What do you think?
Rate this book
Language A to Z
6 hrs and 17 mins
Linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible. But here's a secret: There's a lot that's quirky and intriguing about how human language works-and much of it is downright fun to learn about. But with so many potential avenues of exploration, it can often seem daunting to try to understand it. Where does one even start?
In these twenty-four 15-minute lectures by one of the best-known popularizes of language, you'll discover a delightful way to get accessible, bite-sized introductions to language. Using the English alphabet as a unique, offbeat way to approach the subject, Professor McWhorter has crafted a hopscotch tour of some of the field's major topics, hot-button issues, and more.
You'll learn why it can actually be OK to use slang like "LOL." Why English speakers don't use words like "thou" and "thee" anymore. What makes "mama" and "papa" a child's first words-in many languages. How popular rhymes like "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe") actually derive from the words for numbers in an early relative of Welsh. Why "like" is here to stay in common American speech. And much more.
These and other fascinating topics are all delivered in Professor McWhorter's light-hearted yet informative teaching style, which makes this series essential for anyone looking for a welcoming window into the quirks, curiosities, and intricacies of how language works. Filled with humor, whimsy, and no shortage of insights, it's a fast-paced tour of the same territory linguists tread each and every day.
©2012 The Great Courses (P)2012 The Teaching Company, LLC
Linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible. But here's a secret: There's a lot that's quirky and intriguing about how human language works-and much of it is downright fun to learn about. But with so many potential avenues of exploration, it can often seem daunting to try to understand it. Where does one even start?
In these twenty-four 15-minute lectures by one of the best-known popularizes of language, you'll discover a delightful way to get accessible, bite-sized introductions to language. Using the English alphabet as a unique, offbeat way to approach the subject, Professor McWhorter has crafted a hopscotch tour of some of the field's major topics, hot-button issues, and more.
You'll learn why it can actually be OK to use slang like "LOL." Why English speakers don't use words like "thou" and "thee" anymore. What makes "mama" and "papa" a child's first words-in many languages. How popular rhymes like "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe") actually derive from the words for numbers in an early relative of Welsh. Why "like" is here to stay in common American speech. And much more.
These and other fascinating topics are all delivered in Professor McWhorter's light-hearted yet informative teaching style, which makes this series essential for anyone looking for a welcoming window into the quirks, curiosities, and intricacies of how language works. Filled with humor, whimsy, and no shortage of insights, it's a fast-paced tour of the same territory linguists tread each and every day.
©2012 The Great Courses (P)2012 The Teaching Company, LLC
7 pages, Audible Audio
First published January 1, 2013
25 people are currently reading
838 people want to read
About the author
John McWhorter
48 books1,731 followersJohn Hamilton McWhorter (Professor McWhorter uses neither his title nor his middle initial as an author) is an American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His research specializes on how creole languages form, and how language grammars change as the result of sociohistorical phenomena.
A popular writer, McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New Yorker, among others; he is also contributing editor at The Atlantic and hosts Slate's Lexicon Valley podcas
A popular writer, McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New Yorker, among others; he is also contributing editor at The Atlantic and hosts Slate's Lexicon Valley podcas
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews
February 24, 2020
Water is the new cigarettes
John McWhorter is as entertaining as he is erudite. In this series of lectures he chooses one word for each letter and expounds upon it's history, meaning, connections and occasionally any jokes or personal anecdotes that fit.
There was much that was interesting in this book but three things have stayed with me more than anything else.
1. One of the most complicated languages in the world is Xoo, spoken by a small group of people Masarwa, previously known as Bushmen, in Southern Africa. In addition to the usual vowels and consanants it is a tonal language, with four different tones. And 113 different click sounds. It isn't possible to learn it as an adult, only children growing up with the language can get it fully.
2. There is a dying language in Siberia, Ket, that has no other related languages in Asia, but is closely related to dozens of Native American ones. 15,000 - 20,000 years ago there was a land bridge, now drowned, across the Bering Strait, and these Native Americans came originally from Siberia and colonised the Pacific North-West.
