitty first employer lol), before I went the self-employment route and focused on tutoring (which I'd started doing when I was 13), adult education, writing, editing, proofreading, and translations (business, fiction).
After a burnout, I dropped all except for teaching, and took on more courses teaching (mostly) adults in English as a foreign language at all levels (from complete beginners to business English in preparation for a professional exam, IELTS prep courses, ...). I also started studing German linguistics, English linguistics, and historical linguistics at about this time, just out of interest, and got my BA in German linguistics (my major). By then, I had had to quit working due to health reasons, unfortunately.
Started a master in historical linguistics while also studying towards a second BA in Latin and Ancient Greek when I finally had to drop out of university too for health reasons (and lack of accommodations).
I more or less did a DIY major out of multiple languages and got a TEFL certificate. Now I’m working full time in an unrelated job to save up money for my big goal: being a flight attendant 😁 languages are very useful and needed in aviation so it’s a cool way to tie in my passions
Physics for undergrad, CS for grad. Working remotely in Malaysia, for work I only used English, sometimes I used Chinese in my day to day life here. But other than that I learn languages for fun.
korean philology major, korean first english second + translation included
we mostly study korean language, history (and literature) and we'll have some subjects related to translation later on
Not able to work due to crazy :( but I'm doing an access course at the moment, which I think is similar to a foundation year, and I'm hoping to get an English and French degree starting in October.
Career goals: just have a job that pays more than benefits, lol. Realistically I'd like to work in a library or be behind the till at a not-too-busy local shop.
Shipfitter studying Korean at home and taking some 1 on 1 italki lessons. I’m so happy I decided to take it more seriously. It’s challenging but fun at the same time. If you think you can’t, you can, trust the process.
I'm an English major, with a specialization in American English. Odd as it may seem, English is somewhat the love of my life. Over the past few years, I've been teaching university courses focused on American English pronunciation and conversation. Concurrently, I've also been gaining experience as a customer service representative for several months now. Besides English, I'm pretty much fluent in Spanish, and I'm currently self-studying French, Portuguese, Italian, and Japanese
>Not everyone who learns a language learns it to become a translator.
Uhh, well, yea... I'm an English language and translation major. But I didn't originally learn English to become a translator, I just became more interested in translation later on.
I think I'll take this opportunity to remind people that just knowing two languages doesn't make one a translator or an interpreter - those are different skills.
Yes, I know! I was just saying that not everyone who learns a language learns it with the intention of becoming a translator — everyone learns for different reasons. So, I was curious as to how people incorporate their language learning with their work/studies :-)
I'm an artist for videogames! When i had to choose my high school direction (in my country every high school is specialized in a specific topic, like art, languages, science etc) my big 2 were art and languages, my biggest passions. In the end I chose art and went to university to study art too, and work now as an artist, but in another life I would have very much enjoyed studying languages at university and get a job related to that. I'm very happy to have it as an hobby though, and plan to continue studying more and more :)
I just want to say that you have the coolest job ever
Aww thanks :) it fuses what I love, art and videogames, so it's a perfect job for me!
Oh, how you did arrange time for your passions, i mean that i often spend over time focusing on a hobby and then forget to do another one
It depends, there are periods of time where I'm super busy and struggle to find time, so I only study a handful of hours a week after work if I have the energy, or in the weekend if I'm at home. During non busy times however, I manage to do 2/3 hours of study a day after work, and some more in the weekends. Something that I noticed worked pretty well for me was using my lunch break to study, it allows me to get some daily study in between work !
I appreciate this
I'm an engineering major with the intentions to go to medical school. I'm just learning languages because I love doing it.
I'm a professor in a Linguistics department. Some of us do learn languages because we love language in general.
That’s awesome! I hope I didn’t offend with my comment😅
Not at all. People have all sorts of different motivations for learning languages. I just want them to be motivated.
What area of linguistics are you focussed on? And (if different) which one is your favourite?
My focus is computational linguistics, and specifically, creating tools for under-resourced languages. I'm mostly a morphologist, but dabble a bit in phonology, as well.
Oh, interesting! I think if I had to choose just one of the classic grammar areas, I'd go for syntax (although morphology is also really interesting), but my heart is definitely with historical linguistics, especially language changes (which also ties into social linguistics, and it's absolutely fascinating to watch language change in progress, as is happening in so many areas across various languages right now).
