+crisy1001 Not necessarily, just because they can't hear doesn't mean they won't babble gibberish as infants. Many deaf people can speak just as well as anyone else because they can read lips.
Unix One Well yes, I am aware of that......frankly I'm not exactly seeing the connection between my comment and this. I suppose though thinking about it now, the whole babbling with their hands thing might not be true, but if they saw others doing that I could see it. I'd have to watch the video again to remind myself of the context here.
crisy1001 Sorry, I know the comment was a year old, but because TH-cam doesn't have a method of aging the comments or whatever, makes it easy to still feel like responding today, old comment or not.
crisy1001 I do to: like if the comment passes 1 year, put it lower in the list. 2 years or more, YT should delete it, because then fights could start that really don't need to.
This video is like the first two weeks of an Intro to Linguistics class. ALSO what are the possibilities for a Crash Course: Linguistics? Because I would watch that shit like it was my job.
Oddly enough, my daughter would practice a sound or word for a few hours or days, until she got it right, then not say it again. She would just point at things we knew she could say the name of but not say the actual word, making us have to guess sometimes about what she really wanted. (She would point at a cabinet full of items and we would have to figure out ourselves that she wanted the box of Cheerios, or whatever it was...) She wouldn't really "speak" until she was 3 and could form full sentences. At first, we thought she had developmental problems, but it turned out that she was just a stubborn perfectionist, and has remained one for her entire 21 years. lol!
I found a story my mom told me really interesting. She told me that when I was learning to walk I refused to let go of the edges of things. One day my dad and her were arguing about how to help me learn how to walk and though I didn't know how to speak yet I let go of the couch and walked towards them. I imagine that their arguing and disappointment in me caused me more anxiety than my fear of falling. When I talk to babies, I talk to babies. I have people tell me "they can't understand you" but we have no idea just how much they actually can understand. I'm sure I knew exactly what my parents were arguing about and I'm positive that I knew that I was the cause of the argument.
Spanish is considered a language there are many local accents but Spanish is one language Many Chinese speakers of say WU or Min Dan or Shanghaiiese cannot understand Mandarin most Spanish speakers can understand Spanish in multiple Spanish speaking countries believe me I speak both Mandarin and Spanish
Being multilingual. The language of my toughts changes. I mostly think in my native tongue. However alot quite often i think in English. When i think specificly, i think in English due to the fact that English has more words specifying things making it easier to think fast and accurate. This is reason why i end up using some English words even in my native tongue. This is due to the fact i either dont remember the word in my language. Or the English is more specific. As many words here are pronounced the same thus sometimes hard to get into context when trying to explain something. But mainly my tough wary. I usually think in English when I'm hanging out with English speaker like on the internett or English speaking friends. And i think in my native language when hanging out with family or work. Yoy end up thinking in a foreign language when hanging out with foreigners. This is so that you dont struggle speaking the other language fluent. This is where i notice most people struggling speaking a new language is because they don't understand enough to have toughs in that language. And thus they get strange vocabulary at times and struggles with pronunciations. Also stuttering. Thinking in that language helps you warm up before speaking it. This making you're language more fluent
I've learned English when I was 7 and I find myself thinking in English at times. It's mostly when I'm thinking about something I've read in English, when I'm talking to foreign people or when I'm thinking about some movie or a TV series in English.
I'm inclined to think that thoughts don't happen in language. In other words, we have thoughts and our brain converts them into language as a second stage. Assuming I'm right about this, this second stage - conversion into language - can have both positive and negative side-effects. Converting something into language can: a) help us to codify and clarify our thoughts (think how useful it can be sometimes to write out something you've been thinking about - whether it's a diary entry or a shopping list); but: b) it can also be very constraining (think how frustrating it can be when you struggle to put into words something you've been thinking about, let alone writing about a complex concept - such as when you're trying to finish your masters dissertation or similar).
I'm multilingual, too (depending on how you count I'm fluent in three to five languages). Like you, I think (and dream!) in different languages, too. What I find interesting is that when I think about what language I'm thinking in in what situation, there seems to be a clear pattern. For example, when I'm reflecting myself and my actions, I usually think in English. When I think in the "conversation mode" (i.e. thinking about telling someone about something or just simply thinking to myself in the manner in which I would think if I were to talk to someone), I usually think in Swiss German (except when thinking in this mode in the context of my family, in which case I usually think in High German (or Dutch)). I also usually think in High German when thinking about certain kinds of complex problems (although I frequently think about these things in English, too). What I also notice is that I often don't realize for several minutes what language I'm reading in. When browsing the internet - for example - I usually use English, but when I switch to German, or from German back to English, I usually don't notice at once.
brkatimachor I think thinking can happen both with and without language. I definitely have internal monologues sometimes, both in my mother language and in my second language. But that's not always the case.
I find that when I'm in French and I speak French I go from a fairly confident and loud and annoying person to quiet and more considerate and I always think about what I'm going to say. It's like my entire personality changes.
+Krilln That's funny, for me it's the opposite : I'm French, and a rather shy person, and it occurred to me that I become more talkative and confident whenever I'm speaking English.
+Unix One My case is a little bit different. When I speak serbian (my mother tongue) I tend to speak very, very fast, but when I speak english i speak calmly and slowly. On the other hand, when I speak turkish, I´m speeding again.
filip cvjetkovic You're lucky you can speak more than one language fluently. All I have reserved are a few phrases and words from Spanish. I can understand what's being said to me if someone speaks it, but it's almost impossible for me to speak back meaningfully.
I wasn't able to speak a comprehensive language until I was late into my 4th year. My parents took me to a doctor to see if i was deaf, but found out that my babbling was the result of living in a multilingual environment, where I tried to speak my mom's Filipino, my dad's Hungarian, and my country's English. This caused me to speak sentences combining all three of the languages, where it was eventually stopped when my parents decided only to speak English to me. English is all I know now though :P
I friggin' love linguistics. Every aspect of it. I want to do a linguistics channel SO BADLY!!! Maybe this summer, once things settle down a little. THANK YOU, HANK!!! :D
The whole subject of Chomsky and his research was probably the most fascinating part of my university courses on linguistics. I encourage everyone watching this video to read up on the stuff he proposed/found out. Really fascinating if you're interested in psychology.
I'm learning a new language right now and it feels so weird. Actually, I found the perfect metaphor yesterday. I bought an old Super Mario Bros game that I used to be obsessed with as a kid and found that while I could play it alright (the muscle memory and some actual memory was there), it also felt weirdly foreign and awkward. I'm not that young girl clumsily pawing at the buttons when I was a beginner, but nor am I the pro, quickly clearing levels, that I eventually came to be. So while learning Arabic is difficult and feels foreign, I'm beginning this process already knowing what language is as a concept and how communicating works. Also, I second all comments requesting a linguistics crash course.
As a student of linguistics in university who studies 5 languages, this episode was my favourite. :3 Language is endlessly fascinating, I stuff myself full of whatever language I can learn on a daily basis and still know next to nothing. You can always observe behaviour, but to have a richer understanding of other cultures and ways of thinking, there really is no better way than to study their language. It's the only way to really get in their noggin and *really* know what they're thinking, why, and how. Thanks so much for this episode, Crash Course!
Zachary Riesenberger don't forget about the "prescriptive Grammar" . New words are being created everyday.i.e Selfie! ,Hashtag# :D it's gonna keep on going as technology advances and human civilization improves; in short words- as we keep on advancing towards the future we will have newer terms and thus newer words. i.e in 1995 we never used the word "Skype" let alone the verb "Skyping" cause it wasn't invented yet :) [funny fact: i just had a spelling error for the word "skyping" :P ]
I couldn't help but be reminded of the intonation-based language of the praerie dogs, or how American crows that migrate understand French crows, but American crows that stay put don't understand what the French crows are on about, and also how dolphins seem to gossip with each other. The more we learn, I think the more we realise we are not alone in our capabilities.
According to my parents, I started saying "mama" and "dada" at 5 months old. At 7 months I started using simple sentences. For example, I said "Dada go bye-bye car" when I saw my father starting his car to drive away to work in the morning. At 9 months I said "Huh, that daddy-man shoo-shoo twain tink he can," alluding to "The Little Engine that Could" when I saw my father struggling to get over a steep hill while running a marathon.
