gender	text
m	"I was always interested in learning languages, but also in logical thinking 
and math. Computational Linguistics is the perfect program to combine both of those passions of mine. 
In the linguistic field I find it fascinating to learn how the brain processes language and how people learn a second language 
differently from how they learn their native language. 
I also really like the way that language is explained in a logical way. 
On the computational side, AI is a very important and interesting topic for the future and 
it has a lot to do with Computational linguistics, since we are the ones that teach the AI how to understand, 
process and speak a new language. 
There are many more other interesting subjects in the field so there is something new to learn and discover every day. 
I am convinced, that I chose the right subject with a promising future."
m	"I am studying computer science and my favorite part of this study program is the
development of compilers and therefore also programming languages. If one is
concerned with studying and designing programming languages, it will become
quite obvious that language shapes thought in the most interesting ways. That is
why I also care much about natural languages and also how to formalize, analyze
and compute them."
m	I really like the challenge of computer science as well as having to solve problems logically and simple. Computational linguistics is just the perfect mixture of coding, analyzing and working with languages. While the technical part can drive you crazy sometimes, I'm still able to adapt and to learn a lot new things. I always had fun in learning and speaking languages and I'm counting it to one of my strongest abilities. That results in an interest of linguistics and its studies as well. Therefore I'm certain that CL is just the perfect opportunity for me to combine my interest in computer science with my interest in the study of language.
f	Within linguistics, I am mostly interested in formal semantics, primarily in old-school logical theories and rule-based implementations of syntax and semantics. For my master thesis, I am currently looking for a suitable topic involving either quantifiers, intensionality or causality. However, I am not really into natural languages as such but am mostly intrigued by the theories behind the formalisms themselves and, more dominantly, problems in mathematics/logic (in particular proof theory). Since I regret not having studied computer science or mathematics instead of linguistics but enjoy programming (and need to make a living at some point in the future), I am currently striving to broaden my foundations in statistical methods and computational linguistics. My hope is to get a good enough idea of modern NLP techniques such as machine learning and neural networks to be able to work into more advanced topics by myself, and to improve my programming skills in a way that is relevant for demands in the industry.
f	I am interested in the natural language processing and machine learning.
f	"Mathematics was my first passion and for many years in elementary and middle school, I was winning national and international competitions with ease. Then a time came when I had to put much more effort into being one of the best. As an extremely lazy person, I escaped from this by switching from a maths middle school to a language high school.

In my second year of high school, a friend asked me to join a school club for linguistics puzzles. Years before that I was on the verge of joining the same club but in the maths school, but I was discouraged by some students saying that it was not enough serious.

This second time I decided to give it a chance. Solving linguistic problems very soon became my favourite hobby - it was nothing more than maths with words. I started competing and did no worse than in maths. For four years of competing, I was twice in the extended national team and the last year, I even managed to qualify for the International Linguistic Olympiad.

One can see why computational linguistics seemed like the perfect university discipline for me, which resolved the first part of ""what and where to study?"". For the other part - my home country was excluded. Neither was there a bachelor degree in computational linguistics nor does the education system there has the best reputation. I was left with the English and German-speaking countries, but then from a financial perspective, Germany was the only one left.

Finally, although I have no logical explanation of how I chose Tuebingen, I knew that it would be it. This was the strangest but simultaneously the easiest decision in my life so far and one I would never regret."
f	"The study of language in cooperation with computers is interesting. 
The technology behing translators or voice assistants is fascinating. 
Computational linguistics combines my interests. 
It is a growing and important field to work in. 
Communication and speech are used everyday and all over the world which is awesome."
m	"Since early age, I had an interest in languages, and also computers. ISCL allows me to combine these two.
By analyzing and simplifying languages, we can see the underlying structures, and compare different languages. 
Also, by using different programming languages (Java, Python, etc.), we can translate machine language into real-world language, and vice versa.
To me, this field is very interesting, since it's always developing, and has a large variety of uses in the future."
m	Growing up in a multilingual family with parents who traveled for work, I always had an interest in foreign languages. My parents would regularly switch between four languages, so learning them was expected of me as well. But I didn't mind, because I saw them as a puzzle and enjoyed fitting all the pieces together. Finally figuring out the right word to use, and placing it into its proper position in a sentence was satisfying, but I also knew it was a practical life skill and would allow me to travel and communicate with many more people than my monolingual peers. Around the same time I was beginning to understand my appreciation for natural languages, I was also discovering how to use a computer. Being a digital native, I've always been curious about how to hook up my Nintendo64 and customize my MySpace profile with HTML and CSS. So when machine translation services like Google Translate and foreign language education apps like Duolingo appeared, I realized I could leverage my passion for natural languages and technology into a career.
f	"Since my Bachelor studies, I have been passionate about Linguistics. During that time, I specialized in variety of languages, especially German dialects.
I am most fascinated by how different grammatical rules can be within one language and across regions. Now, my focus has shifted towards Natural Language Processing.
To me, it is very practical to be able to break language down into computable units. I am impressed, how many application areas there are for that topic. I have only been
programming for almost two years and have made a lot of progress since. It has become my passion to think about different approaches to modeling language in order to solve a given task.
What I love most about it is the fact that it is a highly analytical and yet creative task at the same time."
m	I am interested in computational linguistics because programming is something I really like and which I see as a useful thing to learn. Also, I was always interested in learning new languages and examining language in general. Moreover, studies related to computer science open the doors to many work fields which are important in the presence and future. Because I am not very much comfortable with (advanced) math, the CL studies are quite makeable for myself. In CL, many current research topics are discussed, it is therefore a very state-of-the-art scientific field.
f	"Linguistics is an interesting field because languages are everywhere and one of the most integral aspects of humans and culture. 
Languages are used to communicate needs, wishes, experiences but are also exploited to manipulate. Let's develop computational methods to unveil Trump's
hidden agenda - well, we might not need a very complicated algorithm to do that - and detect and analyse politican's rhetorical skills.
But on a more serious, or rather more important note, it is fascinating to watch the development of programmes and algorithms, for instance in Machine Translation, in the recent years and deal with this fast developing subject. For instance, with the help of NLP, we can translate ever slightly more complex texts into another langauge, depending on the language pair with different qualities, 
and extract the content of a page without a human to have a single glance at it. NLP automates processes, and in the time of digitalisation and big data, NLP can be used for good purposes (also bad ones of course). 