3. Most interesting of all is the concept that water bottles are the new cigarettes. Back in the 80s no one felt in danger of dehydrating when they went jogging, no one felt like they might die of thirst in the gym, no one thought they couldn't manage a public transport journey without the guarantee of instant hydration. But they do now.
Smoking is no longer cool. Carrying a bottle of water is. It's often not enough to pack the bottle in a bag, no it must be carried in the hand or placed close by within reaching distance. Sips are taken regularly, even to punctuate a conversation.
Bottles of water are a comfort to hold, something to do with the hands. A sip can be a distraction for stressful times or when there is an embarrassing or difficult gap in the conversation. So yes, what McWhorter says, bottles of water have replaced cigarettes makes perfect sense.
As does the rest of the book. A very entertaining introduction to linguistics for those of us who love words. And McWhorter is my favourite author du jour.
John McWhorter is as entertaining as he is erudite. In this series of lectures he chooses one word for each letter and expounds upon it's history, meaning, connections and occasionally any jokes or personal anecdotes that fit.
There was much that was interesting in this book but three things have stayed with me more than anything else.
1. One of the most complicated languages in the world is Xoo, spoken by a small group of people Masarwa, previously known as Bushmen, in Southern Africa. In addition to the usual vowels and consanants it is a tonal language, with four different tones. And 113 different click sounds. It isn't possible to learn it as an adult, only children growing up with the language can get it fully.
2. There is a dying language in Siberia, Ket, that has no other related languages in Asia, but is closely related to dozens of Native American ones. 15,000 - 20,000 years ago there was a land bridge, now drowned, across the Bering Strait, and these Native Americans came originally from Siberia and colonised the Pacific North-West.
3. Most interesting of all is the concept that water bottles are the new cigarettes. Back in the 80s no one felt in danger of dehydrating when they went jogging, no one felt like they might die of thirst in the gym, no one thought they couldn't manage a public transport journey without the guarantee of instant hydration. But they do now.
Smoking is no longer cool. Carrying a bottle of water is. It's often not enough to pack the bottle in a bag, no it must be carried in the hand or placed close by within reaching distance. Sips are taken regularly, even to punctuate a conversation.
Bottles of water are a comfort to hold, something to do with the hands. A sip can be a distraction for stressful times or when there is an embarrassing or difficult gap in the conversation. So yes, what McWhorter says, bottles of water have replaced cigarettes makes perfect sense.
As does the rest of the book. A very entertaining introduction to linguistics for those of us who love words. And McWhorter is my favourite author du jour.
December 11, 2017
I adore McWhorter. Hands down he is in my top five nonfiction authors. His books on linguistics are just so fun to listen to because his passion imbues them with energy and vitality. His dad-joke humor is friendly and makes you feel like you are having a conversation rather than listening to a lecture.
His knowledge and the breadth of topics will keep you fascinated to the end. I would literally recommend these books to ANYONE that has interest in any sort of nonfiction, or hell, I would literally recommend THIS particular book to anybody that enjoys reading. I assume if you read you have some interest in words, how and why they work (or don’t), or how they change bodies of literature, and this book will be the start of a new linguistics obsession. I guarantee it.
His knowledge and the breadth of topics will keep you fascinated to the end. I would literally recommend these books to ANYONE that has interest in any sort of nonfiction, or hell, I would literally recommend THIS particular book to anybody that enjoys reading. I assume if you read you have some interest in words, how and why they work (or don’t), or how they change bodies of literature, and this book will be the start of a new linguistics obsession. I guarantee it.
May 21, 2019
Loved it, and am downloading several more of John McWhorter's books. As much fun for words as Robert Greenberg is for classical music.
Better than the college courses I had. Oh, yes.
Better than the college courses I had. Oh, yes.
February 20, 2015
If you’re a fan of linguistics, this is the book for you.
As a disclaimer, I didn’t study linguistics in school and am the furthest thing from an expert on the subject but it is something that has always fascinated me. If you are an expert on the subject, this lecture by John McWhorter will probably be much less interesting to you because it’s all very surface level linguistics. McWhorter basically takes each letter of the alphabet and has a 15 minute lecture about some subject of linguistics starting with that letter.