This goes really well with Hank's Vlogbrothers video from Friday! I've always found the acquisition of language to be incredibly fascinating, especially when it comes to learning more than one language.
I didn't always think in words; I could use words just fine, but I processed them slower. I thought in whole concepts; the sounds, smells, feelings, whatever was in what I was thinking about. This wasn't limited to thoughts only involving my physical senses, most abstract concepts were in feelings that I really don't know how to describe in any language I've explored. A couple years ago I realized I was having a lot of trouble translating between spoken English (I was better at written, from reading so often) and my thoughts and back fast enough to keep up with a normal conversation, so I decided to optimize that process and I changed to mostly thinking in words. It's limiting, slow, and less accurate, but I can communicate easier & faster and remember things longer without losing details. There are several other changes I noticed in myself, but I don't know if they were caused by my change in thinking. I don't really know why I'm sharing this... I guess I think maybe someone will find it interesting. Maybe it'll help with someone's research, seeing my (unusual?) story.
I don't know if you guys have already made a video on this but I would love to see the origins and/or the evolution of language. Where did all of these languages come from? Are new languages still emerging or evolving? I'm Iranian and I tried to look into the origins of Farsi and had to give up because it was far too complicated. Would be great if you guys could simplify it for my tiny brain.
nozrati I don’t know much about Farsi but the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari includes how the need for language originated after the agricultural revolution since our brains weren’t used to retaining large numbers. I highly recommend the book, it’s a great read
I'd assume that someone with no ability for language would think in imagery. like playing out a thought in there head . rather than thinking "I want to go for a run" they would imagine themselves running. Pretty interesting topic.
The problem is, wanting to go for a run is not imagining one-self running. The urge is not comprised in the image. I'm just saying both side of the equation are not equivalent which means that a being who reasons in imagery would think in quite a different way than us. I don't have a better explanation to offer as to how they might think and yours is definitely a possibility, it's just that i see problems with it.
One time my friends and I were emcees for a prize presentation event in school, and we were supposed to pronounce names for the prize winners. Our school's population is predominantly Chinese, while one of my friends is a Filipino who only speaks English and some Filipino dialect, one a Malay who speaks English and Malay and also picking up some Chinese recently, and another a Chinese like me. So we came across a Chinese name that gave my Filipino friend a lot of trouble, and it went something like: Friend: Yoon Yoo. Me: No, it's Yün Yü. Friend: Yoon Yew… Me: No, it's like (fumbles) just try to imitate the sound. Yün. Yü. Friend: Yün...Yoo. Me: Arghh (takes paper and scribbles some alphabets until it looks right) like "uin ui" except you mesh u and i together and don't move your lips while making the sound. Friend: ...what? Me: (turns to Malay friend) how do you pronounce this name? Friend #2: Yün Yü. Me: Just like that. Friend: Yoon Yoo. Me: Goddammit just let me take that name. Pronunciations glargh.
That's more of a question of the id, ego, and superego. Simply, all people consciously think in their own language or another language they speak in some cases. However, all basic needs are communicated in innate neural pathways that are completely unrelated to language centres. (I believe this to be correct, although this is not my field)
That is a very interesting thought. I recently asked my friend (who's first language is Spanish but is fluent in English and lives in the UK) whether her thoughts were in English or Spanish and she didn't know what to say, she said mainly English but sometimes Spanish. Could it simply depend on the context of her thoughts?
That's an interesting question. I don't know if we can have thoughts that are separate from language at the level of conscious thought (at least I can't), but it is possible that a thought is not encoded in language before it comes to our consciousness. Still, I would think that the language we are currently reading/thinking in will have an effect on that thought anyway. One example I can think of is expressions. If you ask someone in English what do an elephant, a car and a tree have in common, the response would be different than if you asked that same question in French or another language. (The answer is "trunk" BTW).
Eleanor Stylianides possibly, my thoughts on this were that we all think, not first with language, but instead with concept, which is then attributed to meanings, and then the associated language, which language gets used would most likely depend on context and situation. though this is only speculation.
MoonGoddessArtemis well, if you asked that to a french person, the language they speak would have trunk in common with those words, as the word trunk, might not be attribute to an elephant, as they use a differant word for it, so there may not be similarities between those words at all.
as a Nerdfighter with a BA in Theoretical Linguistics who is starting a masters in Applied Linguistics - I AM SO HAPPY THAT PEOPLE WANT TO LEARN ABOUT THIS!! a lot of the stuff in this video is a simplification, but it's a good overview for people who are interested. Language is cool people! Thanks so much for making this so other people can share my passion :D
Not language but metacognition (knowing about knowing or to think about your thinking) sets us apart from animals. But then again, can we be sure that animals do not possess the metacognition ability? Anyways It brings me great pleasure to see how many people watch these clips. Luckily there are still people who are curious and want to learn new things just for the fun of it. Not just for good grades.
My first cat would meow in such a way it sounded like it said in, out, pet, and food. Pusskers used his limited vocabulary well, meowing with the appropriate "word" to convey what he wanted. He was a smart little bugger- held a hatchling captive to bait its parents, knew how to turn a couple of his electric toys on, the list goes on.
I believe we are able to think without words. Like in pictures or sounds, visual thinking, not everything I think can easyly be formulated in words, sometimes I feel like drawing a picture next to it, to illustrate.
i got into a heavy feud with my brothers wife. she would tell her children jokingly they are "little devils" or "hell raisers" and i had to express to my brother that doing so could really have a negative affect of the kids. but it's not my place to tell others how to raise theyre kids. so i apologized.
I agree with you, it is not good conditioning for their self image and self confidence to be called negative names frequently, even if done so lovingly. i try to mostly say positive things to my son such as calling him "good boy," "smart", "clever", "handsome" etc. however there are worse parenting habits out there so maybe you can cut your brother and his wife some slack on this haha
Interesting they mention aphasia. I had that as a byproduct of a "childhood" disorder. Childhood is in quotes cause it's so rare they did the first long term study (with only 7 people!) in 2013 and apparently 6/7 were still affected in some degree by aphasia, or the other byproduct seizures, and I guess I'm one of the lucky 14%... I think ha. Anyways, my aphasia kicked in when I was 7 or 8 years old (mid-1990s) and I had to relearn English, both the speaking and comprehension of it; I believe more comprehension though. So, I guess it affected both the Broca's area and Wernicke's area for me.
OK, this answers a lot. I have a few memories from when I was less than 1 year old and most of them involve understanding what was said by others, though not being able to talk myself. Until now, I'd never been sure if that was just me filling in the blanks with something logical. Now I know my memories of other people's words are accurate. Thank you, Hank!
I often use a mental short-hand of skipping words and thinking of the concept specifically. This can aid in thinking faster and more deeply on a subject but relying on it too much makes interactions with people harder as actual words are required to express things externally. I'm sure this isn't that uncommon.
Best episode so far in this series. Looking forward to next weeks episode on Motivation. Hope Hank is as excited about motivation as he was about language :p
I've always wonder if I can raise a bilingual child by Speaking always in Spanish and the mother speaking always in German (With both of us understanding Spanish and German)
It's also a great idea to let both paternal grandparents (the father's parents) and maternal grandparents (the mother's parents) help take care of your child sometimes, if possible!
It's called the One Parent One Language approach. The trick is to stick with it. The two systems will be acquired but at different rates ( if the child is around the mother more then the mother's language will be slightly more dominant). There are a lot of benefits which include delaying Alzheimer's to up to 5 years.
I speak English at home but I speant ages 0-9 in Spanish speaking countries. When i'm speaking English, I think in English and when I speak Spanish I think in Spanish. Now I live in China, learning Mandarin (rather than aquiring it through exposure). When I speak Chinese I think in English and I transate it in my head before saying it.
Egh. Close, but I have to nitpick. I'd say the smallest unit of language is a PHONE, which is the actual sound that the speaker makes. A PHONEME is the psychological representation of the smallest indivisible unit of language. For example, in English, the "t" in "top" and the "t" in "stop" are technically different "t"s-different PHONES-but to English speakers, they are the same PHONEME.
