Myths, Lies, and Half Truths of Language Usage DVD

John McWhorter is always educational and entertaining.

Well done and quite informative.

John McWhorter is always enjoyable and informative when talking about the English language, and this is no exception.It's often popular to talk about the decline of English, bad grammar, and the Awful Effects of texting and email on how we speak and write. We may also tend to think that people doing a foreign language are doing something much more impressive than we are in speaking English,McWhorter shows us how the things we often denounce as Bad Grammar are often the English language changing in response to changes in our lives, the kinds of changes that English has been undergoing for a thousand years or more--such as the often-denounced verbing of nouns--and normal cultural changes.We get some great history of the language, which explains just how weird it is, and how it got that way. Many of the case endings and other frills in Indo-European got out in Proto-Germanic due to some other group, possibly Phoenicians, settling in the area and learning it as adults. Then the same thing happened to what became Old English, in contact with large numbers of Norse also learning the language as adults.Oh, and there were the Welsh, who gifted us with "do," a thing that doesn't exist in any other languages except the Celtic ones--and Welsh had other effects on English as we now speak it.Other changes, more recent, are cultural. We don't have "let's go hear the currently popular lecturer speak for two or three hours" as a form of entertainment anymore. And we don't expect modern politicians to speak with the kind of formality that Lincoln, or Churchill, or even John Kennedy did. Yet we still have a distinction between formal and informal English; it's just that our version of informal is found in email and texting, while what we find suitable for writing or public speaking is different from what previous generations wanted.John McWhorter talking about this is a lot more fun than I am. ("Fun" is another interesting word, doing interesting things...) Go listen to it.I bought this audiobook.

Professor McWhorter's lectures are endlessly fascinating, more so for linguists and trivia buffs. They pack a lot of information. Yet, the professor does not allow them to weigh heavily on anyone looking for more perfunctory understanding. The lectures cover a broad swathe of topics without much repetition, which means nuggets of new understanding and "aha" moments are possible everywhere.That said, the good professor takes the highly liberal view that everything one says, writes, reads, etc. in English is right and the language - the way it is used everywhere - is the best it could be. Beyond a point, the pervasive attitude comes in the way of the lectures taking any corrective, constructive, instructive, or suggestive stance. One may learn how what might be today has come into being through some fascinating historical tales, but they offer little to anyone planning to improve any language-related skills. I may say "me is name whatever." The professor might still congratulate me on being the new-age Shakespeare.One can understand why it is challenging to pass value judgments or critiques on any type of language usage in today's universities. Still, the lectures could have talked about some more correct ways that enrich the lives of their speakers/writers/readers and vice versa. The professor must be aware of numerous examples of bad language use creating avoidable problems. They make zero appearances in the zeal to approve everything and not sound like a language elitist. Essentially, the lecture series suffers materially because of an oppressive, underlying political correctness.

Interesting with a lot of detail and interesting examples. The lecturer recommended other material that has been useful.

This is fabulously engaging. I listened to each and every segment myself, and shared my favorites with family and friends. I fully anticipate listening to it again in about a year and being delighted with linguistics all over again. I highly recommend this!

This was funny, engaging, and above all, informative. Some of the stuff McWhorter covers in here is stuff you will think about every day, if you are concerned at all with language. I will definitely continue to read McWhorter's stuff. His voice is at once authoritative and approachable, and he's funny as well as learned.People who are speakers of language (this will include most people reading this review, I'm guessing) will find a lot to interest them here.