John McWhorter delivers a fascinating, detailed exploration of how language changes. He explores changes in grammar, vocabulary, and sounds; the splitJohn McWhorter delivers a fascinating, detailed exploration of how language changes. He explores changes in grammar, vocabulary, and sounds; the splitting, merging, and death of languages; geographical distribution and language families. His style is conversational and engaging, his lectures are well structured and interesting.
At the same time, John McWhorter can be opinionated, inappropriate, and mildly creepy. I enjoyed most of the material, and found it educational. But the wtf moments kept coming. For example, he uses the example "I push the dog into the water", because he finds pushing a dog off the Titanic into the water to die funny. Huh?? As an example of how people talk in real life, he cites Brits discussing dog breeding where he needs to explain that the word "bitch" here is means female dog and not a derogatory comment. You'd think there would be thousands of examples not needing that explanation. At some point he goes on about "leftist academia" completely out of context. He uses the term "Negro" when "Black" would be the commonly used term (he is Black).
I took a big issue with the first chapter, where he discusses what language is, but fails to define it. What I gathered, is that language is a higher form of communication that only humans are capable of, and it has grammar. He goes on to explain how animals cannot do it. So it all boils down to: language is something that only people do, so only people are capable of doing it.
He has an antropocentric bias. He speaks at length how we cannot teach dogs or chimpanzees to speak, as even after years, they only learn a few words of our human speech. But seriously. Both dogs and chimpanzees understand us way more than we understand them! Honeybees can tell each other where pollen is by dancing - McWhorter concludes that that's all they can do, they cannot chew the fat. How does he know? Just because we have decoded only this meaning, it does not mean they don't have thousands of other things they talk about. I happen to know that they can vote on prospective hive locations (Honeybee Democracy).
Dogs have an entire world of scents completely closed to us. He is sure a dog cannot tell her CV to us, but maybe she can, we just can't smell it. And we have recently discovered that whale song has the elements of language, such as equivalents of sounds and syllables.
Back to the good, some interesting tidbits from the lectures:
- Languages naturally get more complex if their speakers remain an isolated group. Thus the most complex languages are not the large, wide spread ones, but isolated, tribal languages. (Joke on you, language elitists.)
- When adults learn a language, they drop complexities. Thus when different groups merge (due to migration, conquest, or trade), languages tend to simplify. This is how English got stripped of most of the grammar present in other Germanic languages, such as verb endings and genders.
- We can trace the origin of peoples by comparing their languages. A language develops dofferently when their speakers spread around, and we can trace when and where the languages diverged.
- Language families developed as one original language, that later split into different languages, then sub-languages, etc.
- Creole languages are created when two languages merge, and this is the only way we know that new languages are born.
And much, much more. McWhorter clearly knows his linguistics. But he should stay away from anything else....more
I have read a couple of books talking about science in science fiction. They would take themes in books and movies and explain if the science is possiI have read a couple of books talking about science in science fiction. They would take themes in books and movies and explain if the science is possible, or how it might be accomplished. (Spoiler: nothing in Star Wars is even remotely scientific.) Adler does some of that, but also something more interesting: how the science inspired past sci-fi writers, and may inspire future ones. This leads to quite fascinating topics. My favorites were how to design your world so it is scientifically accurate; and, how to design your very own dragon.
He takes Jules Verne as the earliest writer who took his science seriously. You might think that he picked Florida as the setting for From the Earth to the Moon because he wanted to explore America, but Adler proves that he did it for scientific reason. Namely, if you want to shoot a cannon to the moon, you have to be between 28 and -28 lattitudes, and the only industrialized nation within this range of his time, and capable of doing this, was America. This led him to consider a post-civil-war America whose military complex suddenly needed something to do. He got a lot of things right, obviously using a cannon was not one of them, but he wrote it in 1867, so let's salute the man.
I very much enjoyed the way things like how far your habitable planet is from its sun, its gravity, the sun's type and size, and the atmosphere can affect many things and lead to rich detail. For example, if your sun is slighly redder, you may have completely different color schemes; if your planet is closer to the sun, your flora and fauna will need adaptations to deal with solar flares, such as leaves that suddenly curl up, animals that dive into the water or burrow under ground if needed. I never considered Avatar (the movie) very scientifically accurate, but apparently the moon it takes place on is very carefully considered, including its atmosphere, gravity, and its floating islands.
