CLAS 3300

Linguistics is just a flat-out hard subject. But if you're majoring or minoring in any language or have interests in multiple languages (specifically European), this class makes your life a whole lot easier in the grand scheme of things. This course makes you understand why there are such weird rules to all those languages, why they sound different, etc. My opinion about Coulter George is that he really is too smart to teach. The man knows 20 languages, and if he gets on a tangent, he will try to tell you how one language law affects all of them. Every lecture, I left completely bewildered and mind-boggled because, as I said, it's really challenging material. The greatest way to survive this class with a good grade is to ask any questions you have during lecture and to go to office hours. George is much more approachable in his office. The way he designed the class is a little weird, since you only have these "quizzes" (which count for so much that they're basically tests), a big paper, and a final. The quizzes are brutal because they require you to think linguistically on your feet. Going to office hours helps, taking extremely good notes, and making flashcards was the way I got an A in the class. So maybe that will help any of you looking at it.

Wow. Coulter George teaches everyone, grads and undergrads, with the same pointed, follow-if-you-can lecturing style. It's a tough course but infinitely worthwhile. Think you know Latin, Greek, or any other Indo-European language? Nope. After this course, you realize how much you'd never noticed. It's ingeniously structured and about a third of the coursework amounts to linguistic problem sets: "given these words in Greek, Latin, and Old English, reconstruct their common ancestor." The readings, however, are absolutely impenitrable unless you have a serious background in linguistics. Thank God Coulter George is such a thorough lecturer or the whole class (yes, grads and undergrads) would be utterly lost.