Yep - [t] and aspirated [t] in English are strictly 'allophones', since they are different realisations of the same phoneme (i.e., /t/). The same applies to morphology as well: the different plural '-s' in 'cats' and 'dogs', and the '-es' in 'glasses' are allmorphs, being different variations of the plural-marking morpheme in English.
I think I'll have to nitpick as well. the [t] in both 'top' and 'stop' are the same; they are still the same distributional variants of the phone or speech sound [t]. A better example would be the difference between the [t] in, say, 'top' and 'take'.
I think that "the language makes humans different from other animals" statement is incomplete, at best. All social animals communicate and have basic understanding of abstract concepts (social relations are kind of abstract). If anything, it's the (probably unmatched by other earthly creatures) extent of its complexity. But there are definitely other characteristics which contribute to "humanity". Some overlap with language and (thus) abstract thinking, but don't have to be identical to them - strong social ties, long learning period and adaptive capabilities. There are others though, and they have also been crucial - ability to precisely manipulate objects of many dimensions or outstanding eyesight, for example. I think that "sapience", human uniqueness and superiority (however one understands them), is not identical with intrinsic qualities ("soul cell") - but is rather encored in capabilities possible thanks to them. These differences are often seen as "quantitative" (a rock used by an ape is technically a worse version of man's hammer), but I think there are some objective thresholds - leaving Earth, creating better human (education, rational physical "conditioning", and such can be put under this, although SF stuff is probably a more significant threshold), longtime data storage and its worldwide distribution, fast technological progress in general. So, it is more about being tall enough to reach the trapdoor, rather than having a non-zero height.
I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you for creating this incredible channel. I am studying through a correspondence university which means no lecturers or lessons - and your channel has helped me tremendously with two of my psychology modules. So a huge South African THANK YOU!!! 😄
pausing the video and went to google to search up kanzi, and damn, boy oh boy, it is mind blown. search it up guys, seriously, your mind will be blown away to the edge of the cosmos.
What I find fascinating is the fact that speakers of Piraha, an Amazonian language, have been found to be unable to learn how to count or do math, since their language does not include numbers.
I just read through the Wikipedia article, so there are quite a few sources. Here's one that seems to be a prominent one: edge.org/conversation/recursion-and-human-thought Also look up Daniel Everett. He's the guy who tried to teach them math, after they requested that they be taught math and numbers so that neighboring tribes wouldn't swindle them in trade (which is a new thing for them).
It seems widespread that peole were initially counting up to a certain number (5, 10, 12). Everything above that was many. Or in our past, we used approximates such as a douzen douzen (in German there was even a word for 5x12 and 12x12). It does not surprise me that it makes mathematic exercises hard. The same goes for roman numbers and odd ways of saying numbers e.g. quatre-vingt-quinze (4x20+15). PS neither English nor German are particularly logic in pronouncing numbers. thir-teen vs twenty-one... Not to forget that we count in several languages to 12 before we use combined numbers. These peculiarties give us some idea about our develeopment.
edi According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "dozen" (as well as its German equivalent "dutzend", as confirmed by DWDS) isn't even a Germanic word, as it derives from the Latin "duodecim (twelve) late in English's development, indicating that the tendency to count by twelves was not inherent to the Indo-European language family (unless it replaced an older word). I should also point out that pretty much all Indo-European languages follow the same, fairly logical pattern (Russian certainly has a weird number system, but it's not *too* far off the beaten path)
Mistran5lation I've constantly been fascinated that, while English has only 2 and a quarter conjugations for numbers, Japanese has a dozen or so number conjugations
Hi Hank! Your work with both CrashCourse and SciShow is spectacular. Both channels are incredibly powerful learning tools and have helped me in my undergraduate degree. On the language topic, would it be possible to post a video about acquisition of a second language? This is a particularly interesting field and I am sure that a lot of people would find it helpful in learning new languages.
actually I didn't understand your language parce que ce n'est pas facile par mujhe apke video bohat pasand ayi ,onnnek onnek onneek bhalo channel eta :)
My husband and I are in the process of raising our son multilingual (Italian, English and Mandarin), and hopefully he will be able to master all these languages into adulthood, but it is a pretty intimidating job to make sure he learns each one of them. To top that off we live in Malaysia where the national language is Bahasa Melayu, and people of chinese heritage (like our family) use equally Mandarin and Cantonese (so he will need to at least understand both dialects). However it is not uncommon to meet multilingual people in Malaysia, as it is a very mixed and varied country in terms of culture, languages spoken, religions and ethnicity.
It shouldn't be a problem. Kids are sponges. And studies show bi/multi-lingual kids are on average smarter than those speaking one language, so you should definitively encourage them. Not to mention the benefits in old age, as studies also show that bilingualism can help prevent certain types of neurological degenerative diseases, e.g. Alzheimer's. I was raised speaking French and German and it helped me a great deal towards learning English later in life; the more languages you know, the easier it becomes to learn a new one. I also have a friend who has 2 kids, half of the week they speak Arabic and French with their dad and the other half with their mom, they speak German, Italian and some Portuguese. Now at age 6 and 7, they can have a conversation in 4-5 different languages! Now this can also have unexpected consequences; another friend of mine was raised speaking Korean, French, Spanish, English and German and although he still speaks all 5 languages fluently and leads a successful professional life, he never could speak any of those languages perfectly, the way a native speaker speaking his own tongue would. A lot of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors etc and a slightly reduced overall vocabulary in each of the languages. He nonetheless remains one of the smartest persons i know and still managed brilliant studies so it shouldn't deter you in any way.
Two things: 1. I like how this episode is related to the most recent Vlogbrothers video (amazement at language). 2. I really like how Strong Mad is standing on the table.
Rodrigo Deleon Well... i think Wu-tang is more of HIS generation, most of this generation probably doesn't even know who Method man is, lol your comment is like 2 decades late. But yeah i appreciated that reference, hip-hop is such a complex art form (more then it is credited to be), and he followed by Shaekspear which reminded me of that amazing "Hip-hop or Shakespeare" video from Tedtalks, you should check it out.
Language just might be a structure to better organize our thoughts. So we could technically think without it We just wound be able to explain anything abstract in nature (to others or ourselves) So we could feel our feelings but not define them (right?)
hey john green i saw two books written by you in a bookstore today and i was going to buy them but then i saw this awesome (yes i know that's not what it means) book with monsters and sword fights so i got that instead
My mind speaks to itself in the language of images, which until recently I wasn't aware was something not everyone does. Words were hard for me to commit to when I kept finding them so contextual. Now they act as toe tags on top of what I can best describe as a meta ideograms. Just thought I would share.
You done goofed with morpheme's definition. You defined a lexeme. A morpheme is the smallest unit of morphology. Whilst most morphemes are lexemes, the reverse is not true. An idiom, like "pulling my leg" is its own lexeme in that it's meaning cannot be predicted from its components but is made of four separate morphemes, pull, -ing, my and leg.
This is an extraordinarily informative video. As a Linguist and Speech Pathologist, this reminded me of my entire undergraduate career summed up in 10 minutes. Nice job!