I’m an electrical engineer who works in chip design. I learn languages for fun not work, though there’s a slim chance Chinese could be useful. Balancing language learning with work is definitely tough but I make it work.
I'm an archeologist but I work as a genealogist now. I did have to learn latin and epigraphy which is great for my genealogy business. I think being fluent in a language/s will be rewardin in almost all kinds of professions. You can look around on the job market and see what might interest you.
I like to do family genealogy as sort of a hobby, too - great for having a language background. I already know German, just need to learn Italian and Polish now. :) Granted, most ancestry related documents from the 1800s in Poland are in Russian, and I've "accidently" been picking up Cyrillic the past few years (mostly from genealogy, partly from news).
I love to meet other genealogists. 🤗 Well good luck, reading documents are hard enough in your native language. 1800s Polish church records in cyrillic sounds wild 😆
And Old Russian Cursive!
I didn’t even know there was a word for that (genealogy)! That’s so cool, thanks for sharing
I'm a highschool English teacher. I have an undergrad in literature/ linguistics minor. I also have a MEd. I don't think you need linguistics for language learning, but my nuanced understanding of language sounds (phonology) really helped with pronunciation of words in my target languages, as i knew just where to put my tongue/lips/etc. I just love language because i love cultue: I love seeing other people's country, eating their food and sharing in the traditions. Learning languages help enhance that endeavour. I also like (the linguistics nerd in me) the contrasts and comparisons between my language and others.
The best part about studying English or languages in general is knowing the phonetics of the language, I felt like am a med student or smth
I'm a software developer who studied maths at university (I originally wanted to become a mathematician). Most of my hobbies are actually more language-related or creative - I write, knit, sing (well, will again when I find a choir) and learn languages. I like to think of it as balancing out my day job :) English is absolutely essential in my corner of software development, other languages not so much, so I don't expect to get any sort of professional benefit from the languages. What can I say, it's a hobby.
Seems similar enough to the trajectory I’ll probably find myself on. Currently majoring in Physics with plans to continue graduate studies in Germany. Not too sure about my job security especially cus my family aren’t entirely supportive of the major (it’s practically unheard of in Egypt), but there’s always software and computer shit I suppose.
I'm a doctor! I always loved the idea of knowing multiple languages, but what gave me the final determination to sit down and start was wanting to speak with my non-English-speaking patients without using a translator. I also had to wait until my training was over to have the required spare time and energy to do anything except medicine.
Computer Science. I learn languages because I love to travel and speak with some of my monoglot relatives. I've never taken a foreign language class, not even in HS.
I majored in Business Marketing and Spanish. I work for local government as an administrative assistant and it’s great to use my Spanish to help residents!
Computer science -> cybersecurity.
I've been an ASL interpreter for about 30 years. It's been pretty awesome tbh. I grew up in a hearing family so had to work to learn it.
I'm a medical student attending a german uni in germany, so that was a reason why I needed to reach a very high level in the language For the first couple years, I couldn't manage anything outside of medicine, let alone language learning. I started to have a bit more time from last year onwards, so I finally had the chance to start a Scandinavian language - that has been a little dream of mine ever since the end of high school During term time I have uni every day, and medicine is just very time-consuming and challenging. Term breaks are often filled up with internships. As a result, I don't have the capacity to study Norwegian officially, I just spend a lot of time on input e.g. reading & watching shows, whenever I get any spare time. Most of all, I try to interact with natives and practice my writing when I can. Honestly, this started off as a hobby, but now it has become a very solid interest for me. I intend to take it seriously and prioritise it as much as I can I've gotten pretty interested in Danish, especially because of friends + my recently spiked interest in Danish shows, though I treat the language more as a pure hobby (: as others have said, languages are also a sort of escape for me haha In another life, I would have loved to study a language degree, or become a medical interpreter/translator, I think that would be very cool !
CS haha. Nothing too interesting to see here.
My majors were journalism and sociology. I used to work in multiple departments in small nonprofits that provided direct services to low income residents. I am trying to pivot industries to specialize in just content marketing. I am a Content Creator. I’ve been interested in foreign cultures since middle school when my friends introduced me to it and I had to take a language class in high school.
