Language is human

Not knowing about the history of the words you speak is like not knowing your spouse's past. You can still get along and reproduce but...thats not exactly a deep meaningful relationship. We are married to our language. (something my historical linguistics professor said last week, paraphrased).

He teaches us about language families, sound changes and why letters have the shapes they do and the alphabet the order it does. (C and G look very similar for a reason - some languages transcribed the voiceless counterpart of the velar plosive as /c/ instead of /k/).

Do you ever wonder why English is so romancy (as in the Romance languages), when it is a Germanic language?? Answer: The Norman Conquest!!

He is a brilliant man teaching a subject that often gets overlooked as the pursuit of a few aficionados, but each class he closes by telling us why we might care about the history of languages. I'm afraid, at times, he might feel a bit like Noam Chomsky attempting to explain language to Ali G.