The Story Of Human Language

There are good reasons that language fascinates us so. It not only defines humans as a species, placing us head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators, but it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries. For example:

How did different languages come to be?

Why isn’t there just a single language?

How does a language change, and when it does, is that change indicative of decay or growth?

How does a language become extinct?

Dr. John McWhorter, one of America’s leading linguists and a frequent commentator on network television and National Public Radio, addresses these and other questions as he takes you on an in-depth, 36-lecture tour of the development of human language, showing how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago has evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today.

Course Lecture Titles

1. What Is Language?

2. When Language Began

3. How Language Changes—Sound Change

4. How Language Changes—Building New Material

5. How Language Changes—Meaning and Order

6. How Language Changes—Many Directions

7. How Language Changes—Modern English

8. Language Families—Indo-European

9. Language Families—Tracing Indo-European

10. Language Families—Diversity of Structures

11. Language Families—Clues to the Past

12. The Case Against the World’s First Language

13. The Case For the World’s First Language

14. Dialects—Subspecies of Species

15. Dialects—Where Do You Draw the Line?

16. Dialects—Two Tongues in One Mouth

17. Dialects—The Standard as Token of the Past

18. Dialects—Spoken Style, Written Style

19. Dialects—The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar

20. Language Mixture—Words

21. Language Mixture—Grammar

22. Language Mixture—Language Areas

23. Language Develops Beyond the Call of Duty

24. Language Interrupted

25. A New Perspective on the Story of English

26. Does Culture Drive Language Change?

27. Language Starts Over—Pidgins

28. Language Starts Over—Creoles I

29. Language Starts Over—Creoles II

30. Language Starts Over—Signs of the New

31. Language Starts Over—The Creole Continuum

32. What Is Black English?

33. Language Death—The Problem

34. Language Death—Prognosis

35. Artificial Languages

36. Finale—Master Class

Endorsements

"I never met a person who is not interested in language." — Steven Pinker

"A born teacher." — The London Times

"McWhorter’s arguments are sharply reasoned, refreshingly honest, and thoroughly original." — Steven Pinker