Other interesting topics include why a writer may include some science and exclude others, and the role of social sciences. I am glad someone acknowledges this, as perhaps 80% of science fiction deals with social issues in different settings. Asimov's Foundation is a prime example with the concept of psycho-history, and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is examined in detail both in the world building and social sciences lectures.
I also found the discussion of ecology in the context of Dune very interesting. Did you know that the book was inspired by the Oregon dune reclaimation project? The fremen use the same plan, even the same plants!
I must say his favorites do not agree with mine, as I must have character development, and he seems to prefer the books big on the ideas and scope. We agree on Dune and The Left Hand of Darkness, but not on Asimov and Heilein. The last lecture was dedicated to Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, as it embodies many of the themes he discusses in the course. He warned of spoilers, so I stopped the audio and read the book. Well, it is his favorite book, and definitely not mine, as it is rather... boring, and relies on the paranormal... I get what he means and why he likes it; I don't like it for the same reasons.
So you may not agree with his taste, but his reasoning is solid, he is engaging, dynamic, and knows his stuff. Highly recommend for sci-fi fans. The audio is free on Hoopla if your library has access to it....more
I have stumbled across this on Audible and it seemed like a good idea to listen to this, as I have listened to the Decameron before. It turned out thaI have stumbled across this on Audible and it seemed like a good idea to listen to this, as I have listened to the Decameron before. It turned out that I remembered next to nothing, but it made me re-listen to the book and having understood better the interactions between narrators and the significance of the stories, I am quite certain they stick with me a lot longer this time.
Kristina Olson takes us through each of the ten days and the focus of each day, drawing significant examples. This is all pretty interesting and gives a pretty good overview to those who do not actually want to read the much longer book - although I quite enjoyed it, as the stories are entertaining.
What is probably unique and interesting in these lectures is the parallel the lecturer draws between the plague and the Covid pandemic. Boccaccio's description of how people reacted to the plague is spot on even now. He mentions four groups of people: 1. those who lock themselves into their houses; 2. those who flee to the country; 3. those who feel like the world is ending so might as well party like there is no tomorrow; 4. and those who decide to go about their business but cover their noses with scented kerchiefs. Some things never change. ...more
This is a fascinating journey both in literature and the cultural and social environment that produced the many reasons that might lead to banning or This is a fascinating journey both in literature and the cultural and social environment that produced the many reasons that might lead to banning or challenging books. Unlike many of the Great Courses, this material is very current and incorporates the latest, strengthening movements towards restricting what we, and especially children, can read. Professor Corrigan dedicates lessons from Shakespeare to the #MeToo movement.
I learned a lot, and now I am re-listening. Full review after second listen....more
I enjoyed this a lot. Prof. Schmid gives a great overview of the mystery and suspense genre, starting with the three mystery stories by Edgar Allen PoI enjoyed this a lot. Prof. Schmid gives a great overview of the mystery and suspense genre, starting with the three mystery stories by Edgar Allen Poe that started the genre, through the classic detective, then the hard boiled private eye, police procedural, spy novels, historical mysteries and experimental mysteries written by aithors usually working in literary fiction. In the first part of the course he devotes a lecture each in discussing various attributes of mysteries such as the types of detectives, settings, puzzle mysteries vs. realism, the role of violence, the police, and of women. He devotes lectures to study diversity in American mystery literature, such as African American, Latino and Native American mysteries, as well as gay and lesbian themes. He also explores the genre around the globe, highlighting the Nordic Noir, French classics such as George Simenon, Italian, German and Spanish authors in Europe; and devotes lectures to Japan, Latin America, and Africa.
