Good bye (For Now?)

Thank you | Gracias | Merci Vielmal

I fell in love with linguistics. Or rather, I fell in love with what it taught me, how it made me feel. It made me feel like my language was seen and validated. It didn’t matter how much I mixed my Spanish and English. It didn’t matter that I’d forgotten most of my Swiss German. My language is natural. Just as your language is natural. Our languages are made to feel unnatural. But they’re not. And I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate in the past year exactly that.

I started Languaging with the hope of transferring some of the knowledge that I gathered in graduate school; I don’t think you need a graduate degree to feel like your language is worthy. I hope I’ve helped teachers know how they can help students feel like their languages are worthy, too.

There’s a Fitzgerald quote about writing: “you don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have to say something.” For the past two weeks, I’ve felt like I’ve wanted to say anything about linguistics. But the truth is, when it comes to linguistics, I’ve said what I’ve had to say.

And I’ll be back if I have more things to say…

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To my paid subscribers— Thank you so much for supporting this project! I’ve had a tumultuous year but Languaging has always been something that has brought me calm, cathartic loveliness. Thank you for seeing the value in my work.

If you’re free on Friday, this month’s meet-up is still on! (All info in the March Meet-up post.)

(Also, everyone has been refunded for their remaining subscription…you should receive an email from Substack about the amount.)

To my free subscribers—Thank you so much for the messages, support, and time that you’ve devoted to reading Languaging. I’ve decided to make the archive completely free, so you can now access all previous posts. If you like them, you can now comment your thoughts. I’d love to keep the conversation going!