“Eskimos have many words for snow.” “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” “Aborigines speak primitive languages.” “English has the world’s richest vocabulary.” “Children learn languages more easily than adults.” “Languages die because they are not fit enough for the modern world.” “Animals speak their own language.” You may have heard many of these statements, but are they actually true?

In this course, we will examine these and related beliefs about language. We will investigate what aspects of these statements are true and what aspects are false or even nonsensical. In doing so, we will explore topics including language diversity, language history, children’s language acquisition, adult language learning, animal and human communication, and much more. We will also consider where language myths come from and why they persist despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary.

(Current OLLI Members Only)