I speak Spanish as my mother tongue and I sometimes dream in English but only when an american friend is in my dream. I used to be a Sign Language Interpreter and My family used to laught at me because I was moving my hands while sleeping.
41:45 the part about saying I love you is so true. In asian collective societies, it is rare for family members to show that explicit level of affection. It's supposed to be shown in what you do for them or for one another. It's not a mean to hide them, but the asian's cultures and literature highly values the abstract implication of something, than actually saying it. It is far more enjoyable to hear about the details of an apple, how red it is, where it is, how long it has been dangling off that one tree, the sun's reflection and the environment around it, than saying "it's an apple".
Yes! I'm Brazilian and when I noticed how easy "I love you" is said in American English I started paying attention. We say "I like you" - translating it back from Portuguese "Eu gosto de você", I love you is just for our partners and family members. The funny thing is that one day I said "Eu te amo" (I love you) to a girl friend of mine. lol It was very strange.
Most definitely true: different languages are like parallel universes, each with its own incredible richness of expresive modalities. This is even true of languages as similar as French and English. When I read in Chinese, I truly feel I'm moving about in a world altogether different; my elation knows no bounds.
"It keeps you a child within your own ethnic community." That's a brillant insight that I've never thought of in a manner related to linguistics, but only in the way in which the power dynamic is late to shift in a culture that embraces a new adolescent longevity within the home.
i've only been doing Russian for 1 and a half years and i have dreams of people arguing in Russian ^-^. it feels amazing. I remember when it started its how i knew the langauge was starting to get into my head in a very deep way i felt
My impression is that it is much easier to become fluent in a foreign language that is not a heritage language. There seems be too much emotional baggage associated with a heritage language that hinders fluency in later life.
I've had an accident and a big rock fell on my back when we are next to a waterfall. I got myself on the ground. I couldn't breath at that moment so all I could sound was like "o-o-o oh." I felt the pain on my back and I was trying to define it in my mother tongue (Turkish) like "Did somebody shot me by gun? What's happening? I remember that I turned my back to go back." I didn't know what happened, I didn't see the rock when it falls. I was trying to figure out what's happening as I said in Turkish but my first sentence after this was "I'm OK" in English because I was speaking in English just seconds ago with my friends. I was surprised even at that time like "Why? How could I speak in another language in such a terrible conditions."
lol In London there are soo many languages in one day I heard Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, Finnish,Arabic, Russian and French. Embrace your language. love it! :)
I find it funny how people say to me (usually in a basic-level language class), "I can't wait until I start dreaming in (insert language here). Then I'll know I can speak it!". This is strange because, for me, dreaming happens fairly on in the language-learning process. I might be barely able to string a coherent sentence together when awake, but able to have a conversation in a dream - and usually when I wake up and think about it, I know my brain wasn't just making it up, it was the real language. I usually dream in English, because that's my first language and the one I speak most, but if I've used a different language a lot during that day, I sometimes dream in that language instead. Sometimes I just have a random dream in another language, and often when I have more than one dream in a night, one is in one language and the rest are in English. Strangely enough, though, when I was in Spain, the language a dreamt the most in was German. I have no idea why, because I was speaking Spanish and occasionally English the whole time, never German.
Rachel Hay Had a dream in a Japanese looking place speaking Japanese I guess... Never been to Japan knew nothing about Japan. Learned years later the place I dreamed of is real... Very unlikely that I was speaking and understanding Japanese fluently, but it's an interesting and somewhat haunting thought.
i dream in images and actions, i've never had to use language to my knowledge, i'm mono lingual, but my ex wife is japanese and my son is fluent in both.
In the youtube search box type "Ugly Thanks" it's the third one down. It's a language I developed to talk to youtubers who have lost their souls. Works like a charm too.
Russian accents are very distinctive and a pleasure to listen to. My heritage is Russian/Ukrainian and I felt very comfortable and at home when I visited St. Petersburg.
The Russian woman has an absolutely jaw-dropping American accent. I've been studying Russian for five years, and not once was there a single betrayal of her mother tongue. I would've honed in on it immediately. Wow.
I don't usually think about translating words much, because for some languages I just don't, I just speak it. But today I was at the graduation ceremony from my (German-speaking) school with my mother, who doesn't speak German at all, and I had to translate everything for her. Mostly I just ad-libbed and condensed and gave her the basic idea what was going on, but sometimes I had to stop and think, "Wait, what does that actually mean in English?" I think the thing I miss most in some languages is the reflexive sort of "-self" or "own" thing that pops up in English. I can't think of an example right now, and I never really knew I missed it until recently. I was trying to write something - I think in German - the other day, and I knew what I was trying to say but that nuance simply couldn't be done in German. I had to find a similar nuance to use. And the whole time I was thinking, "I wish this were Gaelic. It's so easy in Gaelic, I just stick a 'fhein' in there!" Oh, I've found an example. In English, I can say, "My own language". I'm speaking/typing in my own language, rather than one I've learnt. In Gaelic, that's easy: cànan mi-fhèin. But in German, it can't be said.