It ends up being a pretty broad range of topics including: language versus dialect, oral languages, odd quirks of certain languages, how we determine the inherent value of a language, how languages change and much more. McWhorter’s main points are that languages are inherently complex, they change largely by chance and that our weird compulsion to identify a “language” as one that has a defined and well known writing system is wrong. I particularly liked that he argued against seeing Native American English, African American Vernacular English (he refers to it as “Black English” but I feel a little weird saying that as a white person), “dialects”, oral languages or pidgin languages as inferior to so-called “normal” languages. McWhorter is a fantastic lecturer, bringing in enough pop culture and humor to make a pretty serious subject very entertaining. If you’re as much of a linguistics fan as I am, I’d highly recommend it.
And in case you're curious, I’ve added the subjects he chose for each letter:
A for Aramaic
B for Baby Mama
C for Compounds
D for Double Negatives
E for Etymology
F for First Words
G for Greek Alphabet
H for Hobbits
I for Island
J for Jamaican
K for Ket
L for “Like”
M for Maltese
N for Native American English
O for Oldsters in Cartoons
P for Plurals
Q for Quiz
R for R-lessness
S for She
T for Tone
U for Understood
V for Vocabulary
W for “What’s up, Doc?”
X for !Xoõ
Y for Yiddish
Z for Zed
As a disclaimer, I didn’t study linguistics in school and am the furthest thing from an expert on the subject but it is something that has always fascinated me. If you are an expert on the subject, this lecture by John McWhorter will probably be much less interesting to you because it’s all very surface level linguistics. McWhorter basically takes each letter of the alphabet and has a 15 minute lecture about some subject of linguistics starting with that letter.
It ends up being a pretty broad range of topics including: language versus dialect, oral languages, odd quirks of certain languages, how we determine the inherent value of a language, how languages change and much more. McWhorter’s main points are that languages are inherently complex, they change largely by chance and that our weird compulsion to identify a “language” as one that has a defined and well known writing system is wrong. I particularly liked that he argued against seeing Native American English, African American Vernacular English (he refers to it as “Black English” but I feel a little weird saying that as a white person), “dialects”, oral languages or pidgin languages as inferior to so-called “normal” languages. McWhorter is a fantastic lecturer, bringing in enough pop culture and humor to make a pretty serious subject very entertaining. If you’re as much of a linguistics fan as I am, I’d highly recommend it.
And in case you're curious, I’ve added the subjects he chose for each letter:
A for Aramaic
B for Baby Mama
C for Compounds
D for Double Negatives
E for Etymology
F for First Words
G for Greek Alphabet
H for Hobbits
I for Island
J for Jamaican
K for Ket
L for “Like”
M for Maltese
N for Native American English
O for Oldsters in Cartoons
P for Plurals
Q for Quiz
R for R-lessness
S for She
T for Tone
U for Understood
V for Vocabulary
W for “What’s up, Doc?”
X for !Xoõ
Y for Yiddish
Z for Zed
December 24, 2013
Get ready for something a bit different from The Great Courses. This audio-only course (not available in video) from The Teaching Company regular John McWhorter, consists of twenty-four 15 minute lectures. Normally Great Courses lectures are thirty minutes, sometimes forty-five. These lessons fly by and in order to cram as much information as possible into the mini-lectures, McWhorter seems to have arrived at the studio extra caffeinated. He has a lot of great material and he rattles it off quickly. At first it seemed too fast, but I got used to it quickly and liked the pace. Often with audiobooks, my mind wanders if the reading is too measured. The combination of sparkling material and a rapid-fire delivery demands your attention.
As much information as McWhorter stuffs into each lecture, he can still only graze the surface. He explains tones in languages like Mandarin, then describes how English actually has tones as well. The day after I listened to that provocative bit of information, I saw a post on The Language Log blog that invited people to listen to recordings of people speaking Mandarin and English, and determine which language was being spoken. The recordings, taken from BBC radio and a Chinese radio station, had the words and sounds filtered out so that all you could hear was the muffled rising and falling cadences. It was almost impossible to distinguish the tonal language from the "non-tonal" language.
