Have you tried to learn a tonal language? FREE Language Learning Resources 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN
Hi All - Just wanted to clarify something on the Sanskrit vs. Chinese / Tones issue - I am NOT saying that you must learn Sanskrit - just understand the body and sound - and Sanskrit has a very simple system anyone can use and apply to frame any language, and sound rules, tones - even irregular spelling etc. become easy to grasp. Not just for Indic or Sinitic / Tai languages - You can even see at a glance why English Church and Danish Kirk evolved the way they did, and as mentioned in the clip, all the Russian spelling rules make even MORE sense with this framework running in the background. You don't need to consciously think about it - it just becomes part of you, allowing you to shift between language sound systems easily. I am not linking the actual languages - Chinese / Thai and Sanskrit - they are totally separate languages. The word 'Sanskrit' literally means 'polished' (language) - They had mastered how the mouth / body produces sound, and the Brahmic abugida was a map of the human mouth as I outlined in the interview. It's a beautiful grid - and if you DO learn sanskrit, many of the sound rules, shifts, vowel 'gradations', consonant shifts (sandhi) etc are 'baked' into this system and becomes just general understanding. It's basically a user-manual to your mouth. Scholars / Linguists in China had an intimate knowledge of Sanskrit - especially during the Sui and Tang dynasties (a lot through influence of Buddhism), and so you get people like 陸法言 Lu Fa-Yan and his mates got together and started to map out their regional variations of Chinese basing it on the Sanskrit 'map' - This eventually became the 'Qie Yun 切韻' system, where each Middle chinese syllable / character could be allocated a 'slot' in the matrix and you'd know exactly how it should sound tone and all - you had normal voice, stiff voice, creaky voice and stopped endings which became 平上去入 - which are now referred to as 'Tones'. This was the standard way to write dictionaries up until relatively recently. The Thai / Tai system makes things easier, as rather than having to map each character to a slot, they just spell the words with the equivalent 'slot' letters, and add markers if they are 上 (originally stopped / rising - -้) or 去 originally creaky or 'exiting' voice (-่ marker in Thai). Burmese 'tones' run pretty much on these same 'throat' principles - as do Khmer vowels. I much prefer to refer to what we call 'tones' as 'syllable colours' - which is actually what they're called in Thai - วรรณยุกต์ 'wanna-yuk' literally means 'colour markers' - and doesn't suggest anything to do with pitch. Pitch is a by-product of the throat. So finally, to come back to what I mentioned in the clip - STOP COUNTING TONES - to me it's like counting the keys on your computer keyboard. As long as you know how to type, you can type - having more 'keys' doesn't make it a more formidable spelling machine. When I approach any tonal language, all I see are the 3x5 'pigeon holes' (sometimes with an extra row added - but I speak about that in clips if you're interested - see stuff on Gedney tone boxes), and then 'pitch contours' can be mapped to each box - as well as syllable length, voice stiffness / laxness (which is super important) and other tidbits. I NEVER just focus on the pitch. It just happens that some contours coincide between different boxes - so each language has 15 (or 20) tone types - and it's up to each dialect / language / village to render them the way they do - shifts which happened over time and geography, but are totally understandable if you understand how sounds shift from the Sanskrit principles. How many tones (or different pitch contour patterns) a language 'finally' has is just a count of how many 'different patterns' are left after mergers - some have more mergers than others. Some still have high and low registers - but the actual contours might mirror each other or be close in each register. It's just about pattern matching - the key is then just mapping it to normal speech of what you know then and developing prosody / fluency. Just like learning a DVORAK keyboard when you're used to using QWERTY - not that daunting, once you get a new keyboard under your belt- it becomes easier to learn and re-map more and more and isn't a chore. I'll be putting a lesson up soon open to anyone that actually takes people from non-tonal language backgrounds from absolutely no knowledge, to being able to hear, map and reproduce tones from any Asian tonal language (or Japanese pitch accent) - you can train yourself to do it in a day, and then it just runs under the hood (I don't make such grand claims easily - but trust me on this one). Stay tuned.