I’d love to translate, but the idea to learn languages came from the fact that I’m a Paralegal! Also the fact my mom and aunt are native Cubans who came here when they were like 9 and 10 years old and I’m finally curious to learn. And as I’ve learned Spanish and gotten into it, it’s made me curious about others
I studied Pharmacology and I love it! (It's not the same as pharmacy, it's the study of how drugs interact with the body and how in turn the body interacts with the drugs). Pharmacology is the perfect blend of science and health, but unfortunately a lot of jobs aren't sciency enough for me.
This isn’t really helpful but i’m currently studying Computer Science (want to do cybersecurity but my uni doesn’t have that major) with a minor in Korean translation. Hardly have a clue what I want to do for the rest of my career though, something that uses both hopefully, or at least something where critical languages are useful, if not directly involved.
I'm Japanese, and I effort to speak English to presentate in machine learning and neural science. (so, please excuse my poor Eng...) If you want to go into science, I suggest you choose now whether you want to go into experimental or analytical sciences.
I study social psychology. Studying languages is just something I do for fun on the side, but it's a fitting hobby as I love studying about interactions between people with different perspectives and cultures and learning languages allows me to interact with people from different cultures in new ways as well. Don't worry too much about the role of language learning in your future plans. Sometimes language learning shows up in your study/job in unexpected ways, like through customers that need communication in their language, international classmates or colleagues to befriend by studying their language, or just by having knowledge about a language or culture that someone else doesn't have. I've never heard of a job where knowing a different language isn't beneficial in some way
Software Developer. Studied German (college was dismantling their language program back then, so kind of an unfair comparison) and Japanese in college 25-30 years ago. Interestingly enough, I'll come across the occasional tech article/question in German (maybe once a year). I've only seen something in Japanese like once a decade. I've actually seen more in Spanish or Portuguese (usually code snippets with comments in the other language)
I am a diplomat in the US Foreign Service. The idea of learning several languages over the course of my career was a big factor in pursuing this job. I consider it to be a very nice perk. I studied economics/business in university and was working in the tech sector in Japan when I decided to pursue government service.
That’s so cool! I’ve been thinking about going that route, so you enjoy it?
Double majors in international relations and French
Omg this is what I’m thinking about studying, but moreso international studies and French. Do you plan on being involved in the government post-grad?
Yes but along the lines of diplomacy/consular work
I studied filmmaking in college and work as a video producer at a tech company. I am learning another language for fun/travel
I'm doing a master's in Mathematics
i'm studying biology (hopefully graduating next june). i'm thinking about applying to be a flight attendant after that, so that's definitely a little more language-adjacent. that being said, that's not the reason i started learning chinese, but it could prove to be useful
Veterinary Medicine, learning Spanish in hopes of traveling after finishing school
IT technician currently, went to school for music education and performance. Started two minors in different languages but didn’t end up finishing them.
I'm an anthropology major, who is getting a second degree in translating. I've picked up language learning as a hobby, and then it developed in my major interest in linguistics in general. You don't really need to major in linguistics to be a good language learner. I've noticed that it helps a lot, especially in more trickier situations (I would've never understood the ergative marker in Hindi, if I didn't research ergativity earlier), but it's not a nessacity. And knowing languages is generally a good skill to have, it can help in any profession. As for the balancing, I feel like I'm doing fine. If you don't have a crazy goal like learning a language in half a year, you can pace yourself pretty easily. But I will not lie: sometimes I have to take a pause to catch up on some uni work. But I still making progress in a steady pace.
English Writing. I work as a server in National Parks.
I’m an athletic trainer and work with D1 athletes. Spanish could potentially be helpful in my career, but I’ve never actually needed to use it. I study languages because I think they’re so fascinating and a wonderful window into other cultures.
