As a multilingual speaker I've felt this was true for a long time. When I switch from one language to another my thought process changes as well. I've also noticed that when I'm stuck on a problem it's surprisingly helpful to translate it to another language, the answer becomes clear
@Moral Relativism my freind can speak Portuguese and English and I've asked him what language his inner monologue is and he said it changes between the two at random he sometimes accidently speaks Portuguese occasionally when speaking to English speakers
@@lewiitoons4227 Yeah, this inner monologue thing can be tricky at times. I can speak 3 languages and am currently learning a fourth one. The words that appear in my head whilst thinking constantly change. Sometimes I don't even notice that I started one thought in one language and finished it in another. Surprisingly enough, I don't mix those languages when I speak.
@@FelixGameRoom do you sometimes find your self thinking in a different language sometimes? I speak four languages, but i find my self thinking in the language that im using that moment to comunicate with others. Or sometimes the language in with i thinking change or sometimes i even dream in a different language.
I hadn’t noticed, but then I realized it’s true ever since someone told me that my personality “changes” depending on the language I speak. I guess I pour out the cultural aspect of the language unconsciously. But it could also be a function of my comfort or confidence level in that particular language I’m speaking or the situation. It’s certainly very interesting how my thought process, my linguistic strategy changes/adapts to the language.
I've done an experiment with this concept, and its affected my life. Instead of saying "I know", I started saying, "you're right." I found its easier to control what you say through text. So in my texts I started the change and it eventually carried over to my normal language. Ive noticed people trust me more, and I trust them more as well. Its saying the same thing, but instead of focusing on yourself as if to prove something, youre agreeing with them and showing them you knew as well or at least was very open to the idea. Theres lots of sayings you can do to improve your life. Anyone skeptical, just try it out and see if it works for you. If not at least you know for sure.
I've tried something similar with trying not to apologize for some things and instead thanking people. For example, if you're late (maybe traffic or other out of control event) you thank someone for waiting for you. When I had to have something explained, I've thanked people for their patience. It has the side effect of a more positive self image on top of making others feel appreciated and focusing on the positive.
@@korab.23 it works very well, also to avoid negative things to say in general. Like if you're teaching a class that is already assumed to be boring. You can't reaffirm every half hour how boring it is because it'll just make the people in the class find it more boring. I figured that out a few days ago, my instructor kept doing that. And I realized half way through the course, it wasn't the thing they were showing us. It was strictly them constantly putting the thought into our heads.
Here's one for ALL parents. Remove the word "Don't". Example, when near a fire, 'stay back, keep your hands well clear of the flames, etc' instead of just saying 'don't PUT YOUR HAND IN IT'. Express the same sentiments, but NEVER say don't. Tell kids what TO do instead of what NOT to do. It makes a HUGE difference with kids. You don't realise it, but they can hear "(fire) PUT YOUR HAND IN IT". Then parents wonder why kids do exactly what they just told them NOT to do! Never say don't, be instructive to your kids instead of putting dangerous ideas into their heads. Made my parenting really easy. Just takes a bit of effort at the start to reprogram your brain, but you soon get used to it.
I am currently learning about the nerve system in biology (in detail) and we just recently learned some really interesting things about colorsight, for example that we can only see the colour blue since not so long ago. There was an experiment with a tribe and some European people. They had both tell first which square (of twelve or so squares) the cyan one was. The other ones were green. The tribe had major difficulties differentiating the colours while the Europeans could tell easily which the cyan one was. Then they did the same with differently shaded green toned squares and the Tribe could tell them apart easily. The tribe had different words for many green shades but they didn't have a word for blue. Me and my classmates couldn't tell the difference either between the green tones. Sorry if there are some grammatical errors, I am German and still learning. I really liked the video👌
An old friend admitted to me that he never saw green in a sunset previously to me pointing it out to him one time. Now he sees greens all the time in sunsets!
I don’t think it’s correct that we couldn’t SEE blue, but that blue wasn’t a common color and cultures didn’t have a word for it, and most cultures called the sky green
Dude, I've been watching your stuff, periodically, for years. But recently, working from home due to Covid 19, I watch one or two of your presentations daily, and have re-watched a number of them several times. I sincerely appreciate the thoughtfulness in your delivery, as well as the apparent research that has gone into your videos. Please keep up these entertaining and informative episodes. You are doing a truly admirable job at giving us all some needed mental floss to keep our cranial gem-tumblers clean and in working order. With gratitude from Arizona . . . Brian
I am softer and more creative when I speak Brazilian Portuguese, more demanding and aggressive in Spanish and a bit more clever - logical when talking in English. I am learning French and Italian now. I am feeling a change in me when practice these languages. Husband is scared! 🤣 super interesting subject… many thanks 👍
This is one of the big reasons why studying language is so fascinating to me. I study Japanese and Chinese, and in Japanese, it was really interesting to see how the order of their sentences can seem backwards when looking at it from the perspective of an English speaker, but it has actually allowed me to arrange some thoughts more cohesively in my mind without having to always be in the framework established through English.
@@alfredohernandez7486 well essentially, English sentences are Subject, Verb, Object, while Japanese is a SOV. A basic English sentence like "I walked to the library" would be "I library to walked." It seems odd from an English perspective, but it makes sense. You could even change it to something like "Stare to walked, I." Since the sentences are so different, it can change the way that you think about things
@@orinblank2056 I’ve been learning Japanese for a few years and I see your point. Most of the time it’s an incredibly efficient language. Simple and elegant. I find myself using 1 adjective in English as is done in Japanese to surmise a situation or thing. The trick is to get as creative as possible with the English language while speaking as though it were Japanese. Where you might say “oishii” instead I’ll say delectable , exquisite, scrumptious, titillating. Rarely, I say this out loud at risk of sounding like a pompous asshole. But it’s still good for the brain, I feel.
@@orinblank2056 now that you are conscious of the different thought process between the languages, do it find it any easier to learn? I started a bit of Chinese but the sentence structures is what made me stop. I was looking at everything from how English is structured.
I enjoy a number of TH-cam channels, but I have to say, Thoughty2 is my favorite. Your presentation personality is just wonderful. You don't feel overly rehearsed. You share your own fascination or perplexity in content you're presenting. It makes it feel like you're more than just a presenter. Also, your production values keep going up, which adds a lot to sustaining attention. Thanks for all you do!
@@demonwing9431 most say that when they are confused by a strange or overly complex thing hard to understand best example is looking at a very complex math equation and not knowing if its a new language
In Dutch, we have a word called "gezellig". It is an adjective used to describe 'in an ambience of pleasentness in a small, trusted social group'. We find it very strange that there is no English word for this, since being in a situation that could be described as 'gezellig' once in a while is considered imperative to be happy.
I used they as a singular before gender awareness became a big deal. Not because I'm a yuppy who is ahead of the curve, it's more to do with relatability in storytelling. When a person smiles, they feel happier. When the forced smiling persists, that person will grow happier more readily, and they will be happier.
False. I forced myself to smile everyday for years so that no one would have to worry about me. Nonetheless, I was still extremely suicidal during that time of my life. During that time, I also noticed that other people smiled to hide negative emotions.
@@astonish_injurer5598 I don't think that's what he/she meant. There's actually a study regarding that if you forced yourself to smile (not just to hide emotions), but to physically force yourself to smile for a while, your brain will actually think you are happy, thus releasing the necessary hormones for it. But maybe in your case, it won't really work because depression is a very different thing indeed. It is hard to cure that. In the study, maybe it is only for short term... not to cure any mental illness that had lived in our brain.
Haha that sounds awful. When a person smiles, he feels happier. When the forced smilling persis, that person will grow happier more readily, and he will be happier. It is a weird phrase, but it is implied to be including both genders. One can only try to say that it doesn't because "feelings".
He's got almost 3 million subscribers. It's a long mailing list. PewDiePie has 105 million subscribers, they don't even allow notifications on his videos.
As a bilingual I admit that I look and feel the world differently when I think and speak Spanish, my native language, and English, my adopted language. I even feel differently when speaking peoples of different regions of native Spanish speakers as well as different regions of the United States, England, Australia, etc. I stipulate that whenever someone immerses him/herself in the native culture of a foreign language only then the person becomes fluent in the language- in essence becoming in thinking like a German, a Japanese, or whatever.
You have spoken well. This comes from being inferior to their culture to learn as much as possible. Coming with superiority sense will jeopardize your mission.
Favorite thing I’ve heard all day today: “It’s quite possible that we haven’t unlocked other realms of possibility, simply because we don’t have the words for them yet” What an interesting thought. Great video, a truly unique & complex topic which you covered quite brilliantly. 👍🏼
Not sure what this is and isn't true of, but certainly for more easily describing experiences and often experiences others can relate to, having a word for it makes all the difference. Not only does it help you express it quickly, but if gives you the concept nicely packaged as opposed to having to form the concept, link the ideas etc yourself. For example www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
@ Andrew: good quote, it reminded me of the advice Allice (of Wonderland) got that might help to discover new possibilities : before breakfast, think of six things that are impossible... ;o)
we do need new wording in accord with new discoveries. But we dont need anymore word salad confusion directed at the "lower class" coming from the "more educated higher class", and i reiterate more educated "leaders" as an oximoron selling more corrupted salads that hijacked by their industries science, legislative and engineer fields too. the whole idea of wording propaganda to sell bull sh...t is absurd, its like one has to study develop a magic spell wand to say and fool others or make them do something contrary to or beneficial. Take for instance a soldier scolded by a sargent to run into a pepper bullet field because hes got to save his family 5000 miles away
As Edward de Bono was proud of coining a new, useful concept: "lateral thinking." Meaning there is a whole category of thinking strategies and practices that were different from logic. (But lateral thinking practices are just as effective and useful as logic.)
Arrival is about language? I thought it was about the fear of existence, fear of living itself. The translator woman is a recluse and the aliens "showing" her the future(childs death) actually teaches us to live out life to the fullest even though its end is preordained i.e, just coz death is certain, we must'nt shun life.
“I will never accept that singular They is grammatically correct” - Thoughty2, 2020 You have poked the hornet’s nest my friend. Prepare for the onslaught.
I mean to me it just seems like an arbitrarily strange hill to die on lol. It would seem we were in need of a gender-less singular pronoun, and "they" happened to fill that role nicely. It's certainly more convenient than rattling off the common pronouns (he/she and him/her) and and, whether people like it or not, more than 2 is becoming increasingly common. So it seems over time even the clumsy usage like "I enjoyed debating with him/her on the forums" will become less and less acceptable. Language is ever evolving, and those that refuse to accept the changes to what is and isn't proper baffle me.