Thank you very much for share so much knowledge!!! I am from Argentina, but I am doing my best to learn english and chinese. I also did a little bit of german and italian. Every language has his bright side, and his shadows, hehe
It is weird how many ex-pats I’ve met in Thailand who have made next to no effort to learn the language. I’m not great, but I can navigate rural Thailand on my own, food, places to stay, directions, shave and a haircut…. I’ve had exactly the same ‘no bag’ experience. The cashier just continues in Thai without a hitch. I can’t recommend my initial learning technique, but it did help reduce the “affective filter”. I drank Mekong whiskey with Thais after work, and it seemed to get me started. Great explanation of tones!
I think they actually did a study where Spanish learners did better on speaking tests when they'd had a beer, so your method is somewhat backed by science haha
Stu is who got me into learning Thai many years ago, his cracking Thai fundementals course was a game changer in learning the Thai script early on. I haven't studied it in years as chinese as taking up most of that time (and french), but can't wait to re-learn thai the lingq way once it's on there!
@@craigbutler4786 back when I did it, it was on his learning platform called 'jcademy', which is still there. There's also been a book published of the same course
Thank you so much @lingosteve for this opportunity - I think it was a conversation long overdue and I hope that we'll be able to have many more into the future.
"Tones are not pitches, they are throat positions..." WOW🙌🙌 I could listen to you both for days🤩😍Like Steve said, Its all new to me🤷♀️, so I'll definitely follow Stuart on all platforms. You're like the role models for language enthusiasts like us🙏 This was greatly interesting. Thank you 🙏
I'll be putting a clip up in the coming week which will take people from absolutely no exposure to tones or Sanskrit through to being able to map tones internally from any tonal language. once it's there, it just runs in the background and hearing tones and what the throat is doing becomes crystal clear.
I've heard of the Gedney tone box, but I've read it's specifically for Proto-Tai. While the categories do match with Middle Chinese, I don't think the phonation types were the same. 去聲 (which corresponds to Thai B tones) is supposed to be Old Chinese -s > -h, which doesn't actually produce creaky or stiff/harsh voice. It's new to me to apply it to Burmese and Khmer, considering they're not tonal so the categories wouldn't match
Thai WAS my first foreign language! I was once a truck driver, and I learned it from listening to Thai language tapes for hours on end in my truck as I drove down the highways in Canada. It sounded so strange and alien at first, but with repeated listening it began to “solidify” into structure and meaning. I’m still not totally fluent, but I can now get by in Thailand quite well with never having to speak English. I learned to read it pretty well too.
Gedneybox, which I didn't know before, seems to be for ancient Thai language. It would be very interesting for academic linguistics to explore modern/ancient tonal languages in East Asia, but just for ordinary foreign language learners, I'd say it's not so practical as there are some or many spots that are not applicable for the particular language he/she is studying. I say that because I have studied all those languages mentioned in there (except Cambodian and Sanskrit). I do agree with Stu in that tones are not just about pitches and pitch change (contour or glide if you like). Tones also involve time length, sudden stop, and "voice color". However, pitches and pitch changes are most powerful and easy-to-explain among others, and that's why language teachers use pitches to describe each tone. (If they teach other factors as well, it could confuse some students.) And Stu mentioned Japanese within this context, and I am actually of the opinion that Japanese is one of the tonal languages as it involves time length and sudden stop as well as two pitches, but this depends on the definition of tones. I also agree with Stu on the point that we should not worry with the number of tones in the language you will study. Worry does not help learners learn effectively. No matter how many tones there are, you will eventually overcome and feel comfortable with them, just like those many conjugation/inflection tables for European languages, which looks impossible to learners in Asia at first. Maybe think like, "9 tones?, oh just 9?, ok, much better than 100". By the way, in some languages there may be more tones than the number of tones officially announced. In Vietnamese, for example, even though the officially agreed number of tones is 6 (Hanoi dialect), many of the tones have one or more variations and are pronounced differently depending on various circumstances the word is in. But even so, you'll eventually be able to pronounce well enough for effective communication.
I'm lucky that the linguists of old did all the hard yards for me - The Brahmic system of 3000 years ago formed the base for all of this. Highly recommend checking out the Chinese 切韻 system. It puts you in good stead for many languages in this part of the world - including Japanese and Korean.