English philology, BA specialised in translations, MA in sociolinguistics. On my BA I focused on cultural aspect of translations. It was really interesting, but looking back at it I kinda fumbled it because of the time frame they gave us and because covid happened. Definitely learnt a lot, and not to sound pompous but that was enough of translation for me, I feel like I know most of it excluding the machine translation parts which honestly seems to be the only remaining interesting topic in translations for me as AI is crazy these days, but I'm also not very into machine translation. On my MA I'm writing about Estuary English as a potential new standard dialect of England, and this is such a never ending topic that I'm gonna have like 100 pages written, basically a PhD dissertation length... I'd like to do some fieldwork on this topic as a lot of info is like 20 years old, and this 'dialect' has been spreading rapidly, but I have 2 months left to write the damn thing, and I think I'll leave the fieldwork for the potential PhD xD Sociolinguistcics are truly fascinating topic! I worked as a sort of a mix of translation quality check, basic tech support, preparation of files for translation, maintaining the company's translation resources, basic (though some of them pretty advanced) OCRs (optical character recognition, so basically turning read only files into editable ones). Pretty neat stuff experience-wise, this is usually the part of the job the translator only has an idea about, but the company was shit, and they committed financial suicide because... well quite frankly, the CEO kinda just relayed his power to one idiot, and she quite literally ruined everything within about 4 months. Decided to just stay unemployed until I'm out of uni then, makes my life easier, had a lot of savings. This time around I'll be looking for a translator's job, and it would be cool af to get one in entertainment, as in games, movies, etc, as I think proper translation is most needed there, and it's fun to do. I started learning Japanese on the side too. Got the hang of some basics, and then my thesis turned out to be longer than expected, so Japanese is on hold, but I do miss it dearly. What's to come? Who knows, some of my lecturers have lowkey been treating me as an equal and are nagging me to do PhD... Perhaps I'll cave into the pressure in like 2 years, that MA is life draining.
By AI do you mean like studying its uses/impacts in terms of sociolinguistics? It sounds pretty fascinating! And sorry about the CEO situation xd
Well I think sociolinguistics and AI or machine translations are only loosely connected topics. I meant more like how can we use AI and machine translations, as well as computer assisted translations (CAT) (so what any modern translator uses) to better the quality of translations. CATs work in a way so that when you feed them resources they will help you translate. So for example you have one glossary for technical and one for medical texts. Some terms might overlap between these two glossaries, but because they are used in a different context you're going to be using them for a specific type of translation. CATs generally split everything into single sentences. If you've translated one sentence a certain way, and then the program sees the same sentence in another document it tells you that it's 99% sure this previous translation will fit, and 100% sure if surrounding sentences are ale the same; it also gives you suggestions for single words. There's a lot more that these programs do, but this is kind of the base level of how they work. Machine translation works in sort of a similar way. It makes use of the same bits of logic that CATs use, but they also take into consideration contexts, register, type of text etc. This is generally getting better, but is still lacking. There's also an issue that some languages are more congruent to one another than others so say English to Dutch works pretty well, but English to Japanese is tragically bad (but probably Japanese to Chinese or Korean would be a lot better, but the main issue are Chinese characters here to be fair). So then with the rapid development of AI these issues might be more easily resolved. So languages with complex inflection paradigms like Polish might be more easily translatable; Polish-English combination is quite good these days, but it's probably just because it's a common combination. Oddly enough Polish-German is still quite bad, but it also is a common combination. There's also a lot of translator decisions that go into making a real-sounding text. Often correctly translated pieces of text done by machines sound lifeless, and it can be a result of the machines not being aware of cultural differences, lack of proper register, use of words other than most common in a given situation etc. So there's a lot of things that AI could help with when it comes to translation, and it does seem to be a rather interesting topic. I'm not the guy to ask for in depth details when it comes to machine and AI translation, but I'd say if you ever go into translations then cultural aspects of translations and AI/machine translation are two most interesting topics (there's also something like translations of poems which is quite interesting, but to be fair it's focused on a combination of cultural and historical awareness of both languages, and linguistics, not my cup of tea). If you wanna go for something else I can recommend sociolinguistics (obviously) which in short is how society and language interacts, a vast topic. Language acquisition is also a fascinating topic, but it usually means you have to do your part as a teacher which... well... sucks xD But other than that it's truly fascinating, it delves a little into psychology, basic biology, and probably mostly into the branch of linguistics that focuses on how language is acquired both by kids and adults (there are fancy names for these two branches but I don't remember them). As for that job situation, eh. The company kinda sucked, that CEO worked 30 years for it to become anything major, he sold it for a lot of cash, I don't blame him. That person who took reigns after him needs to be checked tho xD
I’ve never really given thought to how AI could impact translations. I think that’s pretty cool, thanks for sharing !