Haha "umchinae" @1:34:30 - Obviously a lot is lost in John's translation, but I think that was the point! This panel resonates so much with me as a 1st gen Chinese-American with immigrant parents who don't speak English. To Maxine's point, my family has never said "I love you" to each other. Only recently did I tell my mom, "I love you" in English. That's over 20 years of never saying it. On a side note, I've also had fluent dreams in Korean and French (I've "studied" some but speak neither!)
I agree with this. In Europe, being bilingual, or speaking several languages is VERY normal in many countries, and there isn't any sense of seclusion. In the U.S., take any city, and you will find neighbourhoods which are of a particular people/race who still speak their family's language. It isn't as common here in Europe, even though it still exists a little bit. It's interesting!
I speak 4 languages and i have dreams in all of them. Sometimes i speak them very well, correctly and without mistakes, sometimes i try to find the suitable words and i just can't. And every time when i wake up i want to speak to the language i dreamed of...weird but nice!
I just enjoyed all the video. I speak 3 languages but I have to admit that I only dream in my first language (spanish) somitimes I speak english or german without having any accent but I know that it's a dream.
Masallah cok bilgili birine benziyorsun. Ben Belçikada yasiyorum, dogma büyüme buraliyim, bu yüzden ana dilim Türkçe'den sonra dogal olarak Hollandaca ve Fransizca ögrendim okulda (Belçikanin yerli dilleri bu ikisi.) Daha sonra film seyrederek Ingilizce ve Hintçe ögrendim tamamen sans. Ve çok sükür fazlasitla yetiyor bu bes dil bana :) Son bir sorum olacak, Üniversitede ne okudunuz, ve su an ne is yapiyorsunuz çok merak ediyorum?
Actually right away, when she started speaking: 21:21-21:24 her accent popped up immediately. And it is her r's. See, Russians with bad accent (those who does not even try to pronounce english r's but just substitute them with Russian "р"), have r's as hard as arabic accent r's for exemple. However, when we try to pronounce "english" r... then it sounds way too soft, softer then American one. And it is recognizable immediately, at least for my ear.
As a child when we moved to Denmark from the Netherlands I never wanted to give up my mother tongue. It's very strange to me to hear that children want to give up their mother tongue just to be accepted... It has always wondered me why some children didn't want to speak their parents' language. Maybe because I'm interested in languages. I don't know.
I've never done that, but I have woken up talking to myself in another language instead of English. I do it with Spanish a lot. I sometimes think in English in my head, but for some reason or another, I just slip into Spanish, linger there, and come back to English.
Very interesting video, a lot of interesting thoughts, but I want to mention - wow! Lera is so attractive! And her English doesn't look like her second language.
Dr. Boroditsky the example you offered in 1:32:00 " недоперепила" is not quite a commonly used word, it's more like a made-up-to-amuse word to make Russian sound super-complicated when it is not, although I have to admit it illustrates its possibilities. In my whole life I have never heard one use this word in such a weird form.
im a native english speaker (australia) and never spoke (or learnt) another language until highschool where I had to finish my last 3 yrs in japan. I dont rememberexactly when my thinking switched to japanese only, but sometime beforehand, i had dreams in japanese and upon waking I would be so mentally exhausted haha. After i finished highschool and returned to aust it took me about 6months to fix my grammer. Languages are fun.
1:37- Re: Saying I love you to people.This was virtually unheard of in Ireland 25 years ago: definitely a product now of overdosing on American culture. In fact when I was a kid it was a constant source of amusement to us when kids on TV would say "I love you dad". Seemed very forced and ridiculous to us. Point being that it seems culture and language are not mutually exclusive. Great talk!
Spanish is my mother tongue, then i learned English & Italian as my second languages & this is kind of weird, but i learned french when i was 59 (im 64 yrs old now in 2019) then at 61 one i learned portuguese & the wierdest thing is that i used to dream in french in 1979 40 yrs ago!!! When the only languages i knew back then in addition to my mother tongue spanish were; english & italian french is my weakest language i took took proficiency test & the results 3 times was b1 level , the thing is that i usually dreamed a lot arguing in french except that the last time i dreamt that i was talking to Claudia Cardinale, & president Macron from France about pollution in the worlds most populated cities the languages i dream the most are spanish & english most of the time in portuguese very seldom even though my level in portuguese is at the end of b2.the human brain never stops to amaze me!!!
Thoughts and dreams do not have a language. Thoughts are abstract. We translate them into words of a language in our minds and we then we speak those translated words. The translation from abstract thoughts to words in our minds is so rapid because of constant practice that we are unable to resolve them into the two distinct steps that are actually occurring. So we erroneously conclude that we think in a language. With practice we can develop self-awareness to such an extent that we can resolve the two distinct steps occurring - formation of abstract thoughts followed by translation into words. Similarly we do not dream in any language. Dreams are abstract. We can dream of eating a hamburger or chopping firewood or of any other activity, including speaking in a particular language. That doesn't mean we dream in that language. Our minds are not actually constrained by fetters imposed by human culture and society, like language. We ought put in more effort to free ourselves of the burdens and fetters that human species and human society impose upon us.
Interesting. As a Dutch person, after 10 minutes it occurred to me that nobody comes from a background where it is completely normal as a kid to be prepared to learn at least three other languages in school.