Interesting video. I'm curious to see practically how a knowledge of the Gedney Box/Sanskrit phonetic system actually translate to practical ability in a tonal language, at first glance it feels like telling someone to learn the IPA to learn English. It also seems like the relationship between Sanskrit -> Russian, Chinese, and Korean is pretty tenuous. Almost sounds like an Ur language argument to me.
it's funny, while Stu was ranting on about throat orientations and the intricacies of tones and whatnot, you can tell Steve isn't really digging it. Steve isn't the kind of guy to really get into the minutia of any language and so all that detail was just honestly irrelevant to him and what he's passionate about.
I think what you've pointed out is true, however what I think you're also picking up on is the vast difference in knowledge of Linguistics. Stuart Jay Raj is by far the most accomplished Linguist in the formal sense on UA-cam. If you go back and watch the talk Steve does with Matt vs. Japan, he takes on the same blasé attitude until Matt switches to Japanese at the end. Either way, great talk, I hope Stuart's thorough knowledge of linguistics pushes others to deepen their understanding of whatever language they are currently learning.
@@byronwilliams7977(forgive my terrible English) it's personal.Technically, Stu is a better language learner because he knows a lot of theories. it's just like learning music theory, basically you can acquire *MOST* of the details through immersion (equivalent to _PRACTICING_ or _PLAYING_ the piano,even though learning language is more not 100% a conscious process).Linguists like Stu, theoretically will learn tonal languages faster than polyglots who don't know any linguistic theory at all.
@@alphacentauri7511 Watch Stuart Jay's videos, there's nothing theoretical about anything he has claimed. Have native speakers of the various languages he speaks assess how well he speaks those languages, you'll see that you not only have to be fluent in terms of language, grammar and prosody, but also in terms of comportment. Cultural fluency is an enormous aspect of language learning that many if not most polyglots simply don't have. Stu Jay really knows his stuff. ua-cam.com/video/c9Qxyh4bIiU/v-deo.html
after 13 years of Mandarin I need another 1000 hrs 🤣 most people of Chinese ancestry outside China have Chinese names but here in the Ph our names are really unique like I've talked with a couple of Chinese nationals and our names are really unique to them, and maybe it's because we have masters who give us our names that correspond to our birth date time and moon position I think. I super get what he says about work. I speak English no problem so when talking with foreign suppliers it's super easy but when I get to factories here being fluent in local languages help a lot too!
sanskrit is The key to many asian languages specially south asian languages most of these languages share majority of sanskrit vocabulary ( a native speaker of sinhalese from sri lanka )
I'm so inspired by the both of you. When Stuart Jay Raj started talking about Sanskrit, Thai and Khmer I knew I had to follow him. Such an amazingly bright inspirational person like you are! I got into Sanskrit a little over a year ago when I wanted to learn my then boyfriend 's mother tongue Marathi - and I found the material for Hindi and Sanskrit was the way for me to learn the beautiful Devanagari Script. @TheLinguist (Steve Kaufmann) I was delighted to hear that you enjoyed the delightful Danish series "Badehotellet" (ENGLISH: "Seaside Hotel") . There's a new season coming up very soon. Didn't know it was on Netflix. I've been watching it on a local Danish website. If you love "Seaside Hotel/Badehotellet" and/or the American "Little House On the Prairies", I believe you will absolutely love the Danish series "Matador" (don't know the English title) . It's a fictional depiction of the exact same era as "Badehotellet". EDIT: I forgot the most important part. I am blown away with your Danish pronounciation.
İ just found out that the word for "cockroach" sounds almost identical to my language! 😯 İ also agree that Danish sounds so much like a southern Chinese language, Vietnamese or even Thai. Just last week İ'm in northern Germany and heard some people who İ thought were Chinese or Vietnamese just to realize that they're Danish. And this had happened several times now.
Where is the link to Stu's stuff in the description, which was mentioned a couple times in the video? I only see links to Steve's stuff (and to LingQ).
Wow! Just started at introduction part, amazing! Please allow me sharing a ‘new gospel’: gospel = go + spel(l) language = ln + a + gauge, communication = tau(=Greek t, T) + co-min + co-min Very much appreciated for your sharing this wonderful(=e-fun + world) message!
