February 27th: Reasons I love being a linguistics student

As much as I think an exchange or an Erasmus is an invaluable experience for anybody, no matter what they study or where their interests lie, personally - and I might be a little bit biased here - I think language students and linguistics students get a little bit more out of it than somebody who studies, say, maths, for example.

That's not to say that I don't think living abroad is equally beneficial for people who don't study linguistics. Whatever you study, it's an experience that is more than worth doing and I can't recommend it enough. Go, people, see the world!

I realise that even within an area where you'd expect to find a group of people who are all passionate about what they do, this isn't always the case. Some people within my year group study English Language and Linguistics because there are lots of job prospects when you finish, or even because they think it'll be easy, or maybe just because they couldn't think of what else to do their degree on. And yes, some people may think that visiting Oxford and spending half the day sitting in the linguistics section of the Oxford University Press bookshop is sad, but not me. I am a linguistics nerd and proud of it, and I am not ashamed to admit that I spent a day in one of the most beautiful towns in England reading a textbook on the syntax of Old Norse. Luckily I've found a group of people who know exactly what it's like to feel that passionate, because all of them feel that way about what they study too.

I can take one step outside my flat and hear two languages, just like that. I am surrounded everyday by people who are fluent in three languages as a bare minimum. Some of the signs in restaurants and shops are written in five languages. Being here, my little monolingual brain is a sponge, and with every new word that I learn, I am learning more about the world. This is all fascinating to me. It's fascinating that these foreign words that are just sounds to me have actual meaning and significance to speakers of that language, and it's like I have a barrier in my head that they don't have, stopping me from understanding; it's fascinating that even if I did become fluent in a language, I will never have the same insight into it as a native speaker, because some things can not be translated.

There are many reasons I love being a linguistics student. I live with two fellow linguistics students, and it is a common occurrence in our flat to walk in and find one of us sitting at the table, staring into space, making strange noises; or hear the terms 'fricative', 'uvular' and 'alveolar ridge' floating about and not assume they mean something dirty. But the number one reasons I love being a linguistics student are all tied up with living here in Spain. I constantly want to use Spatalan words in conversations with or emails to my family or friends from home, but they won't understand and it's frustrating. Here, I can use three languages in one sentence and nobody would bat an eyelid. (This is not necessarily a good thing. If I were good enough at Spanish or Catalan to be able to speak solely in one of them, I would.)

But on Saturday night, I went clubbing with the Erasmus students for a couple of peoples' birthdays. We were all in 80s fancy dress, and while we were in the taxi, a little bit drunk, with our crazy hair and makeup, rather than talking about getting drunk like normal English girls on a night out, we were practising Catalan and Spanish with the taxi driver.

I love the fact that this is my life.

Molly x