Linguistics is the study of language itself — how it is built, how people use it, and how it changes. It is not the same as an English class, and it is not the same as learning to speak a language. A person who does linguistics looks at sounds, words, grammar, meaning, and history, and may study one language, many languages, or language as a human thing (including sign language). Though actually, people mix this up all the time: they hear linguist and picture someone who speaks five languages. Some linguists do; many study one language very closely, or babies, or how the brain holds words. The word belongs to universities and serious books, but the questions are ordinary: Why do we say it this way? Why did this word change? How is the Chinese you hear in Taiwan different from the Chinese you hear in Beijing, and how is a Chinese sentence built differently from an English one?