I just let my students vote on my next language, Right now, the forerunners are Thai and Greek, so maybe I will have to nip over to Jay’s page. Also, I did notice that some of the principles of Sanskrit in my languages, but I had just written them off as coincidences.
In languages like English, Spanish, and Russian, each word may have an accented syllable. Those languages use stress for that accented syllable. But Japanese, Swedish, Croatian, and a few others use pitch for accented syllables. You can speak Japanese fluently without the pitch accent and native speakers will understand you, in fact some regional dialects of Japanese don't even have it. In Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc you will be ambiguous and often misunderstood if you get everything else right but leave out the tones.
Where can we find the map of our...mouths?... that all tonal languages are based on? I did find "Mastering Tones in Thai Chinese and other Tonal Languages" but ...
It means you'll get it for free as a side-effect/by-product. Like Mr Miyagi didn't teach Daniel-san how to block. He taught him wax on wax off paint up paint down etc. But later when he needed to block he realized he could now do it instinctively.
Wow so cool brother Stu can spoke so many languangs, there are two Superman in this video. Only spoke two languanges indonesian and english.😔 What is tonal guys?🤔
He is kinda discouraging at the end xD i think because of his job people have higher expectations to him and that's what he sees and why he says what he says but the average persons will be very happy if you try to speak their language even if you can just discribe your day and where you are from etc. .
A lot of Stu's ideas are ones he developed himself, he uses his own terminology as well as standard linguistics terminology. So some of Stu's concepts are new even to people who speak the languages and study linguistics.
@@sbmizzou he’s overwhelmed because Stuart is a linguist genius, Steve aquires languages en mass and speaks them horribly. If you’ve heard his Chinese or Japanese you’d know he really doesn’t care about pronunciation. Those are his words not mine.
Have you tried to learn a tonal language?
FREE Language Learning Resources
10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com
LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/
My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/
The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/
My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870
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Yes. I'm studying Tibetan right now.^^
I am intermediate now in Thai. Doing OK, but the helpful Thais decode my mistakes from context - most of the time, anyway.
Hi All - Just wanted to clarify something on the Sanskrit vs. Chinese / Tones issue - I am NOT saying that you must learn Sanskrit - just understand the body and sound - and Sanskrit has a very simple system anyone can use and apply to frame any language, and sound rules, tones - even irregular spelling etc. become easy to grasp. Not just for Indic or Sinitic / Tai languages - You can even see at a glance why English Church and Danish Kirk evolved the way they did, and as mentioned in the clip, all the Russian spelling rules make even MORE sense with this framework running in the background. You don't need to consciously think about it - it just becomes part of you, allowing you to shift between language sound systems easily.
I am not linking the actual languages - Chinese / Thai and Sanskrit - they are totally separate languages. The word 'Sanskrit' literally means 'polished' (language) - They had mastered how the mouth / body produces sound, and the Brahmic abugida was a map of the human mouth as I outlined in the interview. It's a beautiful grid - and if you DO learn sanskrit, many of the sound rules, shifts, vowel 'gradations', consonant shifts (sandhi) etc are 'baked' into this system and becomes just general understanding. It's basically a user-manual to your mouth. Scholars / Linguists in China had an intimate knowledge of Sanskrit - especially during the Sui and Tang dynasties (a lot through influence of Buddhism), and so you get people like 陸法言 Lu Fa-Yan and his mates got together and started to map out their regional variations of Chinese basing it on the Sanskrit 'map' - This eventually became the 'Qie Yun 切韻' system, where each Middle chinese syllable / character could be allocated a 'slot' in the matrix and you'd know exactly how it should sound tone and all - you had normal voice, stiff voice, creaky voice and stopped endings which became 平上去入 - which are now referred to as 'Tones'. This was the standard way to write dictionaries up until relatively recently. The Thai / Tai system makes things easier, as rather than having to map each character to a slot, they just spell the words with the equivalent 'slot' letters, and add markers if they are 上 (originally stopped / rising - -้) or 去 originally creaky or 'exiting' voice (-่ marker in Thai).