And sometimes, dealing with languages from a computational point of view, we might also find underlying patterns or phenomena at work in languages we wouldn't have found otherwise."
m	"From a young age I've been a very motivated language learner, and have been enjoying all sorts of fun with words - solving anagrams, playing scrabble, writing rhymes...the list goes on. With that in mind, I figured sticking to something language-related would be an appropriate choice of study, and being more technically rather than artistically inclined I opted for linguistics over literature. I had some experience programming in high school as well, and thought it would be fun (and, of course, sensible in terms of career development) to keep going, so computational linguistics seemed like the perfect choice; as a friend put it, ""connecting the beautiful and the useful"".

A little over three semesters in and I am increasingly leaning towards the computational side of things. I am starting to develop a strong liking for mathematics which I had previously considered too mechanical, and now find it hugely exciting to attempt to find patterns and rules which can be combined to form complex systems. Language can definitely pass as a complex system, and whether we can reliably deconstruct it to its atomic components, whatever they may be, is as much of a philosophical as it is a practical question. The answer to this is most probably no, but the thought of never being able to decode it fully may make it all the more enticing. It is as if language were a hugely convoluted math problem, one that no-one will ever find the solution to, but where making sense of even the smallest unexplored sub-equation would feel like a seismic event to anyone involved."
f	I am interested in annotation, tokenization and corpus linguistics, esp relating to Thai. It is quite challenging to work on / deal with Thai tokenization and annotation due to its linguistics aspect.
m	"I've been interested in linguistics since I was young, which showed mostly through my desire to learn many new languages.
Thoroughout high school, I've learned English relatively well and I attempted to branch out to other languages too, from which German was the one I invested the most time into.
I don't consider myself fluent in German, as I still have trouble expressing myself using the language, but I'm managing to understand fairly well.
Over time, I realised my interest in languages didn't just manifest itself in my desire to learn completely new languages, but also in observing patterns and similarities.
I invested a lot of time reading about linguistics, and the field of computational linguistics was recommended to me by my high scool literature teacher.
Unfortunately, there are no universities providing complete computational linguistics courses in my country, so I decided to brave the world and try my luck here in Germany."
f	"I got into computational linguistics through to the diciplines I got to know through my studies, german and computer science (I studied politics as well, but as there's no connection to that topic here, we can ommit that). Coming from a linguistic background and diving into computer science, I especially found interest in theoretical computer science, especially formal language theory. I'm interested in the connections between natural language, formal language and complexity theory. Trying to connect these interests by studying grammar formalisms from a complexity-standpoint is something I would look forward to (especially TAG). My interest in language is rather the syntactical aspect rather than semantics or pragmatics. 
I would like to gain some experience of analyzing language from a different point of view that 'just' the syntactical/ on a theoretical level I've gotten used to. 
I postponed the ""hands-on""-courses regarding language for a long time (also because I'm not very eager to do the programming-work most of the times) and tried to ignore the influence of statistical applications in the field, because I have always been convinced, that genuin knowledge about the structures will be more useful than an insight gained by loads of data. But probably I should start to acknowledge that the two are not mutually exclusive."
f	There are many applications in linguistics and computation. The difficulty is to formalize natural language. For me, it's really interesting that we can do linguistic research by computer. We try to make computer understand natural language. And there are so many different approaches.
f	I chose to study computational linguistics, because this field of study includes both: technical and humanitarian subjects. Linguistics belongs to humanitarian field and computation-to technical field. At first I started my studies only in linguistics. It was amazing to acquire new knowledge about language structure and to learn how the language is build on its different levels. But when I decided to study language from a computational perspective it gave me even more insight into processes that occur within the language. The most exciting thing for me is the possibility of building models that can help machines process and generate the natural language. It seems to be of a great significance for the development of artificial intelligence that I consider to be very important goal for today's world.
f	Regarding overall linguistics I was always very interested in languages, especially the similarities and differences between them. I also find it very interesting how languages change over time, what is the origin of a word and so on. Regarding Computational Linguistics my main interest are the different aspects to help people learn languages and work with them. This includes software to help learn languages, for example, implementing Second Language Acquisition theories to improve language learning applications. Another help for learning languages, what I am also interested in is machine translation.
m	"My interests in computational linguistics are first of all to write programs.
I like the fact, that everybody is using computational linguistics in their life, but only a few know what it is.
It is very interesting how we can decompose our human language, so that our machines can work with them.
For example we can write parse algorithms and use NLP-tools to analyse a large corpus, which can save us a lot of work, but also it is always
necessary to have a human who checks the work done by a program and debug it.
For me the most challenging thing is, how I can write a program that is fast and efficient and uses all resources that a machine can give it."
f	I am interested in computational linguistics because I consider it can offer different approaches to the study of language. The use of technology and its application to linguistics can allow us to work and manage more quantities of data, and therefore to discover new phenomena of language or learn the actual reach of the phenomena. The automatization of some research processes, like the acquisition of data, can also make the research process more dynamic and allow for bigger projects with broader reach.
m	"Language has always fascinated me. Be it the word games or stupid, little creations.
The ever evolving tool for human communication is so incredibly complex that noone really understands it.
But we can try! That is what fascinates me. On one hand using language in everyday life and on the other hand trying to analyze it and make it machine digestible.
Today the interface between human and machine consists mostly of buttons and other touch based input methods.
For me a big motivation is the idea that one day communication between human and machine is mostly natural language based. That is what I want to help make reality."
f	I am very interested in major computational linguistic fields such as speech recognition and machine translation. My favourite linguistic area is pragmatics. In my opinion it is a crucial and yet often ignored aspect in voice recognition and implementing chatbots. Therefore more work can be done in order to improve them. Another thing I would love to do something about is implementing cognitive processes underlying human speech (which can surely improve the quality of human to machine interaction).
f	"I am interested in computation, because I like learning new programming languages. That also includes finding out about their specific syntax and different features. Furthermore I enjoy learning about new algorithms and concepts and how they can be used to solve different problems. In addition, I like how learning more and more in the field of computation has helped me to further my problem-solving skills, as problem-solving is a big part of computation and programming.