Y'all should read "Seeing Voices", Oliver Sacks' excellent book on sign language and deaf culture, and the importance of language to mental and cultural development. I'll just transcribe one of the bets bits here as a teaser: The mother - or father, or teacher, or indeed anyone who talks with the child - leads the infant step by step to higher levels of language; she leads him into language, and into the world picture it embodies (her world-picture, because it is her language; and beyond this, the world picture of the culture she belongs to). The mother must always be a step ahead, in what Vygotsky calls the "zone of proximal development"; the infant cannot move into, or conceive of, the next stage ahead except through its being occupied and communicated to him by his mother. But the mother's words, and the world behind them, would have no sense for the infant unless they correspond to something in his own experience. He has an independent experience of the world given to him by his senses, and it is this which forms a correlation or confirmation of the mother's language, and in turn, is given meaning by it. It is the mother's language, internalized by the child, that allows it to move from sensation into "sense," to ascend from a perceptual into a conceptual world. The corollary to all this is that if communication goes awry, it will affect intellectual growth, social intercourse, language development, and emotional attitudes, all at once, simultaneously and inseperably. And this, of course, is what may happen, what does happen, all too frequently, when a child is born deaf. It is to [Hilde] Schlesinger and her colleagues, over the last twenty years [this book was written in 1987], that we owe the fullest and deepest observations on the problems that may beset the deaf from childhood to adult life, and how these are related to the earliest communications between mother and child (and later, between teacher and pupil) - communications all too often grossly defective or distorted. Schlesinger's central concer is with how children - and, in particular, deaf children - are "coaxed" from a perceptual to a conceptual world, how crucially dependent this is upon such dialogue. She has shown how the "dialectic leap" that Vygotsky speaks of - the leap from sensation to thought - involves not just talking, but the right sort of talking, a dialogue rich in communicative intent, in mutuality, and in the right sort of questioning, if the child is to make this great leap succesfully. The origin of questioning, of an active and questing disposition in the mind, is not something that arises spontaneously, de noveo, or directly from the impact of experience; it stems, it is stimulated, by communicative exchange - it requires dialogue, in particular the complex dialogue of mother and child. It is here, Schlesinger finds, that the dichotomies start: 'Mothers talk with their children, do so very differently, and tend to be more often at one side or the other of a series of dichonotmies. Some talk WITH their youngsters and participate primarily in dialogue; some primarily talk AT their children. Some mainly support the actions of their offspring, and if not, provide reasons why not; others primarily control the actions of their children, and do not explain why. Some ask genuine questions ... others constraint questions ... Some are prompted by what the child says or does; others by their own inner needs and interests ... Some describe a large world in which events happened in the past and will happen in the future; others comment only about the here and now ... Some mothers mediate the environment by endowing stimuli with meaning [and others do not].' A terrible power, it would seem, lies with the mother to communicate with her child properly or not; to introduce probing questions such as "How?" "Why?" and "What if?" or replace them with a mindless monologue of "What's this?" "Do that"; to communicate a sense of logic and causality, or to leave everything at the dumb level of unaccountability; to introduce a vivid sense of place and time, or to refer only to the here and now; to introduce a "generalized reflection of reality," a conceptual world that will give coherence and meaning to life, and challenge the mind and emotions of the child, or to leave everything at the level of the ungeneralized, the unquestioned, at something almost below the animal level of the perceptual. Children, it would seem, cannot choose the world they will live in - the mental and emotional, any more than the physical world; they are dependent, in the beginning, on what they are introduced to by their mothers.
"What I might do while looking for the bathroom in Sweden." But... but Swedes are the most proficient in English out of all of the non-English speaking countries... 90% of them are proficient I know its probably a joke but STILL
When my dad wanted to learn another language and started studying Swedish I asked him, "Why? Almost all of them can understand you in English!" It's a very pretty language, but not the most practical for an English speaker's second language.
Since every language has words and expressions that can't be easily conveyed to other languages, I think our thoughts become more clear the more languages we know. I know three languages, and I can dress my thoughts using expressions from any of them when thinking. If the thought comes first and we dress it up in words in our head, then it becomes a lot more clear and precise. If thoughts arrive already dressed in words, then additional languages can allow us to think thoughts we were previously not capable of. It's mind boggling, really.
Not necessarily. It really depends on the baby's environment. If the child is hearing, and they are sent to daycare at a reasonably young age (like under 4, for instance), they will very quickly pick up the spoken language and speak it with the same proficiency as any other child. If the child is also deaf, they will not need any additional assistance other than simply learning from their parents in order to learn sign language. If they are introduced to their first language after the critical period of language learning, additional effort with a counselor can result in perfectly fluent language acquisition, but it will not be effortless like it is for infants.
Your language does not doom your knowledge. A richer vocabulary can definitely help you think more clearly, but that doesn't mean that you won't be able to understand concepts that are more common in other languages. There have been experiments on tribes that use different language and some don't have words for east, west or even left and right! Instead, they use some other "compass", like a topical natural site (e.g.: mountain). But when they were asked to complete tasks that were based on left-right/east-west problems, they did just fine.
This is the sad case of the 'feral child' "Genie". She was completely isolated from birth and never properly acquired language of any kind even after she was rescued.
Ah man, I have been watching your Sci Show videos for awhile and have been pining over how smart you seem... Thank you so much for crediting all the people who make this wealth of information possible. I really enjoy learning, and try to soak up as much as possible, but I was getting discouraged by the vast amount of topics you cover with such confidence. You truly have a gift for making learning fun. Please let my math teacher in on your tricks. Thanks for the videos.
IMHO language is not a requirement for creating thoughts, but it affects them. Speaking out a problem can help you finding a solution. Translating thoughts can help you understand both languages from a cultural context (e.g. try to find a translation for the concept of Vergänglichkeit, or cool). Every language lacks words for description. Spotting such gaps gives you an impression, what other speakers are not concerned. We got for instance so many words for colors but only few for smells. Also the systematic nomenclature of bodyparts is relatively recent. On the other hand it should give you something to think if the word with the most synonyms is the female rear, or money...
can we get a crashcourse linguistics? that would be wonderful.
+Inez Allen (Valkiro) I support this.
That's my dream Crash Course.
+Inez Allen (Valkiro) Yes! That would be fantastic!
+Inez Allen (Valkiro) Am I the only that whishes for Linguistics CC hosteed by John rather than Hank?
+3006spikespiegel yes. I feel John have become too full of himself after he have published his books
Deaf babies will babble with their hands!? I don't know why but that blew my mind, really amazing!
+crisy1001 Not necessarily, just because they can't hear doesn't mean they won't babble gibberish as infants. Many deaf people can speak just as well as anyone else because they can read lips.
Unix One Well yes, I am aware of that......frankly I'm not exactly seeing the connection between my comment and this.
I suppose though thinking about it now, the whole babbling with their hands thing might not be true, but if they saw others doing that I could see it. I'd have to watch the video again to remind myself of the context here.
crisy1001 Sorry, I know the comment was a year old, but because TH-cam doesn't have a method of aging the comments or whatever, makes it easy to still feel like responding today, old comment or not.
Unix One Mm yeah, it's cool, I wasn't offended or anything, it's all cool. Do wish YT would improve that tho :/
crisy1001 I do to: like if the comment passes 1 year, put it lower in the list. 2 years or more, YT should delete it, because then fights could start that really don't need to.
"Want Juice" and "No Pants" are things I chant nearly every day after work.
Four years late to this party but: LMAO 😂
lol...dirty jokes at their finest!
Six years late to this party but: LMAO
This video is like the first two weeks of an Intro to Linguistics class. ALSO what are the possibilities for a Crash Course: Linguistics? Because I would watch that shit like it was my job.
Definitely!
Since we don't have a crash course linguistics, check out @TheLingSpace! They do a lot of really cool videos! :)
Nativlang has a lot of stuff about language history.
Oddly enough, my daughter would practice a sound or word for a few hours or days, until she got it right, then not say it again. She would just point at things we knew she could say the name of but not say the actual word, making us have to guess sometimes about what she really wanted. (She would point at a cabinet full of items and we would have to figure out ourselves that she wanted the box of Cheerios, or whatever it was...) She wouldn't really "speak" until she was 3 and could form full sentences. At first, we thought she had developmental problems, but it turned out that she was just a stubborn perfectionist, and has remained one for her entire 21 years. lol!
ladymalora Observer bias. Flawed observation.
@@november8289 ??
Watching crashcourse psychology as a way to procrastinate from my psychology revision..... yeah because that makes total sense....
I found a story my mom told me really interesting. She told me that when I was learning to walk I refused to let go of the edges of things. One day my dad and her were arguing about how to help me learn how to walk and though I didn't know how to speak yet I let go of the couch and walked towards them. I imagine that their arguing and disappointment in me caused me more anxiety than my fear of falling. When I talk to babies, I talk to babies. I have people tell me "they can't understand you" but we have no idea just how much they actually can understand. I'm sure I knew exactly what my parents were arguing about and I'm positive that I knew that I was the cause of the argument.
Once again, Crash Course saves the day when my brain gets too tired of staring at my notes. Love the psych series, HUGE help for a college student :)
i am so happy he said Mandarin instead of Chinese.
你说普通话
By that standard, it's wrong to say that Spanish is a language since Hispania has more than one language.
