The Story of Human Language
by Dr. John McWhorter (Great Courses)
read by Dr. John McWhorter 18h 15m
rating 9 / nonfic. – linguistics
Very interesting lecture – (I’m treating these Great Courses audios as “books”). I have a good background for it due to ESL theory and I thought it was kind of basic for the first several chapters,. but then McWhorter got into language families and language diversities in Chapter 8 through 11. My background was as needed for effective ESL teaching. This is a lecture so the tone is a bit different from a normal nonfiction reading and McWhorter has an excellent voice for a lecture.
The discussion includes the myriad of ways all languages change and htat writing is its own language. Listening to a Shakespearean play can be difficult because English has changed, furthermore there are no recordings from the 16th century. All languages change like this and have done this over time and sometimes very quickly. Language is basically oral communication first and foremost. >>>>MORE>>>>