@@QuickNETTech standing against compelled speech is a strange hill to die on...you should have a look at the book he showed in the video. on a side note, its not a manual
@@QuickNETTech I do agree, I'd much rather call someone they/them pronouns over something completely made up like zhim/zher or whatever the fuck people make up to feel different now.
I learned another language fluently as a young adult, while doing so, I noticed how language influences mental processes through grammar, I also came to the conclusion that the flexibility of American English was paramount to the industrial and electronic revolutions because the ability to adapt and simplify new concepts easily accelerates invention and discovery by avoiding the necessity of complex explanations for information assimilation..
Krystian Grzesik this is very interesting! Oddly enough, I am an American yet think/ read to myself in an Kiwi accent because I lived in New Zealand for several years. However, I cannot speak in the accent no matter how hard I try. Brains are a fascinating organism!!
In finnish language we actually don't have separate "he" and "she" but a neutral "hän" which fits for both genders. It's been like that forever. Edit: this still messes me up when trying to describe a male or female person in vocal english, cos I often refer to a woman as "he" by accident
It's possible some of the tribal languages in Africa do too. I don't know their language/s but I've heard it so many times when they speak English. Hmmmm??
This is an incredibly intriguing topic and one of the reasons why I've studied languages. My professors used to say that learning a new language that they eventually mastered was like adding a new heart. I'm guessing they chose heart, because of their love for languages. I can definitely confirm it. Learning a new language is adding so much to life and you become a new person somehow, but you're not losing your old self, you're just becoming a better version by gaining a new perspective through the linguistic lense of your cultural alter egos. You see things clearly after a while in your mothertongue that you never could figure out before when you master another language. You need to understand the concept of the language and embrace the culture (as addition to your original culture). When I speak Spanish,. I'm louder, more joyful, more daring and passionate. When I speak English, the speech is a quieter, more polite sometimes and has its little jokes. When speaking German, everything is precisely expressed which I love and since my voice becomes softer, the words don't sound that hard like most people would believe and finally, when I speak French, I feel very elegant and sophisticated even though a lot of words get cut out in the spoken language. Whenever I speak any of these languages or the ones that I'm still learning, I feel it. I feel like I belong to that culture when I use typical expressions and make jokes in those languages that might also only make sense in that specific language. It's really beautiful and kinda magical! 🌺✨
As a linguist, this is my favorite video you’ve posted. A couple points I think are particularly salient: color, which evidence from the 60s-80s suggests is fairly universal, is more or less a concrete concept. Time, which Lakoff suggests is shaped by metaphorical comparison to money, is certainly more abstract. In general, we can derive two principles. First, language does not have much effect on how we understand the concrete physical world, but does seem to have a larger effect on how we understand abstract concepts. Second, as Lakoff’s ‘time is money’ example shows, the tendency is for abstract concepts such as time to be understood in terms of more concrete concepts such as money. It does not seem to work in the other direction. Lastly, a comment on gender... while the studies you cite show something interesting about the relationship between grammatical gender and biological sex, it is vastly oversimplified and misleading, due to only dealing with European languages. The majority of the world’s languages (most African languages, many Austronesian languages, Aboriginal American languages) have many genders. Gender just means type, and applies to nouns. Several Bantu languages, for instance, have as many 16 genders or more. The fact that a speaker will associate words in one class with adjectives commonly associated with other words in the same class is merely a brute fact of how language works; it does not entail that the gender classes in the language have any effect on how speakers perceive or understand the world. A German could certainly look at two different bridges and characterize one as slender and the other as wide, for example.
Agreed...Masc., Fem., Neuter should have never been used to name classes of nouns to begin with....why not just come up with terms that have no previous connotations.
If language has greater effect on abstract thought then maybe a whole new language should be considered in religious instruction voiding out hatred and elitism, focusing on experiencing it's power and love. Just a thought.
I, also a linguist came here to comment on this too. It was pretty good until the 1984 part. Language doesn’t limit thought. You can think and feel more than you can express. Also in the example of governments limiting language, the only terrifying thing is the type of government you’ve got that would want to try, because it doesn’t actually work.
@@earlgrey9964 I’ve heard arguments about it being sexism in language, because they’re effectively regular, irregular, and off the scale irregular. I’m not sure how much attention to pay to that tbh, but yeah they are poorly named.
"Someone ate my lunch! Well, I hope they enjoyed it" They/them is singular in English ANY time the gender or sex of the person being talked about isn't known. Always has been. It's nothing new, and I guarantee you've used it before many times without ever thinking about it.
I do not use "they" in a singular form. Never have and I doubt I ever will. I am pedantic; my words do not change meaning and my estimation of other persons speaking on a topic is elevated by correctness. If I am speaking of a third person singular, I will use "he" or "she" if I know the gender, and if I don't, it is unlikely that I would be speaking of such a person, but if I needed to, then "person" or "such a person" is what would be used. This person can use that bathroom. Or restructure the sentence completely: This small bathroom has room for one person at a time. He is smoking. She is smoking. I see someone smoking. I would never use "they are smoking" to mean one person, because "they" is a group. I suppose the plurality is contained in "are", as in "they are"; where singular "he is" would be "they is" and where have you heard that? "They is coming to dinner" ;-)
@@thomasmaughan4798 Then your English is poor, because either your speech is full of "he or she" and "his or hers" statements, or you're assuming genders you don't know and communicating misinformation. There's NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE!! It's how the English language has ALWAYS been structured! Good lord, get over yourself.
@@themudpit621 "Then your English is poor, because either your speech is full of "he or she" and "his or hers" statements, or you're assuming genders you don't know " Yes to both.
Singular they is actually not a modern thing. It's been in use for quite a while, mostly when speaking about a person whose gender is unknown ex: "Someone left their keys on the desk." I see it as no different than having you as both singular and plural.
An extremely interesting topic I never saw being treated before. I'm trilingual, my native German, then English and French, I did live in both the US and France for many years without any contact to the other languages. Unfortunately I'm prone to depression, due to a bad childhood, and I felt how I could shed all the trauma by talking and thinking in another language! English was and is always my favorite as well as living and working in the US! Today I live back in Germany, because of my declining health, and well, since I'm here depression is back and I can't shake it. All these connections I came to realize just recently -and wonderful knowing that there are scientific ground for it, too.
I'm sorry your going through depression, I also have depression form a very bad childhood and DNA and I'm also really depressed rn, I speak some languages and I also love English more it make me happy and I think its because it was the language that view depression as something more than just being sad, I have learn more about myself and I have been helped more in English so I natural love it more! It also view homosexuality in a medical and non negative way which help me accept myself because in other languages I know it is not a very nice word and is more like a swear word, I wonder if you had some happier memories in English then in German, maybe that one reason you like it more
@Moral Relativism Not exactly. Not in the sense that we understand it and yet, you still cited two conclusions. Reich means something between the country and the place where a people live. These are not forms of government.
When I was a health teacher and was asked to teach secondary school students and their parents sexuality education, I discovered that in English we are missing an entire block of language used to talk and teach each other about healthy sexuality. All terms we use for sexuality are either scientific terms (and they sound cold and scientific) or they are slang terms which sound demeaning and inappropriate, or cutsie words. For example the words for male sexual anatomy, the slang sounds like a weapon, or cutsie words like "your pee pee or wee wee, or woodie," and female sexual parts often didn't have a name at all. They were "down there," or had cute names like, "coo coo poo, and cooter." Do we refer to their other systems of the body by cute names? So, how can we teach our children about healthy sexuality when we are missing the language to do so.
This may have evolved out of the Victorian era sterilization of anatomy with regard both to the sciences used to describe the human body and the taboo associated with discussing sex and sexuality. Words for anatomy like dick of pussy might be considered vulgar today because that's how the common folk referred to such things, while proper individuals didn't refer to them at all, unless you were a doctor in which case you used scientific words. We can see this with the evolution of other words into being considered vulgar, many of what we'd consider profanities today are only such because that's how the poor and common folk referred to those items or acts.
Interesting! I grew up in West Yorkshire, England; I learned to speak French in my early 20's - but I've forgotten it all now. I came to South Africa in my late 20's and learned isiZulu; I can claim approximately 50% fluency. I see/understand things differently if/when I am speaking in isiZulu, which has 7-11 noun 'genders' depending on how you count. There is a third person passive tense that acknowledges an incident or a fault without accepting or assigning blame - 'a mistake was made'. Language certainly affects our perception of the world around us, which is probably why learning a different language is a personally transforming experience. I once met an English Jesuit priest who had spent so much time in Japan that he spoke English with a Japanese accent! I abhor the idea of a universal language; we should learn to treasure the incredible unity-in-diversity that humanity represents. Angisho lutho ngezinwele ezingaphansi kwekhala lakho...(translation available on request!)
There is. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it. Chinese don't have irregular numbers like we do in English for the teen numbers. Neither do they have a different word depending on whether the value is in the tens place or ones place. Our eleven is for them literally ten and one. Our twenty-one is literally their two tens and one. But I think maybe their language is like that because their race is better at math to begin with.
Do we need some new words for time? The word Time being connected to money, I would also say due to being forced into schools and strict jobs, that the concept of time has become quite negative no wonder more and more people can only become happy when free from the concept of time (bing watching TV, playing computer games) A lot of depressed introverts say that days roll in to each other as they spend most of the day stuck in their head, I wonder if adding more words changing the concept of time would help them out
Not because I am Eastern European but I think knowing more words definitely improves communication. I noticed a big difference between me talking in my native language or English.
@@andrewmckeown6786 Yes. Singular, gender indeterminate has existed for a long time. Person a: "There's someone at the door" Person b: "Tell them to go away, I'm busy" Don't disagree with the existence of something that can be objectively proven just because you disagree with the way it is used.
He had a q&a video where he confirms it that he is saying 42 because its the answer of everything which is a reference to Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy
The same works for songs as well from what I've experienced. Listening to English, Japanese and Chinese songs you can tell the difference with the way they articulate their notes and syllables and how their songs sound
4:00 "To them, the color has fundamentally changed." To be honest, the Russians are right. If you've ever looked at a color wheel you'll notice that dark blue and light blue are about as similar to one another as green and yellow, and to us, a change from green to yellow would probably elicit the same reaction.
Pink and red in English is a better comparison. We think of them as different colors when pink is red with white mixed in and light blue is blue with white mixed in.
Well, probably he didn't know that we Bengalis separate them as well. We call the light blue "akashi" which translates to 'Sky colored' and for dark blue, we say "neel" which is recognized as the original blue.
