I've found the course extremely interesting and well organized to be an introductory course. I had no special need for the course and, accordingly, no special expectations besides the joy of learning the basics of a subject that I've always liked, and of acquiring some basic skills on it.

Professor Marc van Oostendorp does a remarkable job on being didactic, clear, interesting and covering a nice selection of aspects of this wonderful field.

The course's dynamics is very nice: lectures, dialogues, assignments, interviews, informants' contributions, readings, forum, quiz... it's never boring, really nicely structured!

A point which in my opinion can be improved: the redaction of the questions in the quizzes are many times unclear, confusing and even misleading. After the fun of completing the week assignments with a lot of attention put into details, it's a pity when the quiz is not clear or frustrating.

Thank you, I enjoyed it a lot!

Was helpful course. I learned a lot of things from this course.

Great introductory course for anyone who doesn't know anything about linguistics but has an affinity for languages. Well presented, well structured, interesting throughout. I have two suggestions for the people running this course: 1) The explanation of Grice's Maxims in the context of linguistics was cursory at best. It was mentioned only in a short exchange, yet there were questions on it in the quizzes. 2) It would be nice if students could have access to the correct answers to the quizzes, obviously being impeded to resubmit them after having seen them.

The course was really fun throughout! Easy enough for beginners to linguistics, although the assessments weren't so easy, sometimes had to reattempt them a couple of times to pass them :/

The last assessment somehow had an glitch, it told me most of my answers were wrong on my first attempt but after several attempts trying all other options and still getting those questions wrong, I chose the same options as my first attempt and this time I got 100% lol. Anyways the final exam was somehow easier than the assessments.

This course is great to get an introductory insight into linguistics, however there are a few of the quizzes which are a bit hard to pass since the examples given in the videos are not directly translated to understand how the sentence structure would work Likewise, some of the content such as required readings have dead links, which makes it hard to answer questions that are related to this unavailable content It would be nice if the content was revised and updated for the new students :)

Very good course with content that covers a variety of fields in linguistics, taught by a lovely professor, two charming students (marten always makes me smile) and a variety of guest speakers. Only criticism is that the course is many years old, and some aspects have not been updated, leaving the student at a dead end, but only in a few select cases. Overall, a lovely introduction to linguistics at good pace.

VERY good content and classes! Some questions in the quizzes are confusing, and there was the trouble with the required reading for Week 3. The first Honors assignment is confusing - specially its very last input question.

Course content was great, however many of the links to readings and the free subscription to Ethnologue - which are needed to be able to work on the end of week quizzes, are now expired.

Material is excellent and very interesting. Test questions can be confusing and poorly phrased.

I don't regret taking this course. It was created by truly A-class linguistics experts. The course really gives you a very basic look at linguistics, showcasing its primary building blocks. I have learned a lot! Thank you everyone for your work! I do understand it's hard to squeeze all the linguistic essentials in the 6-week timespan, so the course creators relied on the students' autonomy greatly.

But sometimes, the amount of required reading was just overwhelming. Also, I had a feeling that the course content and the tests were created by separate people, as it took me great pains to connect the dots between the relevance of the test questions and the material learned. This course demands strong analytical skills, so if you're not used to reading and understanding the scientific content on-the-spot, prepare for multiple re-reading.

Some tests took me long enough to pass. I couldn't actually find a way to know the correct answers. Due to this, I have this dreadful feeling I could have done better. The forum is half-dead and keeps going at cost of those who keep enrolling.

All in all, if you need to learn the most general picture of linguistics, this is a nice course. It won't make you a professional though, but you will get a clearer view on why this science is not that easy! However, due to all tech and organization drawbacks, I don't feel like investing into the certificate. This course needs revitalizing!

This course is extremely complicated. Some questions are confusing. Most of us don’t

know Tarifit Berber, nor Abruzzese, nor Turkish, nor Mandarin Chinese. I’m referring

specifically to Quiz 3. Please change that Quiz to a fairer one. On the other hand, I learned a lot about the Miracle of Language and our Professor is more that excellent. I congratulate him.

