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zeteticzymurgy 's review for:
The Story of Human Language
by John McWhorter
This was really good! Linguistics is something I know is important but I never knew anything about ... the closest I came was my whole friend group in college taking it as a gen ed, yet I took something else for some reason. This course was a great introduction yet managed to also get seemingly pretty deep into nuance as it went on.
I do want to point out one weird thing, though. About once an episode, the lecturer would say something straight-up strange. Now, the best courses from the Teaching Company have lecturers with big personalities that come through and make the material interesting, so perhaps he was trying to do that. But, it didn't quite work. Sometimes he was self-effacing and it was cute, and other times he was quirky and adorkable. But, unfortunately, sometimes he was sexist, and other times borderline bigoted in other ways (e.g., a small language was often said to be spoken by "ten people in a cave covered in mud" or something like that). I think this course is almost twenty years old, so I did wonder if it was a "times are changing" kind of thing. But, I don't think so ... twenty years ago would have been when my friends were in that gen ed linguistics course, and I think I would've heard about them cringing over some of the things this guy said. Don't let this detract from the otherwise excellent course, though. Rather, do what I did: listen to those 5-10 seconds, say "what the heck was that," and move on with the lecture.
I do want to point out one weird thing, though. About once an episode, the lecturer would say something straight-up strange. Now, the best courses from the Teaching Company have lecturers with big personalities that come through and make the material interesting, so perhaps he was trying to do that. But, it didn't quite work. Sometimes he was self-effacing and it was cute, and other times he was quirky and adorkable. But, unfortunately, sometimes he was sexist, and other times borderline bigoted in other ways (e.g., a small language was often said to be spoken by "ten people in a cave covered in mud" or something like that). I think this course is almost twenty years old, so I did wonder if it was a "times are changing" kind of thing. But, I don't think so ... twenty years ago would have been when my friends were in that gen ed linguistics course, and I think I would've heard about them cringing over some of the things this guy said. Don't let this detract from the otherwise excellent course, though. Rather, do what I did: listen to those 5-10 seconds, say "what the heck was that," and move on with the lecture.