TELEVISION

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths of Language Usage

Series: Great Courses

4.4

(36)

Episodes

Rating

Year

2012

Language

English

Publisher

The Great Courses

About

In Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths of Language Usage, an acclaimed linguist, Professor John McWhorter, dispels the cloud of confusion that clings to English and gives you a crystal-clear view of why we use it the way we do. Throughout these 24 lectures, you'll discover the true answers to these and other questions that continue to perplex us all: Is English, as a language, in crisis?

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Episodes

1. Alarm over the Decay of English

30m

Is English going to the dogs? Embark on an exploration of myths and controversies about our native tongue - where it came from, where it's going, and its unusual place among the world's 6,000 languages. Begin your investigation by looking at the purported epidemic of English abuse.

2. Surprises in the Ancestry of Old English

30m

Trace the evidence that English derives from a language that was incompletely learned by invaders of northern Europe more than 2,000 years ago. Where were these people from? An analysis of sound changes in their language, Proto-Germanic, leads to an intriguing hypothesis.

3. Not Exactly Anglo

30m

How did Old English develop from Proto-Germanic? And why did people in Britain end up speaking the language of the Germanic invaders? Discover that the traditional explanation that English was brought to England by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the 5th century A.D. is vastly oversimplified.

4. Don't Forget the Celtic Connection

30m

English has a more interesting history after the Anglo-Saxon period than was previously thought. See how the evidence is in grammatical constructions you use every day. For example, the reason you say "I'm building a house" rather than "I build house" traces to Celtic influences.

5. From Insider Language to Lingua Franca

30m

Explore the general properties of human language to learn the place of English in the broad spectrum of different tongues. In the process, discover how to distinguish a language spoken by a limited number of people from one used by hundreds of millions around the globe.

6. English as Easy German

30m

Starting with a simple sentence in German, peel away layers of complexity that don't exist in English. Then uncover more evidence that English is unusual in the simplicity of many of its grammatical features, showing that something happened to pare it down.

7. The Viking Conquest of English

30m

Trace the events that explain why Old English lost much of its complexity in the transition to Middle English. The agents of change were not the Norman French, who arrived in 1066, but the already established Vikings, who's Old Norse fused with Old English to create an abbreviated new language.

8. How the Words of Modern English Emerged

30m

Starting with Celtic contributions to English vocabulary, explore the borrowings from Old Norse, French, and Latin. These have enriched English with a wealth of synonyms, allowing speakers to choose between alternatives such as the Anglo-Saxon hide versus the Latinate conceal.

9. Black English

30m

Having seen that Proto-Germanic was streamlined into Old English, which was streamlined into Modern English, discover that Black English takes this process a step further. What some regard as bad grammar is language evolution, analogous to the shift from biblical Hebrew to modern Hebrew.

10. Honored Conceits of Blackboard Grammar

30m

Begin a new section of the course that focuses on your own relationship with language. In this lecture, trace the origin of "correct" usage to Robert Lowth, an 18th-century bishop who wrote an influential textbook on grammar that is the leading source of prescriptivist rules still promoted today.

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SeriesGreat Courses

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Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths of Language Usage

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