John McWhorter

Learn how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today....

These 34 astonishing lectures will introduce you to the major language families of the world and their many offspring, including a variety of languages that are no longer spoken but provide vital links between past and present....

Many features of English sound normal to a native speaker, but linguists find them puzzling as well as revealing....

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar....

Linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible....

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound "Black"....

A New York Times bestseller One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much. Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of...

Words on the Move opens our eyes to the surprising backstories to the words and expressions we use every day....

Embark on a journey to the very beginning of writing as a tool of language and see how the many threads of history and linguistics came together to create the alphabet that forms the foundation of English writing....

Best-selling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the social fabric....

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric. Americans of good will on both the left and the right are...

This short, opinionated audiobook addresses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that the language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world....

With his trademark humor and flair, bestselling linguist John McWhorter busts the myths and shares the history of the most controversial language topic of our times: pronouns The nature of language is to shift and evolve—but every so often, a new usage creates a whole lot of consternation...