Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

I'm glad I was not deterred by other people's poor reviews of this book. I enjoyed and found it interesting.No, it is not a textbook in linguistics. Rather, it discusses some of the topics and problems linguists deal with. In this it is rather like the Mathematics book in the VSI series -- which does not attempt to teach the reader basic arithmetic or any other branch of math, but gives some insight into what mathemeticians do and why the subject is compelling to its practitioners.While occasionally unclear, this book certainly does not require any special education on the part of the reader. The author does not provide pat answers to some of the difficult questions, but gives the reader a feel for areas of debate amongst experts.After reading Matthews's book, I had a better sense of what linguistics is, what parts of it are most interesting to me, and what books from the "Further Reading" section at the end might interest me.

P.H. Matthew’s ‘Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction’ provides an excellent example of just that.It covers all of the basics of Linguistics from the examination of Language development; the analysis of word formation and language change through the pronunciation of letters; finally to how our bodies (including the brain) are connected to the process of creating and understanding language.The only downside is that it does not provide much in further reading on the subject (unless my copy is missing some pages). But it does provide enough information that a reader of this book will then know what subjects to search to thus find more on that particular topic.

I decided to read this book after randomly seeing a very interesting interview with a linguist who discussed American accents across the country. I wanted to learn more about what the field of linguistics actually is and if I might want to study it more seriously. The book is just what it says, a very light foray into the vast and deep and historically long study that is linguistics. I found it enlightening to learn the scope and limitations of the field. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the field of linguistics, but not sure exactly how it is defined. It helped me to realize that my interests lie more in other fields, not this one.

I confess to being a novice in linguistics; however, I think that a book with more emphasis on logical rules and structures in language would have been better suited to my interests than this rather brief excursion into many esoterica of complexities of specific linguistic properties. At any rate, although the book was somewhat interesting -- given my penchant for studying the logic of language -- I do not rate this book very highly. Of course, one needs to acknowledge that the structures of language are highly abstract; therefore, the technical study of language can quickly get very tedious. Nevertheless, I think that I would have preferred a book more devoted to the logic inherent in language than this tedious and technical exposition. But maybe a book on philosophy of language would have been more my style.To sum up, the book was worth my buying and reading, but did not fully meet my expectations for a book in the VSI series.

It took 6 weeks to get to Vietnam. The book was in good condition.

Another great introduction to the field of linguistics, which runs through the basics.

nice little book

I knew very little of linguistics before reading this book, but, even so, I didn’t learn much from this book. The author used very concrete examples, which prevented him to give the reader a good overall view of the subject.

I'm very impressed by the reviewers who claim to have come to this with no background in linguistics and have found it a useful and accessible introduction. Good for them. By contrast, I studied linguistics for two years at undergraduate level (admittedly back in the days of wing collars and high-button shoes) and bought this because I had sudden need of a refresher, and I found it hard work. I suspect many people coming to the topic completely cold would also find it quite a challenge.There's nothing much wrong with the book. For its length it's remarkably comprehensive, stimulating, well-written and relatively jargon-free. But it's very dense and packed with information and concepts, and the structure rather throws you in at the deep end, as though you've arrived at a challenging lecture ten minutes too late. All bases are covered, but much effort is asked of the reader. Which is fair enough, but it may not be what you're expecting, or need, from something calling itself "a very short introduction".I repeat: the book is admirable in many ways, particularly just how much it covers in a relatively small number of pages, and some readers have clearly found it a helpful introduction. However, I suspect that, for those of us who clearly fall short of their advanced levels of intellect, the more humble "Teach Yourself Linguistics" book I bought at the same time will prove a much more accessible way in.

There was a bit too much about things such as pronunciation and the use of "self" in a sentence. But it said nothing about various linguistic questions which interested me. For example: Why do some languages have genders but others don't? If (as the book claims) English evolved from German, why does German have 3 genders and English none?How do languages such as Chinese work in practice? How do you work out how to pronounce a written word/symbol that is new? How are Chinese symbols ordered in a dictionary. Are these things which will limit the spread of Chinese beyond China?Lots of other basic questions are similarly ignored and the Kindle edition isn't formatted very well. The text refers to diagrams which are probably on the next page in the paper version but in the kindle version you need to jump on a few pages then backwards and forwards to relate things.I will be looking for another book on the subject.

I am certainly not a linguistics specialist but have an interest in the subject and wished to become better informed. This short book has given me an easy entrance into the complexity of modern linguistics without being over simplistic. Highly recommended.

Interesting, well written, useful…suitable for fairly literate adults…not for kids…

A very basic and brief introduction but the book provides a good overview of linguistics. This is only a small book, 125 pages, a lot of the content is common sense, but there is a section about the history of language which I found very interesting. Ideal book to begin with, it is easy to follow, but then I would purchase something bigger if you want to learn a more in depth knowledge of linguistics and language.