@@Primalxbeast Not really. Pink and red are the same color, just one is lighter than the other. Blue and light blue are actually separate colors, with light blue being a mix of blue and green.
@@Primalxbeast I guess there's a difference between additive and subtractive blending. When you're blending additively (like, when you're designing colors to be displayed on a monitor, for example) and you wanted to get cyan (the color that most people think of when they talk about light blue), then you'd mix blue and green together to get it. Things are, of course, different when mixing subtractively, since mixing two dark colors will give you an even darker color, and not a lighter one, but when we're actually talking about what the light itself looks like, then cyan is a mixture of blue and green.
"They" can be singular because it is describing a single group. That group could consist of 0 or more objects. This is nothing new but if you have more information about the group members you would typically use a more specific pronoun. If the group consisted of a single male person you would use he or she if female. If the one just one person and you did not know the gender then in many languages the convention is to use the male form. But is has become popular to use "he or she" instead of assigning the pronoun to a specific gender. The use of "they" has thous expanded into this area, while it still is grammatically correct it does provide less information.
This isn’t a criticism just something I found interesting. When you talked about 1984 and the government controlling words people knew and could use, I actually instantly went in the opposite direction. As a linguist I always think of language as something in constant motion and they way new words and usages appear is what I love about languages. “I won’t recognize ‘they’ as a singular pronoun” made me think more of the thought process of the government in 1984- limiting language as to oppress the development of new thought. I was genuinely surprised when you said ‘it’s just like political correctness’ because I had immediately thought of conservatism, not in the political party sense but the opposition to change sense.
He's pretty right wing, made a few out of this channel videos on his views. I have no idea how someone who knows as much as he does can ignore that Orwell was super far left, and much more terrified of conservatives than anarchists, he even fought in an anarchist regiment in the Spanish Civil War.
"They" as a form of singular appeared in the past, but it has never been popular. Now, the "political correct" people are the ones trying to force it along with many other words because feelings, even threatenig people with jail if they do not comply in some countries. Those are not "new words and usages", but propaganda from a few groups and ideologs. And it is not a "opposition to change", but an opposition to a forced language.
@@kuelapfortress1687 Again I'm not here to state an opinion one way or another, but the exact same could be said of the opposite. Languages change constantly and only became standardized in very recent history. 'They' as a singular pronoun having existed in the past doesn't really matter because the conversation is about what we (or at least many English speakers) consider to be an accurate use of the word 'they' changing to reflect the state of society. That is how language works and and has ALWAYS worked. The word 'fan' referred to the hand held fold out fans used to cool oneself off long before it began to mean circular fan attached to an electric motor even when used alone as 'fan.' Words change. That's just reality.
@@hwychn475 "they" is not changing to reflect a change. Is being used as a way to force a change in other people's speech. It is not a natural evolution of language, like in your example. You can still speak however you want, idgaf, but don't try to force it on people with sad excuses.
This guy is a master at doublespeak. Obviously we both clicked on this because we thought there were actual words we could say to just change our brain. But it's not clickbait!
Except no, it doesn't. It makes you more knowledgeable. I know an autistic guy who can tell you everything about anything you ask, kinda like google, but he cannot buy his own food because he just can't seem to understand how money works or that a single $100 bill is more than a single $1 bill. He knows more than any normal human is capable of, but he would score a 0 on an IQ test, which measures intelligence... Try taking one. You can't study for it and it has no subjects. It asks questions that require using you brain to compute the answer. Like, it shows a 3D object and multiple choice answers of it as seen from different angles. Question is, which one shows this object upsidedown, from behind? You have to visualize the object and rotate it in your mind to find the answer. Reading all of wikipedia won't help you solve that. But, speaking a language where thinking about any object requires knowing its compass orientation, might actually help a lot! I think that's the point he is exploring here. Was that too much? Did it help or annoy you? Do you disagree? Do you just not care? LMK, honestly. It's part of a study im doing on social media communication.
Ithkuil is a constructed language that was the ground for an experiment: the language was designed to convey information in as few syllables as possible. That means information is compacted in very short sentences. Its writing system is equally compact in nature. This means an Ithkuil speaker should express himself much faster and think faster as well. My understanding is that the language is hard to master. I never found a conclusive answer whether the language makes you think faster. I don't know if the language is practical enough to be mastered as a native language from childhood. This subject is also interesting and worth mentioning in another video.
I mean, Id say that when people aren't that used to words in a sentence that works, but at some point I think more words for more complex meanings might be better and the positive effect of that isn't that big anymore. Taking meanings together, giving on thing that meaning and understanding/remembering that well seems to be pretty effective to me. (lol something random now) Imagine giving all digits combinations a symbol (00, 01, 02... 56, 57... 98, 99) and remembering / naturally thinking about them so well that you can remember twice as many digits. 12521247 would require 4 symbols that you remembered. The problem is that you need to add a lot of symbols and also adapt to them well just to double it. 1000 symbols to triple your regular amount, but I'm unsure how much a human is able to remember separated small symbols in a way that the required short-term memory stays close to the same and the required long-term memory especially goes up.
ok, so, the fact that "sjw's" insist you can't use words 'f*g" or "r**ard" or "n****" is NOT the same as not being allowed to criticize anyone. Insults are not the same as criticism.
Interesting, this has been something I've always thought of, it feels nice to know that others have done this much research on the topic of how language affects our world-view. I do have a question though, in the case of multi-lingual people, do we consider their first language only or all the languages they are proficient in, when considering this...?
This is why it is so important for us to think about the way words are used to communicate news and stories. Divisions are being caused by those who are influencing the way we think about our neighbors.
@@rafanifischer3152 keep on dreaming buddy. I can speak 3 languages and have heard stand-up comedies of each. They are all unique and funny. You should learn one more language other than english before commenting such idiocy.
I believe "you" should be singular. I find it hard to form a sentence referring to a set group with the word "you" without following it up with a noun or mentioning a noun before the word. To me the word is used as a directional point above all else
I don't think of "love" as the catch all term that English does. I think of it referring to a number of different phenomena. Also the phrade "knowing someone" in English is too vague.
it depends when. If im alone I usually think in english but since my family and irl friends are finnish and I speak finnish with them I always think in finnish too. Same goes in school (I go to a swedish school) there I always think in swedish.
Language doesn't re-wire your brain, culture does. The 'linguistic relativity' observed correlates language with perception, however I believe that the change of perception isn't caused by change of language, but change of culture. Take France for example. Their tendness to be more romantic isn't because there are more words to describe love, but because romantic gestures in French culture are more common.
Language and culture are intertwined. A particular language usually points out to a specific group of people. When you interact with another language, it means that you are also interacting with the culture that speaks the language. You cannot understand one's culture without accessing its language directly. You cannot seperate language from culture, as you are here trying, and failing, to do.
France is not the only country that speaks FR... I can concur that France is very very different than other francophone countries. Like day and night!!
You have an excellent point, and worthy of a talk of its own, as language and culture overlap. However, the speaker's point about "linguistic relativity" holds much merit. The speaker's example pertaining to the color-name of blue reminded me of going to the Hardware store as a young adult to buy some grass seed for a bald spot in the lawn of my new home. When asked what variety I wanted, it was a perception-opening experience to learn the color shades of the grass varieties: I henceforth became acutely aware of the varying shades of green in every lawn, and could not "un-see" the variation in color tones which were previously monochromatic to me...
You are right about how having a different tone of voice changes the intent! I've been rewatching your older videos. Where before your words and tone seemed true, they seemed to not hold as much impact or importance. The videos were to me as entertainment only. I'm unsure when the change happened, but now I feel that I am not only listening to your opinion(which I do not always agree with*coughcough Tesla/Edison*), but that there are more facts expressed. I myself express what I have learned here with a different tonality upon sharing to others. That is, after fact checking if it truly intrigues me.😉 So! Thank you for giving me copious amounts of knowledge; that comes in handy for more than just cocktail parties! Cheers! Your Fellow Towel Carrier, 48😏
In the Philippines, there was a documentary released talking about an indigenous tribe who didn't have the word rape and therefore had no concept of it. Prior to the age of the internet and modernization, there was not a single rape case in the community. It was so unthinkable for them that it just never happened. With the introduction of the word, there are now some cases of it, but still considered one of the worst crimes and is even a taboo for them
My conlang doesn't use "They" as a non-binary 3rd person pronoun. It uses a completely separate pronoun because the language already has four noun genders. There is no English equivalent to it and it is grammatically distinct from "they" and as a result has completely different declensions that don't really translate well into English.
There is research to suggest increasing one's vocabulary specifically around words that describe moods and feelings can increase one's empathy. As a simplistic example consider the word angry. Adding words such as irritated, annoyed, furious, indignant, incensed, enraged, frustrated, exasperated, etc to your vocabulary allows for nuance, affording more opportunity to relate to another person.
I feel like the memes of today are like an augmentation to English that actually add new information to it, as there are so many memes and its almost like a contest to explore new memes, people end up exploring new territory that normal languages haven't ever been to
This was the most perfect and knowledgeable piece of information I have been blessed to have crossed my path. That is, up until you justified the English language due to its ambiguous meanings behind words. Especially after you've expressed how dangerous this game being played is.
As an English speaker I noticed as a young child how easy it is to be very deceptive and absolutely honest by carefully choosing one's words with the preferences of the listener. Later adding translations/interpretations to consideration, I became very suspicious of anyone absolutely certain of the meaning in one language of something from another language, even if both languages were more precise.
As a native Finn, I have been thinking about this from time to time. In Finnish language there is no pronouns like he or she and perhaps that changes our way of thinking. Would like to see some indepth study about this.
@@bonniedavis9076 What does this have anything to do with my age? Been thinking about it perhaps since 2000's or so. That makes it over 20 years ago and I was already adult then
So, using 50 different words to describe “snow” allows/gives the Inuit the ability to distinguish a unique concept makes sense when you live in the Arctic. They convey in a single word that, in order to accurately and precisely describe what takes me, in English, several different words to describe. I don’t have words in my language for that degree of specificity. For example, I describe three different types of snow to convey concepts and differences such as big, heavy, wet flakes from tiny, little ice balls and the medium-sized, light, fluffy snow that you can’t make a snowman with because it won’t stick together. The argument here is if I spoke their language, I would also perceive the world differently, because now I can define each type of snow/ice. The Inuit language naturally developed to convey concepts so precisely because it is necessary in their world. When you live on the ice at times, the subtle differences in ice that I may not even notice, they see the difference between life or death. Thank you for this! The vocabulary of visual artists will include many different concepts of a colour’s shade. Where the average person might say the house is blue and gold, an artist would more likely describe it as a dark, navy blue house with bronze trim. See the differences in your initial idea vs the more precise wording. The number and type of words at my disposal, determines how I perceive the world around me!
