Classic university textbook. Language is the most important means of human communication. Without language there can be no communication, and without communication there can be no society, and thereby a person. This course seeks to consistently tell about language, its place among other phenomena of reality, about its structure, its individual sides, about those laws that govern the historical development of languages. The course is intended to familiarize with the system of concepts and terms used by any linguistic discipline, it should be a genuine "introduction" to the entire cycle of linguistic subjects.