In the field of linguistics I like learning about many different topics and building a deeper understanding of as many topics as possible.
What I especially enjoy about linguistics is that most theories and concepts can be related to real life spoken language.
The best part is, when linguistics and computation are connected and both fields become relevant to solve a problem."
m	Since I was born, I had a strong interest towards learning and using languages and was also fairly talented in it. This strong intrest towards learning new languages led to the interest towards understanding how languages work internally, how grammar is used in a natural way, how language itself and specific linguistic features evolve. I wanted to discover the origins of languages and how they can be classified. This again made me want to understand the methodology behind it - how can proto-languages be reconstructed, what tools are there to understand layers of natural language that are way beyond the surface? I wanted to find answers for those questions, and so after completing my Abitur, I enrolled myself in the General Linguistics Bachelor's degree. Within my Bachelor's programming, I kept getting in touch with programming and computational tools. After a while, I felt like not knowing how to program was very limiting in certain linguistic fields, so naturally, programming as a tool for doing linguistics got me interested. The second reason on why I got interested in programming was my elder brother, who studied computer science and always told me about very interesting stuff. With my rising interest in programming and my seemingly never descending interent in linguistics, it became clear to me that a combination of these two fields would be the right choice for me - so I already leaned into the field of computational linguistics when writing my B.A. thesis in computational historical linguistics; and then, as a natural consequence, I enrolled myself in the ISCL M.A. program.
f	"I think computational linguistics provides a lot of exciting concepts and projects. 
I'm currently interested in intelligent tutoring systems not only because a student can benefit from a learning environment that matches their skills and weaknesses but also because it can bridge the gap between (financially) advantaged and disadvantaged students.
Another topic I find intriguing is how language and statistics interact. A lot of recent research suggests that the way humans learn languages is connected to probability, and so are pretty much all state-of-the-art NLP tools, which use machine learning. 
Finally, computational linguistics plays a huge part in the development of intelligent systems (ai), which un-doubtedly is one of the most interesting things happening in the field of computer science."
f	"Learning languages has always been a hobby of mine. Learning to speak and understand other languages gives me a sense of accomplishment and changed how I view the world. When I learned that some machines/programs can understand and use natural languages, I wanted to learn how that is even possible. That's why I choose to study Computational Linguistics. Out of the major fields of Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics interest me the most. Since I had a lot of fun learning the meaning of language and figuring out how its meaning may change in different context. Machine learning is what makes ""intelligent"" machines/programs possible. To understand how it works, I have to know the statistical models behind it."
f	From the ISCL BA program, my main focus of interest is computer programming itself. From linguistics, I am mostly interested in cognitive linguistics and language use. I hope to learn how to use Python and Java for solving complex problems. I am also interested in looking at linguistic tasks as programming challenges. I am looking forward to this course as I hope it will help me become a better programmer.
m	My main interest in linguistics and computation is from the time I spend working for the  homepage quality control department of a big automotive company. Back then we just started to do testing with automation. For example, Spell-checking had to be done in many languages. Doing this by visual checks (bot takes screenshots of pages and compares to stock images) for the corporate main pages was okay because the translations there were given (layout everything was already in image form provided in documentation, but the lower it went in the structure(from main country page to dealers etc.) the more freedom was there to make up own texts. To explain the homepages were created by the companies CMS system, so support for that was also with the quality control department. Having knowledge in linguistics and computation would have been a huge help back then for me. Also i understood after working on creating fully automated quality tests that this part of the job will only get bigger in size compared to manual testing.
f	"When I was studying Applied Linguistics as a bachelor degree, I enjoyed learning about languages and how they form in terms of morphology and syntax. 
I also enjoyed how learning about how languages hav a significant influence on society and human's behavior. 
However, I always thought how can I apply this knowledge practically and use it effectively in life. 
Computational Linguistics was my first choice since technology and data science is the core of our lives. 
Most importantly, I enjoy analyzing natural languages' data and trying to overcome the challenges related to it. 
Therefore, I thought NLP is the best field that gets me to use my linguistic knowledge in a technical and practical way."
f	"My interest in linguistics started with my desire to better comprehend the English language.
From a very early age I developed fast a great interest in languages.
Though the thought of engaging in the field of computational linguistics
has never crossed my mind only until I found this program in Tuebingen that
combines both my love for languages and the current necessities
of computation of almost everything.
I am fascinated by the ongoing developments in this field and I’ve always
been curious to learn what happens behind the curtains.
With the help of this field our everyday lives are constantly improved.
At first the idea of replacing more and more of our services with technology,
frightened me but come to think of it, our lives are considerably improved by artificial intelligence.
And all tedious tasks are excluded from our lives, we are left with the freedom to pursue any goal we want,
be it a career, family or just travelling. Robots could change the world into a better place,
they could serve us or be our friends, or execute our time consuming and repetitive tasks.
They could create enough resource and revenue to sustain our choices and preferences of living where for example,
things like “I need a job in order to sustain a living!“ would no longer exist.
In conclusion, these are some of the reasons why my interest in computational linguistics is constantly developing."
f	My main interest lies in historical linguistics and investigating language change. I am particularly interested in the Amazigh (Berber) languages and Arabic although I don't speak any Berber nor Arabic dialect. I am not familiar with computation but I found it a practical aid to what I am interested in. I'd love to learn more about computation and programming so that I can investigate the topic I am interested in with more ease.I also find machine learning an intriguing field but I need to improve my sense of statistics.
f	I am thrilled to be taking this class. This sounds like the foundation course that I desperately need. I'm excited to dive into the practical/applied side of NLP rather than only theory. I look forward to this semester!
m	"Language Modelling,
Syntactic and semantics parsing,
Applying machine learning to theoretical and experimental syntax and semantics."
m	Communication is essential for learning, or respectivly teaching. I'm very interested in artifical intelligence, especially ones that are capable of learning. Now to teach a computer one would have to be able to communicate with it in a way. Destroying the blockade between language, text or speech, or any input in general, and the computer would make it possible to let a AI learn existing sources without further help. Imagine for example an interactive AI with the entire knowlegde of Wikipedia or even every published paper. Surely there's more to do than just tell a computer how to read, but it's still a start.