I was never bored, albeit there was quite a bit of repetition, especially because he kept returning to the examples of the earliest Poe novellas to illustrate his point. I have read those, and they are not that great, even if you can see in them the archetypal arrogant detective. He uses them way too much. Other usual suspects mentioned ad nauseam are Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and the hardboiled classic writers Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler. In fact I was very surprised how many of his examples I have actually read, given that I do not think of myself as a particularly avid mystery fan - however I do like to skim off the top of every genre I read and thus I have read at least the most famous books. I have only read The Maltese Falcon by Hammett, for instance, and given that I think Spade is an enormous ass, this will stay the only one, especially after listening Prof. Schmid waxing eloquently about how the point of the entire hardboiled genre was to be realistic, disillusioned, and generally being a macho jerk. While being assertive and ruthless are admirable in men, the same characteristic in women are captured as the femme fatale who needs to be punished for her sins. Hammett is dripping with misogyny, and so does Ian Flemming.
I think I come down mostly on the less violent crime side of things, preferring puzzles and historical mysteries, although I have read some pretty violent crime novels, such as the Rizzoli and Isles series. Generally I can tolerate violence if I get a good story and/or characters, but I prefer to avoid the gory or especially the slow dread. Suspense is not my jam at all, I like action or puzzles.
I have been trying to break my reading slump with shorter interesting nonfiction audios, and this one was just perfect. The author/lecturer, Erin McDoI have been trying to break my reading slump with shorter interesting nonfiction audios, and this one was just perfect. The author/lecturer, Erin McDonald, is an astrophysicist, and her specialty is “the use of general relativity in science fiction, through faster than light travel, artificial gravity, alternate universes, and more”- which sounds like the coolest job I could imagine (if I was into math).
She starts with some physics basics sprinkled with references to Star Wars and Star Trek, then later switches to how science fiction makes use of the newest scientific ideas and how they break the rules. Her favorite sci-fi invention is the transporter (whose isn’t) in StarTrek - which is impossible due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that you cannot know a particle’s position and speed at the same time, thus making it impossible to decode our bodies and reconstruct them again. However the writers off-handedly reference a “Heisenberg compensator” at some point, which McDonald thinks it is brilliant: the writers know what law they are breaking, and say that we will presumably find a way around it… sometime.
I quite enjoyed this marriage of physics and nerdy pop references. I am proud to say I got all references except for her favorite video game, Mass Effect, which I am not familiar with.
She signs off with,
“May the force be with you. Live long and prosper. So say we all.”
This collection of 36 roughly 30-minute lectures has been plucked from other Great Courses, which leads to varied results. Some lectures focus on histThis collection of 36 roughly 30-minute lectures has been plucked from other Great Courses, which leads to varied results. Some lectures focus on historical context, others on literary analysis, some are conclusions or introductions of a long course on the book, and one particularly badly chosen selection summarizes the 10th book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, referring to previous lectures. This makes for a very uneven listening experience.
Many of the later choices are American. It is extremely neglectful to leave out Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which laid the foundations of modern physics, and instead to include The Jungle, which only led to the creation of one agency in one country. Similarly, we could have done with just one of Common Sense and The Federalist Papers, in favor of The Theory of Relativity , which changed our understanding of the universe. And if we are talking American history, how about including African American authors whose work has changed our conception of race, such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Souls of Black Folk?
Only three are written by women, which is not surprising, however what is surprising is the lack of female lecturers. I am quite sure there are many female historians and professors of literature to choose from. There are only two (whose lectures I greatly enjoyed), but what’s egregious is that men teach the two feminist works in the collection: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Feminine Mystique. I was cringing hearing both of those men describing these two women as mentally unstable, airing the dirty laundry in their relationships, and calling Betty Friedan “dominant” and “bossy” as a young child - terms never used for men; nor do we hear that men “could not get along” with other men. We never hear of Benjamin Franklin’s skirt chasing or Hamilton’s feuds, which is fine because they are not relevant - but neither are they relevant for the women. Predictably the male lecturers sweep feminism under the rug as no longer needed - unfortunately this could not be further from the truth, especially now.
My favorite lectures were complete classes on a book, focusing on historical context and the impact of the book. Highlights for me were Herodotus’s The Histories, where professor Elizabeth Vandiver gives a fascinating overview of the history of the Greeks of the era as well as explains why this work is the first of writing history as a genre, and how it has influenced all histories written after. Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci was illuminating simply because I didn’t know anything about how influential the change from roman numerals to Arabic ones was. And the lesson on Common Sense provided much needed context to a book I have read but could not make heads or tails of because I did not know the history surrounding it.
