My new-ish self-description.

I've decided lately that my new linguistic project has been coming together so well, that I'm just going to introduce myself to people when it comes up as "the world's foremost expert on [the modern stage of this language family]," and as "a major expert in [the longer-term language]." I mean, I'm now on my 3rd project that revises something major about the language in a way that affects most everyone or in fact everyone who learns it -- these are not some little curlicues on someone else's established line-of-thinking! -- and if that doesn't make an authority, what does? And I can point to acceptance by conferences and collegial engagment with an expert who holds a chair and has major publications. And, if anyone points out that I haven't quite mastered this one script that the language sometimes appears in, that only proves my point all the more! "And it's all the more remarkable, since I still haven't quite finished my course of studies, on all of the language stages." Of course, I wouldn't do this with people who work in academia... And for people who are outside of it who then ask me why I'm not in it, I've been saying, "The world is kind of f*cked up right now," and at that they usually nod and don't ask me any more questions, but in a way that shows you that they get what I mean, and are not put off by it.