The Story of Human Language

Discover the fascinating history of human language-from its beginning as a single tongue spoken some 150,000 years ago to the estimated 6,000 languages spoken today.

• By This Professor
• 01: What Is Language?
• 02: When Language Began
• 03: How Language Changes-Sound Change
• 04: How Language Changes-Building New Material
• 05: How Language Changes-Meaning and Order
• 06: How Language Changes-Many Directions
• 07: How Language Changes-Modern English
• 08: Language Families-Indo-European
• 09: Language Families-Tracing Indo-European
• 10: Language Families-Diversity of Structures
• 11: Language Families-Clues to the Past
• 12: The Case Against the World's First Language
• 13: The Case For the World's First Language
• 14: Dialects-Subspecies of Species
• 15: Dialects-Where Do You Draw the Line?
• 16: Dialects-Two Tongues in One Mouth
• 17: Dialects-The Standard as Token of the Past
• 18: Dialects-Spoken Style, Written Style
• 19: Dialects-The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar
• 20: Language Mixture-Words
• 21: Language Mixture-Grammar
• 22: Language Mixture-Language Areas
• 23: Language Develops Beyond the Call of Duty
• 24: Language Interrupted
• 25: A New Perspective on the Story of English
• 26: Does Culture Drive Language Change?
• 27: Language Starts Over-Pidgins
• 28: Language Starts Over-Creoles I
• 29: Language Starts Over-Creoles II
• 30: Language Starts Over-Signs of the New
• 31: Language Starts Over-The Creole Continuum
• 32: What Is Black English?
• 33: Language Death-The Problem
• 34: Language Death-Prognosis
• 35: Artificial Languages
• 36: Finale-Master Class