<p>I have to take linguistics for my major and I don't really know what it is. Is it interesting and how challenging is it?</p>
<p>Plus, if you have any knowledge specifically about Penn State linguistics classes I would appreciate.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, Linguistics is the study of the Origin of Language. You learn about phonetics, semantics, speech origin…word use…not exactly sure if that’s what’s still studied today. Best to go to the school’s dept. website and look on-line. Or call the school and ask for that dept. Someone will hopefully answer your questions!</p>
<p>I took Linguistics in college and I remember it being interesting and not very challenging. However that was many years ago!</p>
<p>I loved the Linguistics course I took! It was great!. However, parts of it can get very technical and there is likely to be some memorization involved. I have to confess that I only retained the details about which English phonemes (word sounds) are fricatives, sibilants, palatals, etc. long enough to get through the test. But I did leave all the post-it flags stuck in the book so I can find that information when I need it.</p>
<p>One fun book on the topic that is a fairly easy read is “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker. You should be able to find a copy at your local public library. The textbook used in our class was “An Introduction to Language” by Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams. It wasn’t a difficult read either, well except for that stuff on phonetics and phonology. I read all of the fun chapters on language and the brain, the history of language, writing systems, etc. before the not-so-fun ones. Lastly, there is a really cool website that is about the brain in general, but also includes current understanding of language: [LE</a> CERVEAU À TOUS LES NIVEAUX!](<a href=“http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/]LE”>http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/) Even though this link is to the English version of the page, for some reason the French title always shows up. Really cool stuff! I love it because you can choose whether you want to read the material at a beginner, intermediate, or advanced level. And of course, you can also read it all in French if you want to!</p>
<p>Why do you say that you “have” to take linguistics for your major. No one should ever be forced into a linguistic major – you really need at least an introductory class to decide. </p>
<p>My daughter thought she was interested in linguistics until she took a basic foundation class – one thing she learned from that class was that she never, ever wanted to take another linguistics class again. That was not because of a bad class – my impression was that it was an excellent class with a well qualified professor – but it just wasn’t at all what she had expected of imagined. </p>
<p>I’m a great fan of Pinker’s books, but I don’t think that gives a good picture of what the study of linguistics is about. My d. was very much put off by the technical, math-y stuff.</p>
<p>You might feel differently-- you might love it – but you have to try it first! If you have to ask what the class entails, you should not in any way be planning to major in it.</p>
<p>It doesn’t sound like the OP is majoring in linguistics, bu t in a field where basic knowledge of linguistics is useful or recommended (anthropology, philosophy, etc)</p>
<p>OK… I see where I misread the post. (oops!) – </p>
<p>If the OP simply needs to take one course to support a different major, here’s a good article with a basic overview of the things that might be covered or touched upon in an introductory course:
[Linguistics</a> 101: An Introduction to the Study of Language](<a href=“http://www.ielanguages.com/linguist.html]Linguistics”>http://www.ielanguages.com/linguist.html)</p>
<p>Yes, I took it in grad school. It is a very technical part of English, focusing on the structure of the language. Is it challenging? Yes. I recall it was kind of killer, especially for the lit people. Is it interesting? Well, how fascinated are you by things like the function of the subordinate clause or the development of a grammatical morpheme? I can’t imagine that at the undergraduate level it’d be much more than an overview.</p>
<p>One of my brightest classmates at NU was a linguistics major, who went onto Yale Law School. I never took a linguistics class - wish I had. It’s really fascinating and there are many, many subfields – grammar, accents / dialects, etc. You might want to google some of the blogs such as Language Log (I’m sure their blogroll will be interesting to poke around). One of the bigwigs in the field, William Labov, is at the University of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Bill Labov teaches at UPenn, not Penn State. His field is sociolinguistics. </p>
<p>OP might enjoy reading a few books by Deborah Tannen (who teaches at Georgetown, BTW) to get an overview of the types of questions that sociolinguists ask and, if this is interesting, find out who teaches sociolinguistics at PSU (and whether the basic intro course is a prereq) and then go from there. It does not hurt to have a basic curiosity whetted by literature accessible to a layperson before diving into more technical intro courses.</p>
<p>Sounds intriguing…does anyone have any knowledge of PSU linguistics?</p>
<p>I would think going to the PSU linguistics website would be the place to start. </p>
<p>[Program</a> in Linguistics at Penn State](<a href=“http://linguistics.psu.edu/welcome.htm]Program”>http://linguistics.psu.edu/welcome.htm)</p>
<p>My son has been interested in linguistics since he was about 12. He taught himself elementary linguistics in HS both through books and a lecture series by The Teaching Company (google or PM me if interested). It was the springboard for one of his essays. He is currently a linguistic major in college. The Teaching Company lectures (24 hours?) were good enough to get him through the first semester of the survey course at Harvard without much additional studying.</p>
<p>Linguistics can be a lot of fun, especially if you like solving puzzles. I especially liked the morphology questions. On the test, the professor gave us a series of sentences in some common language like Latin and then obscure language like Cree, and then you needed to “translate” a couple of English sentences into that language. Of course, you already had all the vocabulary translated, but you then needed to determine what the endings and word order might be for subjects, direct objects and indirect objects, what the endings might be for singular vs plural verbs. All the information you needed was there in the multiple examples, you just needed to carefully review the evidence.</p>
<p>This was in an intro graduate level course, so I imagine an intro undergrad course would be similar but not quite as tough.</p>