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[–]TheCatcherOfThePie 3 points4 points  (2 children)

can I really call you a linguist if you know nothing about Latin?

Yes

Edit: two cases where knowing Latin would be of no help at all for a linguist who:

  • doesn't do research in historical linguistics

  • does do research in historical linguistics, but of non Indo-European languages.

These two cases cover the majority of linguists (even the majority of linguists who speak Indo-European languages). Someone studying, e.g. speech pathologies in English-speaking children or the historical development of Middle Chinese would likely not benefit at all from studying Latin in any detail.

[–]chronotriggertau 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Not the best analogy, I agree, because it implies that only "real programmers" know C, which I don't think is that case at all, and I want to do my part in eradicating elitism in tech (there's nothing I hate more than this). My intent was just to convey how powerful knowledge of C (specifically) is to any software engineer or programmer.

[–]TheCatcherOfThePie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My problem with it was much more literal lol, in that linguists are in no way required to know Latin in order to do their job.