" Someone is knocking on the door! And they are making a lot of noise! " They is the normal pronoun to use when we do not know the identity of the actor. "When you arrive , give your keys to the valet. They will take care of it." If , instead, we know the name and gender of the valet, we can say " He will take care of it.." So, no, it is not just 'vernacular'. @Lingofiles I see down thread people take this as connected with 'gender-pronouns' , but it's a structure that always existed.
Thank you. I've read many comments from people stating that they as a singular has existed for a long time, without giving examples. Seeing the examples I felt a bit dumb as a native english speaker for needing someone to provide examples but, as you suggest, I was probably thinking strictly in the gender pronoun sense.
I don’t think he implied it was new. I think he simply questioned the validity of the usage. It’s common because it’s easy and understandable, but maybe not the best use of the word, or the best way to structure the sentence.
@@unapologeticsouth it's the only way to do it when you're repeatedly referring to someone of unknown gender. You can't keep saying 'his or her', 'he or she'. It sounds silly. "Hello Officer. Yes, someone broke into my house, he or she came in the window and he or she went through my drawers. He or she left a trail of footprints. I hope you catch him or her." No, we say "someone broke into my house, they came in the window, and they went through my drawers. They left a trail of footprints, I hope you catch them."
@@themudpit621 I’m not saying it’s uncommon to speak this way. I’m not saying I haven’t always done it. I’m not saying it sounds less than understandable. I’m simply saying, I, like Thoughty2, have questioned it. There are certainly ways other than you have illustrated to say the same thing without using pronouns at all. It’s more cumbersome than what we have grown used to, but possibly more correct. It often sounds better in speech to end a sentence with a preposition, but it’s not proper. “Where did that dog come from?” “From where did that dog come?” I’m as guilty as any when it comes to misusing words and phrases, or using poor grammar that ultimately erodes our language. But, it’s worth knowing there are proper ways of saying things wether you choose to use them or not.
@@unapologeticsouth ...I hope your name is not referring to the Southern U.S. if it is...change it if you want to be taken seriously. Otherwise your TH-cam name is practically equivalent to unapologetic moron.
Thoughty2 forever.. Ever since I've started watching this channel I swear I feel like my general knowledge of the world has increased immensely. Thank you.🙏
@@madmax5841 Not necessarily the case, here. I remember these days, myself. My father didn't have any love for his car. When there's a dude you have to interact with twice a week whose job is to fill your gas and clean your windshield, "fillerup" just becomes what everyone says to avoid starting an actual conversation.
I was scred for a little bit because I realized I've been using masculine and feminine pro nouns to describe things for all my life and I feel like I've been lied to for some reason
Now that i think abour it, learning 3 languages at some point that all have different genders for every noun is what might've made me sick of gendering things and people in the first place. It's all bullshit circus.
Thank you for what you're doing 🙏 In this video, at 2:51, there's shown a bit of a book there that is written in Romanian language and it's actually a page of the bible that speaks about The Word. Very interesting, as this is a very complex language - the opposite of Hobi tribe that it was mentioned at the time. Very good work, Sir, although there aren't many to get this subtlility, there it is pointed out 🤝 P.S. I am Romanian obviously.
Words and language are the 'collective agreement' that keeps 'reality' together. What it is is how we speak it. This is how we learn our 'reality' from our earliest age. The 'agreement' of 'this is a chair,' and 'this is a horse.' 'Reality' is the 'agreement.' The associations are what creates that 'reality.'
The movie "Arrival" is just like this! Aliens come to earth and a scientist tries to learn their language. Thanks to this she could see things/remember things that didn't happen yet. Pretty cool movie, you would probably like it too. (Edit: I'm now at 8:50 , I should've seen it coming xD )
Rods and cones which are the devices responsible for receiving colors within our eyes translating them and transmitting that information through the optic nerve to our occipital lobe. These physical features are still developing in the eyes when we are born as babies. The first colors perceived in the spectrum as this occurs, are black white and red; so the idea that that is the order universally that colors are connotated within our language makes total sense. it is our genetic development which decided it because we do not consciously enumerate or evolve our aspects of our inner eye or occipital systems. It's truly astounding and so simple and logically basic at the same time.
As a multilingual speaker I've felt this was true for a long time. When I switch from one language to another my thought process changes as well. I've also noticed that when I'm stuck on a problem it's surprisingly helpful to translate it to another language, the answer becomes clear
@Moral Relativism my freind can speak Portuguese and English and I've asked him what language his inner monologue is and he said it changes between the two at random he sometimes accidently speaks Portuguese occasionally when speaking to English speakers
@@lewiitoons4227 Yeah, this inner monologue thing can be tricky at times. I can speak 3 languages and am currently learning a fourth one. The words that appear in my head whilst thinking constantly change. Sometimes I don't even notice that I started one thought in one language and finished it in another. Surprisingly enough, I don't mix those languages when I speak.
@@FelixGameRoom do you sometimes find your self thinking in a different language sometimes?
I speak four languages, but i find my self thinking in the language that im using that moment to comunicate with others.
Or sometimes the language in with i thinking change or sometimes i even dream in a different language.
I hadn’t noticed, but then I realized it’s true ever since someone told me that my personality “changes” depending on the language I speak. I guess I pour out the cultural aspect of the language unconsciously. But it could also be a function of my comfort or confidence level in that particular language I’m speaking or the situation. It’s certainly very interesting how my thought process, my linguistic strategy changes/adapts to the language.
You spoke my words. The language we speak; and the many we know; has great impact on us. I’m a different person for each language I know.
I've done an experiment with this concept, and its affected my life.
Instead of saying "I know", I started saying, "you're right." I found its easier to control what you say through text. So in my texts I started the change and it eventually carried over to my normal language. Ive noticed people trust me more, and I trust them more as well. Its saying the same thing, but instead of focusing on yourself as if to prove something, youre agreeing with them and showing them you knew as well or at least was very open to the idea.
Theres lots of sayings you can do to improve your life. Anyone skeptical, just try it out and see if it works for you. If not at least you know for sure.
Cool!
I knew it.
I've tried something similar with trying not to apologize for some things and instead thanking people. For example, if you're late (maybe traffic or other out of control event) you thank someone for waiting for you. When I had to have something explained, I've thanked people for their patience. It has the side effect of a more positive self image on top of making others feel appreciated and focusing on the positive.
@@korab.23 it works very well, also to avoid negative things to say in general. Like if you're teaching a class that is already assumed to be boring. You can't reaffirm every half hour how boring it is because it'll just make the people in the class find it more boring. I figured that out a few days ago, my instructor kept doing that. And I realized half way through the course, it wasn't the thing they were showing us. It was strictly them constantly putting the thought into our heads.
Here's one for ALL parents. Remove the word "Don't". Example, when near a fire, 'stay back, keep your hands well clear of the flames, etc' instead of just saying 'don't PUT YOUR HAND IN IT'. Express the same sentiments, but NEVER say don't. Tell kids what TO do instead of what NOT to do. It makes a HUGE difference with kids. You don't realise it, but they can hear "(fire) PUT YOUR HAND IN IT". Then parents wonder why kids do exactly what they just told them NOT to do! Never say don't, be instructive to your kids instead of putting dangerous ideas into their heads. Made my parenting really easy. Just takes a bit of effort at the start to reprogram your brain, but you soon get used to it.
I am currently learning about the nerve system in biology (in detail) and we just recently learned some really interesting things about colorsight, for example that we can only see the colour blue since not so long ago. There was an experiment with a tribe and some European people. They had both tell first which square (of twelve or so squares) the cyan one was. The other ones were green. The tribe had major difficulties differentiating the colours while the Europeans could tell easily which the cyan one was. Then they did the same with differently shaded green toned squares and the Tribe could tell them apart easily. The tribe had different words for many green shades but they didn't have a word for blue. Me and my classmates couldn't tell the difference either between the green tones.
Sorry if there are some grammatical errors, I am German and still learning. I really liked the video👌
An old friend admitted to me that he never saw green in a sunset previously to me pointing it out to him one time. Now he sees greens all the time in sunsets!
I don’t think it’s correct that we couldn’t SEE blue, but that blue wasn’t a common color and cultures didn’t have a word for it, and most cultures called the sky green
British girl: he might have feelings, he might not, it's a 50/50
French girl: he will love me no matter the outcome it will be a 100/0
*rattatoui theme plays*
Lmao
100/100 is equal to 50/50
@@aw1lt yup
those two are the same odds. you failed us
Dude,
I've been watching your stuff, periodically, for years. But recently, working from home due to Covid 19, I watch one or two of your presentations daily, and have re-watched a number of them several times. I sincerely appreciate the thoughtfulness in your delivery, as well as the apparent research that has gone into your videos.
Please keep up these entertaining and informative episodes. You are doing a truly admirable job at giving us all some needed mental floss to keep our cranial gem-tumblers clean and in working order.
With gratitude from Arizona . . .
Brian
Should've written 'Bri' 👴🎸
I agree with Brian
I am softer and more creative when I speak Brazilian Portuguese, more demanding and aggressive in Spanish and a bit more clever - logical when talking in English. I am learning French and Italian now. I am feeling a change in me when practice these languages. Husband is scared! 🤣 super interesting subject… many thanks 👍
If your learning French your going to feel rude an arrogant while speaking the language
Study Icelandic! And let me know what changes 😃😂❤️
Super hard lenguage indeed 🥲🥲
This is one of the big reasons why studying language is so fascinating to me. I study Japanese and Chinese, and in Japanese, it was really interesting to see how the order of their sentences can seem backwards when looking at it from the perspective of an English speaker, but it has actually allowed me to arrange some thoughts more cohesively in my mind without having to always be in the framework established through English.
Can you gives us an example.
@@alfredohernandez7486 well essentially, English sentences are Subject, Verb, Object, while Japanese is a SOV. A basic English sentence like "I walked to the library" would be "I library to walked." It seems odd from an English perspective, but it makes sense. You could even change it to something like "Stare to walked, I." Since the sentences are so different, it can change the way that you think about things
@@orinblank2056 I’ve been learning Japanese for a few years and I see your point. Most of the time it’s an incredibly efficient language. Simple and elegant.
I find myself using 1 adjective in English as is done in Japanese to surmise a situation or thing. The trick is to get as creative as possible with the English language while speaking as though it were Japanese.
Where you might say “oishii” instead I’ll say delectable , exquisite, scrumptious, titillating.