Spanish is considered a language there are many local accents but Spanish is one language Many Chinese speakers of say WU or Min Dan or Shanghaiiese cannot understand Mandarin most Spanish speakers can understand Spanish in multiple Spanish speaking countries believe me I speak both Mandarin and Spanish
Roman Soiko Castillian is not the only language of Spain. There are other Spanishes. Not everyone agrees with Castillian being referred to as Spanish.
well Galician I guess
see, this is the type of guy I would look for in a party. Just to talk about stuff that expands my intellectuelness
*intellect
But yes I agree LOL wholeheartedly
I love how these crashcourses exactly add up to the chapters of the book used in my introduction to psychology class. (Gleitman et al., 2011)
Being multilingual. The language of my toughts changes.
I mostly think in my native tongue.
However alot quite often i think in English. When i think specificly, i think in English due to the fact that English has more words specifying things making it easier to think fast and accurate.
This is reason why i end up using some English words even in my native tongue.
This is due to the fact i either dont remember the word in my language. Or the English is more specific. As many words here are pronounced the same thus sometimes hard to get into context when trying to explain something.
But mainly my tough wary.
I usually think in English when I'm hanging out with English speaker like on the internett or English speaking friends. And i think in my native language when hanging out with family or work.
Yoy end up thinking in a foreign language when hanging out with foreigners. This is so that you dont struggle speaking the other language fluent.
This is where i notice most people struggling speaking a new language is because they don't understand enough to have toughs in that language.
And thus they get strange vocabulary at times and struggles with pronunciations. Also stuttering.
Thinking in that language helps you warm up before speaking it. This making you're language more fluent
Bad spelling. Written on phone.
I've learned English when I was 7 and I find myself thinking in English at times. It's mostly when I'm thinking about something I've read in English, when I'm talking to foreign people or when I'm thinking about some movie or a TV series in English.
I'm inclined to think that thoughts don't happen in language. In other words, we have thoughts and our brain converts them into language as a second stage.
Assuming I'm right about this, this second stage - conversion into language - can have both positive and negative side-effects. Converting something into language can:
a) help us to codify and clarify our thoughts (think how useful it can be sometimes to write out something you've been thinking about - whether it's a diary entry or a shopping list);
but:
b) it can also be very constraining (think how frustrating it can be when you struggle to put into words something you've been thinking about, let alone writing about a complex concept - such as when you're trying to finish your masters dissertation or similar).
I'm multilingual, too (depending on how you count I'm fluent in three to five languages). Like you, I think (and dream!) in different languages, too. What I find interesting is that when I think about what language I'm thinking in in what situation, there seems to be a clear pattern.
For example, when I'm reflecting myself and my actions, I usually think in English. When I think in the "conversation mode" (i.e. thinking about telling someone about something or just simply thinking to myself in the manner in which I would think if I were to talk to someone), I usually think in Swiss German (except when thinking in this mode in the context of my family, in which case I usually think in High German (or Dutch)). I also usually think in High German when thinking about certain kinds of complex problems (although I frequently think about these things in English, too).
What I also notice is that I often don't realize for several minutes what language I'm reading in. When browsing the internet - for example - I usually use English, but when I switch to German, or from German back to English, I usually don't notice at once.
brkatimachor I think thinking can happen both with and without language. I definitely have internal monologues sometimes, both in my mother language and in my second language. But that's not always the case.
I wish crash course would add a 'further reading/viewing' section to videos.
"Want juice! No pants!" Words to live by.
I find that when I'm in French and I speak French I go from a fairly confident and loud and annoying person to quiet and more considerate and I always think about what I'm going to say. It's like my entire personality changes.
+Krilln
_yeah me too. i am in french immersion and the same thing happens to me_
+Krilln That's funny, for me it's the opposite : I'm French, and a rather shy person, and it occurred to me that I become more talkative and confident whenever I'm speaking English.
+Krilln I wish I was you. I took Spanish for two years and I can't really speak it, I can understand it more than anything.
+Unix One My case is a little bit different. When I speak serbian (my mother tongue) I tend to speak very, very fast, but when I speak english i speak calmly and slowly. On the other hand, when I speak turkish, I´m speeding again.
filip cvjetkovic You're lucky you can speak more than one language fluently. All I have reserved are a few phrases and words from Spanish. I can understand what's being said to me if someone speaks it, but it's almost impossible for me to speak back meaningfully.
I wasn't able to speak a comprehensive language until I was late into my 4th year. My parents took me to a doctor to see if i was deaf, but found out that my babbling was the result of living in a multilingual environment, where I tried to speak my mom's Filipino, my dad's Hungarian, and my country's English. This caused me to speak sentences combining all three of the languages, where it was eventually stopped when my parents decided only to speak English to me.
English is all I know now though :P
these videos have been very helpful when prepping for college psychology exams. glad i found these!
The reveal that Kanzi is a bonobo was horrifying. I hope Hank wasn't in charge of breaking to news to his "mother"
I friggin' love linguistics. Every aspect of it. I want to do a linguistics channel SO BADLY!!! Maybe this summer, once things settle down a little. THANK YOU, HANK!!! :D
maybe too late to the party, but how things going?
@@kupamanduka I was about to ask that, you barely beat me to it! I mean, by barely I mean 10 months but...
This show is honestly so helpful! Thank you for making knowledge so accessible, & thank you for enriching my education!
This series (Crash Course Psychology) is saving me as I study for my AP Psych exam later today
The whole subject of Chomsky and his research was probably the most fascinating part of my university courses on linguistics. I encourage everyone watching this video to read up on the stuff he proposed/found out. Really fascinating if you're interested in psychology.
I'm learning a new language right now and it feels so weird. Actually, I found the perfect metaphor yesterday. I bought an old Super Mario Bros game that I used to be obsessed with as a kid and found that while I could play it alright (the muscle memory and some actual memory was there), it also felt weirdly foreign and awkward. I'm not that young girl clumsily pawing at the buttons when I was a beginner, but nor am I the pro, quickly clearing levels, that I eventually came to be. So while learning Arabic is difficult and feels foreign, I'm beginning this process already knowing what language is as a concept and how communicating works. Also, I second all comments requesting a linguistics crash course.
As a student of linguistics in university who studies 5 languages, this episode was my favourite. :3
Language is endlessly fascinating, I stuff myself full of whatever language I can learn on a daily basis and still know next to nothing. You can always observe behaviour, but to have a richer understanding of other cultures and ways of thinking, there really is no better way than to study their language. It's the only way to really get in their noggin and *really* know what they're thinking, why, and how. Thanks so much for this episode, Crash Course!
Language: Crash Course Psychology #16
Sometimes I feel like I'm still in the babbling stage of language development.
hank i could kiss you, i srsly got an B+ in intro into psych only because of this series
Wait If we only have a finite amount of words in the English language we can't have an infinite number of combinations of those words
Zachary Riesenberger don't forget about the "prescriptive Grammar" . New words are being created everyday.i.e Selfie! ,Hashtag# :D it's gonna keep on going as technology advances and human civilization improves; in short words- as we keep on advancing towards the future we will have newer terms and thus newer words. i.e in 1995 we never used the word "Skype" let alone the verb "Skyping" cause it wasn't invented yet :)
[funny fact: i just had a spelling error for the word "skyping" :P ]
I have to ask a question: why do we mix languages together?
I couldn't help but be reminded of the intonation-based language of the praerie dogs, or how American crows that migrate understand French crows, but American crows that stay put don't understand what the French crows are on about, and also how dolphins seem to gossip with each other. The more we learn, I think the more we realise we are not alone in our capabilities.
According to my parents, I started saying "mama" and "dada" at 5 months old.
At 7 months I started using simple sentences. For example, I said "Dada go bye-bye car" when I saw my father starting his car to drive away to work in the morning.
At 9 months I said "Huh, that daddy-man shoo-shoo twain tink he can," alluding to "The Little Engine that Could" when I saw my father struggling to get over a steep hill while running a marathon.
This goes really well with Hank's Vlogbrothers video from Friday! I've always found the acquisition of language to be incredibly fascinating, especially when it comes to learning more than one language.
Great now I can't stop paying attention to his hands.
Gah!!
