The Story of Human Language

By: John McWhorter, The Great Courses

Narrated by: John McWhorter

Length: 18 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct. Now you can explore all of these questions and more in an in-depth series of 36 lectures from one of America's leading linguists.

You'll be witness to the development of human language, learning how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today and gaining an appreciation of the remarkable ways in which one language sheds light on another.

The many fascinating topics you examine in these lectures include: the intriguing evidence that links a specific gene to the ability to use language; the specific mechanisms responsible for language change; language families and the heated debate over the first language; the phenomenon of language mixture; why some languages develop more grammatical machinery than they actually need; the famous hypothesis that says our grammars channel how we think; artificial languages, including Esperanto and sign languages for the deaf; and how word histories reflect the phenomena of language change and mixture worldwide.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2004 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2004 The Great Courses

excellent!

this is a fascinating course. lecturer is witty, funny, intelligent, and makes the course very enjoyable.

Excellent Lectures!

Prof. McWhorter did a wonderful job not only compiling the material, which was exhaustive, but his organization and performance was superlative. If every lecture series ever given were this good, we would have a nation busting at the seams with scholars, philosophers, and scientists.

Language is what makes us humans

What did you love best about The Story of Human Language?

The way Professor John McWhorter approaches language is human. It does not sound preachy and makes me think about languages I have learned to appreciate.

Linguistics from A to Z

I love languages so this was a detailed course on all aspects of language structure, evolution and variability. Excellent presenter. Highly recommend.

Worth every minute ... and then some

This really is a "great course." I learned a ton, and really enjoyed it. Prof McWhorter is my new language hero. In addition to amazing content, his delivery is very engaging. Highly recommended.

Amazing series

I loved the lecturer, he is very funny and explains the topic very well. Recommend to anyone.

Fantastic course

This is my first Great Courses course, and it’s setting a pretty high bar. John McWhorter is a gifted orator: highly intelligent and very entertaining. I found every single chapter fascinating.

Great Course

An awesome course on a topic people really don't think about. It's also really fun to learn that some of the topics discussed in the news are totally off base. It really makes you think.

I would also like to comment on the excellent instructor. I wish, I had taken classes with this guy.

great source

loved hearing this lecture series. John is amazing.... bahut khuub ( Hindi). notice how I did not say oo instead used uu.i learnt that from this book

Some examples are not to be completely believed

This is a wonderful course, I came here from Professor McWhorter’s Language Families Around the World. However, I would like to point out that particularly in Lecture 10, Professor McWhorter’s depiction of Cantonese, which is one of my mother tongues, is quite inaccurate. “He’s my classmate”, for example, would really be said as “He is my (I ‘s) classmate” or “He is I classmate” to translate it word-for-word. “He I classmate laiga” as Professor McWhorter said, makes sense and is intelligible to a Cantonese speaker, but is rather informal and is rarely heard. Personally, I would think of it as the speaker omitting “hai”- is and “ge” - possession indicator, because of the colloquial context. The explanation of “Too noisy lah” is also quite beyond my perception as a native speaker. I’ve spotted quite a bit of these inaccuracies in Professor McWhorter’s Chinese-related expositions. Of course, I’m not a scholar, but I am a native speaker. So It’s reasonable to suspect that such defects do exist, and are something to bear in mind.