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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics by Universiteit Leiden

4.6
stars
95 ratings

About the Course

Build your knowledge of Indo-European languages, how they changed through time, and how to reconstruct ancient languages. Every language belongs to a language family; a group of languages that are genetically related to each other. Indo-European is the name of the language family to which English belongs, along with many sub-families such as Germanic languages and Romance languages. The Indo-European language family is now known to consist of thirteen major branches and a number of now extinct languages of which only fragments have been preserved that may once have formed branches of their own. You’ll delve into the structure and origins of these branches. Not only will you learn about the oldest languages belonging to the Indo-European language family, but you’ll also learn about linguistic reconstruction, how you can tell whether two languages are related to each other and how language changes. This course will guide you through the different groups of Indo-European languages. You’ll look at some of the oldest texts from these languages, including Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, and learn about the importance of oral traditions in the history of these texts. As you progress through each of the branches of the language tree, you’ll begin to piece together the Proto-Indo-European language bit by bit by comparing and contrasting each different language in the tree....

Top reviews

AK

Oct 2, 2022

W​anted to know something about how Proto-Indo-European language was reconstructed for quite sometime already. And the course was just 100% hit! Thanks!

LB

Feb 13, 2023

The course was well done and very engaging. There was a wealth of information, the presenters were great, and overall I found the topic fascinating.

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26 - 27 of 27 Reviews for Introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics

By Qaulan M I

•

Jan 4, 2024

This is course is packed with knowledge, so if you want to dive in into historical-comparative linguistics, especially the Indo-European historical-comparative phonology, this is the course for you. Dr. Pronk, Lotte, and Laura also presented the course nicely. However, this course also has a very steep learning curve, so if you are a beginner to the topic of Indo-European linguistics, brace yourself to study as hard. I find that the information solely from the course is not enough to succeed this course, I often still find myself reading external sources to supplement this course. I am also not the biggest fan on phonology, as a result thereof, I find this course quite hard and it took me twice as much effort to learn the material in comparison of learning other aspect of linguistics. Overall good, but be prepared of the overwhelming focus on the sound laws! It is challenging, even for someone with undergraduate linguistics background.

By Matthew H

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Feb 6, 2023

This was really an extraordinary course. The course itself covered just about all that I thought they needed to cover, if not more, while the extra materials were very much appreciated. There were a few bugs in some of the tests, but otherwise I feel the course was exceptionally well done & that I have learned much from it.