Thanks to…

• Asya Pereltsvaig for the textbook

• All of our guest lecturers for their nerding

• Kevin and Niloo (alphabetically) for their help and support

• You all, for being here!

Flashback!

This class will teach you about Language, by talking about languages.

• Goal 1: Learn how linguists talk about Language

• Goal 2: Learn about the incredible diversity of language in the world

• Goal 3: Learn about the life cycle of languages

• Goal 4: Talk about languages!

• Goal 5: Turn you all into Linguists.

How’d we do?

Goal 1: “Learn how linguists talk about Language”

Ojibwe is an Algonquian dialect continuum of the Great Lakes region. It’s polysynthetic, VSO/VOS, with heavy use of animacy, evidentiality, and modality. Phonologically, a seven vowel system is used, with both vowel length and nasality contrastive.

• OMG! We can understand that gibberish!

Success!

Goal 2: “Learn about the incredible diversity of language in the world”

People will say stupid things to you.

• “Translators are overpaid. All they do is remember different words in other languages.”

• “German’s easy, it has most of the same sounds as English.”

• “Oh, come on. Indian can’t be endangered, there are 300 reservations worth of speakers!”

• “English is the hardest/easiest/original language.”

You can smack them down!

Goal 3: “Learn about the life cycle of languages”

You can now explain…

• What language death is

• What language revitalization is

• Why languages tend to die in the first place

• Why that’s a bad thing.

That’s more than 99% of the world population knows!

• … And you’re a better citizen of the world for it!

Goal 4: “Talk about languages!”

You can now name more languages than 90% of Americans

• … and you can talk intelligently about them too!

• This doesn’t seem like much, but…

People love when you know something about their language!

• “You’re the first person I’ve ever known who’s heard of Amharic!”

• “Every other American thinks Iranian people speak Arabic! Thank you!”

• “Oh, yeah, Russian’s hard. You guys are all about that Case!”

  • 🎶 “We’re bringing Dative baaaaack, why don’t you tell them Romance speakers that.” 🎶

  • 🎶 “I know y’all use noun claaass…” 🎶

You’re there to tell them that every foreign tongue is perfect from the bottom to the top

• (because it is.)

• Seriously, you get a lot of mileage out of “Oh, ____, that’s a beautiful language!”

… also…

You know lots more about different cultures now, too!

• You know why the Chechens and Russians don’t see eye-to-eye

  • Same with the Basque, Uighur, Kurds, etc.

• You know that there was more than one Native American group

  • (You’d be surprised, in Boulder…)

• You know that not all Africans are Khoisan language speakers

  • (and that all the rest don’t speak Swahili)

You know weird things now!

• You know that Stalin didn’t speak Russian well

• “I speak Hebrew!” “Awesome, I love conlangs! Do you speak Klingon too?”

• You know that Simba is named “Lion”

• You know that everything in Chipotle is Nahuatl

  • Except the art.

• You know that we’ve stolen half our state names from Indigenous languages

You know that Michael Bay only has one facial expression

You know that Michael Bay only has one facial expression

You know that Michael Bay only has one facial expression

You know that Michael Bay only has one facial expression

What else did you learn?

Goal 5: “Turn you all into Linguists.”

• Right?

Right?

Oh, some of you don’t yet know that you want to declare a LING Major!

Taking this class was a great first step!

You’ve got a huge advantage in LING 2000

• We covered a lot of similar material, just from a very different perspective

• Seriously, take LING 2000. You’ll need it for the major

  • … which you’ve already declared

… and in every other Linguistics class

• We’ve covered elements of Language Sound Structures (LING 3100)

• … and World Language Policies (LING 3545)

• … and Morphosyntax (LING 4420)

• … and Language and Culture (LING 4800)

• … and American Indian Languages (LING ____)

Did I mention the LING Major and Minor are pretty small?

• Especially if you’re taking a foreign language already!

• Email Deanna Fierman for more information on declaring

  • Fierman@colorado.edu

• (You can’t blame a guy for trying, right?)

OK, OK, maybe you’re not all going to declare a LING major

• … but I’ve still warped all of your brains!

You’ll be weirdly interested in people speaking another language on the street

Hearing an ejective in the wild will make your day.

• (Seriously, you laugh now, but when you hear one…)

You’re much better equipped to learn another language

• “So, this language does something reallllllly exotic…”

  • Dude, it’s just case. Cool your jets.

• “Can we just drop the pretense and look at a pronoun chart?”

You’re also better equipped to handle the uninformed

• “We need somebody to offer customer support in Hmong. Let’s just buy Sandy a Rosetta Stone CD.”

• “Translator? I’ll just write the letter in English, then use Google Translate before I send it to them!”

• “Anja’s from Sweden, and Sweden’s right next to Finland, so she should be able to rewrite the manual in Finnish.”

• “Of course the savage languages are going to be endangered. They can’t express civilized concepts!”

You’re going to be more sympathetic to non-Native speakers of English

• Because seriously, English, go home, you’re drunk.

… and you’ll be kinder to yourself when you screw up another language

• Because that language is drunk too.

… but most importantly of all…

You understand that even though people around the world all use it differently…

• Language is magic

Go be wizards!

Thank you very much!