McWhorter touches on click languages, language death, why old people in cartoons always sound like Walter Brennan, and more.
As much information as McWhorter stuffs into each lecture, he can still only graze the surface. He explains tones in languages like Mandarin, then describes how English actually has tones as well. The day after I listened to that provocative bit of information, I saw a post on The Language Log blog that invited people to listen to recordings of people speaking Mandarin and English, and determine which language was being spoken. The recordings, taken from BBC radio and a Chinese radio station, had the words and sounds filtered out so that all you could hear was the muffled rising and falling cadences. It was almost impossible to distinguish the tonal language from the "non-tonal" language.
McWhorter touches on click languages, language death, why old people in cartoons always sound like Walter Brennan, and more.
October 26, 2023
26 15 minute lectures on linguistics. Form A to Z I never thought I'd like the subject matter, and to be fair if anyone else was teaching it I probably wouldn't but Mr McWhorter has such joy for the subject that he makes what otherwise would be a tedious exercise enjoyable and fun. I'm probably going to listen to all of his lectures that he has done in the Great courses series just because I enjoy his style so much.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
October 1, 2014
I highly recommend this audiobook. Absolutely terrific "instructor," the segments are perfect in length, you get serious knowledge with a great sense of humor, and you can drop off and pick up wherever you'd like. Couldn't have been better. Looking forward to a follow-up -- I hope, anyway!
March 13, 2024
Courses and discussions like this are necessary in building compassion and empathy in divisive times.
Language is such a fascinating part of the human experience and this series gave so much insight into this without being presented in a way that was overwhelming or pretentious.
Language is such a fascinating part of the human experience and this series gave so much insight into this without being presented in a way that was overwhelming or pretentious.
March 12, 2019
I always enjoy McWhorter's work and comments. "Language" is such a fascinating topic and it amazes me that one can find commonalities in the tremendous variation found in the languages of the world.
September 20, 2017
Okay, so the marginal added value of this ("GREAT") course is low if you've already read/listened to John McWhorter's Words on the Move or his podcast, Lexicon Valley. Most of the same ground is covered: the way elderly people in early 20th century shows/movies spoke with rural accent (and this reflected generational urbanization), the "back shift" in cadence as verbs become nouns ("I susPECT him", "the usual SUSpects"), the way defining "languages" and "dialects" is primarily socio-political and cultural, rather than scientific, McWhorter's fanboying over old timey Hollywood, and so on.
But! That said, I love John McWhorter, he be my fave linguistic prof, so I always love to hear his stuff. In this series, he advances his two usual theses: (1) that language is an ever-changing organic thing, the "blob in a lava lamp", and that contrarian grammarians (heh) slash obnoxious pedants often seem to be a few steps behind on that one, LITERALLY (ho ho, come at me), and (2) that language is oral first, written second, but that's really the first point told another way.
Anyway, this lecture series is organized into 24 bite-sized lecturettes - actually, no, that sounds sexists and WHY SO FRENCH? - lecturini, one for each letter of the alphabet. It's perfect for a short commute, since each lecturino is ~15 minutes long, which, on 1.5x speed, is a mere 10 min! The "Great Courses" (registered trademark) canned applause which bookends each lecture is awkward af, but no matter, I love John McWhorter's JOIE DE VIVRE, his overabundance of personality, his cheesy dad jokes and his extremely nerdy (in a non-ironic, non-"cool" nerd way) interests. That man loves Looney Tunes. And black and white movies! What a nerd! Love that guy.
None of this - neither his theses, nor his interests and cheesy impressions - is new, again, if you've listened to his other audiobooks or heard his podcast. But I still enjoyed this a lot, and loved the new stuff I learned:
- About how languages, when isolated, can get really baroque and ridiculous, and that that baroque-ness has nothing to do with how "complicated" the lives of the speakers are. To whit: KET! From Siberia! I think McWhorter called it a magisterial Gothic cathedral, anyway it made me lol.
