Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and an important way of understanding what it means to be human. Explore the world through this fascinating lens.
Human language is a unique phenomenon. Think for instance of the following questions: What are the phonetics – the specific sounds of speech – of French and Mandarin, and what are their similarities and differences? How do children acquire their native language? Why are some politicians better at convincing the electorate than others? How has German developed over the centuries? Do you converse differently in English than in Japanese? How and why do languages differ from each other? These are the kinds of questions linguists try to answer.