Crash Course Linguistics Preview

Key Takeaways

hi i'm taylor benke and welcome to crash course linguistics language is everywhere it's what we use to order a pizza talk on our phones tell jokes and make sense of the world around us we've used language to learn about every other subject on crash course and now it's time to learn linguistics how language itself works over the next 16 episodes we'll look at the structure of language from the smallest building blocks of sounds and hand shapes to the structure of words and meanings to how words go together to make sentences and conversations along the way we'll also look at the relationship between language and our identity the brain and even computers we'll learn about writing language acquisition and the diversity of human languages there are actually over 7 000 identified languages in the world today that includes thousands of spoken languages and hundreds of sign languages they can be found in small communities or span across multiple countries they can be written or unwritten and they can be learned through family formal schooling or broader social networks each one is a living experiment into how humans communicate throughout this series we'll be sharing examples from widely known languages as well as some you may not have encountered before but we won't be learning one language in particular instead we'll be looking at similarities and differences across many languages learning how to think like a linguist about the languages we encounter in our everyday lives we're excited to produce a series on linguistics because it's super relevant to lots of fields including speech recognition and natural language processing speech pathology lexicography and communications it's also useful if you're teaching or learning languages not to mention for journalists poets translators interpreters and other people who work with language and if that sounds like basically everyone it kind of is more generally understanding linguistics helps us understand how our own minds and bodies work and the hidden patterns in our interactions with other humans it's also really fun regardless of what part of language we're analyzing or which language or languages are our focus a linguist is interested in language as it's actually used linguistics is not about trying to establish and enforce one variety of language as better than another after all if we were studying rabbits we wouldn't go around telling some rabbits that their hopping style is better than others but this increased understanding of language does come with an ethical responsibility to be kind and compassionate with it before we get into it all let me introduce myself my name is taylor benke and i'm a writer video maker and digital organizer i studied linguistics in college alongside writing and spanish ever since i've been fascinated by how language works and how it shapes our identities i think a lot about the power of language as a tool for communication both in my work with digital communities and on my youtube channel it's radish time i'm excited to keep learning about linguistics with you see you in the first episode