Burmese 'tones' run pretty much on these same 'throat' principles - as do Khmer vowels. I much prefer to refer to what we call 'tones' as 'syllable colours' - which is actually what they're called in Thai - วรรณยุกต์ 'wanna-yuk' literally means 'colour markers' - and doesn't suggest anything to do with pitch. Pitch is a by-product of the throat.
So finally, to come back to what I mentioned in the clip - STOP COUNTING TONES - to me it's like counting the keys on your computer keyboard. As long as you know how to type, you can type - having more 'keys' doesn't make it a more formidable spelling machine. When I approach any tonal language, all I see are the 3x5 'pigeon holes' (sometimes with an extra row added - but I speak about that in clips if you're interested - see stuff on Gedney tone boxes), and then 'pitch contours' can be mapped to each box - as well as syllable length, voice stiffness / laxness (which is super important) and other tidbits. I NEVER just focus on the pitch. It just happens that some contours coincide between different boxes - so each language has 15 (or 20) tone types - and it's up to each dialect / language / village to render them the way they do - shifts which happened over time and geography, but are totally understandable if you understand how sounds shift from the Sanskrit principles.
How many tones (or different pitch contour patterns) a language 'finally' has is just a count of how many 'different patterns' are left after mergers - some have more mergers than others. Some still have high and low registers - but the actual contours might mirror each other or be close in each register. It's just about pattern matching - the key is then just mapping it to normal speech of what you know then and developing prosody / fluency. Just like learning a DVORAK keyboard when you're used to using QWERTY - not that daunting, once you get a new keyboard under your belt- it becomes easier to learn and re-map more and more and isn't a chore.
I'll be putting a lesson up soon open to anyone that actually takes people from non-tonal language backgrounds from absolutely no knowledge, to being able to hear, map and reproduce tones from any Asian tonal language (or Japanese pitch accent) - you can train yourself to do it in a day, and then it just runs under the hood (I don't make such grand claims easily - but trust me on this one). Stay tuned.
The Friend of my Teacher is Also my Teacher. Thank you Maharaj☺️🤗
Thank you very much for share so much knowledge!!! I am from Argentina, but I am doing my best to learn english and chinese. I also did a little bit of german and italian. Every language has his bright side, and his shadows, hehe
It is weird how many ex-pats I’ve met in Thailand who have made next to no effort to learn the language. I’m not great, but I can navigate rural Thailand on my own, food, places to stay, directions, shave and a haircut…. I’ve had exactly the same ‘no bag’ experience. The cashier just continues in Thai without a hitch.
I can’t recommend my initial learning technique, but it did help reduce the “affective filter”. I drank Mekong whiskey with Thais after work, and it seemed to get me started.
Great explanation of tones!
If you survive Mekong whiskey you are strong and can learn anything you set your addled mind to!
I think they actually did a study where Spanish learners did better on speaking tests when they'd had a beer, so your method is somewhat backed by science haha
Stu is who got me into learning Thai many years ago, his cracking Thai fundementals course was a game changer in learning the Thai script early on. I haven't studied it in years as chinese as taking up most of that time (and french), but can't wait to re-learn thai the lingq way once it's on there!
his book was an absolute lifechanger for me, really changed the way I approached learning languages
Hi what’s the Thai fundamentals course you’re referring to? I’m currently learning Vietnamese but would love to start learning Thai also. Cheers
@@craigbutler4786 I bought his book cracking Thai fundamentals, it’s really good
Hey Joshua - that's great to hear - thank you!
@@craigbutler4786 back when I did it, it was on his learning platform called 'jcademy', which is still there. There's also been a book published of the same course
Thank you so much @lingosteve for this opportunity - I think it was a conversation long overdue and I hope that we'll be able to have many more into the future.
Hey, do you have any links or info for the Sanskrit map you were talking about that helps with understanding tones?
@@heretoimprove1773 It's the first 25 letters of the Sanskrit/Hindi alphabet.
"Tones are not pitches, they are throat positions..." WOW🙌🙌
I could listen to you both for days🤩😍Like Steve said, Its all new to me🤷♀️, so I'll definitely follow Stuart on all platforms. You're like the role models for language enthusiasts like us🙏
This was greatly interesting. Thank you 🙏
I'll be putting a clip up in the coming week which will take people from absolutely no exposure to tones or Sanskrit through to being able to map tones internally from any tonal language. once it's there, it just runs in the background and hearing tones and what the throat is doing becomes crystal clear.