m	I'm interested in the engineering side of computational linguistics. I like solving, in this case, interesting linguistic-based problems, and computers are good to such ends. Specifically, I'm intrigued by machine translation, dialog systems, text, classification, text mining/analytics, sentiment analysis.Therein lies my interest in linguistics and computation. And that's five sentences.
m	I'm interested between the connection of natural language and computational modeling. I want to know how machine translation works. Also how information is gathered and used and how computational linguistic is helpful in our daily life. How to read statistics and analyze them would also be interesting.
f	At first I was only interested in Linguistics, in words, wording, which words people chose to communicate certain things, the way context can change a sentences' whole meaning, and also in the way words can be misunderstood. Then I started being interested in how languages and computers can be connected other than the fact that programming languages themselves are language, have grammar, carry meaning. How computers can be used to interpret meaning of a sentence also leads back to the question how humans process sentences. I like the interdisciplinarity of Computational Linguistics. One thing that fascinates me is how easy the use of computational language processing tools makes it to search a text for certain things, to alter things, and to process data very fast. Also how translation tools make communication easier, sometimes even possible, all over the world. ü
m	"I started programming in the year 2000 with Basic and C and started founding startups in 2004, where we developed a social network for >1M users. My first encounter with NLP was when I studied search queries, entered by users to find other users, groups or general things in blogs and so on. Many queries had the format ""user city age"" - ASL! - so that a rule based system and a ngram index was quite sufficient. After that I developed a web analytics platform for two years, where my personal interest was lying on a sophisticated google-search referer clustering. At the end, it was a simple naive bayes implemented in SQL. Then I realized I need a more formal background in math and went to university, but started another ""toy startup"" in the first semester, where I break apart email addresses for semantic evaluation. The engine improves itself by seeing firstname/lastname combinations from news articles and Wikipedia and learning ngram combinations (since name.firstname, namefirstname, firstname.name, firstamename and so on are possible). That also brought me to sentiment analysis on news articles about politics in public media. In times where social media dominates what is worth spreading, its hard to say what is fake news and how media influences public opinion. 

My major is computer science and theoretical computer science brought me to the formalism behind languages. I developed a statistical/machine learning/other buzzwords approach to learn Type 3 languages from examples, like automatically translating CSV to HTML by examples. Another private research project is finding a temporal hierarchy in languages by clustering dictionaries, where I'm still on the hunt for dictionary sources. 

As human language is full of knowledge, it's fun to discover these treasures. That's why I'm really looking forward to the course to learn new techniques."
m	Master Machine Learning
m	Recently I grow a great interest in NLP, because I find it very practical. A product can have a more accurate algorithm, when the technology in NLP is upgraded, thus satisfying the customers. To realize it, I want to know the characteristics of natural language and computation. Currently I am focusing on computation. So this course is perfect for me. I hope through this course I can gain a deeper understanding of NLP and computation.
m	Just one or two decades ago systems involving natural languages were pretty terrible. Machine translation for example was barley worked most of the time. Same for speech recognition systems. However, both of them evolved in impressing ways over time. Nowadays it's possible to translate several sentences from English to German and they not only make sense, but are also grammatically correct. Same holds true for speech recognition systems like Alexa or Siri that actually work most of the time. Human languages plays a huge role in our everyday life and for the longest time it seemed impossible for computers to properly understand or process it, especially considering that even we ourselve don't fully understand how language works. Combined with the additional chances that open up for processing large amount of data through better functioning NLP systems makes (computational) linguistics an interesting field of computation.
m	"My interest in computation springs from seeing how powerful computers can be as tools and that understanding and learning more about them would make possible much more productive work in regards to almost anything.
As a more theoretical person I can see myself working with data in the future, for which an understanding of computation and programming would be of great importance.
I have an interest in logic and as such enjoy the way of thinking that is necessary to work with a purely logical language, such as a programming language.
My interest in linguistics started with authors that were very creative in either creating or playing with languages such as Lewis Caroll, often playing with ambiguity and the way that language conveys meaning, or J.R.R. Tolkien, who built several fantasy languages for his literary universe. 
Furthermore, literary inspiration came from a love for poetry and songwriting.
I was raised bilingual and have always had an interest in learning new languages. As such I am interested in matters about how humans learn a language and why it is, that adults struggle so much more with some aspects of language learning than children do.
I especially enjoy learning about writing systems and like to learn the meaning for symbols, regardless of whether I speak any of the corresponding languages or not.
I am also very interested in ideas about the mapping of language to meaning and ideas about how language might shape the experiences we have, as well as questions about how culture and history might shape language and vice versa."
m	I have always been interested in Mathematics and programming. During high school learning foreign languages became a hobby of mine. Computational Linguistics is combining two passions in one study programme and one science. My particular interests within Computational Linguistics range from more philosophical topics, such as Logic and implicature in natural languages, to technical applications in the area of speech processing.
m	I have worked on labeling linguistic features in the text. I am highly interested in developing tools that could facilitate better human-computer interaction through human language.
f	Prior to 2016, when I commenced the BA in Computational Linguistics I did not have any interest in either Linguistics or Computation. A friend of mine was begining the ISCL degree in the winter and asked me to come with her. I said I had no interest in the degree however after some persuasion and as my job was very boring I said I would try it for a semester. I didn't really have any expectations of the course, nor did I have a clue what computational linguistics even meant, however I finsihed the 1st semester, then the second and third. I can now say that I definately have an interest in both the computational and linguistic side. I am very interested in machine translation (statistical and rule based). I find the programming side of things difficult and frustrating, but also very satisfying and somewhat enjoyable.
f	My interests in language are mainly theoretical. While I like the practical side of computational linguistics, I didn't chose to study it to create useful applications, but rather to learn more about different ways to formalise linguistics structures and meaning. I'm rather interested in computation only as a tool to solve problems. I enjoy different topics in formal semantics and learning about their occasional connections to philosophical ideas. However, right now I'm trying to collect some more knowledge on distributional semantics and linear algebra and I would eventually like to find a project for my thesis in this topic.
m	"I have been interested in languages since I was a child, since I grew up bilingual.
It is interesting to learn how different languages are actually quite similar, in terms of grammar.