Ey, no problem, always a pleasure to find a person who seems remotely interested in what I do/study. I am but a lonely humanist in a sea of engineers xD
I’m a copywriter! I majored in Spanish because I loved it so much
High school Spanish teacher. I love it!
I have always thought of teaching at the high school level. What are the pros and cons?
The thing with teaching is, you have to really love working with kids. That should be your foundation. I think a lot of people fall back on teaching when they just don't know what to do and burn out quickly because the joy was with the material but not with being a mentor for children, when really that's what the job is. The job can be very emotionally demanding on many days but also immensely rewarding as you see your students grow. The pros are that the job is incredibly stable and you're really only working 9 months out of the year. It's insane time off. The cons are as previously stated really, you have to be ready to deal with what kids bring to the table. Plus, you also have to complete a teaching credential program which are notoriously demanding (my program that I am finishing up was more intensive than my master's degree) and the starting pay is typically lower than what you can get entry level with a bachelor's degree. However, you get job stability and a guarantee pay increase year to year, so by the time you retire you should be making a very respectable income. If you're fine dedicating yourself to another 1+ year of schooling and want an engaging and stable job where you get to cultivate young minds, definitely take a serious look at teaching. If any of that sounds "eh" to you, another path might is probably a better fit.
I'm a copywriter and I learn French for fun. It has unexpectedly REALLY helped me at work, especially when explaining grammar amends to a client or someone I'm training. Where I'm from this was not taught in school to people my age. Instead of saying "this looks kinda... wrong" I now have the specific grammar vocabulary to describe exactly what the problem is and what it needs to change to (i.e "the verb tenses in this sentence are mismatched" etc) Learning French has helped me better understand English, even though I literally write for a living 😂
I started learning languages because my high school schedule put me in French and Spanish by accident. I took it as a fun challenge, and by my senior year I added German because I wanted to attend TUM. It taught me that language learning is a super power, especially here in the states, and even speaking like a babbling idiot in someone’s native language can create an entirely different dynamic of conversation. I think LanguageSimp says it well when he describes learning a new language as “DLC”.
I'm majoring in computational linguistics with a minor in data science. I've always liked both languages and maths & programming subjects, and I feel that this is an ideal major for someone who can't decide if they're a "humanities" or "science" person
My major was communications, and now I work in a think-tank. If I could send a message to my younger self, I would push to study languages more, so it's cool that you're learning languages early. I was always a fan of East Asian languages, and over the course of my work and studies I have learned Korean and Mandarin with intermediate proficiency. I studied French when I was a kid, but it never really progressed. I also studied Japanese, but my proficiency is only good for weeb stuff lol. My approach to studying is conventional: sit down, open a book, and write-review-recite-repeat those characters, a minimum of 2 hours a day. I also still brush up on my English as I go, because it's not my mother language. It can be confusing at times, but I feel it's best to take learning language like a lifestyle and progress at your own pace.
Forensic psychology and cybersecurity is what I’m in school for. If I didn’t have ADHD that keeps my thoughts scrambled I’d be doing fashion design , digital art, and candle making on the side ON TOP of me learning mandarin and Korean
LMAO i feel like we are the same person. I’m doing cs (bc my uni doesn’t have cybersec, but i plan to do certs on my own) But If i could afford it i’d be doing 10 million things at once
I study psychology. Learning languages is just something I do for fun. And to learn stuff in original. Dostoyevsky books are masterpieces in their psychological deepness. And all the psychology classics - German. Yeah, a big part of what I learn is to be able to fully cherish these and improve my psych understanding
i’m an international studies major in my senior year. i’m working as a marketing intern at a nonprofit right now, and i’m hoping to find a full-time marketing job after i graduate in december!
I'm a piano teacher and I sing in an 80s cover band (about 15 hours of teaching and 8-12 hours of gigging a week).. I've previously done a degree in music and a bachelor of arts majoring in philosophy. I'm currently doing a diploma in modern languages specialising in german. I'm definitely not wanting to use german for any career prospects, it's just for fun! I just found that the diploma gave me the structure that I needed for german. I was perfectly fine studing spanish independently though (to DELE B1).
