* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
LINGUIST List logo Eastern Michigan University Wayne State University *
* People & Organizations * Jobs * Calls & Conferences * Publications * Language Resources * Text & Computer Tools * Teaching & Learning * Mailing Lists * Search *
* *
 

Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Want to be a Professor of Egyptian and Mayan Glyphs, Oracle Bone Script Chinese, and Archaic Sumerian
Question:
Please help an amateur linguist. No one around me knows how to answer my questions about linguistics education. I'm turning to you. Please don't turn me down.

I'm a 4th year student at an engineering university in far northern Michigan (Michigan Tech). I have an Associate in Humanities, and I'm one semester into an Anthropology Bachelor's.

But I really want to be studying the following scripts and their corresponding languages so that I can read them as an occupation. I like logo-phonetic and syllabo-phonetic writing systems whose graphemes actually resemble real things. They are consequently all the earliest of known written languages: Archaic Sumerian, Middle Egyptian, and Classical Mayan and their related scripts. I also
am interested in similar scripts that are either undeciphered or were incapable of expressing the entirety of their respective spoken language: Jia Gu Wen 'Oracle Bone Script' Chinese, Indus Valley Script, and Rongo-rongo.

My second area of great interest are the languages of the Bible (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic) and the languages of liturgy in all the rites of the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches (Ge'ez, Latin, West Aramaic, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, etc).

I seek an undergraduate and graduate program where I can get started on all these languages and the modern scholarly languages that would facilitate their study. Needless to say, both in advice and options I am in a bad situation up here at Tech.

Where can I go? Do you have any ideas?

I'm sorry if this is messy. I'm at an archaeological field school in New York and I have little computer or free time. Please, please, please help. I'm having so many difficulties finding anything. You'd think finding a college that would take that much dough from an amateur linguist would be easy!

Sincerely,
Lawrence J. Rogers, 20

Reply:
Hello, Lawrence,

Just today, LinguistList published an announcement from a couple of grad students in England who have founded a list for (especially) grad students who are into ancient languages, so they can exchange ideas, queries, discussions, etc. The URL for the list is:

ancientpglinguistics@lists.bham.ac.uk

and you can see the whole message on LinguistList, vol. 18.1846 (http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-1846.html#?CFID=12359120&CFTOKEN=64079456). You may want to visit and/or join the list.

Jim

James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México

Reply From: James L Fidelholtz    click here to access email
Date: Jun-19-2007
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Want to be a Professor of Egyptian and Mayan Glyphs, Oracle Bone Script Chinese, and Archaic Sumerian Susan Fischer    (Jun-18-2007)
  2. Re: Want to be a Professor of Egyptian and Mayan Glyphs, Oracle Bone Script Chinese, and Archaic Sumerian Nancy J. Frishberg    (Jun-19-2007)
Back to Most Recent Questions
Page Updated: 20-Nov-2009

Please report any bad links or misclassified data

LINGUIST Homepage | Read LINGUIST | Contact us

NSF Logo

While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed
on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.