Studying computational linguistics right now is also really interesting, since the research in this field is really active.
I am really interested in machine translation and how to work the methods and technology changed thorughout the years.
But sometimes taking a linguistics class is really boring, but I got used to it."
f	There are many areas of interest of computational linguistics that interest me such as text analysis and speech recognition but I am also interested in looking at and learning about natural language processing.
f	From my point of view, linguistics is exciting because it studies a complex phenomenon, human language. Language is extremly versatile, highly dependent on context and shaped by culture. Not only does it consist of a set of grammar rules, but it also enables us to exchange complex thoughts, ideas, knowledge and feelings. It is therefore an important means of expressing how we understand and represent the world. To me, extracting information from written or spoken language is not only about identifying parts of the speech or capturing the main topic of the content, but rather about understanding how the human mind represents the world through linguistic space. It is exciting to me how perceptions are put into words and how information is transmitted to evoke similar representations in our minds and to exchange ideas. Regarding computation, I am particularly interested in models that learn from training data e.g. which words or phrases occur in similar contexts and might thus convey a similar meaning.
m	"I came to this area somewhat serendipitously. In short, I had observed in the workplace what it was to be a programmer, I wanted to learn these skills, and this Computational Linguistics course proved was the best fit for me that was taught in English.
Since living in Germany I have come to greatly appreciate google translate, and I now use amazon alexa regularly. I am very excited about the potential of speech-based interfaces to provide a healthier way for humans to work with computers for everyday tasks (as opposed to the addictive and distracting interfaces that screens have become). 
It is also fun to consider the new ways that technologies could influence life through a speech interface, from telling the driver what the tyre pressure to streamlining agricultural practices by allowing farmers to record vocal data while their hands are dirty."
m	"I used to study linguistics in the US. When studying there, i found semantics especially implicature very interesting. And it interests me that humans sometimes have trouble drawing the implicaturs when talking with each other, what 
about machines? Therefore, i want to see how we can come up with some algorithms for machines to capture implicatures. And this would significantly improve the accuracy of many voice assitants, such as Siri. More than that, i really want 
to know lots of new-fashioned, state-of-the-art techniques used in the field of AI."
f	"My interest in linguistics developed during my studies of German linguistics. I find it interesting how linguistic systems define our understanding of the world and how this had changed over time. 
It's pretty interesting how words and morphemes have changed. But to seek these changes with the hand and the eyes is difficult. Therefore, it is easier to study these differences in a way that is more elegant than before. In addition, the development of programming languages ​​is interesting compared to existing languages."
f	"Living in Germany and studying in English has given me the opportunity to learn and improve two second languages. In general, I find fascinating how languages can influence the way people think and understand things. The same information can be communicated in very different ways.
What I like about Computational Linguistics is that it explores that using Machine Learning techniques, some field that I am also keen on. Trying to model languages and the way information is stored using statistics and algorithms is something that I find very interesting.
During my master, I have worked in a research project that aimed to generate two-dimensional embeddings of text data, using dimensionality reduction techniques. In there, text processing was a key part of the embedding generation, therefore NLP was very present in the project.
Due to all of that, I have a great interest in Computational Linguistics."
f	Language is such a vital part of communication. Studying linguistics allows one to enjoy and learn the facets of such a science. The computational aspects allow one to further this knowledge and bridge the gap between these two disciplines. This course seems like it will finally give instruction in the practical application of computational linguistics, which I'm sure most are rather excited about. So yeah.
m	Programming is a creative tool. I don't particularly like it but it is necessary. Solving problems can be fun, but also overwhelming. Nevertheless, using it allows us to statistically model natural language. This scientific approach allows interesting insights into human behaviour and speech.
f	I have always been interested in languages and it has always been clear to me that words are not just randomly put together to magically make sense. The idea that there are certain patterns in languages and that it is possible to quantify them to a large extent is fascinating. With the advance in technology, it has become possible for the artificial models to learn these patterns. It is very interesting what methods work best for learning more about languages and their structures, and for solving practical tasks.  I do not think that the NLP field is anywhere close to solving such fundamental issues as e.g. language understanding, which makes me curious about more philosophical questions. For instance, what is "meaning"? Or, what does it mean "to understand a language"?
f	What I find the most interesting about linguistics, is probably the fact that it is such a complex topic with so much to learn about. Even though we use it daily, there are such deep and interesting structures in natural language that we don't even think about or notice when speaking. Also the possibilities for research and applications in all the different fields of linguistics are pretty much endless. In a lot of those, computation can be a great tool, for example to help finding certain structures in a language. I find it especially fascinating, when such tools are used to create something really practical and helpful, for example a computer-based way to help children learn a foreign language efficiently. I also really like programming. Trying to pinpoint a concrete problem and then finding a solution for it, is just really fun to me.
f	As a Computer Science major, I am interested in all applications of Computer Science, including Computational Linguistics. I think there are very interesting Computational Linguistics applications out there, like translation services or virtual assistants, and I hope to find out more about the mechanisms behind them. Furthermore, I feel like I was able to cover most foundational topics of Computer Science in my studies so far, expect for Natural Language Processing, about which I am very happy to get the chance to do so now. Additionally, I have learned foreign languages since kindergarten and have been living abroad in several countries, which has fostered my interest in languages. Thus, I feel like Computational Linguistics is the perfect field for me to combine my interest in Computer Science and in languages.
m	The foundation and core of our society is communication. While there are different ways of communication, language is the most important one. We use language every day without thinking about it; thats why I find interest in studying language to better understand this important tool. I believe the computational part helps a lot in analyzing language and gives it an interesting twist, as we use (programming) language to analyze language.
f	"I study Computer Science and Mathematics, which has introduced me to formal
languages and complexity theory.  Since I was a kid, I've been interested in
learning languages and intrigued, more broadly, by how language functions.
