Hi, I'm Marc van Oostendorp.
This is Leiden University.
Welcome to this course on the miracles of human language.
This is our studio where we prepared a course full of surprises,
full of miracles of human language.
This course is all about diversity.
Well, it's all about diversity, and it's also about similarity.
And that's because there are about 6,000 languages in the world.
And they're diverse, they're all different,
but they are also similar in some way.
How is that possible?
That's one thing, an important thing that we're going to explore in this course.
And we're going to explore this in five modules.
In the first module, we talk about questions like what makes language
so typically human,
or differentiates it from, from animal languages, for instance.
And we're going to see how linguists go about their work.
There are different kinds of linguists and we're going to meet them.
In the second module, we talk about sounds of language.
How do we produce sounds?
How do we distinguish sounds?
How do we organize sounds in our minds?
In the third module, we talk about words and sentences.
How are languages different in the way in which they create words?
How are they different in the way in which they organize words into sentences?
In the fourth module we talk about meaning.
How do we give meaning to words and sentences in human language?
And how do languages differ in that?
And in the fifth module, we talk about language in its social context.
We talk about how language is actually used in, let's say, everyday life.
Since this course is all about diversity,
there's also diversity within every module.
It's not just me explaining things to you.
We also have discussions with students
and we've interviews with experts, with linguists from the Netherlands
and other countries about linguistics,
about their job.
But most of all, we have speakers of different languages.
We have found six speakers of six very different languages.
And they will give examples of how they speak of words and
sentences in their language.
And it will be up to you to analyze those examples.
And if you're in an advanced track or if you just like that kind of thing
we also invite you to submit your own language,
to make videos in which you give those same words and sentences
in your own language.
And then, other students can analyze those.
We also invite you to participate.
We have an online forum on our course page
and if you like that kind of thing,
we also have a Facebook group in which you can discuss these things.
But in any case, we hope to see you very soon in the first module of
our course on the miracles of human language.