@@StuartJayRaj looking forward to that!
@@StuartJayRaj can't wait
I've heard of the Gedney tone box, but I've read it's specifically for Proto-Tai. While the categories do match with Middle Chinese, I don't think the phonation types were the same. 去聲 (which corresponds to Thai B tones) is supposed to be Old Chinese -s > -h, which doesn't actually produce creaky or stiff/harsh voice.
It's new to me to apply it to Burmese and Khmer, considering they're not tonal so the categories wouldn't match
Wow, brilliant film! My thanks to both of you. I particularly liked the tones explanation with the throat. I have never seen that before.
the same thing happened to me. But it is so interesting to discover these tricks
Thai WAS my first foreign language! I was once a truck driver, and I learned it from listening to Thai language tapes for hours on end in my truck as I drove down the highways in Canada.
It sounded so strange and alien at first, but with repeated listening it began to “solidify” into structure and meaning. I’m still not totally fluent, but I can now get by in Thailand quite well with never having to speak English. I learned to read it pretty well too.
Fascinating information! Thanks to both of you.
Thanks Steve for hosting Jay. Jay is a super stickler! I watched him hosting you on his youtube channel last week!
super inspiring, thanks a lot!! ❤️
Gedneybox, which I didn't know before, seems to be for ancient Thai language. It would be very interesting for academic linguistics to explore modern/ancient tonal languages in East Asia, but just for ordinary foreign language learners, I'd say it's not so practical as there are some or many spots that are not applicable for the particular language he/she is studying. I say that because I have studied all those languages mentioned in there (except Cambodian and Sanskrit).
I do agree with Stu in that tones are not just about pitches and pitch change (contour or glide if you like). Tones also involve time length, sudden stop, and "voice color". However, pitches and pitch changes are most powerful and easy-to-explain among others, and that's why language teachers use pitches to describe each tone. (If they teach other factors as well, it could confuse some students.)
And Stu mentioned Japanese within this context, and I am actually of the opinion that Japanese is one of the tonal languages as it involves time length and sudden stop as well as two pitches, but this depends on the definition of tones.
I also agree with Stu on the point that we should not worry with the number of tones in the language you will study. Worry does not help learners learn effectively. No matter how many tones there are, you will eventually overcome and feel comfortable with them, just like those many conjugation/inflection tables for European languages, which looks impossible to learners in Asia at first. Maybe think like, "9 tones?, oh just 9?, ok, much better than 100".
By the way, in some languages there may be more tones than the number of tones officially announced. In Vietnamese, for example, even though the officially agreed number of tones is 6 (Hanoi dialect), many of the tones have one or more variations and are pronounced differently depending on various circumstances the word is in. But even so, you'll eventually be able to pronounce well enough for effective communication.
Wow... So deep! So interesting! Thank you so much!
loved this colab
Super interesting conversation, and certainly enlightened me to different ways of thinking about tonal languages, in general.
I have waited for ever to see lingosteve and SJR do an interview!!! This was a long time coming
Fascinating content from a very unique perspective
Wow very interesting talk. Love to see it!
Thanks Stuart that was very helpful! i struggle with tone in Chinese alot and now I´m goina try your method
'You will be insane to not learn Sanskrit...'
SIR! RESPECT!
That was a lot of fun. You can tell Stu has a process and believes in it. It was pretty substantive.
I'm lucky that the linguists of old did all the hard yards for me - The Brahmic system of 3000 years ago formed the base for all of this. Highly recommend checking out the Chinese 切韻 system. It puts you in good stead for many languages in this part of the world - including Japanese and Korean.
@@StuartJayRaj As a Japanese learner, what do you mean? I'm aware of pitch accent, but how does this help with a non-tonal language?
Oh man, this is gonna be good!
Interesting video. I'm curious to see practically how a knowledge of the Gedney Box/Sanskrit phonetic system actually translate to practical ability in a tonal language, at first glance it feels like telling someone to learn the IPA to learn English.