- About how we always assume that language "reflects" reality, rather than creating it (SAPIR WHORF HYPOTHESIS, PEOPLE), and thus we always assume that certain words or concepts MUST be givens. For example, gendered pronouns - "he" and "she". But no! There are several languages than never developed gendered pronouns (Finnish, Japanese), and McWhorter quotes one of those speakers as asking, "Well, why would you need it?" The same way many English speakers feel with gendered nouns in other languages, like Italian lady-tables (la tavola) and man-books (il libro) and irregular-because-originally-Greek-drama (il drama).
- About how old "like" is.
- About how vague and hard it is to count words in a language, given all those words that - via idiom - are becoming new words (e.g. "pick" and "up" which become "pickup" (the truck) and "I tried to pick him up" (flirting/asking on a date) and "I really need a pick-me-up" (slice of tiramisu)).
Recommended.
But! That said, I love John McWhorter, he be my fave linguistic prof, so I always love to hear his stuff. In this series, he advances his two usual theses: (1) that language is an ever-changing organic thing, the "blob in a lava lamp", and that contrarian grammarians (heh) slash obnoxious pedants often seem to be a few steps behind on that one, LITERALLY (ho ho, come at me), and (2) that language is oral first, written second, but that's really the first point told another way.
Anyway, this lecture series is organized into 24 bite-sized lecturettes - actually, no, that sounds sexists and WHY SO FRENCH? - lecturini, one for each letter of the alphabet. It's perfect for a short commute, since each lecturino is ~15 minutes long, which, on 1.5x speed, is a mere 10 min! The "Great Courses" (registered trademark) canned applause which bookends each lecture is awkward af, but no matter, I love John McWhorter's JOIE DE VIVRE, his overabundance of personality, his cheesy dad jokes and his extremely nerdy (in a non-ironic, non-"cool" nerd way) interests. That man loves Looney Tunes. And black and white movies! What a nerd! Love that guy.
None of this - neither his theses, nor his interests and cheesy impressions - is new, again, if you've listened to his other audiobooks or heard his podcast. But I still enjoyed this a lot, and loved the new stuff I learned:
- About how languages, when isolated, can get really baroque and ridiculous, and that that baroque-ness has nothing to do with how "complicated" the lives of the speakers are. To whit: KET! From Siberia! I think McWhorter called it a magisterial Gothic cathedral, anyway it made me lol.
- About how we always assume that language "reflects" reality, rather than creating it (SAPIR WHORF HYPOTHESIS, PEOPLE), and thus we always assume that certain words or concepts MUST be givens. For example, gendered pronouns - "he" and "she". But no! There are several languages than never developed gendered pronouns (Finnish, Japanese), and McWhorter quotes one of those speakers as asking, "Well, why would you need it?" The same way many English speakers feel with gendered nouns in other languages, like Italian lady-tables (la tavola) and man-books (il libro) and irregular-because-originally-Greek-drama (il drama).
- About how old "like" is.
- About how vague and hard it is to count words in a language, given all those words that - via idiom - are becoming new words (e.g. "pick" and "up" which become "pickup" (the truck) and "I tried to pick him up" (flirting/asking on a date) and "I really need a pick-me-up" (slice of tiramisu)).
Recommended.
May 15, 2014
Highly recommend. McWhorter gives listeners a new appreciation of language as quasi-living organisms that morph and change in chaotic and yet predictable ways.
Why does English have so many words? (all languages accrete words over time; only written languages never lose them). Why do we see Native Americans portrayed in old movies as speaking that rough English of the Lone Ranger's Tonto or Popeye's Chief Ugh-Amugh-Ugh? (see: pidgin) Where does the term "baby mama" really come from? (in a word: England) Why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni? (The "macaroni" were the young fashionistas of their day. Precursor to the dandy.) Where does the silent "S" in Island come from? Why do some words take irregular plurals? The strange history of the letter Z and why we most often spell words with an S when we mean the /z/ sound (e.g. rise, clothes, bears, trees). The odd pervasiveness of the double negative.
The fascinating answers to these and other questions build up a unique portrait of language as art as well as tool, as comparative linguistic inquiry increasingly reveals what we often take as a logical superiority of our way of speaking to be mere artifact other languages do splendidly without.
