User:Carlmarks

I signed up on April 23, 2004, with no intention of actually doing very much - a bit of copyediting, perhaps, maybe even some translation. After all, if I know about something, why would I bother looking it up? Ha! Wikipedia is the crack dealer of knowledge: you're not sure you need any at first, but the first one's free. Of course, it'll keep you up all night, and you'll still want more in the morning.

My major interest is linguistics, especially phonology, but since that field tends to be well-covered here, I'm just expanding stubs and wondering, "Gee, I wonder if [subject] has an article..." My personal philosophy for Wikipedia is that depth is enormously important, so I try to attack any a fetal position. I don't like leaving red links on an article I wrote unless I know I really can't write anything useful about them.

I'm a Briton of Welsh-Irish ancestry who grew up in America, and am currently an undergrad pursuing two degrees, one in linguistics and one in Spanish. I speak Spanish very well, Russian somewhat less well, and a lot of other languages not very well at all. (I've studied Arabic, Chinese, Italian, and Ancient Greek for varying lengths of time, but it's been so long I've lost what skills I had.)

I believe the most important things on the Internet are Wikipedia, Google, Omniglot (most linguists scoff at writing systems, but they can bite me), the Ethnologue, and Toothpaste for Dinner. Oh, and MC Frontalot. (I am shocked, shocked, to find that there is no page on nerdcore hiphop. This will be rectified tomorrow.)

The first article I ever wrote was on the Santali language - which, to be quite honest, I know next to nothing about. (See my above lauding of the Ethnologue.) I'm always willing to do research on an interesting topic - unless, of course, I'm being graded on it, in which case I will run and hide (and edit Wikipedia) until my professors give up on getting the paper from me.

I'm probably very tired.