It also seems like the relationship between Sanskrit -> Russian, Chinese, and Korean is pretty tenuous. Almost sounds like an Ur language argument to me.
it's funny, while Stu was ranting on about throat orientations and the intricacies of tones and whatnot, you can tell Steve isn't really digging it. Steve isn't the kind of guy to really get into the minutia of any language and so all that detail was just honestly irrelevant to him and what he's passionate about.
Maybe because I've listened to Steve so much, I also wasn't digging it 😀
I thought so. It seems that he wasn't that interested into it.
I think what you've pointed out is true, however what I think you're also picking up on is the vast difference in knowledge of Linguistics. Stuart Jay Raj is by far the most accomplished Linguist in the formal sense on UA-cam. If you go back and watch the talk Steve does with Matt vs. Japan, he takes on the same blasé attitude until Matt switches to Japanese at the end. Either way, great talk, I hope Stuart's thorough knowledge of linguistics pushes others to deepen their understanding of whatever language they are currently learning.
@@byronwilliams7977(forgive my terrible English) it's personal.Technically, Stu is a better language learner because he knows a lot of theories. it's just like learning music theory, basically you can acquire *MOST* of the details through immersion (equivalent to _PRACTICING_ or _PLAYING_ the piano,even though learning language is more not 100% a conscious process).Linguists like Stu, theoretically will learn tonal languages faster than polyglots who don't know any linguistic theory at all.
@@alphacentauri7511 Watch Stuart Jay's videos, there's nothing theoretical about anything he has claimed. Have native speakers of the various languages he speaks assess how well he speaks those languages, you'll see that you not only have to be fluent in terms of language, grammar and prosody, but also in terms of comportment. Cultural fluency is an enormous aspect of language learning that many if not most polyglots simply don't have. Stu Jay really knows his stuff.
ua-cam.com/video/c9Qxyh4bIiU/v-deo.html
Waiting forward to Stuart Jay Raj being able to make videos about learning Burmese...
Wow this guy has a lot of knowledge
#StuartJayRaj Is a great Polyglot 👍👍 中文開通語言巧妙之門| #王懷樂 （his Chinese name!) Stuart Jay Raj
after 13 years of Mandarin I need another 1000 hrs 🤣 most people of Chinese ancestry outside China have Chinese names but here in the Ph our names are really unique like I've talked with a couple of Chinese nationals and our names are really unique to them, and maybe it's because we have masters who give us our names that correspond to our birth date time and moon position I think. I super get what he says about work. I speak English no problem so when talking with foreign suppliers it's super easy but when I get to factories here being fluent in local languages help a lot too!
oops the closed captions / subtitles at 1:23 say "from Austria" when he says "from Australia".
anyhow thanks for the cool interview, keep it up
Fascinating
sanskrit is The key to many asian languages specially south asian languages most of these languages share majority of sanskrit vocabulary ( a native speaker of sinhalese from sri lanka )
19:21 Who are those 'xiang sheng performers' (if I spelled it right)?
I'm so inspired by the both of you.
When Stuart Jay Raj started talking about Sanskrit, Thai and Khmer I knew I had to follow him. Such an amazingly bright inspirational person like you are!
I got into Sanskrit a little over a year ago when I wanted to learn my then boyfriend 's mother tongue Marathi - and I found the material for Hindi and Sanskrit was the way for me to learn the beautiful Devanagari Script.
@TheLinguist (Steve Kaufmann) I was delighted to hear that you enjoyed the delightful Danish series "Badehotellet" (ENGLISH: "Seaside Hotel") . There's a new season coming up very soon. Didn't know it was on Netflix. I've been watching it on a local Danish website.
If you love "Seaside Hotel/Badehotellet" and/or the American "Little House On the Prairies", I believe you will absolutely love the Danish series "Matador" (don't know the English title) . It's a fictional depiction of the exact same era as "Badehotellet".
EDIT: I forgot the most important part. I am blown away with your Danish pronounciation.
Raj 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳 India !!
İ just found out that the word for "cockroach" sounds almost identical to my language! 😯
İ also agree that Danish sounds so much like a southern Chinese language, Vietnamese or even Thai.