The way of language develops always fascinated me. Somehow it is kind of true that English is a lot easier to learn than Chinese when absorbing the key knowledge within a subject instead of focusing on learning the language itself. In another words the complex of Chinese slows down the learning process, however the literature beauty of Chinese language is boundless!
Children recognize that if they want to be able to optimize their acceptance and integrate into the economy they must master that language used by the population.
For the first question ... the answer is kids learning multiple languages do slow down compared to monolingual kids... but the catch is after a certain point they catch up and are at pair in English plus they have another language ...
Not exactly, but sometimes I have a hard time pinning down what language I use inside my head for my own thoughts... Sometimes it's just the language I'm using the most at a given moment, but most times I feel I just think in concepts, regardless of language. (btw, I speak 5-6 languages, although most of them are inside the same family)
hi, QUESTION does anyone here dream without sound. In my dreams there's never sound or speach? I am sometimes aware that something has been said and I understand what has been spoken without ever hearing the words.
In the UK we have a poor history of speaking foreign languages but its improving . But of course its a being an native English speaker as everyone in Europe speaks English. Now I speak fluent French and Spanish and my kids both speak French. The Dutch all seem to be trilingual from an early age.
It is not that there are no words for 'I love you' in Chinese because there are, it is just the Chinese are not so straightforward as their Western counterparts. There are numerous ways of communicating love: verbal encouragement, words of appreciation, quality time spend with the loved ones, acts of service - you name it - and they vary across cultures. It is a cultural thing. I am surprised how some people keep resorting to false equivalence (41:23): equating language with culture when the two things are not equal. History knows a lot of examples when the death of a language did not lead to the disappearance of a culture the language was once part of.
Hace un rato me heche una pestaña y empecé a soñar en griego, no es la primera vez que me pasa,no me acuerdo del sueño y creo que eso no importa mucho, lo que me llama la atención es soñar en un idioma que no tiene nada que ver conmigo pues no conosco a ningún griego y ese país me es indiferente, no creo conocer más de 5 etimologías griegas en fin nada que ver es más en el minuto 4:47 una mujer dice en este video como se dice buenas noches en griego y no entendí nada y como en mis sueños bien que puedo entender, he soñado en otros idiomas que he estudiado pero pues eso se me hace hasta cierto punto normal,pero soñar en un idioma que no conosco se me hace muy raro, decia Aristoteles "no hay nada en nuestra mente que no venga de nuestros sentidos", pues no sé si tenga razón, ni ayer ni hoy fuí a un restaurant griego, ni escuche música griega etc de cualquier forma es interesante ver una conferencia sobre neurociencias que toque éste tema.
Has anyone else woken themselves up screaming something in their second or third language, but not understood what they were saying in the daze after waking up? It's happened to me at least once...
Haha, funny that. No doubt it's in everyone's advantage to learn English, just the same as it would be advantageous for you to know Spanish or English. English is actually quite difficult to learn and not at all an easy language to master. I know that English is a widespread language that is understood on a basic level throughout most countries of the world because of pop culture, but it really shouldn't be taken for granted. A lot of people find it just as hard as Spanish might be to you ;)
As you guessed right, I didn't even know there was a language called Bashkir. I had to check it out on google maps :) I'm Turkish btw, I'm guessing they're close languages since it's Turkic? So, how come you learned all these other languages then? Did you study languages or something at the University?
When Maxim says the word "lie," at 1:30, I can't figure out the word at all. After some googling, I finally figure out the word is "li" just like in the caption. Her "peasant dialect" sounds likely a dialect from Canton province, and "lie" is the pronounciation for the character.
I would like to say same story for me but with Spanish. It really messed up my spoken language mainly because I randomly cannot recall the English words for something that I am trying to describe.
my ex wife is japanese and i always say that what i miss most is japanese women gossiping, the sing song way they speak, but japanese seems very gender oriented, men speak much more gutterally. an ex-girlfriend, and friend, of mine speaks spanish, french english and german, and listening to her talking to family always sounds like a heated argument is going on, and it's odd when single words or phrases in english creep into the conversation, i wonder what differences being able to vocalise different concepts in the appropriate language that makes. this cutting the phrenum is interesting because my mother always says she was worried i would talk with a lisp, i hadn't thought about that for years and now it seems a common bit of mythology. another interesting observation, that maxine hong says it's hard to say i love you in chinese, my ex-wife wouldn't hold hands in public because "it's not the japanese way", and the approximation to "i love you" is tsuki-da, "i like you". i'm not sure expressivitey is a word, google suggests expressiveness, americans "make up" words, the english "create words" - jus sayin. - on learning: it takes a lifetime to learn (guitar) so the sooner you start, the longer it takes. on the subject of schools our son went to japanese school one day a week, one morning in fact, he and his whole class passed GCSE japanese a year early, the school is great for teaching, but also being relaxed, i enjoyed japanese school more than the english schools, parents are much more involved, i wish there was more crossover. on the dream thing, i've never had a dream that had dialogue, i dream situations and events, but i don't recall ever having had to use language...
Wow, that's pretty much what happened to me except that I went from Venezuela (Spanish) to the US. I hate when I don't remember a basic word in Spanish, it makes me feel stupid xD
I'm not entirely sure, actually - can you name a couple times at which it is particularly apparent to you? I think her r's are actually better than a few of my native-speaking friends, honestly, and she also doesn't even have a trace of Russian stress patterns, to my ear, which is one of the hardest things for native speakers to shed.
