the meaning of "a linguist"

[optimistic pessimist]

Dear all,

My dictionary says a linguist means someone who is good at speaking or learning a foreign language (other than a person who studies languages).

If so, does it make sense to say "I want to be a linguist like my father" to mean "I want to be good at speaking a foreign language like my dad"?

Thank you!

OP

 

[emsr2d2]

Yes. You could also add a comma after "linguist". If you omit the comma it means that you want to be as good a linguist as your father. If you add the comma, it means "He was a linguist and I want to be one too".

 

[Odessa Dawn]

My dictionary says a linguist means someone who is good at speaking

Which dictionary, please?

 

[MikeNewYork]

You could, but it is likely that you will be misunderstood. "Linguist" has another, possibly more common meaning. If your father speaks more than one language fluently, you could refer to him as a "polyglot" or one who is bilingual, multilingual, etc.

 

[optimistic pessimist]

My dictionary is titled "Collin Coubuild"
.

 

[emsr2d2]

There have been several examples given from that dictionary recently, few of them good.

 

[Tdol]

There have been several examples given from that dictionary recently, few of them good.

Weren't they from a translation? Cobuild's a perfectly good dictionary.