Just last week İ'm in northern Germany and heard some people who İ thought were Chinese or Vietnamese just to realize that they're Danish. And this had happened several times now.
Where is the link to Stu's stuff in the description, which was mentioned a couple times in the video? I only see links to Steve's stuff (and to LingQ).
They should be there. I have asked our people to get them up as soon as possible.
Just go here. mindkraft.me/
Wow! Just started at introduction part, amazing!
Please allow me sharing a ‘new gospel’: gospel = go + spel(l)
language = ln + a + gauge, communication = tau(=Greek t, T) + co-min + co-min
Very much appreciated for your sharing this wonderful(=e-fun + world) message!
You are my idol ❤
2 linguistic legends in 1 video 👍💪
It was interesting to watch a pragmatic smart person talk to a goofy scheister.
I just let my students vote on my next language, Right now, the forerunners are Thai and Greek, so maybe I will have to nip over to Jay’s page.
Also, I did notice that some of the principles of Sanskrit in my languages, but I had just written them off as coincidences.
that'd be fun. you're welcome to swing by
Where would you learn Burmese? Must be very hard to find content.
there is content out there - though some of the best I've found is written in Chinese and Thai
Can you explain why Japanese is tonal? I saw that it wasn't tonal as in Chinese.
Japanese has pitch accent - so you have 4 core pitch patterns that will govern phrases based on the initial word.
In languages like English, Spanish, and Russian, each word may have an accented syllable. Those languages use stress for that accented syllable. But Japanese, Swedish, Croatian, and a few others use pitch for accented syllables. You can speak Japanese fluently without the pitch accent and native speakers will understand you, in fact some regional dialects of Japanese don't even have it. In Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc you will be ambiguous and often misunderstood if you get everything else right but leave out the tones.
Where can we find the map of our...mouths?... that all tonal languages are based on?
I did find "Mastering Tones in Thai Chinese and other Tonal Languages" but ...
gedney box language
The sound is working?
Where can we find the grid for Chinese Language?
Could have done with another twenty minutes on this.
Could somebody please explain to me what he means by "come out in the wash". This is definitely not something that we say in my dialect of English.
This must be an Australianism - it means that as long as you do 'X', the final result will turn out to be 'Y'.
@@StuartJayRaj Great, thanks. I checked out your channel and I'm absolutely blown away thanks so much for your great insight.
Come out in the wash: will work out in the end.
@@teacherlee3102 Thanks.
It means you'll get it for free as a side-effect/by-product. Like Mr Miyagi didn't teach Daniel-san how to block. He taught him wax on wax off paint up paint down etc. But later when he needed to block he realized he could now do it instinctively.
12:30 and following minutes: GREAT
Wow so cool brother Stu can spoke so many languangs, there are two Superman in this video. Only spoke two languanges indonesian and english.😔 What is tonal guys?🤔
He is kinda discouraging at the end xD i think because of his job people have higher expectations to him and that's what he sees and why he says what he says but the average persons will be very happy if you try to speak their language even if you can just discribe your day and where you are from etc. .
Now I know I should stay away from tonal languages. It sounds so complicated.
This is gold.
So - where are Jay's links you promised??? All we see is linq
They are supposed to be there. I have alerted our people and will get them up there
@@Thelinguist Sure
Meanwhile I just googled and found this which may be all you need. mindkraft.me/
Steve looks skeptical.
He looks overwhelmed.
It's funny to see a polyglot bewildered by another polyglot while most normies like us are bewildered by both
A lot of Stu's ideas are ones he developed himself, he uses his own terminology as well as standard linguistics terminology. So some of Stu's concepts are new even to people who speak the languages and study linguistics.
@@sbmizzou he’s overwhelmed because Stuart is a linguist genius, Steve aquires languages en mass and speaks them horribly. If you’ve heard his Chinese or Japanese you’d know he really doesn’t care about pronunciation. Those are his words not mine.
Raj is Indian singk name I guess
when an asian lady speaks with a brit accent..... an angel gets its wings cause that is the hottest thing ever.
First.
Jay does a fantastic job of over-complicating the subject of tones. And of course he has to in order to sell you his lessons from his website.