Linguistics (inspired by Powers Pet Peeves ;) )

[Sgt. Josh Underpants]

It's a real bitch to cleanup, let me tell you.

Fixed

[Drama Queen]

Well I've just finished "The Story of Human Language" presented by John McWhorter and I cannot rate this book/lecture series highly enough. I could very well argue without hyperbole that this is the most interesting non-fiction I've read/listened to date.

It's one of The Great Courses, a series on audible.com. I'm not sure if there they do print versions. I'll discuss the Great Courses more in-depth in the literature thread (I'm listening/have listened to several) but this one is most relevant to this thread.

Maybe this is pretty basic stuff if anyone has studied linguistics much or at all, I can't say, but if like me you are interested in the histories and nuances of the worlds various languages, but have not studied the topic, this is a wonderful starting point.

Amongst the many interesting things it shows how linguistics can be as useful as archaeology or DNA in piecing together early human migration patterns.

It explains why English sounds nothing like German despite being a Germanic language whereas most of the Latin languages are much more recognizable with each other.

It explains the creations of new languages, the reasons for dying languages, how and why grammar changes, the influences of historical social interactions, such as colonialism, slavery, revolution, class divides...

Basically language contains so much more than... well language.

I had no idea this topic was so fascinating, honestly my mind has been blown by this.

[Judge]

Dropping this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc