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Back to Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics by Universiteit Leiden

4.7
stars
2,357 ratings

About the Course

Everywhere, every day, everybody uses language. There is no human society, no matter how small or how isolated, which does not employ a language that is rich and diverse. This course introduces you to linguistics, featuring interviews with well-known linguists and with speakers of many different languages. Join us to explore the miracles of human language! The Miracles of Human Language introduces you to the many-faceted study of languages, which has amazed humans since the beginning of history. Together with speakers of many other languages around the world, as well as with famous linguists such as Noam Chomsky and Adele Goldberg, you will learn to understand and analyse how your native tongue is at the same time similar and different from many other languages. You will learn the basic concepts of linguistics, get to know some of the key features of big and small languages and get insight into what linguists do. This course gives an introduction into the study of languages, the field of linguistics. With the support of the basic linguistic terminology that is offered in the course, you will soon be able to comment both on variety between languages, as well as on a single language’s internal structure. Anyone who wishes to understand how languages work, and how they can give us insight into the human mind is very welcome to join. The course is useful if you want to get a fairly quick introduction into linguistics, for instance because you are considering studying it further, or because you are interested in a neighbouring discipline such as psychology, computer science or anthropology. Furthermore, the course will help you develop analytical skills. If you are curious to understand how language works and how it gives insight into the human mind, this course is definitely for you!...

Top reviews

DC

Sep 23, 2017

Extremely informational, well presented, with questions that stimulate reflection. The optional reading material is food for thought. I hope to see more courses from the same professor and University.

DP

Jan 2, 2017

Excellent! Really enjoyed and learnt a lot. I did not expect such a great content and professionalism in a free course. I am definitely purchasing for the title.

Thanks to all the team! Great job!

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601 - 625 of 716 Reviews for Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics

By Rafael C

Apr 11, 2020

An excellent course providing a strong basis in the technical areas of linguistics, particulary useful when you have prior nowledge in a cognitive science.

Nonetheless, some questions of the test tend to be a bit confusing and would benefit from a little revision - but the tests remain doable!

A very interesting course, completely worth your time.

By zanko r

Oct 1, 2020

This course provides a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to linguistics, including a wide range of topics, such as syntax, semantics, morphology, and psycholinguistics. The theories are explained in a very clear manner, and the different interviews enlighten the learner and inspire him to pursue linguistics with ever greater passion.

By Muhan L

Aug 23, 2016

Firstly, I'd like to thank the professor for bringing us such a great class on linguistics! The course gives a general introduction on what linguistics is about in quite a balanced depth, not too deep to scare people away while not too shallow that you may feel boring. The missing star is due to some vague instructions of quizzes.

By Olivia C

Jan 4, 2017

I learned very much in this course, and I am thankful for the opportunity to have taken it. I found some of the quiz questions to be unnecessarily difficult because of how specific they were to the videos of the language informants, but overall, I enjoyed the course and the wide range of supplemental materials that are offered.

By NESTOR A C G

Mar 13, 2017

Great course. Even though it says An Introduction... I found it demanding.

By the way, when I started the course it was possible to see the number of hours a week needed to complete the course (3 - 4 hours) on the course description. However, now it's not possible and I need this important information a.s.a.p.

Thank you!

By Richard a J O

Oct 24, 2018

Overall, I enjoyed taking this course. It was challenging, but it helped me to develop my skills in reading journal articles and assessing university level material. It had interesting case studies and gave me a good grounding in the field of linguistics. Thanks University of Leiden and Dr. Marc van Oostendorp!

By Rasmus B

Dec 12, 2021

Very interesting content, very interesting reading material. Good course intstructor. Only negative part: the exam questions were sometimes weird and felt as if they were set up to trick me; there were some cases where I really was sure that I knew the answer, but reading the alternatives made no sense at all.

By Nelli S

Aug 6, 2021

Why I start this course? Miracles of Human Languages seemed to be unusual and exceptional. This knowledge gave me inspiration not only of new openings of Linguistic but also vision how to operate in our great world of languages. Thank you to the team of professor Marc van Oostendorp and Inge with Martin.