Why does English have so many words? (all languages accrete words over time; only written languages never lose them). Why do we see Native Americans portrayed in old movies as speaking that rough English of the Lone Ranger's Tonto or Popeye's Chief Ugh-Amugh-Ugh? (see: pidgin) Where does the term "baby mama" really come from? (in a word: England) Why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni? (The "macaroni" were the young fashionistas of their day. Precursor to the dandy.) Where does the silent "S" in Island come from? Why do some words take irregular plurals? The strange history of the letter Z and why we most often spell words with an S when we mean the /z/ sound (e.g. rise, clothes, bears, trees). The odd pervasiveness of the double negative.
The fascinating answers to these and other questions build up a unique portrait of language as art as well as tool, as comparative linguistic inquiry increasingly reveals what we often take as a logical superiority of our way of speaking to be mere artifact other languages do splendidly without.
March 19, 2024
For a beginner in linguistics, McWhorter is entertaining. However, this series fell short. McWhorter likes making large claims with great confidence, not all of which can be substantiated. For example, McWhorter asserts that writing was invented once. I've come across other academics who challenge this, and they provided sources. His style can be fun, but over time, I've come to find it somewhat grating. His casual dismissal of all with which he disagrees strikes of a popular news service rather than rigorous research. As this genre was not intended to be rigorous, I didn't reflect this particular complaint in my rating. Overall, I would describe this series as shallow and wide.
August 13, 2020
John McWhorter and I differ in general political views, judging from his tweets, but I have to recognize that he is brilliant. This is a witty and engaging look at various elements of language.
December 8, 2019
Mixed feelings about this course. The English alphabet serves as the scaffolding for what McWhorter presents. For example, "A"stands for the Aramaic language, which he uses to illustrate that a once obscure language is now spoken in over 25 countries. That prompts associated thoughts such as the once dominant Greek language in Eurasia (for about a thousand years). "B" stands for "Baby Mama" that McWhorter uses to discuss black English. And on it goes, through "Z". McWhorter obviously knows his subject matter and he is funny too, but the information shoots out like buckshot, with streams of information that more often than not seems like minutia, and the overall point tends to get lost.
The first sentence in the accompanying lecture notes promises more big picture stuff about language. In taking each letter of the alphabet "as an occasion to explore one aspect of language around the world --not languages around the world," McWhorter suggests some universal characteristics about language. But in these lectures, this did not strike me as McWhorter's focus. Rather, the course is about linguistic variation around the world. Like cultures, the only universal is linguistic variation. For the English speaker, the good point about what he puts forward is that it pulls us out of parochialism. English is but one way language works. The Austronesian family has no prefixes or suffixes. In China (one of their languages?), there is no past or future tense. Tense is determined by context. Tone is also a big deal in the Asian languages (but "there are tonal languages all over the world"). Variation of tone, and meaning, comes in subtle shades that are hard to distinguish for the non-native speaker. Mandarin Chinese, McWhorter says, has four different tones. "Ma" means "different things depending on the tone." And the "click" languages in southern Africa seem to be particularly different from anything we are familiar with.
While there's often an historic or explanation for the evolution of word usage, meaning, and style (e.g., slang, uptalk, etc.) for English, often there is not. From his lecture notes, for example, when we say "loud speaker" the accent is on "loud." When we say someone is a "loud speaker" the accent is on "speaker." Then, there's the meaninglessness of "do," as in "Do you know him?" "I do not know him." This "do" McWhorter writes "doesn't even mean anything."
The first sentence in the accompanying lecture notes promises more big picture stuff about language. In taking each letter of the alphabet "as an occasion to explore one aspect of language around the world --not languages around the world," McWhorter suggests some universal characteristics about language. But in these lectures, this did not strike me as McWhorter's focus. Rather, the course is about linguistic variation around the world. Like cultures, the only universal is linguistic variation. For the English speaker, the good point about what he puts forward is that it pulls us out of parochialism. English is but one way language works. The Austronesian family has no prefixes or suffixes. In China (one of their languages?), there is no past or future tense. Tense is determined by context. Tone is also a big deal in the Asian languages (but "there are tonal languages all over the world"). Variation of tone, and meaning, comes in subtle shades that are hard to distinguish for the non-native speaker. Mandarin Chinese, McWhorter says, has four different tones. "Ma" means "different things depending on the tone." And the "click" languages in southern Africa seem to be particularly different from anything we are familiar with.