Haha, like a magician
😂
I didn't always think in words; I could use words just fine, but I processed them slower. I thought in whole concepts; the sounds, smells, feelings, whatever was in what I was thinking about. This wasn't limited to thoughts only involving my physical senses, most abstract concepts were in feelings that I really don't know how to describe in any language I've explored. A couple years ago I realized I was having a lot of trouble translating between spoken English (I was better at written, from reading so often) and my thoughts and back fast enough to keep up with a normal conversation, so I decided to optimize that process and I changed to mostly thinking in words. It's limiting, slow, and less accurate, but I can communicate easier & faster and remember things longer without losing details. There are several other changes I noticed in myself, but I don't know if they were caused by my change in thinking.
I don't really know why I'm sharing this... I guess I think maybe someone will find it interesting. Maybe it'll help with someone's research, seeing my (unusual?) story.
I don't know if you guys have already made a video on this but I would love to see the origins and/or the evolution of language. Where did all of these languages come from? Are new languages still emerging or evolving? I'm Iranian and I tried to look into the origins of Farsi and had to give up because it was far too complicated. Would be great if you guys could simplify it for my tiny brain.
nozrati I don’t know much about Farsi but the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari includes how the need for language originated after the agricultural revolution since our brains weren’t used to retaining large numbers. I highly recommend the book, it’s a great read
Do a Crash Course Linguistics series! Yours truly, a linguistics major student.
Noam Chomsky. Agree or disagree, he's a very smart guy.
I love this episode. Please do more on language and linguistics!
A good movie relating to this topic: "Arrival", by Denis Villeneuve.
Great thank you! I just watched the trailer, it looks good! I'm gunna watch it tonight =]
I'd assume that someone with no ability for language would think in imagery. like playing out a thought in there head . rather than thinking "I want to go for a run" they would imagine themselves running. Pretty interesting topic.
The problem is, wanting to go for a run is not imagining one-self running. The urge is not comprised in the image. I'm just saying both side of the equation are not equivalent which means that a being who reasons in imagery would think in quite a different way than us. I don't have a better explanation to offer as to how they might think and yours is definitely a possibility, it's just that i see problems with it.
What if they have aphantasia and can't see images in their head?
it was two pizza I called purple brother on the television ...lol
This is incredibly confusing for people who haven't been to part of them video yet
i wish this guy is my professor. :
One time my friends and I were emcees for a prize presentation event in school, and we were supposed to pronounce names for the prize winners. Our school's population is predominantly Chinese, while one of my friends is a Filipino who only speaks English and some Filipino dialect, one a Malay who speaks English and Malay and also picking up some Chinese recently, and another a Chinese like me. So we came across a Chinese name that gave my Filipino friend a lot of trouble, and it went something like:
Friend: Yoon Yoo.
Me: No, it's Yün Yü.
Friend: Yoon Yew…
Me: No, it's like (fumbles) just try to imitate the sound. Yün. Yü.
Friend: Yün...Yoo.
Me: Arghh (takes paper and scribbles some alphabets until it looks right) like "uin ui" except you mesh u and i together and don't move your lips while making the sound.
Friend: ...what?
Me: (turns to Malay friend) how do you pronounce this name?
Friend #2: Yün Yü.
Me: Just like that.
Friend: Yoon Yoo.
Me: Goddammit just let me take that name.
Pronunciations glargh.
This guy makes explaining this stuff look easy, but he is making it easy to understand, and it's also hilarious! Well done, Crash Cruse.
hmmm. do people think in their own laanguage, or do we think in the meanings, and then translate it into the language we understand?
That's more of a question of the id, ego, and superego. Simply, all people consciously think in their own language or another language they speak in some cases. However, all basic needs are communicated in innate neural pathways that are completely unrelated to language centres. (I believe this to be correct, although this is not my field)
That is a very interesting thought. I recently asked my friend (who's first language is Spanish but is fluent in English and lives in the UK) whether her thoughts were in English or Spanish and she didn't know what to say, she said mainly English but sometimes Spanish. Could it simply depend on the context of her thoughts?
That's an interesting question. I don't know if we can have thoughts that are separate from language at the level of conscious thought (at least I can't), but it is possible that a thought is not encoded in language before it comes to our consciousness. Still, I would think that the language we are currently reading/thinking in will have an effect on that thought anyway. One example I can think of is expressions. If you ask someone in English what do an elephant, a car and a tree have in common, the response would be different than if you asked that same question in French or another language. (The answer is "trunk" BTW).
Eleanor Stylianides possibly, my thoughts on this were that we all think, not first with language, but instead with concept, which is then attributed to meanings, and then the associated language, which language gets used would most likely depend on context and situation. though this is only speculation.
MoonGoddessArtemis well, if you asked that to a french person, the language they speak would have trunk in common with those words, as the word trunk, might not be attribute to an elephant, as they use a differant word for it, so there may not be similarities between those words at all.
I used to study Psychology in school and crash course psych is both entertaining and nostalgia inducing. I enjoy :)
"It was two pizza, I call purple brother on the television" -Hank I was dying of laughter! LOLOL
as a Nerdfighter with a BA in Theoretical Linguistics who is starting a masters in Applied Linguistics - I AM SO HAPPY THAT PEOPLE WANT TO LEARN ABOUT THIS!! a lot of the stuff in this video is a simplification, but it's a good overview for people who are interested. Language is cool people! Thanks so much for making this so other people can share my passion :D
Not language but metacognition (knowing about knowing or to think about your thinking) sets us apart from animals. But then again, can we be sure that animals do not possess the metacognition ability?
Anyways It brings me great pleasure to see how many people watch these clips. Luckily there are still people who are curious and want to learn new things just for the fun of it. Not just for good grades.
I absolutely adore languages and learning new languages and have been doing so since I was young. This was extremely interesting~
"Wu Tang lyrics" I'm glad you're Hip to the Hop
My first cat would meow in such a way it sounded like it said in, out, pet, and food. Pusskers used his limited vocabulary well, meowing with the appropriate "word" to convey what he wanted. He was a smart little bugger- held a hatchling captive to bait its parents, knew how to turn a couple of his electric toys on, the list goes on.
"Want Juice! No pants!"
A constant mood and words to live by
That was a surprisingly good and astonishingly extensive summery of my three years of linguistics learning in university. I'm speechless.
Crash Course Linguistics!!
I believe we are able to think without words. Like in pictures or sounds, visual thinking, not everything I think can easyly be formulated in words, sometimes I feel like drawing a picture next to it, to illustrate.
Since you mentioned speaking with your hands it's all I can pay attention to when watching this video :P
The last 6 episodes all so have been a vast improvement on the earlier episodes.
Keep it up.
i got into a heavy feud with my brothers wife. she would tell her children jokingly they are "little devils" or "hell raisers" and i had to express to my brother that doing so could really have a negative affect of the kids. but it's not my place to tell others how to raise theyre kids. so i apologized.
*on, not of.. *their, not theyre
I agree with you, it is not good conditioning for their self image and self confidence to be called negative names frequently, even if done so lovingly. i try to mostly say positive things to my son such as calling him "good boy," "smart", "clever", "handsome" etc. however there are worse parenting habits out there so maybe you can cut your brother and his wife some slack on this haha
Interesting they mention aphasia. I had that as a byproduct of a "childhood" disorder. Childhood is in quotes cause it's so rare they did the first long term study (with only 7 people!) in 2013 and apparently 6/7 were still affected in some degree by aphasia, or the other byproduct seizures, and I guess I'm one of the lucky 14%... I think ha.
Anyways, my aphasia kicked in when I was 7 or 8 years old (mid-1990s) and I had to relearn English, both the speaking and comprehension of it; I believe more comprehension though. So, I guess it affected both the Broca's area and Wernicke's area for me.
In case you'd like to know:
"Ursäkta, var är toaletten, snälla?" is how I would ask for directions to the bathroom in Sweden
OK, this answers a lot. I have a few memories from when I was less than 1 year old and most of them involve understanding what was said by others, though not being able to talk myself. Until now, I'd never been sure if that was just me filling in the blanks with something logical. Now I know my memories of other people's words are accurate. Thank you, Hank!
I often use a mental short-hand of skipping words and thinking of the concept specifically. This can aid in thinking faster and more deeply on a subject but relying on it too much makes interactions with people harder as actual words are required to express things externally.
I'm sure this isn't that uncommon.
***** Interesting. that's a different take on. But I do think your referring to a different thing. I wounder if there related.
Best episode so far in this series. Looking forward to next weeks episode on Motivation. Hope Hank is as excited about motivation as he was about language :p
I've always wonder if I can raise a bilingual child by Speaking always in Spanish and the mother speaking always in German (With both of us understanding Spanish and German)
yes, each parent speaking only one language is even recommended by some people
evanna11 (when raising a child bilingually)
It's also a great idea to let both paternal grandparents (the father's parents) and maternal grandparents (the mother's parents) help take care of your child sometimes, if possible!
PopDood that'd make a spoiled child
It's called the One Parent One Language approach. The trick is to stick with it. The two systems will be acquired but at different rates ( if the child is around the mother more then the mother's language will be slightly more dominant). There are a lot of benefits which include delaying Alzheimer's to up to 5 years.
I speak English at home but I speant ages 0-9 in Spanish speaking countries. When i'm speaking English, I think in English and when I speak Spanish I think in Spanish.
Now I live in China, learning Mandarin (rather than aquiring it through exposure). When I speak Chinese I think in English and I transate it in my head before saying it.
Egh. Close, but I have to nitpick. I'd say the smallest unit of language is a PHONE, which is the actual sound that the speaker makes. A PHONEME is the psychological representation of the smallest indivisible unit of language. For example, in English, the "t" in "top" and the "t" in "stop" are technically different "t"s-different PHONES-but to English speakers, they are the same PHONEME.
Yep - [t] and aspirated [t] in English are strictly 'allophones', since they are different realisations of the same phoneme (i.e., /t/). The same applies to morphology as well: the different plural '-s' in 'cats' and 'dogs', and the '-es' in 'glasses' are allmorphs, being different variations of the plural-marking morpheme in English.
I think I'll have to nitpick as well. the [t] in both 'top' and 'stop' are the same; they are still the same distributional variants of the phone or speech sound [t]. A better example would be the difference between the [t] in, say, 'top' and 'take'.
Daruqe I am being taught everything he is saying in linguistics class...
I am relieved to see the return of his fish. :)
I hereby nominate that we start calling John the 'purple brother'.
I have an a level english language exam with half of the paper being on child language acquisition, this was very helpful as a little recap. DFTBA
I think that "the language makes humans different from other animals" statement is incomplete, at best. All social animals communicate and have basic understanding of abstract concepts (social relations are kind of abstract). If anything, it's the (probably unmatched by other earthly creatures) extent of its complexity.
But there are definitely other characteristics which contribute to "humanity".
Some overlap with language and (thus) abstract thinking, but don't have to be identical to them - strong social ties, long learning period and adaptive capabilities.
There are others though, and they have also been crucial - ability to precisely manipulate objects of many dimensions or outstanding eyesight, for example.
I think that "sapience", human uniqueness and superiority (however one understands them), is not identical with intrinsic qualities ("soul cell") - but is rather encored in capabilities possible thanks to them. These differences are often seen as "quantitative" (a rock used by an ape is technically a worse version of man's hammer), but I think there are some objective thresholds - leaving Earth, creating better human (education, rational physical "conditioning", and such can be put under this, although SF stuff is probably a more significant threshold), longtime data storage and its worldwide distribution, fast technological progress in general.
So, it is more about being tall enough to reach the trapdoor, rather than having a non-zero height.
I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you for creating this incredible channel. I am studying through a correspondence university which means no lecturers or lessons - and your channel has helped me tremendously with two of my psychology modules. So a huge South African THANK YOU!!! 😄
"It was two pizza, I call, purple brother on the television."
- Hank Green, 2014
pausing the video and went to google to search up kanzi, and damn, boy oh boy, it is mind blown.
search it up guys, seriously, your mind will be blown away to the edge of the cosmos.
I saw this in my sub box and thought you were announcing a crass course in languages for a second. :(
I understood everything you said, and English is my second language! Thanks for the video.
What I find fascinating is the fact that speakers of Piraha, an Amazonian language, have been found to be unable to learn how to count or do math, since their language does not include numbers.
That's actually really interesting. I'd love to read up on that! Do you have any sources for that?
I just read through the Wikipedia article, so there are quite a few sources. Here's one that seems to be a prominent one: edge.org/conversation/recursion-and-human-thought
Also look up Daniel Everett. He's the guy who tried to teach them math, after they requested that they be taught math and numbers so that neighboring tribes wouldn't swindle them in trade (which is a new thing for them).
It seems widespread that peole were initially counting up to a certain number (5, 10, 12). Everything above that was many. Or in our past, we used approximates such as a douzen douzen (in German there was even a word for 5x12 and 12x12).
It does not surprise me that it makes mathematic exercises hard. The same goes for roman numbers and odd ways of saying numbers e.g. quatre-vingt-quinze (4x20+15).
PS neither English nor German are particularly logic in pronouncing numbers.
thir-teen vs twenty-one... Not to forget that we count in several languages to 12 before we use combined numbers. These peculiarties give us some idea about our develeopment.
edi According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "dozen" (as well as its German equivalent "dutzend", as confirmed by DWDS) isn't even a Germanic word, as it derives from the Latin "duodecim (twelve) late in English's development, indicating that the tendency to count by twelves was not inherent to the Indo-European language family (unless it replaced an older word).
I should also point out that pretty much all Indo-European languages follow the same, fairly logical pattern (Russian certainly has a weird number system, but it's not *too* far off the beaten path)
Mistran5lation I've constantly been fascinated that, while English has only 2 and a quarter conjugations for numbers, Japanese has a dozen or so number conjugations
Hi Hank! Your work with both CrashCourse and SciShow is spectacular. Both channels are incredibly powerful learning tools and have helped me in my undergraduate degree. On the language topic, would it be possible to post a video about acquisition of a second language? This is a particularly interesting field and I am sure that a lot of people would find it helpful in learning new languages.
actually I didn't understand your language parce que ce n'est pas facile par mujhe apke video bohat pasand ayi ,onnnek onnek onneek bhalo channel eta :)
Whoa some of that was in French but then I got confused 🤣
@@gabriellameattray9778 haha. It's English, french, hindi and bangla. In that order.
My husband and I are in the process of raising our son multilingual (Italian, English and Mandarin), and hopefully he will be able to master all these languages into adulthood, but it is a pretty intimidating job to make sure he learns each one of them. To top that off we live in Malaysia where the national language is Bahasa Melayu, and people of chinese heritage (like our family) use equally Mandarin and Cantonese (so he will need to at least understand both dialects). However it is not uncommon to meet multilingual people in Malaysia, as it is a very mixed and varied country in terms of culture, languages spoken, religions and ethnicity.
That's so cool !! I wish my parents would've raised me to be multilingual.
It shouldn't be a problem. Kids are sponges. And studies show bi/multi-lingual kids are on average smarter than those speaking one language, so you should definitively encourage them. Not to mention the benefits in old age, as studies also show that bilingualism can help prevent certain types of neurological degenerative diseases, e.g. Alzheimer's.
I was raised speaking French and German and it helped me a great deal towards learning English later in life; the more languages you know, the easier it becomes to learn a new one.
I also have a friend who has 2 kids, half of the week they speak Arabic and French with their dad and the other half with their mom, they speak German, Italian and some Portuguese. Now at age 6 and 7, they can have a conversation in 4-5 different languages!
Now this can also have unexpected consequences; another friend of mine was raised speaking Korean, French, Spanish, English and German and although he still speaks all 5 languages fluently and leads a successful professional life, he never could speak any of those languages perfectly, the way a native speaker speaking his own tongue would. A lot of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors etc and a slightly reduced overall vocabulary in each of the languages.
He nonetheless remains one of the smartest persons i know and still managed brilliant studies so it shouldn't deter you in any way.
it's a metaphor
What is?
when he said it there was a cartoon with a cigarette, it's a reference to the fault in our stars
+mickeynotmouse Oh okay
mickeynotmouse 👏🏻
Two things:
1. I like how this episode is related to the most recent Vlogbrothers video (amazement at language).
2. I really like how Strong Mad is standing on the table.
ey he said wu tang lyrics, he understands us young people xD
Rodrigo Deleon Well... i think Wu-tang is more of HIS generation, most of this generation probably doesn't even know who Method man is, lol your comment is like 2 decades late. But yeah i appreciated that reference, hip-hop is such a complex art form (more then it is credited to be), and he followed by Shaekspear which reminded me of that amazing "Hip-hop or Shakespeare" video from Tedtalks, you should check it out.
Language just might be a structure to better organize our thoughts.
So we could technically think without it
We just wound be able to explain anything abstract in nature (to others or ourselves)
So we could feel our feelings but not define them (right?)
hey john green i saw two books written by you in a bookstore today and i was going to buy them
but then i saw this awesome (yes i know that's not what it means) book with monsters and sword fights so i got that instead
Sorry, this video is hosted by John's brother, Hank.
goddamit
Haha
Banzarro Ur profile picture
My mind speaks to itself in the language of images, which until recently I wasn't aware was something not everyone does. Words were hard for me to commit to when I kept finding them so contextual. Now they act as toe tags on top of what I can best describe as a meta ideograms. Just thought I would share.
You done goofed with morpheme's definition. You defined a lexeme. A morpheme is the smallest unit of morphology. Whilst most morphemes are lexemes, the reverse is not true. An idiom, like "pulling my leg" is its own lexeme in that it's meaning cannot be predicted from its components but is made of four separate morphemes, pull, -ing, my and leg.
This is an extraordinarily informative video. As a Linguist and Speech Pathologist, this reminded me of my entire undergraduate career summed up in 10 minutes. Nice job!
***** how many times did you have to practice that "It was two pizza I called purple brother on the television" to say it so naturally? lol
Daniel Everett disproved Chomsky's theory of universal grammar through his findings with the Piraha.
So does this mean when I have kids I just need speak a bunch of languages around them and then there will be almost nothing they can't pronounce?
Y'all should read "Seeing Voices", Oliver Sacks' excellent book on sign language and deaf culture, and the importance of language to mental and cultural development. I'll just transcribe one of the bets bits here as a teaser:
The mother - or father, or teacher, or indeed anyone who talks with the child - leads the infant step by step to higher levels of language; she leads him into language, and into the world picture it embodies (her world-picture, because it is her language; and beyond this, the world picture of the culture she belongs to). The mother must always be a step ahead, in what Vygotsky calls the "zone of proximal development"; the infant cannot move into, or conceive of, the next stage ahead except through its being occupied and communicated to him by his mother.
But the mother's words, and the world behind them, would have no sense for the infant unless they correspond to something in his own experience. He has an independent experience of the world given to him by his senses, and it is this which forms a correlation or confirmation of the mother's language, and in turn, is given meaning by it. It is the mother's language, internalized by the child, that allows it to move from sensation into "sense," to ascend from a perceptual into a conceptual world.
The corollary to all this is that if communication goes awry, it will affect intellectual growth, social intercourse, language development, and emotional attitudes, all at once, simultaneously and inseperably. And this, of course, is what may happen, what does happen, all too frequently, when a child is born deaf.
It is to [Hilde] Schlesinger and her colleagues, over the last twenty years [this book was written in 1987], that we owe the fullest and deepest observations on the problems that may beset the deaf from childhood to adult life, and how these are related to the earliest communications between mother and child (and later, between teacher and pupil) - communications all too often grossly defective or distorted. Schlesinger's central concer is with how children - and, in particular, deaf children - are "coaxed" from a perceptual to a conceptual world, how crucially dependent this is upon such dialogue. She has shown how the "dialectic leap" that Vygotsky speaks of - the leap from sensation to thought - involves not just talking, but the right sort of talking, a dialogue rich in communicative intent, in mutuality, and in the right sort of questioning, if the child is to make this great leap succesfully.
The origin of questioning, of an active and questing disposition in the mind, is not something that arises spontaneously, de noveo, or directly from the impact of experience; it stems, it is stimulated, by communicative exchange - it requires dialogue, in particular the complex dialogue of mother and child. It is here, Schlesinger finds, that the dichotomies start:
'Mothers talk with their children, do so very differently, and tend to be more often at one side or the other of a series of dichonotmies. Some talk WITH their youngsters and participate primarily in dialogue; some primarily talk AT their children. Some mainly support the actions of their offspring, and if not, provide reasons why not; others primarily control the actions of their children, and do not explain why. Some ask genuine questions ... others constraint questions ... Some are prompted by what the child says or does; others by their own inner needs and interests ... Some describe a large world in which events happened in the past and will happen in the future; others comment only about the here and now ... Some mothers mediate the environment by endowing stimuli with meaning [and others do not].'
A terrible power, it would seem, lies with the mother to communicate with her child properly or not; to introduce probing questions such as "How?" "Why?" and "What if?" or replace them with a mindless monologue of "What's this?" "Do that"; to communicate a sense of logic and causality, or to leave everything at the dumb level of unaccountability; to introduce a vivid sense of place and time, or to refer only to the here and now; to introduce a "generalized reflection of reality," a conceptual world that will give coherence and meaning to life, and challenge the mind and emotions of the child, or to leave everything at the level of the ungeneralized, the unquestioned, at something almost below the animal level of the perceptual. Children, it would seem, cannot choose the world they will live in - the mental and emotional, any more than the physical world; they are dependent, in the beginning, on what they are introduced to by their mothers.
"What I might do while looking for the bathroom in Sweden."
But... but Swedes are the most proficient in English out of all of the non-English speaking countries... 90% of them are proficient
I know its probably a joke but STILL
When my dad wanted to learn another language and started studying Swedish I asked him, "Why? Almost all of them can understand you in English!" It's a very pretty language, but not the most practical for an English speaker's second language.
Since every language has words and expressions that can't be easily conveyed to other languages, I think our thoughts become more clear the more languages we know. I know three languages, and I can dress my thoughts using expressions from any of them when thinking. If the thought comes first and we dress it up in words in our head, then it becomes a lot more clear and precise. If thoughts arrive already dressed in words, then additional languages can allow us to think thoughts we were previously not capable of. It's mind boggling, really.
Do babies of deaf parents need to be sent to a speech counselor?
Not necessarily. It really depends on the baby's environment. If the child is hearing, and they are sent to daycare at a reasonably young age (like under 4, for instance), they will very quickly pick up the spoken language and speak it with the same proficiency as any other child. If the child is also deaf, they will not need any additional assistance other than simply learning from their parents in order to learn sign language. If they are introduced to their first language after the critical period of language learning, additional effort with a counselor can result in perfectly fluent language acquisition, but it will not be effortless like it is for infants.
Your language does not doom your knowledge.
A richer vocabulary can definitely help you think more clearly, but that doesn't mean that you won't be able to understand concepts that are more common in other languages.
There have been experiments on tribes that use different language and some don't have words for east, west or even left and right! Instead, they use some other "compass", like a topical natural site (e.g.: mountain).
But when they were asked to complete tasks that were based on left-right/east-west problems, they did just fine.
This is the sad case of the 'feral child' "Genie". She was completely isolated from birth and never properly acquired language of any kind even after she was rescued.
i'm just now watching this video after i found out i've been accepted to study linguistics at uni and i'm so !!!! yes !!! language(s) !!!
Crash course Linguistics? Please?
Gosh!!!! What a great way of talking. Oh, and those hands, they confirm every word you are saying. I'm in love.
"It was two pizza. I call purple brother on the television."
Admit it you laughed.
Ah man, I have been watching your Sci Show videos for awhile and have been pining over how smart you seem... Thank you so much for crediting all the people who make this wealth of information possible. I really enjoy learning, and try to soak up as much as possible, but I was getting discouraged by the vast amount of topics you cover with such confidence. You truly have a gift for making learning fun. Please let my math teacher in on your tricks. Thanks for the videos.
Can you read during a dream?
IMHO language is not a requirement for creating thoughts, but it affects them. Speaking out a problem can help you finding a solution. Translating thoughts can help you understand both languages from a cultural context (e.g. try to find a translation for the concept of Vergänglichkeit, or cool). Every language lacks words for description. Spotting such gaps gives you an impression, what other speakers are not concerned. We got for instance so many words for colors but only few for smells. Also the systematic nomenclature of bodyparts is relatively recent.
On the other hand it should give you something to think if the word with the most synonyms is the female rear, or money...