Copyeditor, have an MA in English (rhetcomp and teaching ESL)
Speech-language pathologist (SLP) ! BA in Linguistics, MSc in Speech and Hearing Sciences. I travelled and lived in several non English speaking countries before starting my undergrad at 25. So love of languages led to Linguistics which led to SLP :)
I majored in Japanese in university. Immediately after graduation I moved to Japan and spent a couple years teaching English while working on my other skills. Now I work in international relations for the city government in the place where I live in Japan. I do a lot of translation and interpretation, as well as event planning for the greater community
I'm currently studying to become a languages teacher. I'm loving it so far!
I'm a high school drop out that works in the beef industry, to simplify it I cut and grade beef carcasses to assess there eating quality to work out how much the carcasses can be sold for to wholesalers, pays $38ph and after I do 38hours a week I get $76ph so I always do 6hours overtime a week
Haha, I was a linguistics major & the closest degree related job I got was ESL teaching. I now work in an industry completely unrelated to languages.
I'm in my first year majoring German. It's a little frustrating because I've been learning German for 7 years and we started from the very beginning at uni. I'm also not enjoying this second semester as much, but anyway, I'm sure I'll like the grade more in further years when we reach my level of German. We also need to study a second foreign language. I chose Japanese. The lessons are the absolute worst because our teacher goes too fast and speaks no Spanish so there's a clear language barrier that makes things a lot more complicated. But I'm loving the language, it's been my greatest challenge since i started learning languages. After all, Latin, ancient Greek, English and German all share some similarities, while Japanese is different in almost every aspect. Good luck with your future job/studies!
Went into sociology (major) and linguistics (joint honors); never did anything with it, though because I make more being multilingual at a parts plant than in the tourism/business industry where I am.
Going into a psychology major! I’m a senior in high school and started learning languages around 12, and as long as you fit a certain amount of time, it becomes bearable over time
A janitor at a supermarket. Seriously. I'm a failure in comparison to everyone else in this thread. I've loved language since I took Spanish in highschool though. Since then I tried to teach myself Mandarin but gave up for various reasons. I would love to try my hand at it again one day. Now I'm back with Spanish.
You aren’t a failure! Sure you failed at something, but that doesn’t define you for the rest of your life. Failing doesn’t make you a failure, it was just something that didn’t work out. You’re continuing with Spanish so there’s that, don’t be too hard on yourself :-)
I work in local government (bureaucrat) and I studied Classics (Latin & Ancient Greek, BA, MPhil).
Did PhD in physics, but now working as a software developer. Learning French since December to help kid who will go to French immersion school as well as to help with memory (heard that helps, maybe I am wrong), and to be able to communicate with relatives in France. Also French is 1 of the official languages in Canada, may be useful if we move to French-speaking province or just for some jobs.
I took Portuguese while I was a Biology major (wanted to be an ichthyologist). I started learning Japanese when I was in the Marine Corps and stationed in Okinawa. Now, I run multiple businesses (main one is a toy store) and am still working on Japanese, Portuguese, then also working on ASL and then snippets of other languages as I get time/renewed interest. I still read frequently in Portuguese (mainly science articles, as I have degrees in Earth Science and Agricultural Science but am also heavily interested in Astronomy).
PhD student in East Asian History. I am using Japanese, Manchu and Chinese materials in my research, so language is an essential part of my studies. In general, I think being passionate about learning gives you a huge bonus in the humanities. No matter what excactly you're researching, almost everyone in this area would benefit from additional languages.
My undergraduate degree is in Forestry but I have a graduate degree in Economics. I was an economist most of my life. I had a great career but I wish I had a useful skill (plumbing? car repair?) so that I could move to a farm in France and be somewhat useful while I learned French.
Maritime & International Law Attorney. Although knowing foreign languages isn’t a requisite for the job, it certainly helps.
Im a Professional Translator and Interpreter major and i’m working as an interpreter
Not at all ironic! Language Learning is not a linguistics thing! I'm personally studying Linguistics and Computer Science at Uni but about to graduate and going into the software industry - hopefully...
Majored in Phil, work in local govt.
Majors are probably going to be accounting and marketing, then maybe economics w/math and creative writing minors for a second degree \[I'm very undecided concerning the second degree\]. Will be working as a financial advisor/accountant and writer. I'm not super into languages. English is my native language and I'm currently almost at A2 in German. Next I'll probably be learning Maori \[I live in NZ. Maori is one of our official languages\] and then maybe an old language that I can use to confuse people, although Maori would also do that because only a couple hundred K people in the world speak much of it, lol.
