In his debut Interintellect Salon, linguist Colin Gorrie will lead you in an interactive simulation of language change and etymological discovery. Imagine you were transported to a distant time and place, a world full of diverse peoples and languages much like our own. Having given up all hope of returning to our world, you turn…
Join linguist Colin Gorrie in the first in a series of salons investigating language for an exploration of the thorny relationship between language and thought. Does language affect, constrain, or merely represent thought? How would we even go about finding out? Sometimes known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the idea that we might be limited in…
Join linguist Colin Gorrie in the second in a series of salons investigating language for a look at how fictional languages are created. Many celebrated works of speculative fiction over the last hundred years have involved elaborate world-building, often to the extent of having whole languages or families of languages created for the project. Think…
Join linguist and serial language learner Colin Gorrie in the third salon in a series investigating language for an exploration of how language learning works and how to do it better. Learning a second language: Many people attempt it but few accomplish it. Despite the wide variety of books, apps, and courses promising fluency with…
Join linguist Colin Gorrie in the fifth salon in a series investigating language, this time spotlighting the history of the English language. In this salon, we'll turn back time to see how English once looked and sounded. We’ll look at how everything from the pronunciation to the grammar to the meaning of the words in…
Join host Colin Gorrie as we read the great Old English epic poem Beowulf together, as part of the Reading Beowulf series. For our first meeting, we'll discuss the first major section of _Beowulf_: Beowulf's battle with Grendel. We'll also introduce ourselves to the Old English epic. What was the language like? How do we read it?…
Join host Colin Gorrie as we read the great Old English epic poem Beowulf together, as part of the Reading Beowulf series. In this session, we'll talk about Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother. We'll also examine the different choices translators have made in translating Beowulf: verse or prose? archaic or modern? strange or familiar? Reading…
Join host Colin Gorrie as we read the great Old English epic poem Beowulf together, as part of the Reading Beowulf series. This session will cover the rise of Beowulf to power as a king in his own right. We'll also discuss the heroic age that Beowulf purports to describe. What was it like? And how…
Join host Colin Gorrie as we read the great Old English epic poem Beowulf together, as part of the Reading Beowulf series. In this session, we'll end our journey with Beowulf in discussing his final battle with the dragon. We'll also examine the enormous influence Beowulf had on Tolkien – who was probably the world's foremost Beowulf…
In this series—Baby Steps to Beowulf: Old English for Beginners—linguist Colin Gorrie will teach you how to read Old English texts like Beowulf with the aid of a dictionary. Like every language, English has a past. More than many languages, English has changed dramatically over the years: the language as spoken just a thousand years ago would…
In this series—Baby Steps to Beowulf: Old English for Beginners—linguist Colin Gorrie will teach you how to read Old English texts like Beowulf with the aid of a dictionary. Like every language, English has a past. More than many languages, English has changed dramatically over the years: the language as spoken just a thousand years ago would…
