linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.

Linguists seek to understand the common principles behind all the world's 7,000 languages, such as how and why language changes over time, how people learn language as infants and adults, how cognition shapes language and language affects cognition, how social factors affect language, and how language evolved in the first place.

Common Misconceptions

• Linguists describe the way language is actually used, not how people think it should be used.
• Linguistics is not about learning lots of languages. Instead, linguistics studies how language works.
• All languages, accents, and dialects are just as correct and complex as any other. The difference is simply the social attitudes people have about them.