Because of  this, combined with my background in Math and CS, I found myself
interested in linguistics, especially in regards to trying to codify and parse
language.  Last summer I started working in a lab doing audio analysis
research.  This inspired me to learn more about Natural Language Processing,
especially in relation to Machine Learning.  As such, I find that my interest
in the fields of linguistics and computation largely surrounds the question of
""how can we use computation and/or computational models to better understand
natural languages?"", both in practical and theoretical ways."
m	"I am a ISCL, BA student. My interest in linguistics is Phonetics and Phonology as well as Syntax, Semantics
and Pragmatics and Language and Cognition. Also, my interest in Computational is Natural Language Processing and Underestanding,
Speech Recognition and Processing. I am also very interested in using new approchaces like, deep learning, Neural Networks and
Machine Learning to do the NLP and Speech recognition. Furthormore, I have passion to learn how can I use these AI algorithms to
interact with machines like Smart phones, Game box (like Xbox), Cars and so on."
f	"I always wanted to work with words or language, and it didn’t matter for me would it be something related to neurolinguistics, 
just a simple translation work or anything more computational. 
In the end I got a bit more interested in computer linguistics, because in school I always was good with programming and it felt 
natural to continue improving myself in that field. 
Also computational linguistics would allow me to solve bigger variety of tasks: 
it’s really impressive how studying one thing can help you to “get access” to so many completely different fields 
starting from speech recognition to machine translation. 
Another linguistic field which I find quite exciting is contrastive linguistics, I mean, 
it is very interesting to compare morphology, syntax, pragmatics etc of two or more different languages. 
I guess they main reason why both computational and contrastive linguistics are appealing to me is 
because they both are very practical-oriented, which I always prefer to plain theory."
f	I like the connection of language and programming. When I learned Hebrew in Israel it was a big help to use google translate anytime and the dictionary on my phone to write sms when I was not sure how to write it.
m	"Natural Languages and language learning have always been an interest for me.
Already in high school I liked language courses because I was good at it.
I always found learning a new language gave me an alternative perspective on the world.
At a younger age language was not interesting for me because I liked literature or poetry.
It was rather the structure, the grammar and the combinations of different letters I found exciting.
Learning them was always fun, I even liked Latin a lot whereas almost all of my classmates hated it.
Computation and Programming, on the other hand, hardly played a role during my adolescence. 
It was only when I had already become an adult that I started programming.
Very fast, I discovered how exciting it could be to combine language with the abilities of a machine and try to solve linguistic problems with it.
I had not heard of computational linguistics after leaving school.
It took some time until I heard about for the first time.
At this point I knew that this was what I wanted to do."
f	Linguistics is something that I've been fascinated by since I learned about it. When I was a little kid I wanted to be like Indiana Jones when I grew up, because I found the whole concept of ancient civilisations and in particular lost languages really interesting. As I got older I discovered that becoming Indiana Jones is unfortunately not a viable career path. So, I went into the theoretical linguistics field and eventually transitioned into computational linguistics. I was intrigued by how the theoretical approaches I had learned can be automated using computational approaches, and was surprised by how many technological advancements are rooted in computational linguistics. I think that the task of trying to translate the intricacies of human language to something more logical and systematic is really interesing and I'm excited for the future of this relatively new field.
m	I am interested in linguistics and computation because it can easily find a job. I am not saying that other major is hard, but anything related to computer is good to find one. Furthermore, if you were in the class where they taught you computer skills, you can naturally bring your laptop and read news or go shopping without any problems. You can do this in other classes as well, but doing it in programming class is more natural. BTW, machine learning is sooooo cool that my mom is proud of me :-P.
f	I really like that coding is basically a normal language and that our rules on what is considered to be a normal language and what not is sometimes arbitrary like irregular verbs and or plural nouns.
f	When I was young, I wondered why people from other countries use different language. This was my first interest in language and linguistics, I guess. Also I wanted to understand how people learn language and use language. In recent years, AI industry has been in the limelight. That makes me have interest how computer understands human's language and deals with it. These interest brought me learning the combination of linguistics and computation, which is computational linguistics I'm studying now.
m	"There are two major aspects of linguistics I find the most interesting. 
The first aspect is how languages come into being and how the boundaries, in which parts of the world they are spoken, develop.
For example, how is it possible, that in some areas people in almost every village speak a different language (E.g. in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea)?
The other aspect is related to learning. In particular, the difference between learning a native and a foreign language. I think it is a great example for the importance of interaction with the environment
for learning. Studying how children learn languages also lead to implications about the development and structur of the human brain.
Modelling these developments and learning in general with computational models sounds very exciting to me and I would like to learn more about it."
m	My undergraduate degree was in Applied Linguistics, during which I had the opportunity to study abroad a couple times in different parts of the world. Doing so exposed to me many different cultures and languages, which peaked my interest at the time. At some point after graduating, I took more of an interest in programming and computers and decided that I wanted to further my studies in the field that combined these two interests. Seeing how all these different languages and cultures can connect with one another through a shared medium, a computer, was when I realized how powerful and helpful such technology could really be. Now I think I'm most interested in the development of language software and related technologies to try and bridge the remaining gap of speech capability between computers and humans. A lot of nuance and translation is still quite far behind in a lot of translation apps, especially for lesser common languages, but I think this will quickly change in the near future.
m	Sound always fascinates me. It surrounds us in our whole life, yet for most of us we can't see it. In the form of languages, it carries information and emotion among us. In the form of music, it covers the boredom in the air. These frequencies of vibration somehow shaped who we are. With a background of music and engineering, I came here to further delve into the computational world. I wish to crack the hidden secret of sound, music and speech, creating innovative technologies to bring new insights to ourselves. There is one more thing. I speak a rather ancient language that can be traced back to about 2000 years ago. But it is dying, being murdered politically. I want to shelter it via technology and spread it through the net. So when the last word meets its end, the seed of the language   could rise again.
f	Back in high school I hated grammar and thought it was absolutely boring - until I came to university studying English as a major. Since then, linguistic classes were my absolute favorite because it is exciting how language is explainable and logically put together. Moreover, it is interesting how different languages differ syntactically and how different cultures interpret similar lingustic terms differently (for example whether words convey positive or negative meanings). It was, hence, not surprising after my Bachelor's degree to continue with linguistics; however, considering the chances of getting a job as a linguist I chose computational linguistics especially since I wanted to learn how to program. Even though it is really not easy to learn programming and understand the concepts underneath it, it is fun to continue learning in programming and every time a program runs it just feels so good. Last semester I was learning things in the area of artifical intelligence and neural networks - what a delicate matter. I often was devastated when trying to solve the problems that were given by the instructors; however, when it finally worked, it just felt great. For my future I hope to learn a lot more about NLP and how I can process language computationally, integrating it into tasks like question-answering. To achieve this I need to work harder to understand all the facets that are required when working with NLP and deep learning, however, it is my goal to write my own question-answering system.