Las exposiciones de los temas fueron estupendas en todo momento. Aprendí mucho; el único pero es la ambigüedad y dificultad del examen final; sobre todo, para quienes no tienen el inglés como lengua materna.

Most of the reading material and links are no longer available, neither the analysis refered to in the videos, also the website (ethnologue) from which you have to consult information for the test has changed yet the content in the course has not been updated (eg: speakers of Turkish are over a billion acording to ethnologue but in the test the "correct answer" is below this number)

As a preface, let me say the areas covered in the class are interesting; I wanted to love this class. However, this must be one of the most poorly planned and executed online courses I’ve come across. Numerous links to required readings, across several weeks of instruction, were completely broken and useless. Nonetheless, test questions continue to cover these readings — this despite the fact these issues were pointed out five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, last year, AND even already this year. Unforgivable. Also, the lectures were fine, but often only vaguely addressed certain issues, or never fully answered even questions they themselves brought up. Quizzes invariably asked for specifics which were never addressed, or never adequately resolved. And the foreign language videos were fascinating, but again, the areas in which we were quizzed would have been far more appropriate after much more in-depth learning than just 30 minutes of video lectures. As an intro-level course, perhaps they just bit off more than they were willing to chew? That alone could be overlooked, but the obviously systemic failures to address problems make me unable to recommend this class to anyone until substantial revisions are undertaken.

Definitely not an introduction to linguistics. This course is exhausting and extremely frustrating. It seems that the expectations of the professors teaching the course are off the roof. You get three attempts, and no explanation when you choose a wrong answer, and on top of that if you manage to pass quizzes, you can't reflect in feedback what were the correct answers. It is a MOOC course, not a 12-credit course where you are testing someone with such high standards. Course coordinators should look into changing the assessment straetegy of this course. Not recommended for someone who is just starting to enter linguistics. Unfortunately, this course would discourage more than encourage someone in the field.

Most items mentioned in the course are not accisible

Excellent course! I considered myself acquainted with almost most topics related to Linguistics and Language study due to my extensive reading in this field. But I realised that this course opened my eyes widely on some details in this field that I was not quite aware of. The videos were very simple but well-prepared, covering the topics gradually along with exercises and interviews with experts. The interview with Naom Chomsky was the jewel of the course. I watched several times. The interview with Prof Claartje Levelt was very informative. Many THANKS to the course instructor; Prof Marc van Ootendorp who was such a wonderful person, he knows how to attract his viewers very well (I hope I am not violating the quality maxim here). I believe, he managed to present this course to all levels; basic to advance. Thanks to both Marten and Inge for their presence and inputs. They were integral to this course. They managed very well all interviews, even the most difficult one with Chomsky. Thumps up for them!!

Thanks to Leiden University and to Coursera for this course. I do recommend it to all those who are fascinated by the human language.

Best regards

Hadi Kazwini

This course provides a great glimpse into the field of linguistics. The overall structure of modules was very easy to follow through, and within each module the information is offered in bite-sized units of lectures, readings, empirical data of various language informants, and interviews of real-life linguists which gives a sense of a 360 degree view of the subject. The workload was evenly spread out between the weeks and between each small unit, so instead of getting stressed out about the week's learning, I could just pick up where I left off at any time, knowing I could take one step at a time. Finally, introduction to additional resources, such as publications and blogs written by linguists, as well as a temporary subscription to the Ethnologue turned out to be extremely valuable, as I had no prior knowledge of the field and this was all new information. They will continue to be a valuable resource as I continue my learning. I do hope that more courses like this would be offered in the field of linguistics. Thank you Professor Oostendorp and his two students, and everyone involved in making this course available.

"Miracles of Human Language" is a great introductory course for those who want to get into linguistics, but it is also an amazing course for writers, teachers, psychologists and all lifelong learners interested in a topic.