English is just international, but not universal. In countries where it's not the national language just the rich people and middle class so far can speak English, because it costs to learn it. And there are countries in which just the young people are able to speak it, because the elders didn't need to learn it when they were young. So no, English is not enough. And by thinking like that, you are limiting yourself.
It is impossible to make language development stop or even die. Even when parents and teens speak the same language, there will be some loss of it for the new generation due to the gap between them. Feeling excluded for not being proficient in a language is a universal linguistics symptom. Can a system be called Educational if they exclude learners’ families?
When people know that an audio sample of their speech is being taken, they do not pronounce their words the way they would normally. Instead, they pronounce their words the way they believe is "proper English". Glaring example: people who would normally pronounce the word "wash" as "worsh", say "wash" when the tape recorder is running.
I am not sure what you mean by "Russian stress patterns" but probably you are right about this, since she's been in US since she was 12, if I remember correctly. My son is 30 yo and has been in US since he was 10. I do not hear his accent but he says that in rare occasions people do hear his accent. Go figure...
i seak 2 languages also i can understand other two dialects but these are enough because english is an international and sufficient therefore no need for any other languages
i also speak 3 languages and i mix them all up somehow, because i use them all, and when im dreaming i don't even know what language im speaking because for me there is no diffrence between them, i understand them all, and its irritating
Michael Sawyer Your first point is meaningless - if we English-speakers use the German word 'schadenfreude' in English - as fairly recently popularised in the character of Lisa Simpson - we can use it or misuse it in any way we want without reference to the original language. As it happens we use it in the same way as in German. This does not apply to the French word 'seance', however, which we have given a meaning different to that in French. Other languages do the same with our words. German has adopted the English word 'Handy' to mean 'cellphone.' There is no such thing as 'kidnapping' words in the sense you appear to mean it. Your explanation of the difference between the simple past tense and the defective verb 'used to' is both irrelevant - I can see no relationship with the topic - and insufficient. If I say 'I went to that school when I was a child' I am saying that I went there habitually. Your understanding of the simple past tense is simplistic and needs revision. I can't say 'I came to that school as a child', however, which is effectively what the professor in the video does. This is because in all forms of English 'come' and 'go' mean very different things. I agree that ambiguity is not a problem in this case. In Swedish, and several other languages, they generally only use one verb for the English verbs 'teach' and 'learn.' I accept this causes them no problem as they adjust the grammatical context of their word accordingly. So I accept that it is not necessary to have quite as many different words or verbs as we have. I also recognise that, probably due to low educational standards, many Americans are failing to make a distinction between certain verbs - a frequent failure to distinguish between 'bring' and 'take' comes to mind. In this case I am simply expressing my astonishment that an apparently educated person could make a language mistake as profound as the one he does. The language we use and the distinctions we make between words are the tools of thought. Sloppiness in such matters generally results in a loss of meaning and expressiveness. Since language is one of the key tools of this person's trade at an eminent institution it is surprising that he has such a poor command of it. Mistaking 'go' for 'come' is as profound as mistaking 'I owe you money' for 'you owe me money.'
Michael Sawyer But he doesn't say that - he says "I went here" - listen to the interview. However, though I may be pretentious at least I am not vulgar.
I'm in love with Lera Boroditsky... I didn't thought that in english ;)
I speak Spanish as my mother tongue and I sometimes dream in English but only when an american friend is in my dream. I used to be a Sign Language Interpreter and My family used to laught at me because I was moving my hands while sleeping.
Sergio Velázquez lol
I speak Spanish/English/Italian and I dream in any combination of the 3. It's kinda weird and fun at the same time.
41:45 the part about saying I love you is so true. In asian collective societies, it is rare for family members to show that explicit level of affection. It's supposed to be shown in what you do for them or for one another. It's not a mean to hide them, but the asian's cultures and literature highly values the abstract implication of something, than actually saying it. It is far more enjoyable to hear about the details of an apple, how red it is, where it is, how long it has been dangling off that one tree, the sun's reflection and the environment around it, than saying "it's an apple".
Yes! I'm Brazilian and when I noticed how easy "I love you" is said in American English I started paying attention. We say "I like you" - translating it back from Portuguese "Eu gosto de você",
I love you is just for our partners and family members. The funny thing is that one day I said "Eu te amo" (I love you) to a girl friend of mine. lol
It was very strange.
I speak 3 Indian languages, but "I Love You" feels weird in all of them.
Most definitely true: different languages are like parallel universes, each with its own incredible richness of expresive modalities. This is even true of languages as similar as French and English. When I read in Chinese, I truly feel I'm moving about in a world altogether different; my elation knows no bounds.
Lera is incredible!
"It keeps you a child within your own ethnic community."
That's a brillant insight that I've never thought of in a manner related to linguistics, but only in the way in which the power dynamic is late to shift in a culture that embraces a new adolescent longevity within the home.
i've only been doing Russian for 1 and a half years and i have dreams of people arguing in Russian ^-^. it feels amazing. I remember when it started its how i knew the langauge was starting to get into my head in a very deep way i felt
Very interesting debate, thank you very much to share such precious moment.