Overall it is educational, mostly interesting, but haphazard and best used as a tool to explore more the books or historical periods that capture one’s attention.
Women were systematically denied education and access to scientific work, yet we do have women in history who had significant scientific achievements.Women were systematically denied education and access to scientific work, yet we do have women in history who had significant scientific achievements. However, we do not know about them, besides Marie Curie, even whose contributions were belittled as not coming from insight, but perseverance, because genius was reserved for men.
We do not know because they often had to carve out work in other places than academia - usually in their home, working with their husbands, or in low prestige work like tedious data collection. We do not know because their contributions went unattributed, absorbed into their male partners’ or bosses’ achievements, or were overlooked, neglected, and often deliberately erased. However, feminist historians now are looking to identify these women, and restore their place in history.
Leila McNeill identified ten little known women scientists and gave six lectures for on the life and contributions of these women, in this 3 hour long Audible original (available for free with an Audible subscription). Unfortunately this did not come with a PDF with the names of these women, so I have to re- listen and note them.
Lecture 1: Women at the Heart of Science Overview of women’s role in science and why we have trouble finding their contributions.
Lecture 2: When Women Ruled the City: Bassi and Morandi
Laura Bassi became the first female doctor of philosophy at the University of Bologna in 1732. Her doctoral degree defense was a highly public event, attended by foreigners, clergy, professors, nobility, and onlookers—yet she was still forbidden from teaching at the university and was deliberately excluded from a prestigious group of academics within the Institute for Science. [image]
Anna Morandi Manzolini worked at the same time as Bologna’s lady anatomist, who, with her husband, was a creator of wax human anatomical figures. Anatomy was at the time a new science and her models were known not just for their scientific accuracy but their artistic merit as well. [image]
Lecture 3: Protecting Nature: Ammal and Clark
Janaki Ammal was an India’s leading botanist, an expert in cytogenesis, who spearheaded the conservation of indigenous plants, advocated for indigenous methods of preservation, and was heading the efforts to preserve the rain forests. [image]
“Shark lady” Eugenie Clark has devoted her life to study marine life, and was fascinated by sharks. Her research and popularization of sharks changed our view of sharks as mindless eating machines into a vital part of maintaining balance in the food chain. She often dove with sharks and never got attacked. [image]
Lecture 4: A Revolution in Geology: Lehmann and Tharp Inge Lehmann was a geologist and seismologist who discovered that the Earth had a solid inner core. [image] [image]
Marie Tharp was a geologist and cartographer who first mapped the ocean floor and produced the first evidence for plate tectonics and continental shift. [image]
Lecture 5: Public Health vs. Private Interest: Hayden and Kelsey
Frances Oldham Kelsey was a Canadian-American pharmacologist and physician who worked for the FDA and refused to authorize thalidomide for market because she had concerns about proof of safety. Thalomide was a drig that caused severe birth defects. She contributed to new drug safety laws and regulations, and their enforcement. [image]
Alma Levant Hayden was a chemist, an expert in measuring how substances absorb light. She was the first African-American employed by a major US scientific agency, and possibly the first at the FDA. She played a major role in proving that anti-cancer drug Krebiozen did nothing, and prompted a change in US drug laws to require proof of efficacy as well as safety. [image]
Lecture 6: To the Stars: Easley and Rubin
Annie Easley was a computer scientist, mathematician and rocket scientist who worked as a human computer for NASA, and later developed applications supporting NASA’s rocket and space probe launches. [image]
Vera Rubin was an astronomer who discovered dark matter. [image] She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves. By identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. These results were later confirmed over subsequent decades. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is named in her honor....more
John McWhorter takes us on a fascinating survey of the roughly 170 language families of the world. He starts with Indo-EuExtended review July 30, 2022
John McWhorter takes us on a fascinating survey of the roughly 170 language families of the world. He starts with Indo-European, as most listeners of these lectures are native English speakers, but also because linguistics started in Europe. Indo-European is the most studied and currently most widely spread language group of the world. He introduces the basic concepts of language development and features using this group. After this he goes on a tour around the world, starting in Africa, the cradle of humanity, with the suspected first languages of the world, the click languages.
