The background: this year, I was part of a Burningman theme camp whose theme is a scavenger hunt. We have a lost board, with tiles on it that say things like "alcohol donation" or "more than 7 scars" or "graduate of Hampshire" or whatever. People bring the thing or person to us. We take their picture with the tile, move it to the found board, and, if the item is a consumable, we take it. The winners get to dig into the bag of semi fabulous prizes, which are things like bubbles, necklaces...we really put the semi in semi fabulous. Our standards slip as the week goes by. Perhaps it is also fair to mention that we are a heckling theme camp.

Many of the items required a judge. In my case, I was the judge for the tile which said "cunning linguist." Generally, what this meant was that I was summoned to question someone who claimed to be one, I would ask them what school they studied Linguistics at, they would react with confusion, and I would inform them that it was an actual academic discipline. Generally, they would give up at that point, sometimes asking if "loving" language was enough. Inevitably, those folks would not speak any languages other than English.

Well, round about Thursday, I was summoned to test someone. The subject: a young man wearing a media pass, who claimed to be a fourth year burner with the SF Chronicle. We went through the aforementioned ritual, including finding out all he spoke was English, whereupon he insisted that he be given consideration because the tile did not have the word "academic" on it.

I told him I would think of a question to test him with, and that if he could answer the question well enough to show a knowledge of how language works, I would award him the prize. He told me that he would prove to my campmates and to me what a great linguist he was by reading "the last two sentences of my article on Burningman for the Chron." I told him it had no bearing on my decision, but to go ahead while I thought of a test question for him, if he liked.

He proceeded to read the sentences loud and proud to those hanging out on our porch. I cannot do them justice, but let's just say they were so composed of hundred dollar words like "juxtaposition" that they were almost unintelligible. I looked at my campmates for their reactions, the most positive of which was probably "stunned."

"OK, that sentence sample aside," I said, "here's your test question. There's a very famous saying in Linguistics that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. What does that say about the difference between dialects and languages?"

"Ha," said Mr. Reporter confidently, "an army and a navy are used to make war, and opress! If we read George Orwell's 1984, we find that language can be used to shape thoughts and enforce ideas, and therefore, be used like an army and a navy."

"Well," I said, " what you're referring to is called the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, and modern day linguists...well, don't take much stock in it."

This made him go completely ballistic. "WHAT? WHAT?" he screamed. "Your answer does not map to the question! And when I was in college, if you could prove the answer did not map to the question, YOU got the credit for your answer!"

"Well, good for your professors" (I could have pointed out that his answer didn't "map" to what I asked, but at this point, I was just getting amused).

"YOU NEED TO BE MORE OPEN MINDED! YOU NEED TO BE MORE FLEXIBLE IN YOUR DEFINITIONS!"

"But I'm having so much more fun pissing you off." (Said in my sweetest quietest voice, which is actually better than yelling, IMO.)

"I AM WRITING THIS QUOTE DOWN! I AM CALLING MY EX GIRLFRIEND, WHO IS A LINGUIST! YOUUUU bla bla bla...."

At this point, one of my campmates said, "Hey, if you're that set on it, why not just compose a Spanglish haiku about it, and we'll call it even?"

"Yeah," I said, "How about a haiku?"

"NO!" screamed my wannabe linguist, as he shoved his notebook back in his pack and started to walk away.

"So, are we gonna be in the article?" called one of my campmates.

"NO!" shreiked the contestant, "you are NOT in the article!!!"

After he left, one of my campmates turned to me, and said, "Wow. What did you *say* to that guy?"

"I thought you were being nice actually," said another campmate.

A few hours later, I was sitting on a couch thinking about something else, when a wave of psychic hatred and rage from this guy washed over me, with an accompanying babble of pieces of the conversation we'd had. Somehow, I knew he was freaking out about it to someone who juuuust didn't give a shit, and I knew exactly what direction he was in relation to me. "His poor ex. What a call she shall receive," I thought to myself, as I tried to send some compassion back his way.

The next day, a real linguist showed up. He'd studied at UC San Diego, and was even working as a computational linguist. I asked him what morphology was, and he told me it was the study of the shape of words. Case closed. And cunning he was - his playa gift was postcards of maps of places that didn't exist.

I told him about the previous day's adventure, and he grinned and said, "Yeah. I love how everyone's a linguist."