Overview of Course

On this voyage, we will be visiting some of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. India recognizes 22 official languages and there are 302 languages spoken within the borders of China. How do the speakers of these languages navigate their multilingual reality? We will discuss the social realities of minority and majority languages while learning basic linguistic universals such as (1) language change does not equal language death and (2) spoken and written language are inherently different. We will also learn the basic structural components of language and discuss such questions as what is a word? and how do languages express basic cognitive principles differently? This journey will also take us into the topics of national language policy, language in schools, the development of standard language and standard language ideology.