My son is a junior this year and is thinking about applying Penn. His passions lie in Languages, Linguistics and Music. He is in his fourth year of both French and Spanish and plans to be fluent in both Languages before college and then plans to learn one or two more in college. He has some Hebrew and Swahili under his belt as well but I think his next choices may be Arabic and German. He also loves linguistics and studies that on his own time. He is thinking about a double major in Language and Linguistics (perhaps a minor in music although he really plays for himself and doesn’t plan to make a career of it). Can any of you out there give us any information on the Language and Linguistics programs at Penn? Are they particularly strong/big/small etc. We would love any and all info anyone has to offer. Thanks!
Penn has a world-class Linguistics department. Also, a friend of one of my kids was a music major at Penn, and loved the department and its flexibility. He’s now studying conducting at a top conservatory. The music department offers minor programs as well. The Penn Music department has a close relationship with the Curtis Institute, so that’s a plus, too. (However, Penn students who hope to take performance classes at Curtis are often disappointed – very few Penn students are up to the standard of Curtis.)
I don’t know anything about language instruction itself at Penn. Teaching relatively popular languages like French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Hebrew, Mandarin – that has practically nothing to do with academic linguistics. Linguistics students tend to learn several languages, but they are often far more obscure ones. I’m certain, though, that being good at learning languages and enjoying that are big pluses if you want to study linguistics.
I agree that Penn has a strong linguistics department. They have traditionally been the dominant department in sociolinguistics over the past 40 years, with William Labov and Gillian Sankoff, both of whom are now emeriti; but it is a strong program overall. The top linguistics departments in the country are probably MIT, Stanford, UCB and UCLA, but Penn is not far behind.
How engaged is Labov with students?