While there's often an historic or explanation for the evolution of word usage, meaning, and style (e.g., slang, uptalk, etc.) for English, often there is not. From his lecture notes, for example, when we say "loud speaker" the accent is on "loud." When we say someone is a "loud speaker" the accent is on "speaker." Then, there's the meaninglessness of "do," as in "Do you know him?" "I do not know him." This "do" McWhorter writes "doesn't even mean anything."
October 20, 2019
I read this to reengage my brain, after reading some books that just weren't quite doing it for me. And that was a good plan, because this is a fantastic audiobook! The lectures are well-researched and engaging. I learned a lot, and this is a perfect read for any fellow word nerds. I would probably even listen to this one again, since there is a lot to take in.
If you are interested in language and culture, then you will probably enjoy this. Also, this gets bonus points for delivering me 26 lectures without me having to pay for any credits, do any homework, or take any tests.
If you are interested in language and culture, then you will probably enjoy this. Also, this gets bonus points for delivering me 26 lectures without me having to pay for any credits, do any homework, or take any tests.
October 31, 2022
This book is a series of lectures on different linguistic subjects. It is excellent and I learned a lot. I've loved linguistics since I took some courses in college so every once in a while I like to listen to a book on it. This series of lectures touches on a variety of subjects about different languages around the world plus English. Professor McWhorter brings up many good points and adds in a little humor. He does a great job narrating his lectures. I highly recommend this!
February 4, 2024
An excellent source of entertainment and knowledge gap-filling for the armchair linguist. I felt the speaker was really personable yet professional and it made these lectures highly engaging where they otherwise might have been construed as dry. The lectures dedicated to tone in language, languages with clicks and the tonal emphasis we use with compound words I personally found very intriguing. A fun listen, for sure!
January 27, 2023
What a fantastic and extremely interesting and educational book! Professor John McWhorter is an exceptional educator and I thoroughly enjoyed everything he brought to the table. I highly recommend this book.
February 19, 2022
Collection of random information and trivia about different languages.
Of all the Great Courses audibooks that I listened to, I learned from this one the least.
Of all the Great Courses audibooks that I listened to, I learned from this one the least.
January 1, 2023
Delicious and digestible linguistic snacks.
Read
August 1, 2024Very fun lecture series to listen to! I will write a review later.
June 25, 2025
Nerdy. Great narrating.
July 19, 2019
I highly recommend McWhorter’s books! Very entertaining and informative! Impress your friends with facts about the nuances of language!
December 19, 2023
Loved it. So many nuances with languages. I learned quite a few new things, which is what I always look to do in a new book.
I recommend this book to any who wish to learn more about linguistics.
5 stars.
I recommend this book to any who wish to learn more about linguistics.
5 stars.
February 8, 2018
So unadulterated awesome! I died in the “like” lecture when he imitated a German speaker (in accented English) quoting someone who didn’t like pears.
When I find someone stiffnecked with a lack of imagination, I casually get them a copy of these lectures. The richness of this thing we call humanity! An awareness of which will bring us closer, I hope.
Ahmed’s rant time. Small ones this time!
At one point McWhorter concisely presents his pet theory about why water bottles have become popular in the last twenty years: like cigarettes, they give us something to hold, let us interrupt our conversations, and satisfy our oral fixation—he notes how people twenty years ago didn’t carry around water and weren’t getting dehydrated. Well, twenty years ago there was a lot less salt and preservatives in our food—which becomes immediately obvious when you home-cook for a few days and then visit a restaurant (not to mention try processed food). So it’s possible people are indeed more likely to get dehydrated these days compared to twenty years ago, since it takes a lot of water to digest salt. That’s just one thing that’s changed in the last twenty years that could explain the rise of the water bottle.