Wonderful panel of speakers! It was very educating. I can relate to many of the stories that were told.
amazing chat. Really enjoyed you all ! Thanks for your insight
here for John Cho! oh, and all the amazing stories. love it.
Very interesting topics to research on further.
Awesome discussion! Thank you. This makes me want to study linguistics.
Amazing. Keep up the great work.
this speech is so much beneficial for improve of english communication speech and understanding
My impression is that it is much easier to become fluent in a foreign language that is not a heritage language. There seems be too much emotional baggage associated with a heritage language that hinders fluency in later life.
interesting thought
Raised in a three language environment, I was selectively mute until age 18, this is very painful subject.
Muchas gracias
I've had an accident and a big rock fell on my back when we are next to a waterfall. I got myself on the ground. I couldn't breath at that moment so all I could sound was like "o-o-o oh." I felt the pain on my back and I was trying to define it in my mother tongue (Turkish) like "Did somebody shot me by gun? What's happening? I remember that I turned my back to go back." I didn't know what happened, I didn't see the rock when it falls. I was trying to figure out what's happening as I said in Turkish but my first sentence after this was "I'm OK" in English because I was speaking in English just seconds ago with my friends. I was surprised even at that time like "Why? How could I speak in another language in such a terrible conditions."
Very nice, I enjoyed it a lot!
lol In London there are soo many languages in one day I heard Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, Finnish,Arabic, Russian and French. Embrace your language. love it! :)
and what about Polish, it said to be the most spoken language in UK after English..
Yeh, I know...in fact I'm actually surprised they don't teach Polish in schools..I really think they should.
fascinating
What a great conversation! I loved it!
Geoff Nunberg was such a scholar and the sweetest guy. May he rest in peace.
I find it funny how people say to me (usually in a basic-level language class), "I can't wait until I start dreaming in (insert language here). Then I'll know I can speak it!". This is strange because, for me, dreaming happens fairly on in the language-learning process. I might be barely able to string a coherent sentence together when awake, but able to have a conversation in a dream - and usually when I wake up and think about it, I know my brain wasn't just making it up, it was the real language. I usually dream in English, because that's my first language and the one I speak most, but if I've used a different language a lot during that day, I sometimes dream in that language instead. Sometimes I just have a random dream in another language, and often when I have more than one dream in a night, one is in one language and the rest are in English. Strangely enough, though, when I was in Spain, the language a dreamt the most in was German. I have no idea why, because I was speaking Spanish and occasionally English the whole time, never German.
Rachel Hay
Had a dream in a Japanese looking place speaking Japanese I guess... Never been to Japan knew nothing about Japan. Learned years later the place I dreamed of is real... Very unlikely that I was speaking and understanding Japanese fluently, but it's an interesting and somewhat haunting thought.
i dream in images and actions, i've never had to use language to my knowledge, i'm mono lingual, but my ex wife is japanese and my son is fluent in both.
In the youtube search box type "Ugly Thanks" it's the third one down. It's a language I developed to talk to youtubers who have lost their souls. Works like a charm too.
good contribution .. it confirmed to me why German thinking is completely different from all others .. (thought pattern, view of things) thank you
Russian accents are very distinctive and a pleasure to listen to. My heritage is Russian/Ukrainian and I felt very comfortable and at home when I visited St. Petersburg.
Recent studies show that children learn language more easily because adults automatically correct them. Adults are less inclined to correct adults.
The Russian woman has an absolutely jaw-dropping American accent. I've been studying Russian for five years, and not once was there a single betrayal of her mother tongue. I would've honed in on it immediately.
Wow.
This may be because Americans are exposed to foreign accents so often that some non-native accents are no longer classed as foreign.
I don't usually think about translating words much, because for some languages I just don't, I just speak it. But today I was at the graduation ceremony from my (German-speaking) school with my mother, who doesn't speak German at all, and I had to translate everything for her. Mostly I just ad-libbed and condensed and gave her the basic idea what was going on, but sometimes I had to stop and think, "Wait, what does that actually mean in English?"
I think the thing I miss most in some languages is the reflexive sort of "-self" or "own" thing that pops up in English. I can't think of an example right now, and I never really knew I missed it until recently. I was trying to write something - I think in German - the other day, and I knew what I was trying to say but that nuance simply couldn't be done in German. I had to find a similar nuance to use. And the whole time I was thinking, "I wish this were Gaelic. It's so easy in Gaelic, I just stick a 'fhein' in there!"
Oh, I've found an example. In English, I can say, "My own language". I'm speaking/typing in my own language, rather than one I've learnt. In Gaelic, that's easy: cànan mi-fhèin. But in German, it can't be said.
VEry interesting and I learned a lot! Thanks for the video. It was very educational!
Haha "umchinae" @1:34:30 - Obviously a lot is lost in John's translation, but I think that was the point! This panel resonates so much with me as a 1st gen Chinese-American with immigrant parents who don't speak English. To Maxine's point, my family has never said "I love you" to each other. Only recently did I tell my mom, "I love you" in English. That's over 20 years of never saying it. On a side note, I've also had fluent dreams in Korean and French (I've "studied" some but speak neither!)
I agree with this. In Europe, being bilingual, or speaking several languages is VERY normal in many countries, and there isn't any sense of seclusion. In the U.S., take any city, and you will find neighbourhoods which are of a particular people/race who still speak their family's language. It isn't as common here in Europe, even though it still exists a little bit. It's interesting!
They gave me an IQ test, and I had zero ))))))))
OMG she's awesome!
I speak 4 languages and i have dreams in all of them. Sometimes i speak them very well, correctly and without mistakes, sometimes i try to find the suitable words and i just can't. And every time when i wake up i want to speak to the language i dreamed of...weird but nice!
this video is great! thanks!!!!
hardly understand all every each conversations but the conference is really worth to watch :)
BILINGUALISM is the KEY :) RESPECT for and learning in BOTH languages :) including SIGN languages :) An excellent video- thought provoking !!!! :)
I just enjoyed all the video. I speak 3 languages but I have to admit that I only dream in my first language (spanish) somitimes I speak english or german without having any accent but I know that it's a dream.
Masallah cok bilgili birine benziyorsun. Ben Belçikada yasiyorum, dogma büyüme buraliyim, bu yüzden ana dilim Türkçe'den sonra dogal olarak Hollandaca ve Fransizca ögrendim okulda (Belçikanin yerli dilleri bu ikisi.) Daha sonra film seyrederek Ingilizce ve Hintçe ögrendim tamamen sans. Ve çok sükür fazlasitla yetiyor bu bes dil bana :)
Son bir sorum olacak, Üniversitede ne okudunuz, ve su an ne is yapiyorsunuz çok merak ediyorum?
Actually right away, when she started speaking: 21:21-21:24 her accent popped up immediately. And it is her r's. See, Russians with bad accent (those who does not even try to pronounce english r's but just substitute them with Russian "р"), have r's as hard as arabic accent r's for exemple. However, when we try to pronounce "english" r... then it sounds way too soft, softer then American one. And it is recognizable immediately, at least for my ear.
I don't know how I found this but I'm staying.
As a child when we moved to Denmark from the Netherlands I never wanted to give up my mother tongue. It's very strange to me to hear that children want to give up their mother tongue just to be accepted... It has always wondered me why some children didn't want to speak their parents' language. Maybe because I'm interested in languages. I don't know.
At 1:31:05, "madu" from Indonesian also means "honey".
Exactly. That is how polygamy is viewed by men. It is a loanword.
I've never done that, but I have woken up talking to myself in another language instead of English. I do it with Spanish a lot. I sometimes think in English in my head, but for some reason or another, I just slip into Spanish, linger there, and come back to English.
Thank you!!!
"Quite interesting chat." (E. Sapir) "You're right, buddy!" (B. Whorf)
This was interesting and funny! :)
Very interesting video, a lot of interesting thoughts, but I want to mention - wow! Lera is so attractive! And her English doesn't look like her second language.
Dr. Boroditsky the example you offered in 1:32:00 " недоперепила" is not quite a commonly used word, it's more like a made-up-to-amuse word to make Russian sound super-complicated when it is not, although I have to admit it illustrates its possibilities. In my whole life I have never heard one use this word in such a weird form.
im a native english speaker (australia) and never spoke (or learnt) another language until highschool where I had to finish my last 3 yrs in japan. I dont rememberexactly when my thinking switched to japanese only, but sometime beforehand, i had dreams in japanese and upon waking I would be so mentally exhausted haha. After i finished highschool and returned to aust it took me about 6months to fix my grammer. Languages are fun.
1:37- Re: Saying I love you to people.This was virtually unheard of in Ireland 25 years ago: definitely a product now of overdosing on American culture. In fact when I was a kid it was a constant source of amusement to us when kids on TV would say "I love you dad". Seemed very forced and ridiculous to us. Point being that it seems culture and language are not mutually exclusive. Great talk!
Spanish is my mother tongue, then i learned English & Italian as my second languages & this is kind of weird, but i learned french when i was 59 (im 64 yrs old now in 2019) then at 61 one i learned portuguese & the wierdest thing is that i used to dream in french in 1979 40 yrs ago!!! When the only languages i knew back then in addition to my mother tongue spanish were; english & italian french is my weakest language i took took proficiency test & the results 3 times was b1 level , the thing is that i usually dreamed a lot arguing in french except that the last time i dreamt that i was talking to Claudia Cardinale, & president Macron from France about pollution in the worlds most populated cities the languages i dream the most are spanish & english most of the time in portuguese very seldom even though my level in portuguese is at the end of b2.the human brain never stops to amaze me!!!
Thoughts and dreams do not have a language. Thoughts are abstract. We translate them into words of a language in our minds and we then we speak those translated words. The translation from abstract thoughts to words in our minds is so rapid because of constant practice that we are unable to resolve them into the two distinct steps that are actually occurring. So we erroneously conclude that we think in a language. With practice we can develop self-awareness to such an extent that we can resolve the two distinct steps occurring - formation of abstract thoughts followed by translation into words.
Similarly we do not dream in any language. Dreams are abstract. We can dream of eating a hamburger or chopping firewood or of any other activity, including speaking in a particular language. That doesn't mean we dream in that language.
Our minds are not actually constrained by fetters imposed by human culture and society, like language. We ought put in more effort to free ourselves of the burdens and fetters that human species and human society impose upon us.
Interesting. As a Dutch person, after 10 minutes it occurred to me that nobody comes from a background where it is completely normal as a kid to be prepared to learn at least three other languages in school.
The way of language develops always fascinated me. Somehow it is kind of true that English is a lot easier to learn than Chinese when absorbing the key knowledge within a subject instead of focusing on learning the language itself. In another words the complex of Chinese slows down the learning process, however the literature beauty of Chinese language is boundless!
Children recognize that if they want to be able to optimize their acceptance and integrate into the economy they must master that language used by the population.
The "i love you" part is soooooo true
For the first question ... the answer is kids learning multiple languages do slow down compared to monolingual kids... but the catch is after a certain point they catch up and are at pair in English plus they have another language ...
i totally agree , when i started russian i felt a complete..baby like i could never have imagined the grammar and how it would differ to :).
Can I Play ?
Not exactly, but sometimes I have a hard time pinning down what language I use inside my head for my own thoughts... Sometimes it's just the language I'm using the most at a given moment, but most times I feel I just think in concepts, regardless of language. (btw, I speak 5-6 languages, although most of them are inside the same family)
hi,
QUESTION does anyone here dream without sound. In my dreams there's never sound or speach? I am sometimes aware that something has been said and I understand what has been spoken without ever hearing the words.
gateshead1000 It happens sometimes as if the voice and picture being told separately ,or sounds like non consistent subs sometimes.
the actor who plays that role yes
In the UK we have a poor history of speaking foreign languages but its improving . But of course its a being an native English speaker as everyone in Europe speaks English. Now I speak fluent French and Spanish and my kids both speak French. The Dutch all seem to be trilingual from an early age.
It is not that there are no words for 'I love you' in Chinese because there are, it is just the Chinese are not so straightforward as their Western counterparts. There are numerous ways of communicating love: verbal encouragement, words of appreciation, quality time spend with the loved ones, acts of service - you name it - and they vary across cultures. It is a cultural thing. I am surprised how some people keep resorting to false equivalence (41:23): equating language with culture when the two things are not equal. History knows a lot of examples when the death of a language did not lead to the disappearance of a culture the language was once part of.
Hace un rato me heche una pestaña y empecé a soñar en griego, no es la primera vez que me pasa,no me acuerdo del sueño y creo que eso no importa mucho, lo que me llama la atención es soñar en un idioma que no tiene nada que ver conmigo pues no conosco a ningún griego y ese país me es indiferente, no creo conocer más de 5 etimologías griegas en fin nada que ver es más en el minuto 4:47 una mujer dice en este video como se dice buenas noches en griego y no entendí nada y como en mis sueños bien que puedo entender, he soñado en otros idiomas que he estudiado pero pues eso se me hace hasta cierto punto normal,pero soñar en un idioma que no conosco se me hace muy raro, decia Aristoteles "no hay nada en nuestra mente que no venga de nuestros sentidos", pues no sé si tenga razón, ni ayer ni hoy fuí a un restaurant griego, ni escuche música griega etc de cualquier forma es interesante ver una conferencia sobre neurociencias que toque éste tema.
I like learning foreign languages
The problem is that I always learn languages
that are similar to one that I already speak
because of the vocabulary
57:50 Awesome point.
Has anyone else woken themselves up screaming something in their second or third language, but not understood what they were saying in the daze after waking up? It's happened to me at least once...
Haha, funny that. No doubt it's in everyone's advantage to learn English, just the same as it would be advantageous for you to know Spanish or English. English is actually quite difficult to learn and not at all an easy language to master. I know that English is a widespread language that is understood on a basic level throughout most countries of the world because of pop culture, but it really shouldn't be taken for granted. A lot of people find it just as hard as Spanish might be to you ;)
As you guessed right, I didn't even know there was a language called Bashkir. I had to check it out on google maps :) I'm Turkish btw, I'm guessing they're close languages since it's Turkic?
So, how come you learned all these other languages then? Did you study languages or something at the University?
we think in the way we spoke
When Maxim says the word "lie," at 1:30, I can't figure out the word at all. After some googling, I finally figure out the word is "li" just like in the caption. Her "peasant dialect" sounds likely a dialect from Canton province, and "lie" is the pronounciation for the character.
with Brown Leather?
Where does this actually start?
I told my wife to pack her bags... I’ve met the perfect woman. Lera is amazing. Oye!
I would like to say same story for me but with Spanish. It really messed up my spoken language mainly because I randomly cannot recall the English words for something that I am trying to describe.
my ex wife is japanese and i always say that what i miss most is japanese women gossiping, the sing song way they speak, but japanese seems very gender oriented, men speak much more gutterally. an ex-girlfriend, and friend, of mine speaks spanish, french english and german, and listening to her talking to family always sounds like a heated argument is going on, and it's odd when single words or phrases in english creep into the conversation, i wonder what differences being able to vocalise different concepts in the appropriate language that makes. this cutting the phrenum is interesting because my mother always says she was worried i would talk with a lisp, i hadn't thought about that for years and now it seems a common bit of mythology. another interesting observation, that maxine hong says it's hard to say i love you in chinese, my ex-wife wouldn't hold hands in public because "it's not the japanese way", and the approximation to "i love you" is tsuki-da, "i like you". i'm not sure expressivitey is a word, google suggests expressiveness, americans "make up" words, the english "create words" - jus sayin. - on learning: it takes a lifetime to learn (guitar) so the sooner you start, the longer it takes. on the subject of schools our son went to japanese school one day a week, one morning in fact, he and his whole class passed GCSE japanese a year early, the school is great for teaching, but also being relaxed, i enjoyed japanese school more than the english schools, parents are much more involved, i wish there was more crossover. on the dream thing, i've never had a dream that had dialogue, i dream situations and events, but i don't recall ever having had to use language...
Wow, that's pretty much what happened to me except that I went from Venezuela (Spanish) to the US. I hate when I don't remember a basic word in Spanish, it makes me feel stupid xD
Im 22.47 in...does the presentation address the title of the video
yes, it does.
I'm not entirely sure, actually - can you name a couple times at which it is particularly apparent to you? I think her r's are actually better than a few of my native-speaking friends, honestly, and she also doesn't even have a trace of Russian stress patterns, to my ear, which is one of the hardest things for native speakers to shed.
It's 2020 and I'm still drinking water on behalf of the moderator.
My Englisch is no good.Wo Chihuahua kann ich kaufen und Green tea
where are their rice bowls and cameras? : )
English is just international, but not universal. In countries where it's not the national language just the rich people and middle class so far can speak English, because it costs to learn it. And there are countries in which just the young people are able to speak it, because the elders didn't need to learn it when they were young. So no, English is not enough. And by thinking like that, you are limiting yourself.
title misled me, i dream in different languages but i only speak english :(
how does that work?
It is impossible to make language development stop or even die. Even when parents and teens speak the same language, there will be some loss of it for the new generation due to the gap between them. Feeling excluded for not being proficient in a language is a universal linguistics symptom. Can a system be called Educational if they exclude learners’ families?
I wish there was some representation of Indian languages and the impact if being exposed to multiple languages as s a culture what effect it has ?
Jamie was here!
08:00
When people know that an audio sample of their speech is being taken, they do not pronounce their words the way they would normally. Instead, they pronounce their words the way they believe is "proper English". Glaring example: people who would normally pronounce the word "wash" as "worsh", say "wash" when the tape recorder is running.
I am not sure what you mean by "Russian stress patterns" but probably you are right about this, since she's been in US since she was 12, if I remember correctly. My son is 30 yo and has been in US since he was 10. I do not hear his accent but he says that in rare occasions people do hear his accent. Go figure...
i seak 2 languages also i can understand other two dialects but these are enough because english is an international and sufficient therefore no need for any other languages
is there any problem with the word "andale"?
i also speak 3 languages and i mix them all up somehow, because i use them all,
and when im dreaming i don't even know what language im speaking because for me there is no diffrence between them, i understand them all, and its irritating
It may seem petty but how can a college professor say 'X person went here'? Surely such people should know the difference between 'come' and 'go.'
Michael Sawyer Your first point is meaningless - if we English-speakers use the German word 'schadenfreude' in English - as fairly recently popularised in the character of Lisa Simpson - we can use it or misuse it in any way we want without reference to the original language. As it happens we use it in the same way as in German. This does not apply to the French word 'seance', however, which we have given a meaning different to that in French. Other languages do the same with our words. German has adopted the English word 'Handy' to mean 'cellphone.' There is no such thing as 'kidnapping' words in the sense you appear to mean it.
Your explanation of the difference between the simple past tense and the defective verb 'used to' is both irrelevant - I can see no relationship with the topic - and insufficient. If I say 'I went to that school when I was a child' I am saying that I went there habitually. Your understanding of the simple past tense is simplistic and needs revision. I can't say 'I came to that school as a child', however, which is effectively what the professor in the video does. This is because in all forms of English 'come' and 'go' mean very different things.
I agree that ambiguity is not a problem in this case. In Swedish, and several other languages, they generally only use one verb for the English verbs 'teach' and 'learn.' I accept this causes them no problem as they adjust the grammatical context of their word accordingly. So I accept that it is not necessary to have quite as many different words or verbs as we have. I also recognise that, probably due to low educational standards, many Americans are failing to make a distinction between certain verbs - a frequent failure to distinguish between 'bring' and 'take' comes to mind. In this case I am simply expressing my astonishment that an apparently educated person could make a language mistake as profound as the one he does. The language we use and the distinctions we make between words are the tools of thought. Sloppiness in such matters generally results in a loss of meaning and expressiveness. Since language is one of the key tools of this person's trade at an eminent institution it is surprising that he has such a poor command of it. Mistaking 'go' for 'come' is as profound as mistaking 'I owe you money' for 'you owe me money.'
Michael Sawyer But he doesn't say that - he says "I went here" - listen to the interview. However, though I may be pretentious at least I am not vulgar.
.... um because it is SPEECH. We rarely follow tight set grammatical structures in speech.
Stop picking on petty, insignificant things.
A sense of being not accepted is too hard and sensible for children to go through.
by the way did he take a picture with john after that?