The Story of Human Language

By: John McWhorter, The Great Courses

Narrated by: John McWhorter

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

Brilliant masterclass

The man is engaging and funny and articulate and erudite.
What an amazing romp through language.
If you’re interested in languages and how they work, especially if you speak more than one language, do yourself a favour and listen to this.
Superlative.

Funny and Captivating Look at Linguistics

Prof. McWhorter is one of the best Great Courses lecturers - funny, brilliant, enthusiastic. I didn't think I was especially interested in linguistics but I have enjoyed all of his books and lectures. This series would be a very good one to start with, and I would recommend it over his course A to Z.

Thoroughly Enjoyed

There's a tremendous amount of interesting information in these lectures among which is there's more to the field of linguistics than I ever dreamed!

The best part of this series for me was Professor McWhorter himself. He has a very engaging style and a terrific sense of humor.

I highly recommend this to anyone with an a keen interest in, or curiosity about languages.

very entertaining and informative.

I feel like I've learned a lot about language from a perspective that I didn't expect and it was very entertaining at the same time.

Not what I expected

It was hard to get going in this book, because it wasn't what I expected, but I feel like I've come away with a much better understanding of what language is. Performance I marked down a bit, probably more due to app issues: it was common for the audio to cut out and return after a brief pause, probably a buffering issue.

Highly entertaining narrator

Enjoyable content and a very engaging narrator. You get the sense of actually sitting in a lecture with a passionate professor and not listening to someone reading from prepared notes in a soundbooth.

This is the first audiobook I've actually finished

I'm very much interested in languages and this audiobook certainly got me interested to learn more about linguistics.

very interesting subject

What could have been a dull subject, turned out to be quite entertaining. Great performance

Review

I never knew I liked linguistics so much before listening to this. It was very entertaining to me.

Do linguists have groupies?

If so, where do I sign up? I'm a word nerd, so I probably would have enjoyed the content even if Daffy Duck had presented it. But this guy is a delight,!