Rarely, I say this out loud at risk of sounding like a pompous asshole. But it’s still good for the brain, I feel.
@@orinblank2056 now that you are conscious of the different thought process between the languages, do it find it any easier to learn? I started a bit of Chinese but the sentence structures is what made me stop. I was looking at everything from how English is structured.
@@SovereignShooter Definitely. It gets easier to fit be things in when you know some already
Language is really a beautiful and complicated thing that we all take for granted
Not all of us. What about those who're learning a second language, or those who appreciate literature? That's a lot of people.
butcherax bruh
I enjoy a number of TH-cam channels, but I have to say, Thoughty2 is my favorite. Your presentation personality is just wonderful. You don't feel overly rehearsed. You share your own fascination or perplexity in content you're presenting. It makes it feel like you're more than just a presenter. Also, your production values keep going up, which adds a lot to sustaining attention. Thanks for all you do!
I am Greek and when i speak Greek i usually stutter a lot but when i speak English it never happens and i honestly feel cured
When Americans speak Greek it has a whole meaning not appropriate to write. Sorry. Had to .
@@pgh412east explain
Sameee!
@@demonwing9431 most say that when they are confused by a strange or overly complex thing hard to understand best example is looking at a very complex math equation and not knowing if its a new language
In Dutch, we have a word called "gezellig". It is an adjective used to describe 'in an ambience of pleasentness in a small, trusted social group'.
We find it very strange that there is no English word for this, since being in a situation that could be described as 'gezellig' once in a while is considered imperative to be happy.
I would agree that this is a requirement of happiness. It's unfortunate that this word/concept doesn't exist in English.
We had such a gezelly evening.
Midding is close, though maybe not identical. www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/174141113510/midding
Not an official word, but does the trick.
Could it be 'cozy'?
@@DT-fg4kw Yes, cozy seems similar but doesn't always imply small group. Buddies, compadres, "peeps"
I used they as a singular before gender awareness became a big deal. Not because I'm a yuppy who is ahead of the curve, it's more to do with relatability in storytelling.
When a person smiles, they feel happier. When the forced smiling persists, that person will grow happier more readily, and they will be happier.
False. I forced myself to smile everyday for years so that no one would have to worry about me. Nonetheless, I was still extremely suicidal during that time of my life. During that time, I also noticed that other people smiled to hide negative emotions.
@@astonish_injurer5598 I don't think that's what he/she meant. There's actually a study regarding that if you forced yourself to smile (not just to hide emotions), but to physically force yourself to smile for a while, your brain will actually think you are happy, thus releasing the necessary hormones for it.
But maybe in your case, it won't really work because depression is a very different thing indeed. It is hard to cure that. In the study, maybe it is only for short term... not to cure any mental illness that had lived in our brain.
Haha that sounds awful.
When a person smiles, he feels happier. When the forced smilling persis, that person will grow happier more readily, and he will be happier.
It is a weird phrase, but it is implied to be including both genders. One can only try to say that it doesn't because "feelings".
@@astonish_injurer5598
"I'm 14 and this is deep"
@@astonish_injurer5598 OP was just using those sentences to show the usage of 'they' as a singular noun.
Recommendations are literally faster than notifications.
I know right
True, I find better videos in recommendations than notifications most of the time .
Indeed. TH-cam is forkin up eh?
He's got almost 3 million subscribers. It's a long mailing list. PewDiePie has 105 million subscribers, they don't even allow notifications on his videos.
Ikr
If I had that mustache, the options would be, “She loves me,” and, “She loves my mustache.”
I laughed at this! Although I would go with.."she loves me", "she loves me mustache"
"She loves me" 😅
It may be real.. looks fake to me !
He reminds of character, that used be on the Kenny Everett show. 😁
Shaun Green definitely real....
Cool story bro.
She loves me
As a bilingual I admit that I look and feel the world differently when I think and speak Spanish, my native language, and English, my adopted language. I even feel differently when speaking peoples of different regions of native Spanish speakers as well as different regions of the United States, England, Australia, etc. I stipulate that whenever someone immerses him/herself in the native culture of a foreign language only then the person becomes fluent in the language- in essence becoming in thinking like a German, a Japanese, or whatever.
You have spoken well. This comes from being inferior to their culture to learn as much as possible. Coming with superiority sense will jeopardize your mission.
Favorite thing I’ve heard all day today: “It’s quite possible that we haven’t unlocked other realms of possibility, simply because we don’t have the words for them yet”
What an interesting thought. Great video, a truly unique & complex topic which you covered quite brilliantly. 👍🏼
Not sure what this is and isn't true of, but certainly for more easily describing experiences and often experiences others can relate to, having a word for it makes all the difference. Not only does it help you express it quickly, but if gives you the concept nicely packaged as opposed to having to form the concept, link the ideas etc yourself.
For example www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
@ Andrew: good quote, it reminded me of the advice Allice (of Wonderland) got that might help to discover new possibilities : before breakfast, think of six things that are impossible... ;o)
im sure there are others that have unlocked those realms way long ago my friend
we do need new wording in accord with new discoveries. But we dont need anymore word salad confusion directed at the "lower class" coming from the "more educated higher class", and i reiterate more educated "leaders" as an oximoron selling more corrupted salads that hijacked by their industries science, legislative and engineer fields too. the whole idea of wording propaganda to sell bull sh...t is absurd, its like one has to study develop a magic spell wand to say and fool others or make them do something contrary to or beneficial. Take for instance a soldier scolded by a sargent to run into a pepper bullet field because hes got to save his family 5000 miles away
As Edward de Bono was proud of coining a new, useful concept: "lateral thinking."
Meaning there is a whole category of thinking strategies and practices that were different from logic. (But lateral thinking practices are just as effective and useful as logic.)
You have summarizied in 22 min the topic of my phd, kudos! (And why i love the movie Arrival)
What is your phd in?
Howdy the topic of the video
Arrival is about language?
I thought it was about the fear of existence, fear of living itself.
The translator woman is a recluse and the aliens "showing" her the future(childs death) actually teaches us to live out life to the fullest even though its end is preordained i.e, just coz death is certain, we must'nt shun life.
You do have a rather pleasing voice, I feel soothed.
Cats: meow
Dogs: woof
9-year-olds: *FIRST FIRST*
Mario Roblox 8-year-olds:
: Cats: meow
: Dogs: woof
: 9-year-olds: *FIRST FIRST*
@@Nuwa69 HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH Ur probably like the 69420th person who's said that
Second!
Woof.
Pintu Kayu 6 year old be like:
“I will never accept that singular They is grammatically correct” - Thoughty2, 2020
You have poked the hornet’s nest my friend. Prepare for the onslaught.
I mean to me it just seems like an arbitrarily strange hill to die on lol. It would seem we were in need of a gender-less singular pronoun, and "they" happened to fill that role nicely. It's certainly more convenient than rattling off the common pronouns (he/she and him/her) and and, whether people like it or not, more than 2 is becoming increasingly common. So it seems over time even the clumsy usage like "I enjoyed debating with him/her on the forums" will become less and less acceptable. Language is ever evolving, and those that refuse to accept the changes to what is and isn't proper baffle me.
@@QuickNETTech standing against compelled speech is a strange hill to die on...you should have a look at the book he showed in the video. on a side note, its not a manual
Oh deary me...
I understand you were using metaphor, but that brings up painful memories.
@@QuickNETTech I do agree, I'd much rather call someone they/them pronouns over something completely made up like zhim/zher or whatever the fuck people make up to feel different now.
He's wrong, so I would be embarrassed, this channel has really gone downhill, all feelings over facts while claiming to be the opposite
I learned another language fluently as a young adult, while doing so, I noticed how language influences mental processes through grammar, I also came to the conclusion that the flexibility of American English was paramount to the industrial and electronic revolutions because the ability to adapt and simplify new concepts easily accelerates invention and discovery by avoiding the necessity of complex explanations for information assimilation..
I'm not a native english speaker, however I often find myself thinking in it. It's less rigid and easier to manipulate than my mother tongue.
Krystian Grzesik this is very interesting! Oddly enough, I am an American yet think/ read to myself in an Kiwi accent because I lived in New Zealand for several years. However, I cannot speak in the accent no matter how hard I try. Brains are a fascinating organism!!
Yh my native language is french but I think in English it’s easier to manage,
American married to a German we speak Deuanglish some things work better in one or the other or a mix of both.
I think English language doesn’t have rules, rather guidelines.
I'm Marathi but I also think in English
In finnish language we actually don't have separate "he" and "she" but a neutral "hän" which fits for both genders. It's been like that forever.
Edit: this still messes me up when trying to describe a male or female person in vocal english, cos I often refer to a woman as "he" by accident
Iranic people in pakistan are rediculed too because balochi like Persian also don't have pronouns for genders
It's possible some of the tribal languages in Africa do too. I don't know their language/s but I've heard it so many times when they speak English. Hmmmm??
In Ghanaian languages too
In Filipino too. She/he is "siya" and it is gender neutral
I taught English in China and the kids always mixed up 'he' and 'she', not sure why. It was cute though!
This is an incredibly intriguing topic and one of the reasons why I've studied languages. My professors used to say that learning a new language that they eventually mastered was like adding a new heart. I'm guessing they chose heart, because of their love for languages. I can definitely confirm it. Learning a new language is adding so much to life and you become a new person somehow, but you're not losing your old self, you're just becoming a better version by gaining a new perspective through the linguistic lense of your cultural alter egos. You see things clearly after a while in your mothertongue that you never could figure out before when you master another language. You need to understand the concept of the language and embrace the culture (as addition to your original culture). When I speak Spanish,. I'm louder, more joyful, more daring and passionate. When I speak English, the speech is a quieter, more polite sometimes and has its little jokes. When speaking German, everything is precisely expressed which I love and since my voice becomes softer, the words don't sound that hard like most people would believe and finally, when I speak French, I feel very elegant and sophisticated even though a lot of words get cut out in the spoken language. Whenever I speak any of these languages or the ones that I'm still learning, I feel it. I feel like I belong to that culture when I use typical expressions and make jokes in those languages that might also only make sense in that specific language. It's really beautiful and kinda magical! 🌺✨
As a linguist, this is my favorite video you’ve posted. A couple points I think are particularly salient: color, which evidence from the 60s-80s suggests is fairly universal, is more or less a concrete concept. Time, which Lakoff suggests is shaped by metaphorical comparison to money, is certainly more abstract. In general, we can derive two principles. First, language does not have much effect on how we understand the concrete physical world, but does seem to have a larger effect on how we understand abstract concepts. Second, as Lakoff’s ‘time is money’ example shows, the tendency is for abstract concepts such as time to be understood in terms of more concrete concepts such as money. It does not seem to work in the other direction.
