Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.
The Story of Human Language  By  cover art

The Story of Human Language

By: John McWhorter, The Great Courses
Narrated by: John McWhorter
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $41.95

Buy for $41.95

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

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

Editor's Pick

A whole world of words
"Language is so weird. It can never be fully pinned down, and it evolves in fascinating and unpredictable ways. That’s what makes this course so fun. By examining the evolution of language, Professor John McWhorter elucidates a cross-section of history from a perspective we all take for granted. McWhorter knows all of the factoids behind the factoids, in multiple languages, making this course endlessly entertaining and eye-opening."
Michael D., Audible Editor

What listeners say about The Story of Human Language

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6,231
  • 4 Stars
    1,190
  • 3 Stars
    359
  • 2 Stars
    81
  • 1 Stars
    73
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5,761
  • 4 Stars
    892
  • 3 Stars
    233
  • 2 Stars
    71
  • 1 Stars
    56
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5,328
  • 4 Stars
    1,129
  • 3 Stars
    310
  • 2 Stars
    71
  • 1 Stars
    64

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

pretty terrible lecturer

The lecturer was pretty offensive in many parts. lots of sly remarks about "blacks", women, and others. it made me pretty uncomfortable listening at parts.

I think the content was really great, but he should be more aware of his assumptions about people and be a little less offensive towards other groups.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Verbose

Yikes this man is like when you’re a school kid trying to reach a word limit in a term paper. Ooof.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting content with some sensationalist take

I found the content very interesting and informative. One one hand, it was fascinating to learn how languages are born, expand, and eventually decline. On the other hand, the narrator often comes across as arrogant and conceited. His sensationalist claims like the one that Ukrainian and Russian are the same language (I stidied Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian and I can tell that Ukrainian is much much closer to Polish than to Russian) made me doubt the credibility of the remaining content of the course.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Made me Giggled a lot

I liked the contents of this course, it wasn't the topic I was expecting when I bought it, but I liked it nevertheless
It's well structured and easy to understand
and the occasional joke made the course even interesting
Would rate 6 out of 5 if possible

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic!

Absolutely fantastic introduction to Linguistics. Approachable, witty, and comprehensive. Highly recommended for all language nerds!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful and fun listen

Never struggled through this book. John McWhorter has a wonderful voice. He's clear and often hilarious. There is a lot of information to go through with this book and honestly I can't wait to listen to it again. After listening to him I now wonder just how many of the words I typed are borrowed, mangled, and evolved forms of words originally from English or various other languages.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great material unfortunate presentation.

Presented by a rather irritating personality. Too bad, as I really am interested in this subject. The narrator injected far too much of his rather obnoxious opinion in his lectures. The fact that I listened to the entire series is a tribute to my natural tendency towards tenacity rather than any particular respect I feel for the narrator. Linguistics is a science, his opinions are irrelevant and annoying, bordering on offense. Find another instructor.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Stimulating, and it Covered a Lot of Areas

For me, it stimulated notions between the book's lines - between its many thoughts and observations in its various chapters (things that I noticed it did not mention or consider), which, for me, were 1. Linguistic Turbulence - my notion that languages gradually change due to the turbulence in human movement, where one person may drift into another language area and introduce new words into it and borrow some from it, then drift on; 2. the digestive system's effect on language development (say a sour stomach would result in a gruff language); 3. on possible reasons behind click languages, where the sound of the mouth opening when one begins to speak was put to use, or that it was a quieter way of communicating around wild predator and prey... and 4. it did not consider how writing affects a language as it strives for exactness of linguistic expression..."

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

The Story of Human Languages!

Overall, it is very informative book, easy to follow the flow of topics and a lot of interesting facts. There is quite repetition and some topics took quite lengthy coverage, but I believe it is mostly due to the nature of book topic.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Interesting, well researched, and PROBLEMATIC

This lecture series was fascinating. It was clearly based on the author's decades of scholarship and experience as a teacher. The pace moved appropriately and the courses built on each other in an intuitive way that I want to praise as excellent pedagogy. However! The author uses the Esk*mo and B*rbur slurs, repeatedly jokes about his interests as evidence that he's "mentally ill", and gets himself into unnecessarily insensitive conversations about human gender and sex while discussing gendered language. So, while I found it an interesting course, it was not enjoyable. It was triggering and upsetting and while I understand that it is already almost a decade old, that does not excuse a teacher using this kind of language in the classroom. I wish he'd do an updated version, after taking some courses in Trans 101, Disability 101, and Indigenous people's identities, and I dearly hope he doesn't use this kind of language in his current courses where I'm sure he's teaching students who would be too uncomfortable to confront him on how damaging it is to a student's ability to learn when a teacher is using this kind of language...highly ironic for a philologist/linguist.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful