This is the last of the language videos that I filmed earlier this year! There may be more in 2021, but until then, thanks very much to the whole team that work on these: their details, and all the references, are in the description.
I love this, it's like anti-clickbait. The answer to the videos title is in the thumbnail, and then right there in the beginning of the video. After which is a well put together explanation. Thanks tom, keep up the good work.
@@jadenstar1038 He's not just being honest, he's putting the answer in the thumbnail and right in the beginning, meaning anyone who just wanted to know the amount from seeing the title can just get on with their business. Anti-clickbait.
The answer seems to just be the "official languages". As India has more than 6,000 unofficial languages and I am sure that there are more then 1,000 languages when all of the other languages are added up.
I speak an endangered romance language called Lombard, I'm the only one of my friends to speak it and nowadays even older people are forgetting. Fortunately we created some groups to mantain our language, we love it, It's terrible when a language dies, but we will fight for ours!
Here in Argentina we use some words that come from Lombard. I don't remember which ones but even our word for slang is 'lunfardo', so that tells you how much Lombard influence we have. Sadly they were the ones who kept their language the least. The remaining Lombard speakers here are old and don't teach it to their children because "it's not useful".
Lombard is one of the languages Ethnologue could use some fresh data on. Have you come across any good estimates on the number of speakers? Wikipedia also has an article on the Lombard language that needs a bit of updating. In lots of places it says "citation needed" (which reminds me of a popular web based panel show worth a look for those new to Tom's stuff)
There are also "dialect continums" For example Dialect A can understand Dialect B Dialect B understands Dialect C Dialect C understands Dialect D But Dialect A does not understand Dialect D
Yes, I am comfortable with standard British RP and RP-derived standard Indian English. I have turn the subtitles on for AAVE or some English and Scottish accents. I am not event talking about dialects per-se!
There is a saying that goes “If you want to know how someone _thinks_ then you have to learn their language.” And to be honest, this is 100% true. If you know multiple languages you know your thinking pattern changes when you switch between them. This is one of the many reasons why languages should be preserved
That phrase makes no sense to me (im probably taking it at face value because I've never heard it before) because thinking isnt language based BUT that thinking pattern thing seems super interesting
Thinking is not language based it's definitely true. @@hamchurger4566 But originally that phrase was told in another language. (translated multiple times over and over) IMO even that's saying something about how our perception change when we change languages
I would say that the speech online amongst teens and young 'uns is a new language. I usually have no idea what's being said, and I enjoy learning new terminology.
It's right up there with "English is three languages in a trenchcoat, who hide in dark alleyways and beat up other languages for spare vocabulary and grammar."
@@Xnoob545 It means that languages are made by countries saying they're languages. An example would be Swedish and Norwegian as eastern Norwegian and western Swedish are more alike than western Swedish and some southern dialects.
Language challenge Try learning Havyaka( more of a soft child like language..but can be very easy) i dono if you can find a tutorial for this one🧐🤷♂️( its a dialect by the way...but more like a soft version of kannada)
As a Norwegian, sometimes Swedish is easier to understand than some dialects in Norway. It's completely bizarre.. it depends heavily on where you are from though and what dialect you have, and some people just understand everything very well and others like me.. well.. for whatever reason I understand Swedish almost perfect but if I go far enough north I barely understand a thing, even though it's the same language.. or so they say.
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3:36 This is why I'm so passionate about endangered languages. I was raised with the national language of my country and it really saddens me to see the new generations, people my age or younger, starting to forget our local language. I'm quite lucky because thanks to my love and interest for languages, I actually know more about my local language than most people my age, but still not enough to hold a speech or something, maybe just a simple dialogue. Also because I'm from Europe, people don't really get interested in minority language. Partially because even if our languages are endangered, we're not seen as "colonised" like other cultures in the world, but also because many countries in Europe promoted their official languages as the prestige language, while local languages have been always associated with a uncultured kind of speech typical of ignorant farmers and this belief holds true even for native speakers.
One reason, if it matters, why (local) language is important, is that my English "persona" is widely different from my Dutch "persona". It's not intentional, but language also brings with it a certain way of communicating that sincerely changes the way one acts.
I don't know why there aren't more replies here but you're absolutely right. I speak 5 languages and while my personas aren't that different from each other, it's still distinct that other people who talks to me in at least two language can recognize it when I switch.
Dudes just got a lot of branching overlapping interests and that, with his love of travel and making educational videos, gave us our international treasure: Tom Scott
As an Icelandic teens I’ll say that when we text we use a mixture of icelandic and english. But I still talk 95% Iceland to my friends and use english words when I forgot the icelandic ones. Edit: I did not expect this to blow up but I’ll try to anwser any questions Edit 2: Just wanted to say that I’m northern icelandic and 60% of the population is in the south so I mabey not talking for everyone here.
@@Pining_for_the_fjords that’s what happens when cultures become influential and begin to overwhelm others, they spread their language, and cultures that primarily speak English are definitely influential on the world stage. Not saying it’s good or bad but that’s the fact of the matter. Also, English is a Germanic language so it’s not like if they were speaking Mongolian.
@@rosiefay7283 It is so popular mostly because of most schools in Iceland start teaching english when the students are 6-9 years old, and also just so much of media is in english
3:25 my favorite word for this topic is always 'komorebi' (木漏れ日). It's Japanese, meaning 'sunlight shining through trees.' So, if you see sunlight leaking through the leaves, you can say it's 'komorebi'.
2:39 The Hebrew word for ''Hebrew'' there is reversedly written, it is ''תירבע'' while it should be ''עברית'', It's as if I wrote ''shilgnE'' instead of ''English''
@@pischpilot You guys are pretending like it matters. It doesn't matter, it doesn't effect anyone. The spelling doesnt impact the point of the video nor does it confuse anyone. The only people who can read it will know thats it's an error and everyone else will move on
@@leonthethird7494 Chill bro, it's just a comment noting a misspelt word, nobody has cried here for an atrocity , it seems like you obsessively care for it to not be cared by others.... otherwise, If you hadn't, you wouldn't have bothered to reply with such a detailed comment explaining exactly why people don't care about that misspelt word. And you know what, it may not really matter that much, that's right, but it's funny and ironic that you've been trying so hard to make your stand clear on that, as if it mattered for you in some way or another...
Still, you cannot have subtitles on TH-cam in Buryat (~300K native speakers), Yakut (~400K native speakers) or Evenki (~10K native speakers). You can, of course, you'll just have to label them as some other language because they are not available as options. So phones are not that bad.
I'm a rideshare driver in the US (I'm French Canadian, btw), and in the five-plus years I've been driving, I've collected from my international riders the phrase "I don't speak X" in over 80 languages. I knew that there were much more than 80 languages, but never imagined that there were over 7,000. Looks like I'll be driving until I drop. ;-) Seriously, though, thanks, Tom. We appreciate your curiosity and insights into humanity and human nature. Keep up the great work!
America is very linguistically homogeneous. Most of the population are European settlers and said settlers have only been here for a few hundred years, all the while keeping in touch with the homeland. Outside of some creoles and sign languages, no new languages have really appeared in America since colonization. There's a lot of variety in the indigenous languages, but the rest is just English, French, Portugese or Spanish (three of which are Romance and all of which are Indo-European). Some countries have hundreds of different languages. Papua New Guinea has around 850.
As someone who speaks multiple languages and grew up reading many translated works, I don't find it too bad if a language disappears. Humans are amazing and will find ways to express their specific thoughts, even if there are no words to describe it. And when they can't, a new word will be made up. Just take the word "vibe" in its current meaning. People will always find a way to relate to each other and communicate, no matter what happens with language
I am certain that if English somehow became some world-wide mega language, it would be a very different English- with a FAR higher number of loan-words and dialects.
@@pokemonprimed dialects will drastically increase due to a lack of communication between populations, giving rise to new languages within a few generations, similarly to what has been happening in the past. Granted, the digital age will reduce its effects, but it will still occur nonetheless
0:26 Fun fact: Singlish also contains splatterings of Mandarin in there here and there. Also, it's not a language spoken by singing along the words, although the accent can sound like so if you're not familiar with it. (Learned that the hard way.)
I'd love to see you do a video of how Latin turned into the Romance Languages... and how, somehow, there's still a dead language called Latin that is well-defined.
The Latin that is teached in schools isn't the Latin that evolved into the romance languages. There was thr vulgar latin, the colloquial language which was a lot different from actual Latin, mainly grammatically. It was the intermediate step. But since it was only used by the people (who couldnt write at the time) it was never written down. Therefore we know nothing about it. Sry for bad english
@@irgendsoeineziege1058 Oh I know, I'm just curious if there's been any discoveries in the last however many years. Pompeii, for example, has been a treasure trove of information. I wouldn't be surprised if we learned about the contemporary version of Latin from something unearthed there, and Vesuvius erupted not too long before what we consider the Late Roman Republic. So... maybe. Just curious, that's all.
@@yondie491 : I studied Vulgar Latin and Romance philology at university many years ago. Linguists at the time had various theories as to how classical Latin evolved to Vulgar ( spoken ) Latin and from there to the various latin based languages, such as French , Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc. many theories were based on known changes in other languages as well as from graffiti found in Pompei and Herculaneum and short written documents noting how to correctly write Classical Latin, showing how some words had already evolved and were "incorrectly" spelled.
the Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, and after that the Roman Catholic Church monopolised science for another thousand years. This left a huge amount of written records. Latin is "dead" because the Vatican decreed that no new words can be added to it
@@rigira That's because, as it looks (whether it's the case or not), someone messed up "gonna" and went over one letter to the left on their keyboard for "G" and "O" and ended up with "F" and "I" but still managed to type "nna" at the end.
3:33 Trust me I do care!!! My nation's language (Welsh) Is partially endangered but luckily our government is putting a lot of money in and is hopping that by 2050 one million people will speak it (Around a third of the population of Wales, our nation)
Tom's pinned comment was posted two months ago? So if Tom dies, we probably would not become worried and start searching for him until at least two months has passed? That is unsettling.
That story about Icelandic is sad. As a native English speaker, I always appreciate that so many people in other nations learn my language because it makes things easy for me when I travel, but I also always feel bad for showing up in their country and not speaking their language, and making them speak to me in my language.
It is sad, but it's also understandable. There's no business case for making a whole language setting for a phone, unless you ARE (or want to get on the good side of) those Icelandic speakers. If they want to do it, and then submit it to be shipped on phones, more power to them. But I can understand why a lot of product manufacturers just ignore them as a market. What are they going to do -- not buy phones?
@@mal2ksc “What are they going to do -- not buy phones?” - same reasoning would apply to _all_ language except English / Korean / Mandarin (for each of the phone brands). Perhaps people wouldn't go so far as to not buy a phone at all, but it might well affect their decision _which_ phone to buy if one brand does offer their native language and another doesn't. Therefore supporting Icelandic _would_ be a business advantage, it's just not sure if it would be sufficient to make up for the translator costs. (But nowadays in the age of ever better machine translation, probably yes.)
1:07 In NZ, Maori is the indigenous language. Since colonization and most people prioritizing English, it has been hugely impacted by English, with many words being transliterations of English.
I'm actually currently learning German. I've looked into Old English and have an interest in it. It really shows its Germanic roots. Gendered nouns, grammatical cases, all in Old English.
@@dr2okevin das (Hansa) ist doch direktes Einfluss. Die Sprachen haben schon einige gemeinsame Wurzeln, aber dann beeinflusste auch die Deutsche Sprache diese anderen. (sorry for my rusty German!)
As an Irish speaker I've always been concerned by the death of languages, but the irrecoverable culture and meaning that goes with that was brought home to me when recently I was looking for a good translation of some Kafka but realised that no translation can ever quite get the original. Things are always lost.
@@mistercreeper3029 in French (Quebec), a chicken is involved in the translation of that sentence. Running aimlessly is "Courrir comme une poule pas de tête" litteraly "Running like an headless chicken"
@@LilacLay The reason why most languages are written left to right and/or top to bottom is because most people are right handed, and when using ink, it's easy-ish to smudge what you've written if it's going the opposite direction of what you use to write with. Of course, that's not a problem with modern ballpens and pencils, let alone typing on phones, but back then, it definitely was.
I spent like 5 minutes trying to translate the two books on the right just to know what they were. They were Alice in Wonderland and A Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy of you want to know.
Specifically: * French: Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows * Icelandic: Ævintýri Lísu í Undralandi -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland * Spanish: Guía del autoestopista galáctico -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (¡Que no cunda el pánico! -- Don't Panic!)
I concur on the idea of NOT letting a language die, at least not completely. In order to learn a new language, you need to learn (for the most part) the culture for which that language originated. Culture is society, to an extent. It defines us. Long live language!
It’s understandable. Tribe of 50 people that lost 150 speakers during last two generations, that’s kind of easy to predict. But lets say you have regional language with 5000 speakers which is also losing its grip, but then regional government announces that hey want to promote their regional culture and language gets mandatory lessons in every school. So you put that second one in “maybe” category.
@@yusacetin4235 people predict the past all the time when they shoehorn events that already happened to the past prophecies or anything that wasn't even intended as such. Like the Bible, Nostradamus, the Simpsons. They constantly predict events that already happened
around 314,000 people speak Icelandic daily, only around 20,000 people speak Irish daily (outside of school). Considering Iceland has a population of 366,000 & Ireland has a population of 4.995 million, neither language are doing great
I like that saying, ‘a language is a dialect with an army and a navy’. Before Czechoslovakia split up, Czech and Slovak were considered dialects of the same language. Nowadays, despite being mutually intelligible, they are considered different languages.
They might be considered different languages by law, but that doesn't make them different languages to a linguist. Same with Malay, Hindi-Urdu, or aforementioned Serbo-Croatian.
In iceland its obligatory to learn one of the 3 scandinavian languages: danish, swedish or norwegian (and before 1999 danish was obligatory, but was replaced with english)
@@Culturerism A lot of people forget but it is useful to know the basics for it makes it easier to learn other languages like german. Also a lot of Icelandic people study in denmark. I can count three of my cousins who went there to learn and made families there.
@@Culturerism Well. I’m not too sure. I think that iceland and norway like to make fun of denmark. I’m not sure, my family is closer tied to danes but I can’t really talk for everyone.
There is a saying in Persian for which the literal translation is "don't be tired". It's used when someone has finished work or done something hard, or just as an appreciative compliment, but there's no equivalent in the English language that can convey that message and I feel something is missing from my vocabulary when I live in an English speaking country.
this video made me cry a bit. i'm half irish, and the fact that i barely know what should be my native language makes me so sad. my heart goes out to anyone who has had their language close to die/die. especially people who are victims of colonialism. you ever thing how many languages there must have been in south american? now it's just seen as spanish.
I’m Irish, was born and raised here and the attitude towards the language is horrendous. People don’t see it as a part of culture or identity instead it’s seen as a chore and piece of homework
im half icelandic and i havent really learned icelandic that much but i speak a mix of finnish, english and icelandic with my father and it somehow works :P
@@hege1316 My parents moved to Sweden before I was born, so it was never my native language. I've learned enough to understand it and keep up with some small talk, but not as much as I'd like and I have a harder time reading and writing.
I’ve been learning Gaelic for a while for this reason, I really want it to cling on for a while longer. It’s having a minor revival, which I’m glad of. Any new speakers are a blessing. Our culture was decimated a couple hundred years ago, in fact the language was banned in the 1600s and suppressed strongly after that. I don’t expect it to gain any sort of everyday use or be around for more than a couple hundred more years, but it deserves some use. A world with more languages, even if they’re only spoken secondary to other major languages, is a lot more interesting.
Dragsúgur is incorrectly translated as coming 'through the window', implying that it's only through windows, when in fact the word can both mean through window And door
We have something similar in German. "Es zieht" ("it is pulling") means there is an uncomfortable cross-breeze in the room, and "Durchzug" (through-pull) is the corresponding noun.
It's also interesting to note that it can even follow the same development as "going to" > "gonna". I myself usually shorten "voy a" to something like "voa" or "vua". Most of the people I know also tend to do this and in particularly relaxed speech it almost sounds like we're saying "wa".
@@franciscoflamenco Could be calquing from one of the other European languages, but it could also be independent innovation based on what seems to be a useful cognitive metaphor. Or it could be both, with one reinforcing the other.
Also, regional dialects are kind of getting less common. f. ex a lot of austrian dialects are getting more standardised and way too many children just speak "German" german, which is kind of sad.
@@lost2weeks245 i agree with 'naturally', but not 'necessary'. It's not like people dont speak english, and except for some few theyre usually not completely unintelligable. It's more that dialects have a 'stupid farmer' reputation.
@@tonja7462 It is true, most dialects or even just accents are mostly considered "bad". When I moved to a big city for university, people did call me a farmer for having the accent I had. And yes, I used the past tense because I don't speak like that anymore, except to my family. Also, there's lot of discrimination about accents. Would you imagine someone reading the news in Bairisch or Schwäbisch? Some people may not have access to certain jobs due to the way they speak.
Can I just say how much I appreciate the level of referencing? It’s made it so much easier to properly look up new things or parts I’d not come across before! Thanks!
but even then, it shows how the line between languages is blurry.... im not a fluent speaker of any of them but ive heard sicilian italian is more different from roman italian than roman italian is from dialects of spanish, and that the languages of the basque and catalan regions have more similarities than official french and spanish respectively... thats where the problems in classifying what is a "language" start, you could probably argue with a bit of reaching that modern spanish and italian are dialects of latin
@@appleslover It's really hard to encapsulate in a single youtube comment but essentially it's English base words with Chinese grammar and vocabulary from Malay, Tamil, Hokkien, Canto etc mixed in. If you're interested, Langfocus' video on singaporean languages is a good start I'd recommend to non-singaporeans. If you want to hear it actually being spoken I guess you'd have to look for singaporean shows/youtube clips or come visit sometime!
Tom Scott, thanks for all of your work on these content. I really appreciate how you always put the extra effort into making sure it's fact-checked and valid, and it manages to both entertain and inform me at the same time.
i love how language changes the way you think. i grew up with three languages being spoken in my own home, sadly ended up only being fluent in one, and can understand speech in one, but not read it nor speak or write in it, and lost the third entirely. i've become very much a language-dabbler in adulthood, picking up lessons and courses in random languages, and then never fully learning the language, but in doing so, i became fascinated with how just the etymology of words imply a lineage of previous meanings that contribute to how the people who speak the language over time think of the concept the word stands for
For the people who don't get this comment, Scots Wikipedia was almost entirely written by an American with no knowledge of the language who just wrote in a Scottish accent and had too much time on their hands. It was only discovered last year I think? It's honestly hilarious and such a niche reference
As a Welsh speaker this is actually something that a lot of people are worried about. There is a lot of effort going on in Wales to keep Welsh alive, but it is a battle against a powerful tide.
Thanks for the video! Finally I know how to explain what a species is and how new ones emerge. It is like languages. As long as they are similar, they have strong influence on each other and dialects are like sub-species, which still can mate. But, mostly through geographic separation, languages evolve to two distinct forms, just like species.
And there are also eveolutionary trees out there, which are really cool and interesting! But in comparison to species, such trees show much more horizontal "gene transfer" for languages.
As someone who (I would like to say) knows German, it fascinates me how a language which I used to think of as a very unified one could be so regional in its dialects. Even further, the fact that some dialects have distinct enough pronunciation and grammar that people only learning the standard language (me inc.) don't have a chance of comprehending some of them
I studied the "standard" version taught in US high schools in the 50s and 60s and maybe later. Anyway, I ended up getting a job in a big company when I was only about 20. The people came from all over Germany, at that time divided east and west. So I got to hear several dialects plus there were other foreigners like me (the only American at the time) who spoke "accented" German. Lots of fun.
German is everything but unified, less so than English I'd say. Some dialects are even classed as their own language (and the difference between "person speaking German with that dialect" and "person speaking that dialect as a seperate language" are subtle, gradual and not clear cut), like Plattdütsch (which fits somewhere in the continuum Standard German - Plattdütsch - Frisian - Dutch) or Bavarian.
Say you're "going to" do something does make sense. You're approaching your future actions in time, not in space. The future is coming, so you're going towards whatever you're doing in the future. That's why it makes sense as a tense marker.
I’m Swedish, work as a programmer and live in one of the larger cities which makes me probably use english as much as I use Swedish. I’m almost ashamed of how much I use “swenglish” on a daily basis, but this just proves I’m part of the evolution. Thank you!
Tom: "Imagine how you'd feel if English was endangered" Me, a native Spanish speaker that learned English as a second language: "Ah, it doesn't matter too much either"
that sentence is why i have a v strong distaste towards monolingual native english speakers who aren't also linguists. that's a lot of modifiers but they are a VERY large group of people who don't realise how privileged they are.
Tom: "Imagine how you'd feel if English was endangered" Me, a native Malay speaker that learned English as a third language after Malay and Mandarin, with Japanese as fourth: "Ah, it doesn't matter too much at all"
I'd still be a bit sad. Translations often don't hold up to the original. For example, the Czech translation of Lord of the Ring, while good (great even, by today's standards), still doesn't quite hold up.
@@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsna It's particularly unfortunate how little pressure there is in the Anglosphere, generally speaking, to learn a second language. As a monolingual English speaker, I can't see it as a privilege, but almost a curse. Since there isn't any incentive or educational groundwork to pick up a second language from a young age, particularly in North America, most English-speaking people have a much harder time picking up a new language. And to me, it's a very sad, isolating situation.
@@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsna it's not privilege to make stuff in your own language. Make a multi billion dollar tech company with Icelandic as the main language if you want to make Icelandic more widely used.
Well they do, Sigur Rós, and they have appered in Game of Thrones and How to Train your Dragon movies. And I am sure that there are others that have appeared in English Pop culture.
Folk rock sucks. It takes the worst form bough. What they need to do is to use their language and if anyone in their land refuses do not do buisness with them and if they turn violent fight them.
My favourite thing about linguistics is that after well over a century of scientific study of languages (and millennia of observation and analysis before that), there is still no consensus not only about what is a language, but also about what is a word. In papers, everyone just uses these as if they were clearly defined terms when they are not and it's just casually handwaved because our contextual understanding of these (quite likely using Prototype Theory) is "good enough for jazz".
This is the last of the language videos that I filmed earlier this year! There may be more in 2021, but until then, thanks very much to the whole team that work on these: their details, and all the references, are in the description.
wow
Time traveller detected
Hey Tom, like your videos!
Time traveling going well.. I see..
Ok
Tom Scott did the reverse clickbait and told the answer right away. Hats off sir. Thank you.
Adam Neely style
👏🏼
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👏👏👏
It's quite sad that nowadays we need to thank someone for telling what's in the title of a video.
"Someone has to draw some line somewhere" Said every person ever involved in a border conflict........
@@DarrensGeneralInfo no one cares
@@Evp3 i care
"Bring out the long ruler!" - British Empire
"Someone has to draw the line somewhere..."
~Sykes
and Picot, 1916
borders... conflict... "can you see any borders from up here? what have borders given us?", sorry to everyone who doesn't get that reference xD
I love this, it's like anti-clickbait. The answer to the videos title is in the thumbnail, and then right there in the beginning of the video. After which is a well put together explanation. Thanks tom, keep up the good work.
Anti-clickbait orrr just not clickbait but a honest video/title
Its not anti-clickbait... its honesty lmao.
@@jadenstar1038
He's not just being honest, he's putting the answer in the thumbnail and right in the beginning, meaning anyone who just wanted to know the amount from seeing the title can just get on with their business. Anti-clickbait.
The answer seems to just be the "official languages". As India has more than 6,000 unofficial languages and I am sure that there are more then 1,000 languages when all of the other languages are added up.
Adam Neely does the same thing
I speak an endangered romance language called Lombard, I'm the only one of my friends to speak it and nowadays even older people are forgetting. Fortunately we created some groups to mantain our language, we love it, It's terrible when a language dies, but we will fight for ours!
Good luck! As long as you have the community and the love of the language, your language won’t die.
Here in Argentina we use some words that come from Lombard. I don't remember which ones but even our word for slang is 'lunfardo', so that tells you how much Lombard influence we have. Sadly they were the ones who kept their language the least. The remaining Lombard speakers here are old and don't teach it to their children because "it's not useful".
@@aylen7062 Really cool! is sad that lombard is dying but we will keep it alive!
Lombard is one of the languages Ethnologue could use some fresh data on. Have you come across any good estimates on the number of speakers? Wikipedia also has an article on the Lombard language that needs a bit of updating. In lots of places it says "citation needed" (which reminds me of a popular web based panel show worth a look for those new to Tom's stuff)
@@peterbrassington9322 We are working on it, we finished Wikipedia in Lombard language, now we are continuing to work!
There are also "dialect continums"
For example Dialect A can understand Dialect B
Dialect B understands Dialect C
Dialect C understands Dialect D
But Dialect A does not understand Dialect D
There's also asymmetric intelligibility. Dialect A can understand Dialect B, but Dialect B can't understand Dialect A.
Linguistics are a fascinating subject.
Yes, I am comfortable with standard British RP and RP-derived standard Indian English. I have turn the subtitles on for AAVE or some English and Scottish accents. I am not event talking about dialects per-se!
Or ring species, like bird subspecies going around the artic, and where they meet again, they now can't reproduce with each other.
This doesn’t make any sense at all but ok
Tom: How many languages are there?
Tom: 7,117.
Duolingo: *Ten, take it or leave it.*
It actually has about 36 now, if you count some of the beta languages
@@theocaratic "beta languages" _giggles_
@@n3rdy11 I always giggle at English use of 'beta' because in my language, it means 'daughter'
@@anatine_banana_69 In my language (Hindi) it means son
@@dishant8126 in one of my national regional language it means I/me
"Saying "I'm going to start" makes no sense when taken literally."
Monopoly: *Am I a joke to you?*
Yes, Monopoly, you are a joke.
@@sponge1234ify I am going to go.
"Do not pass Go, do not collect $200"
The number of times I've heard that phrase...
The tile is called Go, though, not Start
Underrated
There is a saying that goes “If you want to know how someone _thinks_ then you have to learn their language.” And to be honest, this is 100% true. If you know multiple languages you know your thinking pattern changes when you switch between them. This is one of the many reasons why languages should be preserved
Agreed
As someone who speaks 7 languages, I can confirm this is true
That phrase makes no sense to me (im probably taking it at face value because I've never heard it before) because thinking isnt language based BUT that thinking pattern thing seems super interesting
Thinking is not language based it's definitely true. @@hamchurger4566 But originally that phrase was told in another language. (translated multiple times over and over) IMO even that's saying something about how our perception change when we change languages
Can you give an example?
Tom Scott: "You can't go to start, start is not a place"
Monopoly players:
where are my $200?
Isn't that "Go" rather than "start"?
@@j--xe3ke I like to mention they mean million dollars edit: may not be %100 true but it makes sense
@@georgebailey8179 I think you're right, but I literally had the exact same thought in the video so I was happy to find this comment.
@@georgebailey8179 oh, uh, probably. At least in the dutch version it is start =)
A fairly new language in historical terms is Afrikaans, which only officially broke away from being a Dutch dialect about 100 years ago
Fun thing as a Dutch person Afrikaans is perfectly understandable. reverse it is not the case. (based on my experience)
@@Jacob-W-5570 Afrikaans is also intelligible to English speakers.
@@Jacob-W-5570
Dutch sounds very bouncy compared to Afrikaans, we put emphasis in different places sometimes which makes words hard to understand
Afrikaans is closer to standard dutch than most dutch dialects. Its just got its own army and navy.
I would say that the speech online amongst teens and young 'uns is a new language. I usually have no idea what's being said, and I enjoy learning new terminology.
As a fluent Welsh speaker I can confirm the importance - culturally and historically - of keeping native languages alive. Great vid
Me :"I wonder how many languages are there in the world"
Tom :"7117"
Me :"Understandable, have a nice day"
What u on about weirdo?
Anarchy in the UK
Go vegan
qepqepqepqepqepqepqpe
I remember entering a French website but still being able to understand it with my English and Spanish. It was a weird experience.
What's amusing to me isn't the similarities in languages, so much as the differences.
Gateau, in French, means Cake. . .
Gato, in Spanish, means Cat.
@@normang3668
Well, in China they are both considered food. :D
@@videotaper2272, cursed comment
@@normang3668 I think that could just be a coincidence. Not every word that looks similar are actually related.
As all three languages share a common ancestor.
But what we all want to know is... how many red T-shirts are there?
No one seems to want the swingsan from you
Yes
7117, probably
1
Thee bett'r speaketh in shakespearean english, f'r i doth not und'rstand
"A language is just a dialect with an army and a navy." Bloody love this!
It's right up there with "English is three languages in a trenchcoat, who hide in dark alleyways and beat up other languages for spare vocabulary and grammar."
I dont get it
@@Xnoob545 It means that languages are made by countries saying they're languages. An example would be Swedish and Norwegian as eastern Norwegian and western Swedish are more alike than western Swedish and some southern dialects.
Language challenge
Try learning Havyaka( more of a soft child like language..but can be very easy) i dono if you can find a tutorial for this one🧐🤷♂️( its a dialect by the way...but more like a soft version of kannada)
@@NotASummoner Then There's "Croatian", "Serbian", "Bosnian", and ""Montenegrin"".
As a dutch person, certain dutch dialects are completely incomprehensible to me and yet they still technically count as dutch
Can you understand Afrikaans well?
@@andrewjones575 It can be hard, but in most cases it is understanible. Formal speech is easier. (I am Dutch too)
Wat dacht je van limburgs? :)
@@Treinbouwer Is Limburg still part of the Netherlands? My my, how time -flies- stands still...
As a Norwegian, sometimes Swedish is easier to understand than some dialects in Norway. It's completely bizarre.. it depends heavily on where you are from though and what dialect you have, and some people just understand everything very well and others like me.. well.. for whatever reason I understand Swedish almost perfect but if I go far enough north I barely understand a thing, even though it's the same language.. or so they say.
To quote my professor a few years ago. "How many languages are there? Somewhere between 1 and 6.000.000.000. What is a language?"
That's assuming someone can know only one language ... hum suddenly it became complicated
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@@wianprinsloo2817 whag
@@wianprinsloo2817 what
@@wianprinsloo2817 what
3:36 This is why I'm so passionate about endangered languages. I was raised with the national language of my country and it really saddens me to see the new generations, people my age or younger, starting to forget our local language. I'm quite lucky because thanks to my love and interest for languages, I actually know more about my local language than most people my age, but still not enough to hold a speech or something, maybe just a simple dialogue. Also because I'm from Europe, people don't really get interested in minority language. Partially because even if our languages are endangered, we're not seen as "colonised" like other cultures in the world, but also because many countries in Europe promoted their official languages as the prestige language, while local languages have been always associated with a uncultured kind of speech typical of ignorant farmers and this belief holds true even for native speakers.
What language(s)?
Let me guess, Spain?
@@freddiefreakerfreakerker4149 No, but I guess my story is a common one among the different linguistic minorities of European countries.
@@J.o.s.h.u.a. French? (More precisely Breton?)
@@divicarpe1844 Italian, more precisely Sardinian.
0:44 - So the takeaway I got from this video is that we're not Tom's friends.
breh, your literaly Anonymous
Parasocical relationships are like that, when the parties involved are honest.
Oh no! 😭😭😭
@@timothymclean I didn't know that there was a word for that
@@Kriae Hooray, I'm educational!
Dragsúgur is simply translated to draft, Gluggaveður is a more interesting word directly translated window weather
draught*
Ég var bara að tékka hvort aðrir íslendingar væru hér þetta var fyrsta commentið sem ég sá
@@average_salad Við erum ábyggilega þónokkrir hérna :) Að minnsta kosti miðað við höfðatölu.
@@baijokull það er rétt við erum allt meðan við höfuðtölu
Okay...what the hell is going on here?
We have a word for “the wind that comes through the window”, it’s draught, pronounced ‘draft’
right, might not have been the best example, but his point ist still correct.
draft even sounds a bit similar to the beginning of the islandic word.
But draft doesn't necessarily mean that. It's air current leaking around a door or window. A summer breeze through an open window wouldn't be a draft.
A draft can come through wooden floors not just windows.
@@renakunisaki then a very specialized draft so i guess it still stands.
Draft is just an air current coming from somewhere it should not.
can we just take a second to appreciate the sheer confidence and presentation skills needed to make this with under 5 cuts
I very much like how somebody can just draw a stick figure with a red T-shirt in front of a green screen and we all just know that's Tom.
Perhaps the fact that it appears in a Tom Scott video...
@@RedmarKerkhof Shhh, don't ruin it :(
"You cannot go to start, that's not a real place."
Your narrow worldview constrains you from collecting 300.
What bourgeois monopoly are you playing that you get $300?
*Ahem* tho
@@Insertnamehere58 If you are banker, well, no one else needs to know...
That is in spirit of what the game represents, I think
You get 200
@@Insertnamehere58 i have a us monopoly board that lets you collect $2000 i think
One reason, if it matters, why (local) language is important, is that my English "persona" is widely different from my Dutch "persona". It's not intentional, but language also brings with it a certain way of communicating that sincerely changes the way one acts.
I don't know why there aren't more replies here but you're absolutely right. I speak 5 languages and while my personas aren't that different from each other, it's still distinct that other people who talks to me in at least two language can recognize it when I switch.
Same. For some reason, I’m way more serious in English
One day we will understand how tom chooses the topics for his videos
That could be a topic of a video
Bruh the emoji
Well computer science and linguistics are common themes...
By then, English won't exist.
Dudes just got a lot of branching overlapping interests and that, with his love of travel and making educational videos, gave us our international treasure: Tom Scott
Up until the last sentence I didn't realize that I'm watching this in my second language
This comment feels too real
I envy English learners they have so much resources , it's impossible to not learn atleast some English nowadays
As an Icelandic teens I’ll say that when we text we use a mixture of icelandic and english. But I still talk 95% Iceland to my friends and use english words when I forgot the icelandic ones.
Edit: I did not expect this to blow up but I’ll try to anwser any questions
Edit 2: Just wanted to say that I’m northern icelandic and 60% of the population is in the south so I mabey not talking for everyone here.
For an Icelandic-speaker, how easy would it be to learn and use Norwegian? Just wondering why English is so popular as a second language in Iceland.
@@rosiefay7283 It's popular because it is the worlds lingua franca like in every other country that is not overly nationalistic.
Still it's a little worrying to hear that Icelandic teenagers can more easily remember some words in English than Icelandic.
@@Pining_for_the_fjords that’s what happens when cultures become influential and begin to overwhelm others, they spread their language, and cultures that primarily speak English are definitely influential on the world stage. Not saying it’s good or bad but that’s the fact of the matter. Also, English is a Germanic language so it’s not like if they were speaking Mongolian.
@@rosiefay7283 It is so popular mostly because of most schools in Iceland start teaching english when the students are 6-9 years old, and also just so much of media is in english
3:25 my favorite word for this topic is always 'komorebi' (木漏れ日). It's Japanese, meaning 'sunlight shining through trees.' So, if you see sunlight leaking through the leaves, you can say it's 'komorebi'.
Okay Tom,
According to the analytics, how many people left as soon as you gave the answer? :p
I left as a joke then came back
@@SaadTheGlad same
It was in the thumbnail
I never even saw the video, just the thumbnail. I didn't even write this comment, it's just in your head.
@@SaadTheGlad same
2:39 The Hebrew word for ''Hebrew'' there is reversedly written, it is ''תירבע'' while it should be ''עברית'', It's as if I wrote ''shilgnE'' instead of ''English''
nobody cares
@@leonthethird7494
36 people care. You're outnumbered.
@@leonthethird7494 60 people care...
@@pischpilot You guys are pretending like it matters. It doesn't matter, it doesn't effect anyone. The spelling doesnt impact the point of the video nor does it confuse anyone. The only people who can read it will know thats it's an error and everyone else will move on
@@leonthethird7494 Chill bro, it's just a comment noting a misspelt word, nobody has cried here for an atrocity , it seems like you obsessively care for it to not be cared by others.... otherwise, If you hadn't, you wouldn't have bothered to reply with such a detailed comment explaining exactly why people don't care about that misspelt word. And you know what, it may not really matter that much, that's right, but it's funny and ironic that you've been trying so hard to make your stand clear on that, as if it mattered for you in some way or another...
My Samsung phone has Icelandic (íslenska) as a language option. TH-cam is also available in Icelandic. Yay for Icelanders :)
How old is your phone? Mine's 6 years old and only has 5 languages: English, Spanish, Vietnamese (surprisingly), Korean (unsurprisingly), and Chinese.
But what about Faroese?
@@thewanderingmistnull2451 I'm more surprised that you still use a 6 year old phone to be honest
Still, you cannot have subtitles on TH-cam in Buryat (~300K native speakers), Yakut (~400K native speakers) or Evenki (~10K native speakers).
You can, of course, you'll just have to label them as some other language because they are not available as options.
So phones are not that bad.
@@theviniso Don't be. I'd still have my flip phone if it hadn't broken on a sidewalk one day.
I'm a rideshare driver in the US (I'm French Canadian, btw), and in the five-plus years I've been driving, I've collected from my international riders the phrase "I don't speak X" in over 80 languages.
I knew that there were much more than 80 languages, but never imagined that there were over 7,000. Looks like I'll be driving until I drop. ;-)
Seriously, though, thanks, Tom. We appreciate your curiosity and insights into humanity and human nature. Keep up the great work!
America is very linguistically homogeneous. Most of the population are European settlers and said settlers have only been here for a few hundred years, all the while keeping in touch with the homeland. Outside of some creoles and sign languages, no new languages have really appeared in America since colonization. There's a lot of variety in the indigenous languages, but the rest is just English, French, Portugese or Spanish (three of which are Romance and all of which are Indo-European). Some countries have hundreds of different languages. Papua New Guinea has around 850.
As someone who speaks multiple languages and grew up reading many translated works, I don't find it too bad if a language disappears. Humans are amazing and will find ways to express their specific thoughts, even if there are no words to describe it. And when they can't, a new word will be made up. Just take the word "vibe" in its current meaning. People will always find a way to relate to each other and communicate, no matter what happens with language
I am certain that if English somehow became some world-wide mega language, it would be a very different English- with a FAR higher number of loan-words and dialects.
@Alexa Tri my mother tongue is Dutch and I speak a number of other western European languages, as well as English, of course
@@pokemonprimed dialects will drastically increase due to a lack of communication between populations, giving rise to new languages within a few generations, similarly to what has been happening in the past. Granted, the digital age will reduce its effects, but it will still occur nonetheless
You call it a current meaning but that meaning of "vibe" is from at least the 1960s, 1967 with the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" at the latest.
@@thewanderingmistnull2451 then let's take the word "boner". It used to mean a mistake. And now... well...
I love that when talking about Icelandic not being supported by smartphone "Hebrew" (עברית) is spelled backwards.
Arabic script as well in most cases when shown by Anglophones
Maybe because it starts from right to left
Hebrew and Arabic scripts are always directionally discriminated in whatever piece of media they appear in😌
When you say "backwards", do you mean relative to how the language is supposed to be written?
The Arabic was in the correct direction, but wasn't connected
@@EpicB Yes. The equivalent of hsilgne.
When you forget words in both languages: *Byelingual
Happens to me all the time, especially at work. People probably think I'm slow.
Damn my that didn't make sense, I'm sorry
OMG, MY REPLIES DIDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE
I could have just edited it
When you forgot a words in three languages, would it be trylingual?
As someone who just discovered your work, I want to thank you for having so much bingeable material.
0:26 Fun fact:
Singlish also contains splatterings of Mandarin in there here and there.
Also, it's not a language spoken by singing along the words, although the accent can sound like so if you're not familiar with it. (Learned that the hard way.)
A smattering of Hokkien, a soupçon of Bahasa Melayu, a dash of Tamil and so on
I'd love to see you do a video of how Latin turned into the Romance Languages... and how, somehow, there's still a dead language called Latin that is well-defined.
The Latin that is teached in schools isn't the Latin that evolved into the romance languages. There was thr vulgar latin, the colloquial language which was a lot different from actual Latin, mainly grammatically. It was the intermediate step. But since it was only used by the people (who couldnt write at the time) it was never written down. Therefore we know nothing about it. Sry for bad english
@@irgendsoeineziege1058 Oh I know, I'm just curious if there's been any discoveries in the last however many years. Pompeii, for example, has been a treasure trove of information. I wouldn't be surprised if we learned about the contemporary version of Latin from something unearthed there, and Vesuvius erupted not too long before what we consider the Late Roman Republic.
So... maybe.
Just curious, that's all.
@@yondie491 : I studied Vulgar Latin and Romance philology at university many years ago. Linguists at the time had various theories as to how classical Latin evolved to Vulgar ( spoken ) Latin and from there to the various latin based languages, such as French , Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc. many theories were based on known changes in other languages as well as from graffiti found in Pompei and Herculaneum and short written documents noting how to correctly write Classical Latin, showing how some words had already evolved and were "incorrectly" spelled.
@@illegitiminoncarborundum8202 exactly. I'd love long-form videos on that kind of thing.
I know some vague outlines of theories but nothing in depth.
the Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, and after that the Roman Catholic Church monopolised science for another thousand years. This left a huge amount of written records. Latin is "dead" because the Vatican decreed that no new words can be added to it
I'ma
aɪmə
_verb_
contraction of the phrase "I am going to"
*Example sentence:* I'ma get a beer at the hovercraft pub
Finna
əmə
*Imma
Some people use like this: "Imma go get a beer" is it wrong? 😅
@@rigira That's because, as it looks (whether it's the case or not), someone messed up "gonna" and went over one letter to the left on their keyboard for "G" and "O" and ended up with "F" and "I" but still managed to type "nna" at the end.
3:33 Trust me I do care!!! My nation's language (Welsh) Is partially endangered but luckily our government is putting a lot of money in and is hopping that by 2050 one million people will speak it (Around a third of the population of Wales, our nation)
2:40 Hebrew's written backwards because Adobe Creative Cloud can't handle RTL, take a drink.
Raisist
Yet Arabic is rendered RTL correctly. Weird
@@vertyyy8234 Only if they're raising their glass to take a drink
@@zozzy4630 yes
Tom's pinned comment was posted two months ago? So if Tom dies, we probably would not become worried and start searching for him until at least two months has passed? That is unsettling.
Probably a good year really
I'm sure people actually close to him would start searching for him sooner than that.
@@Colaman112 I'm sure the OP comment it's more a joke than a statement
@@fractalez Would you bet Tom's life on it?
@@SillyMakesVids Do... do you have a *second* Tom to meet that bet with?
That story about Icelandic is sad. As a native English speaker, I always appreciate that so many people in other nations learn my language because it makes things easy for me when I travel, but I also always feel bad for showing up in their country and not speaking their language, and making them speak to me in my language.
Some just tries to practice what they learnt at school since age 6 because English is taught globally
I am learning Mandarin because of this. I also want to be more helpful to Chinese tourists that visit Australia.
It is sad, but it's also understandable. There's no business case for making a whole language setting for a phone, unless you ARE (or want to get on the good side of) those Icelandic speakers. If they want to do it, and then submit it to be shipped on phones, more power to them. But I can understand why a lot of product manufacturers just ignore them as a market. What are they going to do -- not buy phones?
@@mal2ksc “What are they going to do -- not buy phones?” - same reasoning would apply to _all_ language except English / Korean / Mandarin (for each of the phone brands). Perhaps people wouldn't go so far as to not buy a phone at all, but it might well affect their decision _which_ phone to buy if one brand does offer their native language and another doesn't. Therefore supporting Icelandic _would_ be a business advantage, it's just not sure if it would be sufficient to make up for the translator costs. (But nowadays in the age of ever better machine translation, probably yes.)
1:07 In NZ, Maori is the indigenous language. Since colonization and most people prioritizing English, it has been hugely impacted by English, with many words being transliterations of English.
Tom is flexing his linguistics degree at us again.
I'm actually currently learning German. I've looked into Old English and have an interest in it. It really shows its Germanic roots.
Gendered nouns, grammatical cases, all in Old English.
Viele der Europäischen Sprachen haben gemeinsame Wurzeln. So wurde auch Norwegisch viel von den Norddeutschen Dialekten während der Hanseaten geprägt.
Exactly. Common roots.
@@dr2okevin das (Hansa) ist doch direktes Einfluss. Die Sprachen haben schon einige gemeinsame Wurzeln, aber dann beeinflusste auch die Deutsche Sprache diese anderen.
(sorry for my rusty German!)
Finally someone I can relate to from all these comments claiming to Learn French/Spanish
As an Irish speaker I've always been concerned by the death of languages, but the irrecoverable culture and meaning that goes with that was brought home to me when recently I was looking for a good translation of some Kafka but realised that no translation can ever quite get the original. Things are always lost.
3:28 Finnish: "Juoksentelisinkohan?"
English: "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly?"
germans: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
(beef labeling supervision duties delegation law)
@@mistercreeper3029 in French (Quebec), a chicken is involved in the translation of that sentence. Running aimlessly is "Courrir comme une poule pas de tête" litteraly "Running like an headless chicken"
2:39 Aaaaand... Hebrew is written in reverse letter order on the phone screen. Always remember to check for RTL languages.
Interesting because the Arabic text was correct
@@Maazin5 to be fair, Arabic is more spoken than hebrew
Who even comes up with right to left writing systems?
A bunch of lefties? Who wants ink smeared on thier hand?
@@LilacLay The reason why most languages are written left to right and/or top to bottom is because most people are right handed, and when using ink, it's easy-ish to smudge what you've written if it's going the opposite direction of what you use to write with. Of course, that's not a problem with modern ballpens and pencils, let alone typing on phones, but back then, it definitely was.
@@moondust2365 As a left handed, German-writing person who grew up with modern pens and pencils: I still smeared lots of pages.
0:34 - *Fun fact:* The Singapore's dot is way too far south for about 500 km, which actually the Indonesia's Sumatra.
Cursed maps
It's wrong but not *too* wrong - at least the dot still covers Singapore!
Fun fact: you're totally wrong
@@lat3445 How so?
@@BayuAH because the dot is still covering the Singapore
I spent like 5 minutes trying to translate the two books on the right just to know what they were.
They were Alice in Wonderland and A Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy of you want to know.
that took you a whole 5 minutes?
Thank you
Specifically:
* French: Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
* Icelandic: Ævintýri Lísu í Undralandi -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
* Spanish: Guía del autoestopista galáctico -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
(¡Que no cunda el pánico! -- Don't Panic!)
Hey did you know JK Rowling saved quite a lot of ink in her books by making Ron say "dunno" instead of "I do not know"
Dinno
danno
𝕘𝕦𝕔𝕔𝕚 𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕟𝕠
donno
I concur on the idea of NOT letting a language die, at least not completely. In order to learn a new language, you need to learn (for the most part) the culture for which that language originated. Culture is society, to an extent. It defines us. Long live language!
Tom, this is one of those videos that make me admire the work you and your team do even more than I thought possible.
"50%-90% may be functionally extinct by 2100" - Wow, that's not just a huge amount either way, that's also a HUGE range...
It’s understandable. Tribe of 50 people that lost 150 speakers during last two generations, that’s kind of easy to predict. But lets say you have regional language with 5000 speakers which is also losing its grip, but then regional government announces that hey want to promote their regional culture and language gets mandatory lessons in every school. So you put that second one in “maybe” category.
Predictions are hard, especially those concerning the future.
@@varana how do you predict the past
@@yusacetin4235 With great care.
@@yusacetin4235 people predict the past all the time when they shoehorn events that already happened to the past prophecies or anything that wasn't even intended as such. Like the Bible, Nostradamus, the Simpsons. They constantly predict events that already happened
"And even fairly major ones can be in trouble"
"Lemme guess, Gaeilge?"
"Icelandic is spoken..."
"NOT ICELANDIC TOO!"
I wouldn't really call Geailge major, but it absolutely needs support.
around 314,000 people speak Icelandic daily, only around 20,000 people speak Irish daily (outside of school). Considering Iceland has a population of 366,000 & Ireland has a population of 4.995 million, neither language are doing great
I like that saying, ‘a language is a dialect with an army and a navy’. Before Czechoslovakia split up, Czech and Slovak were considered dialects of the same language. Nowadays, despite being mutually intelligible, they are considered different languages.
Same with Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian
But they don't have navies, do they? :)
They might be considered different languages by law, but that doesn't make them different languages to a linguist. Same with Malay, Hindi-Urdu, or aforementioned Serbo-Croatian.
@@rjfaber1991 then explain why Malaysian and Indonesian are considered different even though I speak both with only slight adjustments
@@TryinaD Because both countries' governments have said so. No more, no less. There will be precious few linguists who agree though.
"Dragsúgur" - The wind that comes through the window. Known in English as a draught.
*British English. American/Canadian uses "draft".
I thought draughts came beneath doors.
@@SillyMakesVids they can be both
@@thewanderingmistnull2451 we use draft as in. Draft an email
Good catch. A house could have a draft coming through the window, or it could just generally be a drafty house, with gaps between the boards.
In iceland its obligatory to learn one of the 3 scandinavian languages: danish, swedish or norwegian (and before 1999 danish was obligatory, but was replaced with english)
Are you Icelandic? I am. If you are you would know that in schools it’s mandatory to learn english and danish in middle school
@@bjornorir3435 How much is Danish prevalent in Icelandic society today? Do you just forget it after highschool or never really learn it at all?
@@Culturerism A lot of people forget but it is useful to know the basics for it makes it easier to learn other languages like german. Also a lot of Icelandic people study in denmark. I can count three of my cousins who went there to learn and made families there.
@@bjornorir3435 do Icelandic people feel then more brotherly with the Danish instead of the Norwegians?
@@Culturerism Well. I’m not too sure. I think that iceland and norway like to make fun of denmark.
I’m not sure, my family is closer tied to danes but I can’t really talk for everyone.
Great to see quality language videos being made. Great job, Tom!
Hey, maybe you could make a video on this subject, if you haven't already. There's a lot more than could've been said.
There is a saying in Persian for which the literal translation is "don't be tired". It's used when someone has finished work or done something hard, or just as an appreciative compliment, but there's no equivalent in the English language that can convey that message and I feel something is missing from my vocabulary when I live in an English speaking country.
What about 'Well done!' (when *not* used sarcastically!)
this video made me cry a bit. i'm half irish, and the fact that i barely know what should be my native language makes me so sad. my heart goes out to anyone who has had their language close to die/die. especially people who are victims of colonialism. you ever thing how many languages there must have been in south american? now it's just seen as spanish.
Same. I’m a Scot, and would love to learn Gaelic. I hate that we don’t learn it.
so which half of you was born in ireland?
I’m Irish, was born and raised here and the attitude towards the language is horrendous. People don’t see it as a part of culture or identity instead it’s seen as a chore and piece of homework
As if I already didn't feel bad enough for refusing to speak Icelandic with my parents growing up.
May I ask why did you refuse?
@@hege1316 Kids are stupid and stubborn. I refused to speak Portuguese with my Portuguese mother for no good reason and now I regret it.
im half icelandic and i havent really learned icelandic that much but i speak a mix of finnish, english and icelandic with my father and it somehow works :P
@@hege1316 My parents moved to Sweden before I was born, so it was never my native language. I've learned enough to understand it and keep up with some small talk, but not as much as I'd like and I have a harder time reading and writing.
@@eduardog3000 I refused to speak Hindi with my dad for no reason and I relate
I’ve been learning Gaelic for a while for this reason, I really want it to cling on for a while longer. It’s having a minor revival, which I’m glad of. Any new speakers are a blessing. Our culture was decimated a couple hundred years ago, in fact the language was banned in the 1600s and suppressed strongly after that. I don’t expect it to gain any sort of everyday use or be around for more than a couple hundred more years, but it deserves some use. A world with more languages, even if they’re only spoken secondary to other major languages, is a lot more interesting.
Is "the wind that comes in through the window" not called a draught?
I don't think so, you can have a draught that comes through a door or under one, I think?
Dragsúgur is incorrectly translated as coming 'through the window', implying that it's only through windows, when in fact the word can both mean through window And door
In french we call that a "vent coulant" (which may be technically two words, but the icelandic word is probably made of two roots as well).
We have something similar in German. "Es zieht" ("it is pulling") means there is an uncomfortable cross-breeze in the room, and "Durchzug" (through-pull) is the corresponding noun.
@@Ezullof Where are you from? I've only ever heard "courant d'air"
Interestingly, future tense "going to" is common across at least several Romance languages (je vais commencer, voy a empezar, etc)
So who is calquing from whom?
It's also interesting to note that it can even follow the same development as "going to" > "gonna". I myself usually shorten "voy a" to something like "voa" or "vua". Most of the people I know also tend to do this and in particularly relaxed speech it almost sounds like we're saying "wa".
@@grantbmilburn My guess would be that everyone is calquing from French, given the history and geography.
Yep, that’s just one of the many reasons French is very easy to learn for an English speaker.
@@franciscoflamenco Could be calquing from one of the other European languages, but it could also be independent innovation based on what seems to be a useful cognitive metaphor. Or it could be both, with one reinforcing the other.
0:02 thanks for the short video Tom,
I will be on my way now.
"Going to start" makes perfect sense.
"You are going directly to jail. You are not going to Start and will not collect $7,117."
I just started listening to the podcast "lingthusiasm" a few days ago and I love it! Thanks for the recommendation 👌
Also, regional dialects are kind of getting less common. f. ex a lot of austrian dialects are getting more standardised and way too many children just speak "German" german, which is kind of sad.
It is sad in a way but it is naturally and necessary for a modern world
@@lost2weeks245 i agree with 'naturally', but not 'necessary'. It's not like people dont speak english, and except for some few theyre usually not completely unintelligable. It's more that dialects have a 'stupid farmer' reputation.
@@tonja7462 It is true, most dialects or even just accents are mostly considered "bad". When I moved to a big city for university, people did call me a farmer for having the accent I had. And yes, I used the past tense because I don't speak like that anymore, except to my family.
Also, there's lot of discrimination about accents. Would you imagine someone reading the news in Bairisch or Schwäbisch? Some people may not have access to certain jobs due to the way they speak.
You mean Standard/Highgerman right?
Yes, but the austrian version. It is different than the German one.
Can I just say how much I appreciate the level of referencing? It’s made it so much easier to properly look up new things or parts I’d not come across before! Thanks!
Yes, you can say that, as evidenced by the fact that you did say it.
Tom: "imagine if it was english"
-me, not phased
Tom: *adds a pic of a book in spanish*
- me, phased
I would be glad if a constructed language replaced English for international use.
@@PouLS there was an attempt at this but it never caught on, check out esperanto
Red T Shirt - ✔️
One Shot Video - ✔️
Intelligent British Accent - ✔️
2 Month Old Pinned Comment - ✔️
Yup, this is a Tom Scott video.
@@DarrensGeneralInfo no
Wait, 2 month old pinned comment?
@@Q84 Aye. You don't see it?
Chru
how is the pinned comment from 2 months ago??
Just look at the Roman Empire to see how dialects transmute into many new languages in only a few hundred years
Yes! These groups were isolated from one another allowing their language's to evolve.
but even then, it shows how the line between languages is blurry.... im not a fluent speaker of any of them but ive heard sicilian italian is more different from roman italian than roman italian is from dialects of spanish, and that the languages of the basque and catalan regions have more similarities than official french and spanish respectively... thats where the problems in classifying what is a "language" start, you could probably argue with a bit of reaching that modern spanish and italian are dialects of latin
Thanks Tom for highlighting the need to protect languages like Welsh.
Just wanted to say that I really enjoy your style of teaching. Your videos are always straight to the point, and very informative. Thanks 😊
Tom Scott: "I'm going to start doesn't make sense. You can't go to start because it's not a place."
Me: opens Google maps
Me: *goes to bottom left of screen*
Also Me: *sadly ponders the abyss of time and the wind coming through the Windows*
Found it! Start, Louisiana, population 305.
1:34 but Start is a town in Louisiana
Ha. Finally a time where Singlish is mentioned. I see this as a win.
Singaporean gang rise up
Care to give an example/overview of it?
@@appleslover Come on lah, you see got Singlish right?
@@appleslover It's really hard to encapsulate in a single youtube comment but essentially it's English base words with Chinese grammar and vocabulary from Malay, Tamil, Hokkien, Canto etc mixed in. If you're interested, Langfocus' video on singaporean languages is a good start I'd recommend to non-singaporeans. If you want to hear it actually being spoken I guess you'd have to look for singaporean shows/youtube clips or come visit sometime!
Tom Scott, thanks for all of your work on these content. I really appreciate how you always put the extra effort into making sure it's fact-checked and valid, and it manages to both entertain and inform me at the same time.
You know you've watched too much Tom Scott when you spot and understand the Bouba and Kiki cameo
So, can we expect an episode of "The Basics" with exactly the same title?
It'll have to have "Programming" because otherwise people would not stop mentioning it
An episode of basic programming language classification/theory would be really nice!
I hope so!
this made me imagine a programming dialect * shudders *
@@ilexdiapason BASIC had different "dialects"
A small correction (and a fun coincidence): I just changed the language of my Android phone to Icelandic, so it definitely is there
Samsung watched this video and hurried to add it within the four hours before you posted this comment.
@@runefaustblack (I know you're joking but I've had my phone in Icelandic for more than a year now :3 )
@@TheMrMe1 "More than a year" isn't a lot, considering smartphones and the language have been around for over 10.
i hope you know the icelandic word for english
@@cameron7374 Yes, it is a ton, considering that smartphones have only been around for around 10.
i love how language changes the way you think. i grew up with three languages being spoken in my own home, sadly ended up only being fluent in one, and can understand speech in one, but not read it nor speak or write in it, and lost the third entirely. i've become very much a language-dabbler in adulthood, picking up lessons and courses in random languages, and then never fully learning the language, but in doing so, i became fascinated with how just the etymology of words imply a lineage of previous meanings that contribute to how the people who speak the language over time think of the concept the word stands for
Now I’m gonna learn Icelandic to save it for another hundred years.
no you wont.
How is your Icelandic going?
Við skulum gera það saman
EULER I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD
I'd like to learn an indigenous american language for thag reason
"And what about Scots"
Wikipedia sweating intensifies.
It's 'Scots' when talking about the people and the Germanic language.
This comment is so niche, I love it
If Scots counts as a distinct language, does that mean Singlish does as well?
For the people who don't get this comment, Scots Wikipedia was almost entirely written by an American with no knowledge of the language who just wrote in a Scottish accent and had too much time on their hands. It was only discovered last year I think? It's honestly hilarious and such a niche reference
@@Nathan-gs5tw Nope, this year, in August! Actual Scots speakers are trying to fix the whole site now.
As a Welsh speaker this is actually something that a lot of people are worried about. There is a lot of effort going on in Wales to keep Welsh alive, but it is a battle against a powerful tide.
Thanks for the video! Finally I know how to explain what a species is and how new ones emerge. It is like languages. As long as they are similar, they have strong influence on each other and dialects are like sub-species, which still can mate. But, mostly through geographic separation, languages evolve to two distinct forms, just like species.
And there are also eveolutionary trees out there, which are really cool and interesting! But in comparison to species, such trees show much more horizontal "gene transfer" for languages.
0:48
come on Tom, we've all heard the Technical Difficulties and the Park Bench (RIP), you 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 sound like this!
As someone who (I would like to say) knows German, it fascinates me how a language which I used to think of as a very unified one could be so regional in its dialects. Even further, the fact that some dialects have distinct enough pronunciation and grammar that people only learning the standard language (me inc.) don't have a chance of comprehending some of them
I studied the "standard" version taught in US high schools in the 50s and 60s and maybe later. Anyway, I ended up getting a job in a big company when I was only about 20. The people came from all over Germany, at that time divided east and west. So I got to hear several dialects plus there were other foreigners like me (the only American at the time) who spoke "accented" German. Lots of fun.
German is everything but unified, less so than English I'd say. Some dialects are even classed as their own language (and the difference between "person speaking German with that dialect" and "person speaking that dialect as a seperate language" are subtle, gradual and not clear cut), like Plattdütsch (which fits somewhere in the continuum Standard German - Plattdütsch - Frisian - Dutch) or Bavarian.
When you said “someone has to draw the line somewhere” my video screen went black for the rest of the video and I thought it was intentional
Say you're "going to" do something does make sense. You're approaching your future actions in time, not in space. The future is coming, so you're going towards whatever you're doing in the future. That's why it makes sense as a tense marker.
"I'm going to start" in other words is "I'm approaching starting". "Going to" and "approaching" are the same thing. Tenses just get muddled a bit.
I’m Swedish, work as a programmer and live in one of the larger cities which makes me probably use english as much as I use Swedish. I’m almost ashamed of how much I use “swenglish” on a daily basis, but this just proves I’m part of the evolution. Thank you!
Tom: "Imagine how you'd feel if English was endangered"
Me, a native Spanish speaker that learned English as a second language: "Ah, it doesn't matter too much either"
that sentence is why i have a v strong distaste towards monolingual native english speakers who aren't also linguists. that's a lot of modifiers but they are a VERY large group of people who don't realise how privileged they are.
Tom: "Imagine how you'd feel if English was endangered"
Me, a native Malay speaker that learned English as a third language after Malay and Mandarin, with Japanese as fourth: "Ah, it doesn't matter too much at all"
I'd still be a bit sad. Translations often don't hold up to the original. For example, the Czech translation of Lord of the Ring, while good (great even, by today's standards), still doesn't quite hold up.
@@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsna It's particularly unfortunate how little pressure there is in the Anglosphere, generally speaking, to learn a second language. As a monolingual English speaker, I can't see it as a privilege, but almost a curse. Since there isn't any incentive or educational groundwork to pick up a second language from a young age, particularly in North America, most English-speaking people have a much harder time picking up a new language. And to me, it's a very sad, isolating situation.
@@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsna it's not privilege to make stuff in your own language. Make a multi billion dollar tech company with Icelandic as the main language if you want to make Icelandic more widely used.
"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy"
Best quote I've heard in (at least) weeks.
@@KahruSuomiPerkele I think you miss the point....a language without an army and a navy are doomed to exctintion
I love your linguistic stuff I also love how you reference everything most things I greatly appreciate that
Iceland just needs a folk rock band like mongolian "the hu"
we have looooooooads. you people just have to start listening to them
Well they do, Sigur Rós, and they have appered in Game of Thrones and How to Train your Dragon movies. And I am sure that there are others that have appeared in English Pop culture.
Folk rock sucks. It takes the worst form bough.
What they need to do is to use their language and if anyone in their land refuses do not do buisness with them and if they turn violent fight them.
We need more Finnish Metal bands to popular.
I like Kaleo.
Q: How many languages are there?
A: Define language.
Considering not every individiual talks the same, and with the many forms of communication outside humans, I'd say 1 hextillion languages.
What about sign languages?
That senntence reminds me of that one eminem song
My favourite thing about linguistics is that after well over a century of scientific study of languages (and millennia of observation and analysis before that), there is still no consensus not only about what is a language, but also about what is a word. In papers, everyone just uses these as if they were clearly defined terms when they are not and it's just casually handwaved because our contextual understanding of these (quite likely using Prototype Theory) is "good enough for jazz".