Lastly, a comment on gender... while the studies you cite show something interesting about the relationship between grammatical gender and biological sex, it is vastly oversimplified and misleading, due to only dealing with European languages. The majority of the world’s languages (most African languages, many Austronesian languages, Aboriginal American languages) have many genders. Gender just means type, and applies to nouns. Several Bantu languages, for instance, have as many 16 genders or more. The fact that a speaker will associate words in one class with adjectives commonly associated with other words in the same class is merely a brute fact of how language works; it does not entail that the gender classes in the language have any effect on how speakers perceive or understand the world. A German could certainly look at two different bridges and characterize one as slender and the other as wide, for example.
Agreed...Masc., Fem., Neuter should have never been used to name classes of nouns to begin with....why not just come up with terms that have no previous connotations.
Hmm, very interesting
If language has greater effect on abstract thought then maybe a whole new language should be considered in religious instruction voiding out hatred and elitism, focusing on experiencing it's power and love. Just a thought.
I, also a linguist came here to comment on this too. It was pretty good until the 1984 part. Language doesn’t limit thought. You can think and feel more than you can express. Also in the example of governments limiting language, the only terrifying thing is the type of government you’ve got that would want to try, because it doesn’t actually work.
@@earlgrey9964 I’ve heard arguments about it being sexism in language, because they’re effectively regular, irregular, and off the scale irregular. I’m not sure how much attention to pay to that tbh, but yeah they are poorly named.
Loving the even higher production quality of the last few videos thoughty
"Someone ate my lunch! Well, I hope they enjoyed it"
They/them is singular in English ANY time the gender or sex of the person being talked about isn't known. Always has been. It's nothing new, and I guarantee you've used it before many times without ever thinking about it.
I do not use "they" in a singular form. Never have and I doubt I ever will. I am pedantic; my words do not change meaning and my estimation of other persons speaking on a topic is elevated by correctness.
If I am speaking of a third person singular, I will use "he" or "she" if I know the gender, and if I don't, it is unlikely that I would be speaking of such a person, but if I needed to, then "person" or "such a person" is what would be used. This person can use that bathroom. Or restructure the sentence completely: This small bathroom has room for one person at a time. He is smoking. She is smoking. I see someone smoking. I would never use "they are smoking" to mean one person, because "they" is a group. I suppose the plurality is contained in "are", as in "they are"; where singular "he is" would be "they is" and where have you heard that? "They is coming to dinner" ;-)
@@thomasmaughan4798 Then your English is poor, because either your speech is full of "he or she" and "his or hers" statements, or you're assuming genders you don't know and communicating misinformation. There's NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE!! It's how the English language has ALWAYS been structured! Good lord, get over yourself.
@@themudpit621 "Then your English is poor, because either your speech is full of "he or she" and "his or hers" statements, or you're assuming genders you don't know "
Yes to both.
The key point here being, _where the sex of the person is not known_ .
I only recently learned that using -THEY- in the singular is actually grammatically incorrect.
I just cant understand why....?
Singular they is actually not a modern thing. It's been in use for quite a while, mostly when speaking about a person whose gender is unknown ex: "Someone left their keys on the desk."
I see it as no different than having you as both singular and plural.
Just like Chris Tucker said to Jackie Chan: " Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth"
Ah yes, comical racism. Always works and never gets old.
And like he said to Jeffery Epstein "only 17 and under Jeff ".
Justin Bayless i’m pretty sure you’re being sarcastic but it’s always funny and never fails tbh
An extremely interesting topic I never saw being treated before. I'm trilingual, my native German, then English and French, I did live in both the US and France for many years without any contact to the other languages. Unfortunately I'm prone to depression, due to a bad childhood, and I felt how I could shed all the trauma by talking and thinking in another language! English was and is always my favorite as well as living and working in the US! Today I live back in Germany, because of my declining health, and well, since I'm here depression is back and I can't shake it. All these connections I came to realize just recently -and wonderful knowing that there are scientific ground for it, too.
I'm sorry your going through depression, I also have depression form a very bad childhood and DNA and I'm also really depressed rn, I speak some languages and I also love English more it make me happy and I think its because it was the language that view depression as something more than just being sad, I have learn more about myself and I have been helped more in English so I natural love it more! It also view homosexuality in a medical and non negative way which help me accept myself because in other languages I know it is not a very nice word and is more like a swear word, I wonder if you had some happier memories in English then in German, maybe that one reason you like it more
There is no direct translation, no equivalent of the word "bigot" in the Romanian language. Make of that what you may.
Neither does Reich in German for all languages.
@Moral Relativism Not exactly. Not in the sense that we understand it and yet, you still cited two conclusions. Reich means something between the country and the place where a people live. These are not forms of government.
@@viniciusdomenighi6439 Realm in English
@@OnTreader So Moral didn't know how to translate a word because they didn't know the words needed. Interesting.
So either they don't need it, or they really need it.
You and your personality are a key, but your moustache is a bridge. Take that as you will.
A bridge that closes the gap between my legs
@@sirawesomeness7543 oooofff
Damn, Brandon. If thoughty doesn't eat your ass, I will.
@@sirawesomeness7543 ...
@@ENTRIFICE what's this about?? Are we eating ass?
When I was a health teacher and was asked to teach secondary school students and their parents sexuality education, I discovered that in English we are missing an entire block of language used to talk and teach each other about healthy sexuality. All terms we use for sexuality are either scientific terms (and they sound cold and scientific) or they are slang terms which sound demeaning and inappropriate, or cutsie words. For example the words for male sexual anatomy, the slang sounds like a weapon, or cutsie words like "your pee pee or wee wee, or woodie," and female sexual parts often didn't have a name at all. They were "down there," or had cute names like, "coo coo poo, and cooter." Do we refer to their other systems of the body by cute names? So, how can we teach our children about healthy sexuality when we are missing the language to do so.
This may have evolved out of the Victorian era sterilization of anatomy with regard both to the sciences used to describe the human body and the taboo associated with discussing sex and sexuality. Words for anatomy like dick of pussy might be considered vulgar today because that's how the common folk referred to such things, while proper individuals didn't refer to them at all, unless you were a doctor in which case you used scientific words.
We can see this with the evolution of other words into being considered vulgar, many of what we'd consider profanities today are only such because that's how the poor and common folk referred to those items or acts.
@@anthonydelfino6171 Good points!
This is so insightful!!
Ask your ancestors 🤣. They are the guilty
this is FASCINATING considering the hbistory of english cultural obsession with propriety etc
This may be your most profound video yet. It's a masterpiece.
Interesting! I grew up in West Yorkshire, England; I learned to speak French in my early 20's - but I've forgotten it all now. I came to South Africa in my late 20's and learned isiZulu; I can claim approximately 50% fluency. I see/understand things differently if/when I am speaking in isiZulu, which has 7-11 noun 'genders' depending on how you count. There is a third person passive tense that acknowledges an incident or a fault without accepting or assigning blame - 'a mistake was made'. Language certainly affects our perception of the world around us, which is probably why learning a different language is a personally transforming experience. I once met an English Jesuit priest who had spent so much time in Japan that he spoke English with a Japanese accent! I abhor the idea of a universal language; we should learn to treasure the incredible unity-in-diversity that humanity represents. Angisho lutho ngezinwele ezingaphansi kwekhala lakho...(translation available on request!)
I request a translation
Second request for a translation! Please
Yes, please translate that!
It's actually "Angisho lutho ngezinwele ezi ngaphansi kwekhala lakho" translated as "I don't say anything about the hair under your nose" :P
Thank you
I've always thought there was a connection between why Asian languages and Asian's propensity for math. Would love to see a study on that.
There is. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it. Chinese don't have irregular numbers like we do in English for the teen numbers. Neither do they have a different word depending on whether the value is in the tens place or ones place. Our eleven is for them literally ten and one. Our twenty-one is literally their two tens and one. But I think maybe their language is like that because their race is better at math to begin with.
Do we need some new words for time?
The word Time being connected to money, I would also say due to being forced into schools and strict jobs, that the concept of time has become quite negative no wonder more and more people can only become happy when free from the concept of time (bing watching TV, playing computer games)
A lot of depressed introverts say that days roll in to each other as they spend most of the day stuck in their head, I wonder if adding more words changing the concept of time would help them out
This is an interesting point and somehow connected to the stoic philosophy. Where the goal is to dwell in leisure. Timelessly.
Coming out of your thoughts and living in the present helps overcome things like depression and boredom.
> A lot of depressed introverts
ayy bro no need to call us names like that :/
@@JohnCephas no
I am familiar with this but have not given it any thought until now, thank you for enlightening me
I Prefer an Australian Kiss over a French Kiss. ...An "Australian Kiss" is likened to a French kiss, but, Downunder.
🙃
I giggled so hard to this..
Why you dirty dog
Or a Glaswegian kiss
@@matthewrandall9833 No, in Scotland an Australian kiss is called carpet munching!
Not because I am Eastern European but I think knowing more words definitely improves communication. I noticed a big difference between me talking in my native language or English.
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought"
propaganda, gossip, ads...friendly persuasion
People’s Liberation Army. Easy to do. BLM.
@@musicnut1966 please explain to me how BLM has anything to do with this
"My friend, they're going to go to the movies "
They can refer to an individual just like them
"Why didn't you go with them?"
No
@@andrewmckeown6786 Yes. Singular, gender indeterminate has existed for a long time.
Person a: "There's someone at the door"
Person b: "Tell them to go away, I'm busy"
Don't disagree with the existence of something that can be objectively proven just because you disagree with the way it is used.
After watching over 200 of his videos, i hereby confirm he says,”Hey, Forty Two here”
plus he mentiones in this video "The hitchhicker's guide to the Galaxy" whrere 42 is the answer to everything in th universe
He had a q&a video where he confirms it that he is saying 42 because its the answer of everything which is a reference to Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy
Well that's just confusing lol! I knew he must have been saying 42! I was just convincing myself that I was hearing it wrong lol
He definately has changed the way he says it many times by now. In small ways.
I still find it very strange, plus the way he says "but' is totally weird.
OH so if I start speaking "Rip and Tear", I think and become the Doom Slayer
@Moral Relativism so I'm able to think like the doomslayer
@@johnmivule-novabow8143 Correct.
@Anubis_X64 Wouldn't it be immortally?
if i start speaking klingon i might become just as agressive as a klingon
The same works for songs as well from what I've experienced. Listening to English, Japanese and Chinese songs you can tell the difference with the way they articulate their notes and syllables and how their songs sound
4:00 "To them, the color has fundamentally changed."
To be honest, the Russians are right. If you've ever looked at a color wheel you'll notice that dark blue and light blue are about as similar to one another as green and yellow, and to us, a change from green to yellow would probably elicit the same reaction.
Pink and red in English is a better comparison. We think of them as different colors when pink is red with white mixed in and light blue is blue with white mixed in.
Well, probably he didn't know that we Bengalis separate them as well. We call the light blue "akashi" which translates to 'Sky colored' and for dark blue, we say "neel" which is recognized as the original blue.
@@Primalxbeast Not really. Pink and red are the same color, just one is lighter than the other. Blue and light blue are actually separate colors, with light blue being a mix of blue and green.
@@ThePC007 If I was painting and wanted light blue, I would mix in white paint with blue, not green with blue.
@@Primalxbeast I guess there's a difference between additive and subtractive blending. When you're blending additively (like, when you're designing colors to be displayed on a monitor, for example) and you wanted to get cyan (the color that most people think of when they talk about light blue), then you'd mix blue and green together to get it.
Things are, of course, different when mixing subtractively, since mixing two dark colors will give you an even darker color, and not a lighter one, but when we're actually talking about what the light itself looks like, then cyan is a mixture of blue and green.
"language shapes the way we think"
"languages evolve over time"
"I refuse to accept the modern interpretation of 'they' as a singular pronoun"
Singular 'they' is far, far older than many people realize
public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/
"They" can be singular because it is describing a single group. That group could consist of 0 or more objects. This is nothing new but if you have more information about the group members you would typically use a more specific pronoun. If the group consisted of a single male person you would use he or she if female. If the one just one person and you did not know the gender then in many languages the convention is to use the male form. But is has become popular to use "he or she" instead of assigning the pronoun to a specific gender. The use of "they" has thous expanded into this area, while it still is grammatically correct it does provide less information.
@The Illusionist Vous means you, not they.
Yeah, it's called coming up with your own opinions, you should try it.
"They" .. The conspiracy theorist's bogeyman.
This isn’t a criticism just something I found interesting. When you talked about 1984 and the government controlling words people knew and could use, I actually instantly went in the opposite direction. As a linguist I always think of language as something in constant motion and they way new words and usages appear is what I love about languages. “I won’t recognize ‘they’ as a singular pronoun” made me think more of the thought process of the government in 1984- limiting language as to oppress the development of new thought. I was genuinely surprised when you said ‘it’s just like political correctness’ because I had immediately thought of conservatism, not in the political party sense but the opposition to change sense.
He's pretty right wing, made a few out of this channel videos on his views. I have no idea how someone who knows as much as he does can ignore that Orwell was super far left, and much more terrified of conservatives than anarchists, he even fought in an anarchist regiment in the Spanish Civil War.
"They" as a form of singular appeared in the past, but it has never been popular. Now, the "political correct" people are the ones trying to force it along with many other words because feelings, even threatenig people with jail if they do not comply in some countries. Those are not "new words and usages", but propaganda from a few groups and ideologs. And it is not a "opposition to change", but an opposition to a forced language.
@@kuelapfortress1687 Again I'm not here to state an opinion one way or another, but the exact same could be said of the opposite. Languages change constantly and only became standardized in very recent history. 'They' as a singular pronoun having existed in the past doesn't really matter because the conversation is about what we (or at least many English speakers) consider to be an accurate use of the word 'they' changing to reflect the state of society. That is how language works and and has ALWAYS worked. The word 'fan' referred to the hand held fold out fans used to cool oneself off long before it began to mean circular fan attached to an electric motor even when used alone as 'fan.' Words change. That's just reality.
@@hwychn475 "they" is not changing to reflect a change. Is being used as a way to force a change in other people's speech. It is not a natural evolution of language, like in your example. You can still speak however you want, idgaf, but don't try to force it on people with sad excuses.
@@machinesworking the left has changed a lot you know. Maybe if he was born in our generation, he would be right-wing.
This guy is a master at doublespeak. Obviously we both clicked on this because we thought there were actual words we could say to just change our brain. But it's not clickbait!
How do you call a person in the US that speaks more than 1 language?
A tourist.
XD nice
What do you say to Michael thatcher?
You can’t even format a question in English properly so you’re one to talk about speaking multiple languages
@@Leicht_Sinn* you're *the* one
SirAwesomeness7, thank you for that. May i ask: How many languages can you speak? If your answer is 1, then you fit the stereotype, congrats!
@@ProtoMan137 i'm german :D
Conclusion: Knowing more things makes you more intelligent.
I never knowed that
I think it's more that assigning labels to certain things helps us remember them and affects how we perceive them.
@@purrsuasively I like yours better
Except no, it doesn't. It makes you more knowledgeable. I know an autistic guy who can tell you everything about anything you ask, kinda like google, but he cannot buy his own food because he just can't seem to understand how money works or that a single $100 bill is more than a single $1 bill. He knows more than any normal human is capable of, but he would score a 0 on an IQ test, which measures intelligence... Try taking one. You can't study for it and it has no subjects. It asks questions that require using you brain to compute the answer. Like, it shows a 3D object and multiple choice answers of it as seen from different angles. Question is, which one shows this object upsidedown, from behind? You have to visualize the object and rotate it in your mind to find the answer. Reading all of wikipedia won't help you solve that. But, speaking a language where thinking about any object requires knowing its compass orientation, might actually help a lot! I think that's the point he is exploring here.
Was that too much? Did it help or annoy you? Do you disagree? Do you just not care? LMK, honestly. It's part of a study im doing on social media communication.
Excellent sir
Ithkuil is a constructed language that was the ground for an experiment: the language was designed to convey information in as few syllables as possible. That means information is compacted in very short sentences. Its writing system is equally compact in nature. This means an Ithkuil speaker should express himself much faster and think faster as well. My understanding is that the language is hard to master. I never found a conclusive answer whether the language makes you think faster. I don't know if the language is practical enough to be mastered as a native language from childhood. This subject is also interesting and worth mentioning in another video.
@chula chalupa edited to read "as few as possible" for disambiguation. Thanks.
I mean, Id say that when people aren't that used to words in a sentence that works, but at some point I think more words for more complex meanings might be better and the positive effect of that isn't that big anymore.
Taking meanings together, giving on thing that meaning and understanding/remembering that well seems to be pretty effective to me.
(lol something random now)
Imagine giving all digits combinations a symbol (00, 01, 02... 56, 57... 98, 99) and remembering / naturally thinking about them so well that you can remember twice as many digits.
12521247 would require 4 symbols that you remembered.
The problem is that you need to add a lot of symbols and also adapt to them well just to double it.
1000 symbols to triple your regular amount, but I'm unsure how much a human is able to remember separated small symbols in a way that the required short-term memory stays close to the same and the required long-term memory especially goes up.
ok, so, the fact that "sjw's" insist you can't use words 'f*g" or "r**ard" or "n****" is NOT the same as not being allowed to criticize anyone. Insults are not the same as criticism.
i mean we can still call people N'wah or Petaq.. should be fun..
Wow! He is so very gifted. So the next time someone says something to me that makes no sense at all, the reply is, Kangaroo! :-)
Mustard
Polyglots:
"I can see everything"
Interesting, this has been something I've always thought of, it feels nice to know that others have done this much research on the topic of how language affects our world-view.
I do have a question though, in the case of multi-lingual people, do we consider their first language only or all the languages they are proficient in, when considering this...?
This is why it is so important for us to think about the way words are used to communicate news and stories. Divisions are being caused by those who are influencing the way we think about our neighbors.
Every Joke is funnier to me in english with american slang words.
That's why stand-up comedy is an almost exclusive English art form.
@@rafanifischer3152 which english? In English or by English people.
the german feminant word bridge describes their whole culture
(lovely, beautiful,...)
aka germans love accuracy and precision
I just realised I was replying not commenting lol
@@rafanifischer3152 keep on dreaming buddy. I can speak 3 languages and have heard stand-up comedies of each. They are all unique and funny. You should learn one more language other than english before commenting such idiocy.
Thoughty2 I believe "you" should not be singular either. I want to go back to thee and thou but I don't want to sound weird in public.
I believe "you" should be singular. I find it hard to form a sentence referring to a set group with the word "you" without following it up with a noun or mentioning a noun before the word. To me the word is used as a directional point above all else
Where I come from, we simply pluralise it; 'All yous down there chatting sh*t' for example.
The modern version is “one”. One is most likely to do this or that. If one could imagine what it would be like to...
i'm pretty sure y'all is a more modern version of this, being a contraction between you and all, but even that sounds weird sometimes
Thou make the most excellent point. If perchance say thee should speak so, thou may not understand me.
"Arrival "...a slow, interesting and definitely great movie.
Anyone else think in a different language to the one you speak ¿
I don't think of "love" as the catch all term that English does. I think of it referring to a number of different phenomena. Also the phrade "knowing someone" in English is too vague.
i talk both Arabic and English, i used to think in Arabic when I lived in Egypt but now I'm in the Uk and think in English.
@@yoshiILY I also swear so much more in english! It even bled over to me saying "fuck" quite often in dutch. But still nearly not as much!
@@yoshiILY yep same english brings out anger in me
it depends when. If im alone I usually think in english but since my family and irl friends are finnish and I speak finnish with them I always think in finnish too. Same goes in school (I go to a swedish school) there I always think in swedish.
That was fabulous, really opened my mind to possibilities!
Having relative descriptors like left and right are a real luxury. Thinking about directions in an absolute way all the time sounds exhausting
Ooh I’m a German and Spanish speaker! The study you provided was really interesting to learn about. I never saw my genders that way, really cool..
Other languages : Bridge is beautiful, slender, strong, etc.
English : Bridge is bridge(insert "The incredibles" meme)
TF2 theme
What a thought provoking video this is. I had never thought about how language can affect your perceptions. Really well done!
Can’t wait to see what’s the title gonna be after ten minutes!
Why Do I Even Look At The Comments well he changed the thumbnail instead
He must of the times changes the thumbnail. Why?
AngelaMerici12 he changed both the thumbnail and the title! He’s so indecisive 💀
Who else loves his videos, especially those suspenders?!?😂
you should see the ones holding his socks up! 🤗
"Oh No! Someone lost _their_ wallet. I hope _they_ find it. I wouldn't want _them_ to worry about it"
It's that easy
I think youve missed the point
21:06 Richard Di Britannia sounds like a CODE GEASS character
My mind was blown wide open from this, I never thought about these kinds of concepts before
One of the most fascinating informative videos I've seen so far! Truly Grateful. Thank you.