m	I would like to do research on computer lexicography and grammar formalisms. My formal, linguistic interests are: Recreational Linguistic, with a focus on morphology, syntax and semantics, Language Philosophy with a basic knowledge of logic. Multiterm, with various aspects of terminology management, or online tools in linguist job that describe corporal structures interest me as well. As for computation I would like to gain some practical knowledge in NLP and machine learning. I would like to improve my programming skills as well. I also want to learn more about Grammar Checkers and Automatic Summarization.
f	As a student in ISCL in Tuebingen, I have to say that it’s a good place to study. In our country, we have different dialects in different areas. And I realized that I actually like to mimic those sounds from dialects. Or saying that, I am speaking one of the dialects but I didn’t realize it until my friends told me. I’d like to see how a language influences our culture and the way we live, or the other way around. Another reason how I found my interest in Linguistics is just from some kids. I like to play around with children and observe how they develop their language skills gradually, it’s amazing to watch a child learning to speak and think, isn’t it? I always try to solve problems in a logical way, that’s why computation field would fit in my plan. And it’s really much fun to learn computational skills and make it useful to our life!
f	"Linguistics is a very interesting field for me because it shows how complex natural languages are. Afterall, human knowledge is expressed in language.
It is the way we found to rationalize, discuss and communicate every subject in our lives.
Understanting languages from a computational perspective is fascinating. 
The possibilities for using the computer to represent and manipulate linguistic structures are so many.
As we develop systems that facilitate human-computer interaction, we further our communication possibilities and create new applications.
Computers are an extremmely useful tool for humans and they can help us simplify many of our activites.
In addition, by creating applications that deal with natural languages we are also able to further understand the complexity of our own languages."
m	"My biggest passion is Languages, and i also like to program and to solve problems, therefore i decided to try to integrate both. 
It has been fascinating to me the way human learns and perceives different languages and also programming languages.  
I am highly motivated to wide my horizons in that field, as well as to open new doors on related topics."
f	I have decided to study Computational Linguistics because I have always liked logic and learning languages. Even though I was sceptical about the computational part of those studies before I enrolled, I turned out to really like programming because it has such a logical structure. I also enjoy the linguistic part of my studies, although I often get annoyed about linguists not agreeing with each other and everyone having their own theory. But maybe one day I will develop my own theory as well and then others can get annoyed about it as well. I hope that my studies in Computational Linguistics continue to be interesting and successful. Sadly, I need one more sentence because the test for this file requires MORE THAN five sentences, even though in the instructions it says AT LEAST five sentences.
f	"Learning linguistics can help one with acquiring a second language. 
Programming is fun.
I am interested in data science.
Data solves problems.
I like python.
Programming is good for brain."
m	Hello there! My interests in Linguistics are Historical Linguistics, ancient languages. I like to read about words and their etymology. I also keen on Anthropological linguistics and reading about different cultures and ethnic groups. However, I am relatively new to Computational Linguistics so I am restricted in my interests and goals yet, having lack of sufficient knowledge in this area. Last sentence.
f	The field of computational linguistics is an exciting area with many applications which can have a large impact on people's lives. I am currently interested in five subfields. Firstly, I want to develop tools for language acquisition. Virtual AI assistant is also a promising new area of research with many potential applications. Especially I am interested in tools for people with visual or auditory impairments. Machine translation is also one of the important subfield in the computational linguistics.
m	Linguistics is a journey, but it is not one taken on foot or by whatsoever means of physical locomotion may be your preference. No, linguistics is a journey of the mind, one where we wander the very thoroughfares of thought, taking in the spectacle of unbridled human cerebration. Yet just as an odyssey by land (though not, in the majority of cases, by sea) is conveyed with far greater haste aided by a stalwart steed, so does the practice of computation carry us with unparalleled haste upon our linguistic endeavors. Who among us can claim to know of a greater achievement than to take even the first hesitant steps along this path to understanding the human mind and perhaps even the underlying soul? For what is a captcha if not a test of god given soul? Only a fool would place some other wretched field of study above this most hallowed one.
m	I've been interested in computation for as long as I can remember. My parents bought a computer for our family when I was rather young, so I had a pretty unique experience as a kid in the area where I'm from, in the sense that I grew up with a computer and with the internet while some of my classmates didn't have a computer until much later. I basically lived in front of my computer in school and I was writing simple programs in Visual Basic and C# years before deciding to come to Tübingen, but I never really got deeper into the programming aspect before starting the ISCL program. Languages have also been a particular interest of mine, having grown up in an area where a couple languages are spoken and having moved around to a few different countries and learning the  local languages to some degree. Learning how the languages work seemed to make it easier to actually use the languages, which kind of lead to casual research on linguistics becoming a sort of hobby of mine.
f	"I am interested in machine translation. 

I also want to know the rationale of checking grammatical errors like what Grammarly does.

I wonder how methods of computational linguistics can be applied to linguistics research. 

I hope to apply CL methods to Chinese, a language without alphabets but characters.

I cannot think of other reasons, and this is my fifth sentence."
f	As the result of interactions between linguistics and computation, I am interested in Chatbot. For example, how to improve the ability of reading comprehension, how to do a dialog state tracking, how to generate responses given certain emotions, how to reduce the needs of human aids in training. Text to speech generating is full of fun as well. I've played a bit with the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech application during this break. I am amazed by what they can do. However, so far, I need to learn a lot and a lot to figure out what I can do in the future and how to solve problems.
f	"Although I've always been passionate about learning languages, it is only recently that I've realized that languages are not some intangible entities. Before entering the program at the University of Tuebingen, I was convinced that languages and language learning could not be understood, structured or explained. I attribute this primarily to the fact that langugage learning has been more of a fun and easy experience for me rather than one that requires a lot of hard work, memorization and structure and pattern finding. 