By Átkýv L

Mar 18, 2022

Overall, I think that this course has definitely lived up to its name. The modules are well-organised, and are taught with comfortable pacing. Perhaps it needs to polish the quality of the videos a little, but other than that, I highly recommend it to people who wish to start their journey on linguistics.

By Paisley G

Aug 9, 2019

There was a lot of interesting information in this course, and I liked the interviews and guest speakers of other languages. If I could change anything, it would be the wording on some of the quiz questions, and the difficulty of a beginner course asking for some of the analysis with the guest speakers.

By Nora A

Dec 20, 2016

A nice refresher for people who already have a linguistic background, and a nice introduction for beginners also. My problem was all the weird questions about the informants. Some of the questions are really hard to understand which makes them impossible to answer. I'm glad I took the course though!

By Jody T

Aug 14, 2017

I have zero background in linguistics, and I found this course interesting and educational. The quizzes however do have some issues such as a couple of wrong or unclear questions as well as arbitrary questions, so be aware that you may have to resort to trial and error in some cases.

By Joe A

Mar 18, 2017

Great introductory course. Helped me a lot to understand what linguists do even if I didn't quite get all the key ideas which weren't all explained in depth enough. The examples from languages are helpful but require quite a good ear so I guess it takes some gift for languages.

By Shivanth M P

Sep 16, 2016

Introductory insight into Linguistics. The professor takes you very briefly about the variety of subdivisions in linguistics , which , each by itself being a big subdivision within linguistics. Enlightened with basics of all these different approaches of investigating languages

By Afonso B

Jan 25, 2022

A good introduction, but quite frankly I could have learned all that was taught in any book about linguistics (that's why I only gave it four stars). On the other hand, I really liked the interviews they did with famous linguists, like prof. Chomsky and prof. Goldberg.

By Carla P

Jun 25, 2020

Muito bom o curso. Mas gostaria que fossem abordados mais curiosidades sobre os idiomas mais conhecidos. Não gostei muito da abordagem em idiomas nada conhecidos ou pouco usados, embora reconheça que a mesma tenha sido necessária para maiores explicações sobre o tema.

By Danni B

Jun 15, 2020

Extremely interesting, videos were entertaining and informative. My only criticism is that the quizzes and final exam seemed to be at a higher difficulty than the course material, and often they were poorly worded or the correct answers didn't seem to be right.

By Casandra H M

Jul 12, 2020

The videos are pretty good, the explanations are easy to understand and I enjoyed the extra material (reading resources). The only thing I would change about this course are the exams, they ask very specific questions and things that may not be that important.

By MO M

May 26, 2019

Good and intense introduction, but difficult multiple choice questions as most answers are deeply rooted in the clips and not in a reading text.

love the free access to Ethnologue and introduction to other linguistic tools such as WALS.

Thanks to the team.

By Aryn H

Aug 20, 2018

This was a very interesting course and introduced me to a lot of interesting concepts and expanded my understanding of the concept of linguistics. I felt some areas could have been explored a bit deeper but overall I enjoyed the course very much.

By Siddharth S

Nov 8, 2016

The course was very interesting and well laid out. The only problems I faced were technical issues during quizzes and forum posts, but the course content itself is excellent and a good starting point for exploring linguistics and human languages.

By Elena A

May 2, 2017

It is a nice course, very well organized for those you are eager to learn about the theoritical aspects of linguistics, such as semantics, morphology. Every video has several quizes, just like every module. I would surely recommend it to anyone.

By Serhii M

Aug 27, 2020

Very interesting and useful course albeit not too deep. It would be great to deepen the covered topics (not to make the course longer!) by adding additional materials for reading and viewing and by making the quizes bigger. Thank you!

By Lucy S

Aug 28, 2017

It's an excellent introduction to linguistics! This course gives learners a general picture of how the field of linguistics look like. Assignments and assessments are of moderate difficulty. Definitely worth taking it!

By Elisabet S

Nov 11, 2016

Sometimes it was hard to understand the concept the professor was trying to make, because some grammatical forms were wrong and therefore the whole concept misleading. Otherwise very interesting course and thank you!