Language doesn't re-wire your brain, culture does. The 'linguistic relativity' observed correlates language with perception, however I believe that the change of perception isn't caused by change of language, but change of culture.
Take France for example. Their tendness to be more romantic isn't because there are more words to describe love, but because romantic gestures in French culture are more common.
Language and culture are intertwined. A particular language usually points out to a specific group of people. When you interact with another language, it means that you are also interacting with the culture that speaks the language. You cannot understand one's culture without accessing its language directly.
You cannot seperate language from culture, as you are here trying, and failing, to do.
Oops, I think you mean “tendency”.
France is not the only country that speaks FR... I can concur that France is very very different than other francophone countries. Like day and night!!
@@sunnyjim1355 hey hey easy atleast he has a point lol
You have an excellent point, and worthy of a talk of its own, as language and culture overlap. However, the speaker's point about "linguistic relativity" holds much merit. The speaker's example pertaining to the color-name of blue reminded me of going to the Hardware store as a young adult to buy some grass seed for a bald spot in the lawn of my new home. When asked what variety I wanted, it was a perception-opening experience to learn the color shades of the grass varieties: I henceforth became acutely aware of the varying shades of green in every lawn, and could not "un-see" the variation in color tones which were previously monochromatic to me...
You are right about how having a different tone of voice changes the intent! I've been rewatching your older videos. Where before your words and tone seemed true, they seemed to not hold as much impact or importance. The videos were to me as entertainment only. I'm unsure when the change happened, but now I feel that I am not only listening to your opinion(which I do not always agree with*coughcough Tesla/Edison*), but that there are more facts expressed. I myself express what I have learned here with a different tonality upon sharing to others. That is, after fact checking if it truly intrigues me.😉
So! Thank you for giving me copious amounts of knowledge; that comes in handy for more than just cocktail parties! Cheers!
Your Fellow Towel Carrier, 48😏
In the Philippines, there was a documentary released talking about an indigenous tribe who didn't have the word rape and therefore had no concept of it. Prior to the age of the internet and modernization, there was not a single rape case in the community. It was so unthinkable for them that it just never happened. With the introduction of the word, there are now some cases of it, but still considered one of the worst crimes and is even a taboo for them
10:30 usual response to hate non binaries
@Eskiieline Lelochié yes
My conlang doesn't use "They" as a non-binary 3rd person pronoun. It uses a completely separate pronoun because the language already has four noun genders. There is no English equivalent to it and it is grammatically distinct from "they" and as a result has completely different declensions that don't really translate well into English.
11:29 it's been used as a singular pronoun for hundreds of years.
The more content I see from this guy the more it seems like he's full of shit.
This is probably the coolest thing since sliced bread. It really makes me want to put in the effort to learn another language.
Ya, the world was a grim place before sliced bread
There is research to suggest increasing one's vocabulary specifically around words that describe moods and feelings can increase one's empathy.
As a simplistic example consider the word angry. Adding words such as irritated, annoyed, furious, indignant, incensed, enraged, frustrated, exasperated, etc to your vocabulary allows for nuance, affording more opportunity to relate to another person.
I feel like the memes of today are like an augmentation to English that actually add new information to it, as there are so many memes and its almost like a contest to explore new memes, people end up exploring new territory that normal languages haven't ever been to
Idk what you're talking about
This was the most perfect and knowledgeable piece of information I have been blessed to have crossed my path. That is, up until you justified the English language due to its ambiguous meanings behind words. Especially after you've expressed how dangerous this game being played is.
As an English speaker I noticed as a young child how easy it is to be very deceptive and absolutely honest by carefully choosing one's words with the preferences of the listener. Later adding translations/interpretations to consideration, I became very suspicious of anyone absolutely certain of the meaning in one language of something from another language, even if both languages were more precise.
I really enjoyed this video, thank you for making it.
As a native Finn, I have been thinking about this from time to time. In Finnish language there is no pronouns like he or she and perhaps that changes our way of thinking. Would like to see some indepth study about this.
Since when? How old are you?
@@bonniedavis9076 What does this have anything to do with my age? Been thinking about it perhaps since 2000's or so. That makes it over 20 years ago and I was already adult then
This is so far the most interesting video of this channel that I've seen.
P.S. This guy has a great voice and English accent.
So, using 50 different words to describe “snow” allows/gives the Inuit the ability to distinguish a unique concept makes sense when you live in the Arctic. They convey in a single word that, in order to accurately and precisely describe what takes me, in English, several different words to describe. I don’t have words in my language for that degree of specificity. For example, I describe three different types of snow to convey concepts and differences such as big, heavy, wet flakes from tiny, little ice balls and the medium-sized, light, fluffy snow that you can’t make a snowman with because it won’t stick together. The argument here is if I spoke their language, I would also perceive the world differently, because now I can define each type of snow/ice. The Inuit language naturally developed to convey concepts so precisely because it is necessary in their world. When you live on the ice at times, the subtle differences in ice that I may not even notice, they see the difference between life or death. Thank you for this! The vocabulary of visual artists will include many different concepts of a colour’s shade. Where the average person might say the house is blue and gold, an artist would more likely describe it as a dark, navy blue house with bronze trim. See the differences in your initial idea vs the more precise wording. The number and type of words at my disposal, determines how I perceive the world around me!
" Someone is knocking on the door! And they are making a lot of noise! "
They is the normal pronoun to use when we do not know the identity of the actor.
"When you arrive , give your keys to the valet. They will take care of it."
If , instead, we know the name and gender of the valet, we can say " He will take care of it.."
So, no, it is not just 'vernacular'. @Lingofiles
I see down thread people take this as connected with 'gender-pronouns' , but it's a structure that always existed.
Thank you. I've read many comments from people stating that they as a singular has existed for a long time, without giving examples. Seeing the examples I felt a bit dumb as a native english speaker for needing someone to provide examples but, as you suggest, I was probably thinking strictly in the gender pronoun sense.
@@jaymiddleton772 cheers. I taught English for twenty years. The habit hasn’t worn off!
Down thread people, speaking as an up threader, are we?
@@MA7-6585 ...down thread, people are taking this as ...(no thread superiority claimed!)
Great little piece that, el’thoughto!
Enjoyed as always!
Cheers matey!
0:20
In the german version it has 3, it is "in love" "enganged" and "married"
Singular "they" has been around since at least the time of Shakespeare. It's not new at all.
I don’t think he implied it was new. I think he simply questioned the validity of the usage. It’s common because it’s easy and understandable, but maybe not the best use of the word, or the best way to structure the sentence.
@@unapologeticsouth it's the only way to do it when you're repeatedly referring to someone of unknown gender. You can't keep saying 'his or her', 'he or she'. It sounds silly.
"Hello Officer. Yes, someone broke into my house, he or she came in the window and he or she went through my drawers. He or she left a trail of footprints. I hope you catch him or her."
No, we say "someone broke into my house, they came in the window, and they went through my drawers. They left a trail of footprints, I hope you catch them."
@@themudpit621 I’m not saying it’s uncommon to speak this way. I’m not saying I haven’t always done it. I’m not saying it sounds less than understandable. I’m simply saying, I, like Thoughty2, have questioned it. There are certainly ways other than you have illustrated to say the same thing without using pronouns at all. It’s more cumbersome than what we have grown used to, but possibly more correct. It often sounds better in speech to end a sentence with a preposition, but it’s not proper.
“Where did that dog come from?”
“From where did that dog come?”
I’m as guilty as any when it comes to misusing words and phrases, or using poor grammar that ultimately erodes our language. But, it’s worth knowing there are proper ways of saying things wether you choose to use them or not.
@@unapologeticsouth ...I hope your name is not referring to the Southern U.S. if it is...change it if you want to be taken seriously. Otherwise your TH-cam name is practically equivalent to unapologetic moron.
@@jeffjones3040 “What is in a name? That which we call a rose, by an other name, would smell as sweet.” -ws
Thoughty2 forever..
Ever since I've started watching this channel I swear I feel like my general knowledge of the world has increased immensely.
Thank you.🙏
My dad's 57 Chev was a girl. He always said: "Fill 'er up with number one." when we pulled up to the pump.
I noticed that many men feel love for their cars or other possessions, more than many women feel for men. Haha
@@madmax5841 Not necessarily the case, here. I remember these days, myself. My father didn't have any love for his car. When there's a dude you have to interact with twice a week whose job is to fill your gas and clean your windshield, "fillerup" just becomes what everyone says to avoid starting an actual conversation.
i'm gonna guess you guys are german.
Learning my native tongue made me think of everything differently, almost like perception was a lens and learning polish adjusted that lens
Following.
Do you remember the time before you learned your native tongue?
I was scred for a little bit because I realized I've been using masculine and feminine pro nouns to describe things for all my life and I feel like I've been lied to for some reason
Now that i think abour it, learning 3 languages at some point that all have different genders for every noun is what might've made me sick of gendering things and people in the first place. It's all bullshit circus.
This is one of the most interesting videos on language I've ever watched. I'm saving it so I can go through it again.
"Black then white are all I see, in my infancy. Red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me. Lets me see."
Thank you for what you're doing 🙏
In this video, at 2:51, there's shown a bit of a book there that is written in Romanian language and it's actually a page of the bible that speaks about The Word. Very interesting, as this is a very complex language - the opposite of Hobi tribe that it was mentioned at the time. Very good work, Sir, although there aren't many to get this subtlility, there it is pointed out 🤝
P.S. I am Romanian obviously.
Words and language are the 'collective agreement' that keeps 'reality' together. What it is is how we speak it. This is how we learn our 'reality' from our earliest age. The 'agreement' of 'this is a chair,' and 'this is a horse.'
'Reality' is the 'agreement.' The associations are what creates that 'reality.'
The movie "Arrival" is just like this!
Aliens come to earth and a scientist tries to learn their language. Thanks to this she could see things/remember things that didn't happen yet.
Pretty cool movie, you would probably like it too.
(Edit: I'm now at 8:50 , I should've seen it coming xD )
😂😂
Did you read the book too?
This subject was deeply discussed in the Hideo Kojima's METAL GEAR SOLID 5
Rods and cones which are the devices responsible for receiving colors within our eyes translating them and transmitting that information through the optic nerve to our occipital lobe. These physical features are still developing in the eyes when we are born as babies. The first colors perceived in the spectrum as this occurs, are black white and red; so the idea that that is the order universally that colors are connotated within our language makes total sense.
it is our genetic development which decided it because we do not consciously enumerate or evolve our aspects of our inner eye or occipital systems. It's truly astounding and so simple and logically basic at the same time.