<p>I tend to think of grammar nazis as people who pay attention to the fact that grammar is used, rather than strictly enforce how it is used.</p>
<p>After all, in any given language minus dialects, there is only one grammar no?</p>
<p>We have a very different definition of the term, then, as I’ve only heard it in reference to people who wanted others to conform to their grammatical ideal. And no, there may still be multiple grammars, depending on who you ask. Many linguists are of the opinion that each person has their own internal grammar, as was evidenced by the dissenting opinions on whether or not a given phrase was grammatical when we were asked in our classes.</p>
<p>So I’m going to disagree with you on both points, sorry. 
I will agree with you, though, that many people with the “One True Grammar” mentality go into linguistics; but then they often get frustrated like JGee did when some profs say “Nah, we don’t actually think that way.” Linguistics can be a frustratingly subjective subject, but that’s the nature of language – and a good part of why it’s so easy to offend others on the internet. (I hope I didn’t offend! :p)</p>
<p>I don’t go to “zoo mass” i am not sure what that is 
is that a rave or something?
I go to Berkeley. I stuck with linguistics because it had few requirements and I was good at it and I could do internships on the side in the beginning since it wasn’t too hard. Now I’m spending 10+ hours on 1 homework for 1 class a week, and unfortunately it is the consensus (polls done), just for a damn 8/10 or 7/10. Because I didn’t use the word “and” but I used the words “as well as” that was SOOO worth .25 off. SDLFJh Always the goddamned threats from the stupid GSIs saying “if you ask me to look over something I already graded, i will look it completely over and I may lower your grade so…” UGH. i never know if they are going to be even more petty on grading and subsequently ruin my chances for grad school… </p>
<p>I do not believe in “ONE TRUE GRAMMAR” that is really old and I’ve suffered through numerous lakoff classes to have it beaten in my head. what makes me frustrated about linguistics is that the classes that are sociolinguistic/pragmatic/semantic related are so painful and you sit there with 2 minutes of pauses between each sentence to “think” about stupid philosophical questions and then there is no answer and you move on to think about more stupid unanswerable philosophical questions. If I wanted to think about trees falling down in forests and making sounds for hours in a week I would take philosophy…not linguistics. Also, in lakoff classes, if I wanted to know about “Lakoff’s view of politics” I would’ve taken a less biased poli sci class - not linguistics.
that **** is like eating the shell of a sea urchin and makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Linguistics attracts showoffs who like to take over a god damned classroom and trail-off onto some random subject. Today we talked for 15 minutes about two classmate’s time working as summer help at Macy’s and how it gave insight for those two lame asses how it feels to speak to a non-family member with respect… TOTALLY helpful… Jesus ****ing christ.</p>
<p>The spam sandwich on wonder bread (sorry if you like spam… i didn’t mean to insult) is the historical linguistics… it just exists and is barely edible but I could do it since there is enough salt in that **** to cover up the nastiness.</p>
<p>Phonetics & phonology is the best of the mess (not counting the linguistics of a particular language that you like) - You can get real answers… sort of. </p>
<p>i brought up a 4 year old thread because I typed in google after spending 10 hours on a homework “I ****ing hate linguistics” or “why in the world would people major in linguistics?” or something to that nature and pulled up THIS thread that reminded me of the 123098434 people who say to me “oh you’re studying linguistics! That’s cool! How many languages do you speak?/do you want to be a translator?/I love etymology of the X language!/English can’t be a germanic language…look at all the french in it!” And those people think that linguistics has anything to do with any of that… (well it does help you have a pithy response for that last one). These ppl existed 4 years ago and they exist today and I thought if anyone does a search for “shoudl I major in linguistics?” they could find out what “LINGUISTICS” actually means.</p>
<p>ok im done with the thread - sorry again.</p>