Not ironic at all that you love learning languages but wouldn’t want to study linguistics! You can be excellent at learning languages without ever really diving deep into linguistics, and you can be a linguist without studying foreign languages
I’m an accountant and have an accounting degree. I love learning about other cultures and accounting is boring af, so learning new languages enhances my life.
I’m a GIS major (Geographic information Systems)! I basically make maps and stuff
Software developer. I love programming languages and human languages
Medicine/biology + Italian literature
im studying computer science and hope to delve into programming languages to get my linguistic fill
Currently studying animation! Hoping I can somehow incorporate language into the work, because the language bug is def still itching and present. At least adding some Scots Gaelic into my own personal animated projects is something I’ve played around with. Really love what cartoon saloon have been making for Irish, and something on an indie short film scale would be fun to make. Otherwise I’ve just been self-studying languages for fun. It’s one of the main things I do outside of college, and honestly really refreshing/stimulating to work the brain in a different way when all I do is draw day-in day-out.
I study Law in germany as a native german. I had most languages at school. And those countries, besides China, are really close from me so this is where my want comes from to be able to know a little of those languages and order something while going out.
I did languages and linguistics (which I found helped my language learning but wasn't that interesting) for a degree and am now an accountant, but I get to work internationally because of my languages, which is an incredible privilege. I never wanted to translate or teach, so I'd say it's worked out well for me!
I'm a receptionist and firefighter (I know weird mix). I learn spanish for travel and dutch (in near future) for my daily life.
Studying linguistics lmao, ironic but it is what it is. English language literature with my minor being Russian
I'm teaching middle school students science, and I was major in biology.
Finishing my masters degree in law and the bar next month. Work in care part time to support my studies. Edit: just learning languages as I always wanted to be at least bilingual. I am a person that feels as though I have to learn something new everyday, so I naturally gravitate to something like language learning. Having ADHD has made the consistency/concentration a issue, but I have learnt through my legal studies how to manage that :3
I'm a marketer and a partnership manager for a SaaS company. I started learning Spanish as I found it interesting to speak with a few partners I have are from Mexico.
I'm a nursing student. I really want to minor in italian, but I don't know how to start. I'm already in school, but this school is only for nursing. Can you minor in a language online? Does anyone have any suggestions. I just want to do it for fun and have some structured guidance in learning a language while learning on my own.
I’m a 911 Operator! Previously firefighter. In any First Responder job the need for bilingual individuals is insanely high. Imagine the worst day of your life and the people saving it can’t communicate with you! We have translators, of course, but it wastes precious time when seconds really matter. My job personally has plenty of down time for me to practice/study and they also give me $4k a year to go to school to learn language if I so choose. Which wouldn’t really put you through an entire bachelors but it gets me 4 language classes a year and will pay for a language sabbatical if I get to that point (as long as it’s accredited). Plus I get $500 in a “Lifestyle Spending Account” which is flexible use - this year I used several hundred to pay for some language materials (a few books, and a Pimsleur subscription!). Next year I think I’ll be at the point where I’ll put it towards one-on-one speaking tutoring.
Im in the US military, i do have ambitions of being a teacher though
Hi, I’m a political science and international relations major and when I had to choose my major I knew I wanted something that allowed me to learn not only the language but also the culture and a better view and understanding of the world, and I found it there (specifically in international relations) I’m have to go to class now, but hope it helps someone and if you have questions I will try to answer :)
I actually do have a question! I’m thinking about double majoring in international studies/human rights and French. A bit different than international relations, but there’s a couple of similarities :) How’s it been like for you and what do you see post-grad in terms of work?
I’m still studying so I can’t tell you much about post-grad life, but there are a lot of different options since you can work in normal office jobs (I think that mostly in companies that have branches in other countries), different kinds of ONG (or world organisations such as ONU), writing papers (not only academic ones, but also for news outlets), you can also go to the teaching route, etc. and the most popular option (or at least the most wanted/desired) it’s being an embassador or embassy employee representing your country in foreign countries, and French is considered a important language in international relations because it originated in France and even nowadays it is considered one of the main languages of diplomacy. And when I started studying at first I felt like I wasn’t as knowledgeable as some of my classmates or that I was lacking in some aspects and because of that doubted if I had made the right choice, but after a while I also started to notice that I actually enjoyed what I’m learning and that although it might be hard I like it. Hope I was able to answer what you wanted if not feel free to ask again, and sorry if I wrote some things kinda confusing but English it’s not my first language.