 Although I am more keen on the linguistics part of CL, I do believe that the computational part is nonetheless important, mainly because it gives us the chance to look at language from a perspective that was not deemed suitable in traditional linguistics. In addition, I think that computational methods make the study of linguistics more efficient, as they allow analyses of huge amounts of data that were inconceivable just a few decades ago."
f	My interest in linguistics and computation is a story of a mistake made a long time ago and a story of hope to fix it. Right after school graduation, I have chosen general linguistics as a major for my bachelor's. But it turned out that my home university cannot provide a proper education, and more to it - I am not so interested in general linguistics as I thought. Only languages on their own are quite not applicable, so I decided on a master program in Computational linguistics. For me, it is a chance to fix a previous wrong choice since I am excited about programming.
m	"Language is cool. Computers are too.
I always found language to be fascinating and have had an interest in
the underlying structures that make speech and writing work the way they do.
Using computers to facilitate the study of language seems obvious.
Being able to make a living with both seems great."
f	I am a graduate of Linguistics currently undergoing a Master's in Computational Linguistics with an interest in Language documentation.  I am also interested in how linguistics can contribute to modern tech systems like voice recognition technologies and so on. My B. A thesis dealt with a comparative analysis of three seemingly related languages to determine the linguistic relationship between them, but this was done with lexicostatistics, a not too modern computational method; Advancement in my computational knowledge will be useful, where I feel the need to carry out a comparative analysis on related languages in the future.  Finally, the world is at a fast pace in terms of technological innovations and I feel it is important for me to be in the know of the latest technologies in order to remain relevant in my field.
f	"Although the diversity of languages and the human ability to learn not only one but oftentimes two or more of them is already fascinating, I have two main reasons for studying linguistics and computation.
Firstly, I am utterly intrigued by the potential of machine translation. 
It removes language barriers between countries and cultures. 
Thus, it can contribute to international understanding.
Furthermore, it offers possibilities for people who have difficulties or no opportunities to learn a new language. 
For instance it might allow access to information and knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible.
Secondly, computational linguistics provides technical opportunities that can be applied for language therapy. 
In the future a dialogue system might support language therapists in their work as patients can train at home.
These two reasons are my motivation for studying in the ISCL program."
f	I am currently enrolled in the second semester of the MA program in Computational Linguistics.  In my undergraduate studies, I completed a BA degree in Linguistics and Psychology.  Prior to this program, I didn’t have any programming experience, but I am trying my best to catch up and improve my skills.  I really enjoyed the introductory lecture to this course, and it will surely provide practical and in-demand skills for future internships and jobs.  It is still early in the program, but the topics I am most interested in so far are text analytics, machine learning, and NLP for ICALL.
f	"Growing up bilingual, I always had in intereset in languages. Over the years, this interest grew and I not only learned more languages, but I also started learning about linguistics. 
Linguistics is fascinating to me as it is such a diverse field of research. Adding computation to this field gives endless possibilities of research, but also the possibility to build useful and meaningful tools, such as for detection of hate speech, tutoring systems, systems for mdecial workers, and so on.
Because everybody uses language in their day to day life, computational linguistics is a field that can touch and support an incredible amount of enterprises, projects and people."
m	"I come from an informatics background with a research experience in NLP. Working on various problems, I realized that I have majorly focused only on the accuracy part and haven't truly focused on finding what the models understand or how can we truly enable the learning in low-resource settings. Going further, I am interested in learning more about languages and solving NLP problems by designing not just interpretable but also more accurate models.

During my MA, I would like to explore both CL and advanced ML courses to achieve my goals."
m	One of my incentives to study CL is to be able to explore identity formation in political texts from a CL perspective.
f	"There are multiple reasons why I am interested in linguistics and computation.
I believe that one of the most important aspects of human intelligence consists of their ability to understand and generate natural language.
Therefore automatic processing of natural language is crucial for progress in technology and artificial intelligence.
It is really fascinating that machines can understand and even generate natural language and even improve themselves automatically.
Also I am interested in algorithms and languages in general and I think that combining those topics makes much sense."
f	Linguistics and computation share a lot in common. They are both based on sets of rules and can thus be equally fascinating. It only makes sense to combine the two and transform the love for logic and rules into something useful to others. Since communicating through language is important to most anyone, computational linguistics can provide aid in numerous ways. The possibilities span from making someone's office job more efficient to literally giving a voice to those who cannot speak. These are reasons good enough to keep a computational linguist motivated to learn and create.
f	"Overall, I respect the task to find ways of how inanimate machines and animate human beings are able to interact.
More precisely, I'm fascinated in the general attempt to formalise language - i.e. detect patters and rules (e.g. word formation, congruencies) and "measure" it (e.g. frequency analysis, word counts).
My background, however, is coined by the humanities. I used to train as a teacher for English and German. Therefore, I am also motivated to work on the intersection of (computational) linguistics and literature. Personally, I do not see why these two fields are institutionally separated since I think they both look at the same topic, i.e. 'language', from different angles and a cooperation would be beneficiary for both, e.g. expansion of text material for possible training sets that would make artificial language even more human-like through the incorporation of figurative language etc."
m	"Possibily, my favorite thing about linguistics is how intersectional it is. I feel that almost anything can be examined
through its lens, and this is probably due to the central role played by language in all our activities.
My interest in Computational Linguistics stems from a desire to get a better understanding of how humans process language.
How are we able to compute a meaning for a given sentence? And what about computing a sentence for a given meaning?
Although deceptively simple, the answer to these questions is the subject of an ongoing, centuries-long debate."
f	I am interested in linguistics, because I am interested in language. It's fascinating how language can be used to communicate, to influence people, to share and to divide. I want to know how language works and how to use this tool for everyone's advantage. Computational linguistic is a great way to reach this goal. The computer provides thousands of new ways to deal with language and use it to help people. Chat bots, spelling checker, machine translation, let alone automatic text to speech transition (especially useful for blind people)... It's fascinating what can be done to improve people's live just by combining linguistics and computers and I want to be a part of it.
f	My main interest is (compositional) semantics, both in natural languages and other formal systems. I enjoy formal semantics and logic. At the moment, I am trying to learn more about distributional models of meaning, particularly about compositional vector semantics and its mathematical background. I am interested in possibilities of integrating the compositional and the distributional approaches, as well as representation of entailment in the latter. I am also curious about working with smaller languages.