This course is good for those who are interested in linguistics and thinking of starting a professional linguistic studies. The course introduces some major linguistic subfields: linguistic typologist, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, phonologist, etc., but it's only introductions. You need to delve into the subfield you've got interested in if you want to really know about the specifics. A variety of reading materials are offered, and you can explore miracles of languages as much as you like!

The ethnologue is a mess, and I don't think a linguistics course should depend on a website to pass not only some questions, but almost half of a module, because you can understand perfectly what people is saying about their languages and you can formulate accurate questions that can be answered with the information given, and not researching in a web that has different content than the course provides, or changes the numbers, or absolutely ignore some important facts of languages searched.

It is a decent course that teaches the very basics of linguistics. It covers the topics of a Linguistics 101 course but no topic is explored in depth. It seems that some of the topics mentioned are barely even touched (e.g., Week 5 - Language in the Brain). Professor Oostendorp is a good lecturer but the lectures are not presented for easy notetaking. You should be prepared to make your own notes from the video lectures given few summaries/bulleted lists/etc.

I watched all the videos, but did not do the coursework.

I was a total beginner on the subject. The videos were very well made, and quite nice to watch.

However, I feel like the material was a bit too easy for my taste. I would have enjoyed a course that delved into "harder things".

For someone who doesn't like as much "hard challenges" as I do, I do think that this course is a nice introduction to the subject.

I've watched the first module and it was good.

Only that the website that we are supposed to get the answers for the first week's quiz ( the last 5-6 questions ) from, is not working. And I have to take the quiz several times to find the answers. Please do something about it for the future learners, thank you.

I thought this class was very interesting, but I, like many others, was frustrated by the quizzes. Also, I tried to do the first honors assignment, but was at a big disadvantage using a language I don't know. How am I supposed to come up with counter examples when I don't know the language?

On the whole a nice introduction. In places the content was too broad and tried to cover too much, then in other areas the basic terms were glossed over where more time could be spent with more knowledge gained on the basics. But a nicely varied course.

The course assignments can be real tough and sometimes daunting to tackle. The overall experience could have been more fun learning about languages from various parts of the world. At times too much technical jargons bogged the course for beginners.

Hard to understand with the accents at times and I have gone through the videos while trying to find an answer for the quiz and it was never mentioned in the video so sometimes the quizzes don't match what was taught. Otherwise, I learned a lot.

I found the course very vague, the questions unclear and just generally not well done.. and some of the course references don't seem to work.. I also do not wish to discuss with others or join forums.

Very intersting but very time-consuming: in order to pass the tests with its tricky and detail-focused questions you need to read the questions carefuly and review all material a second time.

I was expecting that the course would cover IPA in-depth. It's pretty unconscionable that an intro linguistics course would not pay deep attention to this topic.

The quizzes in this class were the most difficult and confusing. I have had dozens of Coursera classes, but this course was the most troublesome.

I think this course has interesting participants however I found it difficult to follow and did not do well in this course.

It is a good course for an introducion to Linguistics. However, it is a ittle technical

I had a great and much needed introduction.

Tiffany B.

The course began with suggestions for best practices regarding time mgmt and module transition. It implied that the course could be completed with a minimum of study two days a week. It is a non-credited introductory course, as most MOOCs are. I like to complete MOOCs in 1/2 the given time if possible, so I planned for 4 days of study and committed for 3 days. I've taken a number of MOOCs over the years. This was the 1st that would be tracking my own use of my time. I soon found out why.

In the 1st hour I followed the projected times given for each individual step and divided the elements by 3 days. I had planned for a couple of hours of study on Sunday for my review before taking the mandatory quiz. That was mistake number one. I ended up spending a fruitless 15 hours on Sunday, unable to locate required reading material that I only found out about, listed near the end of my last day of study in the 1st week.

Leiden University also offered free membership to join the LSA, the Linguistic Society of America, no less, which provided world statistical demographics for the most active languages as well as those that were on their way out, were losing favor or had become extinct. I filled out the application for membership and set it aside until I could evaluate the different tiers of membership. It was clear to me this was probably not a free site for anyone with real academic credentials, so I approached joining the society carefully. That was mistake number two. When I returned to joining it a day or two later I was denied access, stating my free membership had been voided under suspicion of my trying to establish two free memberships. I cannot tell you how funny I found that, given at the time I was reading about Labov and the covert methods he suggested to be used to spy on socially deprived groups in order to best conduct his research.

There's more but it's no longer important. I can't register with the LSA because my degrees come from the University of Massachusetts, the University of Maine and Norwich University in Vermont, and none are listed on the society's application for membership. I ended up on Sunday thinking I was well ahead of the course's requirements, when I ran into the required reading list which also included articles from the BBC's nature programs. Several of their animal and nature series were given as required reading, but on Sunday morning, my last projected day of core studies. I tried signing on and joined, and my BBC subscriptions were confirmed by email, however, I couldn't get past the home page of their three different nature websites or locate either of these stories. I tried thru both You Tube and Spotify where I have held active subscriptions for years. Needless to say, most of the questions on the quiz were from these websites, the LSA site and the BBC sites.

As a last ditch effort I went through Leiden University's MA Linguistics course offerings to decide if it would be worth it to take an online MA, and I couldn't find a single one listed online. They appear to all require residence in the NL. I realize as far as the MOOC goes it's not the end of the world and I can still get past these hiccups, but hey, I'n 78 yrs old. I'm already in the same shute along with those languages which are down to their last speakers. The University of Maine has a Linguistics MA and it's tuition-free for Maine seniors. It's a no brainer.

I thank Leiden U and Prof Marc for introducing me to these disciplines. Good luck fellow students, and peace out.

Andrew Joseph Zanas

There were a lot fo sloppy mistakes in the videos, I looked up a lot fo the stuff up outside of the course (which I had to because it was explained to me on the course like i was a 5 year old) then when i tried to give genuinely thought out answers from my outside readings the course said it was wrong, i don't know who to believe but i have to beieve it is the course because there have been a number of times when a concept hasn't been explained in depth enough and the quiz has not reflected the quizzes. also a lot of the time the outside reading does not reflect the lectures, i did like the informants but this wasn't recapped and none of my errors were corrected before i had to go in to the quiz. You could add more videos after the informants to explain what we should have been looking for. Sometimes the task during this wasn' made explicitly clear. I did like the phonology part, that was fairly traightforward and well explained.

The course and videos are wonderful the speakers are engaging and the content fascinating. As a more casual student I am finding the quizzes far too difficult. I am a very smart person and I am struggling with understanding the phonetic alphabet and other very technical aspects of this course. I will be dropping the course because while I wanted to learn the concepts I do not have the time or patience to get that granular for a course of this type.

Interesting content, but issues with broken links needed to complete quizzes while they were due. Needs better explanation of how to use other resources. Many of the quiz questions are arbitrary, rather than really testing knowledge gained in the class. The lectures are still useful, and would recommend doing this as a free course, but see no use in paying for a certificate on completion of the course.

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)

Instructions were confusing or absent in parts of the course. See forum. I also was left with no practical application of what I learned. I enjoyed the studies which showed language changing within cultural divisions

Very slow moving. Feels like you have to sit through a lot for very obvious information. I would recommend http://ielanguages.com/linguistics/ for a more detailed and more concise introduction.

no question that prof is very educated and knowledgeable but course was not quite what i expected.

I find the content not well structure

the quizzes can be trivial and misleading.

Interesting but way too difficult to pass the weekly exams.