Reddit reviews Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 11th Edition

Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct is a strong layperson's introduction to lingistics.

Ohio State has a huge undergraduate linguistics program and publishes an omnibus introductory linguistics textbook to boot. I've heard good things about it: Language Files.

This was my introductory textbook. I found it pretty approachable, and you can wiki / google anything you don't understand. Pretty cheap, too (Amazon has it as only $40 or so new; you should be able to get it cheaper elsewhere).

If you don't know IPA, I found this really useful for audio clips. Also, figuring out how they're made isn't that difficult, and it makes understanding the different sounds easier.

You might also want to check out a few books from your library. I've heard good things about Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct. You can find other book recommendations elsewhere on the subreddit.

Google and Wikipedia are your friends. Google things about language that you're interested in, figure out what that issue is 'called', wiki that, look at the sources it gives, google more stuff... Simple English is your friend on wikipedia.

There's also this link in the sidebar, so you'll get more information there.

My Intro Linguistics course used Ohio State's Language Files. I was very impressed with it, not just as an introductory text, but as a textbook in general. It has exercises at the end of each chapter. You can probably find a key online, but I (and I'm sure the rest of /r/linguistics) would be happy to help with any questions you have.

This was my Intro to Linguistics textbook; it does a good job of surveying the different fields.

My introductory linguistics class in college used Language Files, 11th Edition. I still have it and enjoy looking through it once in a while.

I strongly recommend Ohio State University's book Language Files. If you buy the most recent edition it is fairly expensive, but if you go back a few editions you can get "very good" used copies for under $15. The Table of Contents for the current edition is here and gives you a good feeling for how much ground it covers. Each section has clear explanations and some examples to work through. It gives you a good understanding of what it's like to actually DO linguistics.

I recommended this book to someone a few years back who gave me Reddit Gold in return. It really is that good!

Edit: you have a good chance of finding this book in a local library (public or academic) because it is so popular. Look for it on worldcat.org.

NLP is actually exactly what I'm aiming for. It's pretty interesting stuff.

My favorite book for entry level linguistics stuff is what I used in my intro class: Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics. It's very well organized and separated, so you can pretty much skip anything that isn't really interesting without suffering later. It's also really well written and has a lot of examples and other fun stuff in it.

FIRST is a fantastic organization. Being involved in the FRC team that we founded in my high school was literally the thing that got me interested in STEM. I was a junior, and planning on going to a really non-traditional, liberal arts focused school (with no computer science department at all!). Because of FIRST, I instead chose a school where I would be able to keep learning about programming and robots, which was definitely for the better.

I think the USA has the stereotype for being anti-science because there is a significant portion of the population that is. Even in my University, there was a girl (studying Biology of all things!) in my first year dorm who believed that the Earth was 10,000 years old and that evolution was a lie meant to discredit Christianity. My intro Astronomy class had a whole day devoted to countering Young Earth Creationism, because so many of the students in the class were trying to use it to counter what the professor said.

However, we have an absurdly large population, so you also have a lot of people on the exact opposite end of that spectrum. I think that is why the US can maintain a reputation of being anti-science while at the same time leading the charge in many scientific fields.

Start with:

• Steven Pinker
  
• Andrew Carnie
  and this little gem:
  http://www.amazon.com/Language-Files-Materials-Introduction-Linguistics/dp/081425179X
  
  Don't jump straight into historical linguistics without at least skimming an intro book, or you'll find yourself with a pretty skewed idea of what linguistics is.
  

I'll second the recommendation of The Language Instinct. Pinker approaches it from the perspective of a cognitive scientist, but it's a good book if you want an overview of linguistics and linguistic theory (although some of his claims are controversial and as breads mentioned, it's somewhat outdated).

As for English syntax, I don't think there are any books out there intended for the layman, so your best bet would probably be to pick up an introductory textbook with a syntax unit. I'd recommend Language Files from the Ohio State University Press. It's an excellent and comprehensive introductory text, one of the best.

An Introduction to Language by Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams is also well-regarded, but I haven't taught from it, so I can't speak to it personally.