I'm very grateful to Prof. Dr Marc van Oostendorp, his students and everyone who was involved in creating this course. I also want to say thanks to coursera team for making this course available for so many learners.

This course inspired me to start learning Spanish and French (I now spend some time on duolingo.com every day, and with a great pleasure).

Also, after finishing this course, I felt confident enough to start an important writing project (a book for children with a goal to prevent child abuse, the book is in Russian).

In this course the idea of changing the world with your words is presented in such a simple and convincing way, that it's impossible to resist. I think this course made me a better teacher, a better writer and a happier person.

An excellent course that touches upon all the facets of language. I never knew language could itself be studied like a science, even though it's not a law of nature like gravity. Prof Oostendorp does a fabulous job of giving you multiple perspectives of looking at language - as a social tool, as a lens into the world, as a scientific object to be studied, as an experience in the brain, what different experts say about it and finally what are the various states of endangerment/prosperity in which many real-world languages exist.

The grad students (Marten and Inge) did a nice job of preempting the questions we would've had during the lecture. And of course, playing around with Ethnologue and listening to the language informants (6 beautiful languages from 6 parts of the world) were the cherry on the top. Overall, an incredible experience. You can see the effort that has gone into this. Kudos to the whole team! Brilliant work. Definitely need a Part 2 to this.

This course is by far one of my top favourites (yes, I have a few!) among the courses I have done on Coursera. Prof. Marc van Oostendorp has a way of teaching that has you transfixed in his classes. The structure of the course is dynamic and had me glued to the computer literally binge-watching the lecture videos!

I could do this course once more all over again and would probably say the same thing at the end of it! :D Some of my favourite videos were the ones that had an interview of an expert or a talk-show format. The Professor's teaching assistants have done a great job, as have the others who were featured in the short language-trailer videos.

This course makes for a wonderful experience if anything, I would definitely recommend it to all language and linguistics enthusiasts. :)

This is one of the best courses I have done in my life. I always used to wonder about human languages and how they evolved, and this course answered a lot of my questions and now I am even more interested in the subject as I know the technicalities of linguistics. My special thanks to Professor Marc van Oostendorp who was just amazing and made the topics very interesting and creative. The main reason I completed the course though it has some difficult topics was because of his wonderful teaching and ability to grab my attention. My thanks to Inge and Martin for their discussions and their very thoughtful questions. I will wait for other courses from Leiden University, Thank you for making me more knowledgeable.

As a high schooler interested in linguistics and a competitor in NACLO, this opened my eyes to all the opportunities out there related to different fields of linguistics. Since linguistics is not a course taught in high school where I live, I'm super glad I got the chance to explore it with this course. It was just the right amount of depth and fun so as to not make the course extremely difficult to digest, but also not boring. While the quizzes and final exam were definitely difficult, (I think practice with school tests may actually helped out a lot here haha), I'm super glad I got the chance to take it and would recommend anyone who's interested in linguistics or language to try it out! Cheers! :))

This is the second Coursera course I've completed and I absolutely loved it. I took the Miracles of Human Language course for fun and found myself captivated and immersed in the subject. Prof Marc van Oostendorp and his students were wonderfully informative and I've found myself discussing the interesting nuggets of information I've acquired with friends and work colleagues. One of the great things about Coursera is that you adapt it to the level of learning you require. I'm learning for pleasure, not to gain new academic qualifications, and I felt this course has really enriched my life. I've already recommended it to other people. I'm now looking for my next Coursera challenge. Thanks Marc and team.

The course was very informative and enjoyable. The professor is clear and to the point and I liked his style and logic. The course is well rounded and the course creators have put a lot of effort into designing it and making it engaging. I loved the discussions with Martin and Inge and the opportunity they were give to conduct the interviews. The readings were enjoyable and it was nice to see prof. Noam Chomsky in one of the interviews. I liked the visit to the lab video. This course was quite lovely and the instructors and the students alike are passionate about it. I guess this goes to show that people who choose this field do so because they are so passionate about it.