(no subject)

[tahnan]

There's a question that linguists get all the time after they tell someone they're a linguist, which is, "How many languages do you speak?" It's an intensely frustrating question, because it misses much of the point of the work a linguist does.

Similarly, I know that friends who have masters' degrees in children's literature dread questions about whether that means that they're writing a children's book. (Also, nearly any question that mentions Harry Potter.)

So I ask my readers, out of curiosity. When you tell people something fundamental about who you are or what you do ("I'm a linguist"; "I have a Masters' in Children's Literature"; "I'm from Serbia"; "I have a wooden leg"; "I brew beer"; or what have you), what question is it that you dread getting in return, but which seems to be fairly inevitable?

Comments

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

What I don't like if someone finds out that you've got a lot of knowledge in one particular field (say, I dunno, cartoons or comics or something) and they take that to mean "I need to stump this guy so I can take him down a peg." What is with that attitude? It would especially come up when I was doing occasional radio appearances as Cartoon Guy: we would talk about cartoons but if you could stump me with a good (but fair) trivia question you'd get movie tickets or something.

On a semi-related (and funny) note: there was a Mystery Hunt puzzle that Story and Qaqaq and were working on, and I got called over when it became apparent that (hope this isn't spoiling anything) comic strips. One of the strips involved was Sherman's Lagoon, and I said "I don't really read that one."

The look on Qaqaq's face of shock and disappointment! It was amusing, yet I wanted to crawl into a hole for tarnishing my rep.