Course Information
Registration period
Year-round Recruitment
Course Level
Study Mode
Duration
6 Hour(s) 35 Minute(s)
Language
English
Taught by
Scott Shay
Rating
1 views
Course Overview
A Linguistic Introduction
This course is for people interested in the history of the English language, from its humble beginnings to the international language it is today. The course teaches you basic concepts in theoretical and historical linguistics as it traces the history of the language over thousands of years. You do not need to have any prior knowledge of linguistics to take this course, or knowledge of any language other than English. Do you want to learn about where English came from? And see (and hear!) how it has changed over millennia? Then this course is for you!
Course Content
- 6 section(s)
- 57 lecture(s)
- Section 1 Proto-Indo-European
- Section 2 Proto-Germanic and its Daughter Languages
- Section 3 Old English
- Section 4 Middle English
- Section 5 Early Modern English
- Section 6 Modern English
What You’ll Learn
- Basic concepts in theoretical (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax) and historical linguistics, All about the history of the English language over thousands of years, About Proto-Indo-European, its structure and its daughter languages, About Proto-Germanic, its structure (e.g., phonetics, phonology, morphology), About Gothic, Old Saxon, Old High German, and other Proto-Germanic daughter languages (including Old English), About Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English, including their historic context, sounds, grammar, and literature, as well as hear texts from the period, How linguists use the Comparative Method to reconstruct dead languages, Enough to strike out on your own in learning to read Old, Middle, and Early Modern English texts in the original!
Skills covered in this course
Reviews
-
DDeborah L Howard
I am very interested in Proto Indo European as well as Old English. This is exactly what I was looking for in a course. The PIE is really fascinating.
-
FFrank Sandøy
I recommend it if you want to know more about the English language and linguistics.
-
MMary N. Lloyd
I did learn a lot. The instructor covered all bases and did it thoroughly. Really enjoyed his reading of the texts with the old versions of the language.
-
FFrans Gustafsson
The teacher speaks clearly and is very knowledgeable but uses many large charts which aren’t possible to see on a mobile phone. He certainly sheds more light for me on Old English as well as Gothic, but I think he enjoys demonstrating his ability to read in different languages because he spends a lot of time reading texts aloud in languages which aren’t of direct relevance to English. He’s generally good at pronunciation but forms certain American-style diphthongs where there should be monophthongs, particularly O, and also butchers Swedish and Norwegian pronunciation, though that’s a trivial detail which all the same makes me wonder how close his pronunciation really is to the original in all the languages he attempts to read in. All the same, I appreciate the use of linguistic terminology and his many insights and mostly wish that there were more hands-on tasks for Old English.