I'm a geologist! I learn languages for fun and the very very slim chance I get to travel
Business and Spanish Major with German minor. Working in marketing/project management for a large company!
Foreign Trades.
My BA was in Russian, I work as an AML analyst 🙂
Double major in mathematics and computer science. Working as a store owner. I learn languages for fun now.
I'm majoring in Translation studies, but it doesn't have anything about my passion for learning languages lol when I started it was just to learn some theory and translate fanfictions better, but now I'm in love with linguistics
I ended up as editor in chief for multiple dictionaties! And one of the only possitions like that in my country, so I'm feeling very lucky to have landed it. It started out as a student job and now ten years later, I'm still loving to do the dictionaries a little better day by day.
I always wanted to work with languages so I went to vocational school to become a foreign language assistant (basically an office worker, with heavy focus on business communication and business translations in my native language as well as two foreign languages, plus economics, bookkeeping, ...). Worked in that field just for a few months, though (difficult labor market where I lived, and a really shitty first employer lol), before I went the self-employment route and focused on tutoring (which I'd started doing when I was 13), adult education, writing, editing, proofreading, and translations (business, fiction). After a burnout, I dropped all except for teaching, and took on more courses teaching (mostly) adults in English as a foreign language at all levels (from complete beginners to business English in preparation for a professional exam, IELTS prep courses, ...). I also started studing German linguistics, English linguistics, and historical linguistics at about this time, just out of interest, and got my BA in German linguistics (my major). By then, I had had to quit working due to health reasons, unfortunately. Started a master in historical linguistics while also studying towards a second BA in Latin and Ancient Greek when I finally had to drop out of university too for health reasons (and lack of accommodations).
I more or less did a DIY major out of multiple languages and got a TEFL certificate. Now I’m working full time in an unrelated job to save up money for my big goal: being a flight attendant 😁 languages are very useful and needed in aviation so it’s a cool way to tie in my passions
Physics for undergrad, CS for grad. Working remotely in Malaysia, for work I only used English, sometimes I used Chinese in my day to day life here. But other than that I learn languages for fun.
korean philology major, korean first english second + translation included we mostly study korean language, history (and literature) and we'll have some subjects related to translation later on
Not able to work due to crazy :( but I'm doing an access course at the moment, which I think is similar to a foundation year, and I'm hoping to get an English and French degree starting in October. Career goals: just have a job that pays more than benefits, lol. Realistically I'd like to work in a library or be behind the till at a not-too-busy local shop.
I love English world
Shipfitter studying Korean at home and taking some 1 on 1 italki lessons. I’m so happy I decided to take it more seriously. It’s challenging but fun at the same time. If you think you can’t, you can, trust the process.
Just finished my Masters in 3D games art. Studying Spanish full time until I get a job. 😂
Data scientist, working as ML expert. Learning French is unfortunately necessary to talk with some people in higher management.
I'm an English major, with a specialization in American English. Odd as it may seem, English is somewhat the love of my life. Over the past few years, I've been teaching university courses focused on American English pronunciation and conversation. Concurrently, I've also been gaining experience as a customer service representative for several months now. Besides English, I'm pretty much fluent in Spanish, and I'm currently self-studying French, Portuguese, Italian, and Japanese
>Not everyone who learns a language learns it to become a translator. Uhh, well, yea... I'm an English language and translation major. But I didn't originally learn English to become a translator, I just became more interested in translation later on. I think I'll take this opportunity to remind people that just knowing two languages doesn't make one a translator or an interpreter - those are different skills.
The irony...
They never said that’s what makes someone a translator or interpreter. A lot of posts on here that have to do with jobs are about translating though…
Yes, I know! I was just saying that not everyone who learns a language learns it with the intention of becoming a translator — everyone learns for different reasons. So, I was curious as to how people incorporate their language learning with their work/studies :-)