Talk:Kató Lomb

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I wonder if Ms Lomb is indeed a linguist. She is a polyglot, but this doesn't make her a linguist. There is no indication in the article that she ever studied language or languages in a scholarly way.--Tamas 18:56, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

It's the ambiguity of English which perhaps could be eliminated. In her Hungarian books, she definitely names herself a "lingvista" (someone whose hobby is languages, cf. philatelist etc) rather than a "nyelvész" (a linguist as a scholar). In English, there doesn't seem to be a more exact term for the former concept so it's a bit misleading indeed. However, if you can find a good term, feel free to insert it! Adam78 21:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

That's the trouble, I can't. Linguist in English can indeed mean "lingvista" as well. Maybe we should just leave it as it is for the time being.--Tamas 12:40, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linguist

The problem is the English word, due to its original meaning which is indeed "a person who can speak foreign languages" or a professional working with languages. Notice for example how FBI and CIA are always complaining about lack of linguists (see for example here: http://www.meforum.org/article/754). You can be sure they don't mean people who can perform syntactic analysis, but rather people who have really mastered the critical foreign languages.

[edit] Method

I wonder what method she used for Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. You can not obviously just buy a book and start reading without knowing the script first.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.119.123.147 (talk • contribs) 12:09, 3 April 2006.