In the lecture on T for tones, he summarized research showing first language tonality correlates with perfect pitch. He repeats the notion, popular since Mozart’s day, that perfect pitch is mainly genetic, but very recent research, which capstones thirty years of other research on perfect pitch, shows that it is readily learned by nearly all young children with a simple training program. Asian families tend to also be more likely to give their kids such training early in life (four, where an American family might not think about music lessons until eight). Anders Ericsson tidily summarizes this research, with citations, in his book *Peak*, which I will dig out if anyone asks.
Neither of these subvert any of McWhorter’s arguments! But these lectures drill home the point, over and over again, that what we think we know is so often not the whole story, and that it pays to keep asking questions, keep looking for falsifying evidence, keep looking through the microscope. Science marches on!
When I find someone stiffnecked with a lack of imagination, I casually get them a copy of these lectures. The richness of this thing we call humanity! An awareness of which will bring us closer, I hope.
Ahmed’s rant time. Small ones this time!
At one point McWhorter concisely presents his pet theory about why water bottles have become popular in the last twenty years: like cigarettes, they give us something to hold, let us interrupt our conversations, and satisfy our oral fixation—he notes how people twenty years ago didn’t carry around water and weren’t getting dehydrated. Well, twenty years ago there was a lot less salt and preservatives in our food—which becomes immediately obvious when you home-cook for a few days and then visit a restaurant (not to mention try processed food). So it’s possible people are indeed more likely to get dehydrated these days compared to twenty years ago, since it takes a lot of water to digest salt. That’s just one thing that’s changed in the last twenty years that could explain the rise of the water bottle.
In the lecture on T for tones, he summarized research showing first language tonality correlates with perfect pitch. He repeats the notion, popular since Mozart’s day, that perfect pitch is mainly genetic, but very recent research, which capstones thirty years of other research on perfect pitch, shows that it is readily learned by nearly all young children with a simple training program. Asian families tend to also be more likely to give their kids such training early in life (four, where an American family might not think about music lessons until eight). Anders Ericsson tidily summarizes this research, with citations, in his book *Peak*, which I will dig out if anyone asks.
Neither of these subvert any of McWhorter’s arguments! But these lectures drill home the point, over and over again, that what we think we know is so often not the whole story, and that it pays to keep asking questions, keep looking for falsifying evidence, keep looking through the microscope. Science marches on!
February 22, 2018
Very engaging and a perfect listen. I feels less like lecturing and more like little speeches by a learned friend or acquaintance. In little chunks, it worked very well to listen in spurts while cooking. Listen to one more more letter-lectures as you go.
August 22, 2014
Highly Recommended. Any good survey course will provide enough information to ignite your curiosity and give you a little something to take with you. John McWhorter's 24 part lecture series is pure enjoyment. He is an engaging speaker and is able to present a clear understanding of the field of linguistics, the history of language and writing and it's effect on our understanding of both, the breadth of communication structures, modulation of grammar and lexicon, and numerous other fascinating insights, each with very specific and illustrative examples. The series only about 6.5 hours (at 1x speed) and well worth the listen.
October 1, 2014
There were some pretty interesting short talks about topics in linguistics, here. I appreciated the actual content of the lectures, but though the author came at some things from a strange place. I suppose he lives in a different linguistic world than I do, so I found some of his offhanded comments kind of strange, and a tad off-putting. Still, I enjoyed this, overall, since I am interested in linguistics as a topic. I have another book from the lecturer, but while I'm sure I will get to it, I'm not eager to read it right away, either.
February 21, 2015
Enjoyed this zip through the alphabet with the entertaining John McWhorter. I listened as part of my goal to listen to one lecture 5 days a week this year. These were so short I often listened to several at a time but for some reason I found myself tuning out and having to relisten. I think it might have been that the professor was speaking so quickly which also reminds me that I need to slow down in my own talks. I am always getting ahead of myself and tripping over words and thoughts when speaking. Ideas are just so fun and McWhorter seems to find that pleasure also.
December 23, 2013
If you enjoy bite-sized nuggets of linguistics and language factoids, you'll have fun listening to these mini-lectures from McWhorter. There's not a lot of depth here, though, so don't expect to come away knowing a whole lot more about languages than you already do, outside of a bit of trivia you might sprinkle into your conversations here and there when you really want to sound like a know-it-all.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews