The book is a textbook for the course “History of Linguistic Teachings,” which is included in the curriculum of philological faculties of universities. It tells about the emergence of knowledge about language among various peoples, about the formation and development of the main linguistic traditions: ancient and medieval European, Indian, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese. The transformation of the European tradition into the science of language, the accumulation of knowledge and the formation of scientific methods in the 16th-18th centuries is described. The main schools and directions of linguistics of the 19th and 20th centuries, the development of linguistic research in Europe, the USA, Japan and our country are considered. The manual is intended for philology students, but is also intended for all readers interested in how people in different eras learned language.