I am Hungarian and English is my second language; I also (used to) speak German (I rather forgot now as I have not used it). Since Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, I have perhaps a different take from native English speakers on these lectures.
The journey is fascinating. Studying languages makes us realize how many ways humans can express themselves; how many concepts differ between cultures; how structures we might consider essential we can completely dispense with. I have long known, that gender, pronouns, and most tenses are unnecessary, since my native language does without them beautifully; but it is interesting to see English speakers’ reaction, as they take them for granted. Many languages without those, however, have additional complexities: Hungarian, for example, has countless endings, conjugations, and matching of connecting vowels. Or let’s take Chinese, famously mono-syllabic, but also famously difficult due to use of tones. Japanese has many language constructs around social hierarchy and multiples. There are languages where you talk to your mother-in-law in a different dialect, where women talking to men, men talking to women, or their own genders, require different forms.
The number and form of sounds also differs greatly. Click languages have the most, numbering close to a hundred. Some languages have many consonants but only few vowels; one Caucasian languge makes do with only two. Others have many vowels and few consonants. Polynesian languages have few of each, and make up for it by very long words. Given that these languages are the last group that developed, and click languages the first, it might be that languages go from many sounds and drop them over time; albeit that is just conjecture, as most languages have sounds between thirty and fifty.
One of McWhorter’s major points is to get the idea out of his listeners’ head that English is somehow especially complicated, or that “savages” speak less sophisticated languages than the “civilized” people. In fact, the opposite is true: the more isolated a language and spoken by the less people, the more complicated it gets, because it is “allowed to do what languages do”, and increase in complexity. When a language is learned by babies, no grammatical feature, special cases, tenses, conjugations, exceptions to the rule are hard. When a language is learned by many adults, however, such as when two languages mix, a people are conquered, displaced, or use a language for trade, grammar complexities tend to drop. This happened to English, which is quite grammatically stripped compared to most languages, and especially among other Germanic languages, all of which have multiple genders, conjugations and endings.
Some observations as a non-English speaker. When McWhorter picks characteristic features for a language group, it does not mean that other language groups do not have that. For instance, vowel matching of endings as a particular feature of Turkic languages also features in Hungarian. I suspect there are many such examples. His pronounciations are terrible, although I am sure that for the range of languages he covers, are way better than mine. He points out that writing systems are different from the languages, by the example of Chinese characters that can be used for different words in different languages; but fails to mention that Latin script also transcribes many different languages and we don’t think it odd.
McWhorter is engaging and very enthusiastic of his subject. Unfortunately, this is punctuated by tasteless or downright offensive jokes and stories. He calls Polynesian languages “coconut” languages, describes a Swami woman as smelling of fresh fish, tells numerous offputting food and party stories (such as a woman spewing crackers); sprinkles in mildly sexual and creepy comments; and thinks saying that a dead language is “as dead as the Golden Girls minus Betty White” is somehow funny.
He is clearly well educated and highly intelligent, nevertheless he insists on coming off as stupid and shallow: he often says “but that’s boring” about something I actually find interesting; he uses “top” and “bottom” instead of north and south; describes long Polynesian words as something he would like to eat (because, I think, it sounds like mahimahi); insists that “black people don’t get lice”; that some languages are spoken by “minus seventeen people”; and makes passive aggressive comments about other linguists, such as “it is not nice to say they are wrong, so I am not going to say it [end of lecture]”.
Overall, this lecture series is like walking around on the fascinating streets of Paris and taking in the history, culture, atmosphere and the waft of fresh baguettes; but having to watch out for the dog turds. (If you’ve been to Paris, you know what I am talking about.)...more
This was an enjoyable tour of utopia and dystopia, what makes them different and what makes them similar. We have way much more dystopias than utopiasThis was an enjoyable tour of utopia and dystopia, what makes them different and what makes them similar. We have way much more dystopias than utopias. Utopias concentrate on describing an ideal society, and often lack plot or character development; dystopias tend to flow from the latter. They also have more drama and action - thus more interesting. This actually comes up in Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, where the boring art is the one sacrifice they make in order to have a perfect society.
