You'd like The Story of Human Language (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-language.html http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-huma

You'd like The Story of Human Language (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-language.html http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-langua...). John McWhorter is engaging and the subject matter is interesting. One thing he mentions in the series is that languages tend to become more simple over time as they come into contact with others. This makes sense--if you're bringing people into a community who don't know the language then they're going to simplify it and that will spread. The languages that are the most complex are the ones that are most isolated. Here's a blog post about it: http://lingblog.com/2013/12/23/can-the-structure-of-society-affect-the-complexity-of-language/ http://lingblog.com/2013/12/23/can-the-structure-of-society-...