UvA, BA, Linguistics

Our capacity to use language makes us human beings unique as a species and it is present in all aspects of our daily life. If language fascinates you, you would like to know more about it, and work with it, you are bound to enjoy a Bachelor's programme in linguistics. As a linguist you are interested in questions like the following: How do languages resemble each other or differ? How do children acquire their mother tongue(s) and how is this similar or different from second language acquisition later on? How do language impairments arise? How is language represented in our brains? Why and how do languages change over time? How do sign languages compare to spoken languages? If the answer to one or more of these questions is ‘yes’, Linguistics is right for you! Linguistics focuses on our uniquely human capacity to use language, something indispensable in our daily life. As a linguist you are interested in how language and speech is structured, how we acquire it, how it can be impaired, how it is represented in the brain, how it functions in society, how we deal with 2, 3, or 4 languages at the same time, and how it changes.