Pamela Bedore takes us on a tour of speculative fiction from Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia to The Hunger Games. Her lectures concentrate on the structure and the ideas presented in each work she selects, and how they express the nature of utopia or dystopia. Her main point is that pretty much all of them have a little bit of each other: even the most sunny utopias have a cost, a dark side; and even the darkest dystopias present a sliver of hope, if nothing else than giving a warning so we can avoid it. Thus she posits that overall both genres are hopeful; they both make us think about the choices we make; and pretty much all of them are a bit of both.
We have many of the usual suspects here: Candide, Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World., which rely on a traveler into a realm to describe it, and use the differences to satirize and critique their own society. Thus utopias (and some dystopias) often include humor or satire (which are not necessarily the same thing). The obvious classics of dystopia are We, Brave New World and 1984, to which she devotes quite a bit, along with H.G Wells.
What surprised me was the extensive discussion of feminism in both utopias and dystopias- later incorporated into and melded with speculative fiction, especially science fiction - which has proved to be a fertile ground for social thought experiments on gender, sex, identity, intersectionality, race, enslavement, queer identities and such. So it happens that this topic leads to two discussions each on Octavia E. Butler and Margaret Atwood, both of whom I adore.
She ends the series with discussing the prevalence of young adult dystopias in recent years. Why are kids drawn to these topics? She points to the many anxieties of teenagers, and the ability of the authors to make the kids think about important topics through these works. I am not sure I am buying that, I am more inclined to say that The Hunger Games series is a damn good page turner.
This was highly enjoyable, and made me add several titles to my mental list: Herland, The Dispossessed, We, and anything by Octavia Butler. Apparently I read way more dystopias than utopias. Go figure. But Bedore points out that there isn’t that much difference, anyway....more
A great course I found on Hoopla and highly recommend to all who want to read more Shakespeare. It consists of 24 half an hour long lectures.
Marc ConnA great course I found on Hoopla and highly recommend to all who want to read more Shakespeare. It consists of 24 half an hour long lectures.
Marc Conner speaks clearly and engagingly about Shakespeare and his theater, and about his plays. In each lecture, he introduces a “tool” (or three) to help us understand dimensions of the play. For example, the type of play: a comedy is about young love that has an obstacle standing in the way, which is overcome, and the play ends in marriage(s). A tragedy would end with death. The best comedies snatch a happy ending from an almost tragedy. Another tool is to examine the first lines of what a character speaks. In case of history plays, follow the history (rather obvious). In tragedies, the tragic woman gives insight... etc, etc.
After an intro, Conner delves into twelve plays of the Bard, each illustrating a best example of the period of Shakespeare’s life and the type of play. These include Romeo and Juliet, The Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night (his favorite), Macbeth, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest (there are more). I have really enjoyed it, especially about the ones I read, but also ones I have not, or read too long ago.
Recommend for Shakespeare readers. Free on Hoopla....more
Did you know that Don Quixote is the second most popular book in the world, behind only the Bible? It is the first modern novel, in the sense that itsDid you know that Don Quixote is the second most popular book in the world, behind only the Bible? It is the first modern novel, in the sense that its characters undetake a journey that changes them, as opposed to the hitherto known straightforward telling of a story. Ilan Stavans is a professor devoted to Don Quixote, and speaks enthusiastically of his favorite subject in this short audio course, which I have discovered on Hoopla after borrowing the novel.
We mostly learn about the historical background and DQ’s impact on literature, but some themes are explored as well. I enjoyed the bit about its influence on the Spanish language and the development of Spain as a nation, the comoarison to Shakespeare, and especially the analysis of islamic influence onto contemporary Spanish culture. Cervantes also criticizes the cruelty of contemporary society, and takes swipes at the Inquisition, contemporary writers, and of course, completely satirizes knight errant literature.
The themes explored include male friendship between Don Quixote and Sancho; madness; idealism; platonic love and the absence of Dulcinea; humor and cruelty; and the need for that idealism in our lives in order to deal with the drudgery of reality.
A quick listen for those who want a little extra on Don Quixote....more
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