Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists try to answer questions about language, such as how languages change and why words mean what they mean. Linguists study both their own languages and languages they do not speak.
When linguists study a modern language, they analyze the speech of one or more native speakers of that language. They call such a person an informant. Many languages have no written form. Therefore, linguists must often use a set of symbols called a phonetic alphabet to write down the speech sounds of an informant. Linguists also study dead languages to trace the development of modern ones.
Linguists gather data, form theories and test them, and then establish facts about language. These experts believe they know extremely little about even the most familiar languages. They hope to record and study unfamiliar tongues before such languages become extinct. There are two chief fields of linguistics, descriptive linguistics and comparative and historical linguistics.
