Mark Liberman is dissing me. In his recent Language Log post on Silly Talk about Linguistics he gives credit to Eric Bakovic for the best answer to the question everyone asks linguists, "How many languages do you speak?"
Well, several people sent in the inevitable "you're a linguist? so how many languages do you speak?" question. So far only Eric Bakovic has supplied a good answer: "Both of them."
Well, the truth is, and you heard it from me first, is that Eric and I came up with that one together, along with the much less funny "all of them." I say we both came up with it together because we were most likely drunk at the time and riffing on stuff. But my suspicion is that I came up with it and Eric is just claiming it for his own. Hell, he probably didn't even tell Mark about me. I'm feeling like Little Richard to his Elvis.
I think Eric and Mark owe me an apology.
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Just for the record, here's what (the relevant part of) my e-mail to Mark said:
in grad school Ed Keer and I used to answer the typical "How many languages do you speak?" question with "Both of them."
Would I lie to you? (Don't answer that.)
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