When I was a recent college graduate my first job was in a library. On my first day I went through an orientation that included a tour of materials arranged by languages. It went well until I heard, “Here are the Russian-Haitian items.” After pondering the impossibility of this combination, I later discovered that this was a strange designation for “rush and hasten” these items ASAP. As weird as this is, I have adopted “rush and hasten” into my personal vocabulary because I love seeing the reactions.
Crikey! I think John could recite the phone book and make it sound fascinating! His amazing breadth of knowledge continues to amaze me, and he's gradually becoming one of my intellectual heroes.
The end book title had me laughing out loud. I believe a famous actress video taped (er, digitally recorded?) herself reading that book for the internets amusement. :)
I can't articulate life John but I want to say it saddens me to the core. All we have, as humans, is our heritage and the extra-ordinary things we have achieved as a species from the African Svana to Marian colonies (hopefully to happen soon), need to be preserved at any cost.
My initial reaction to his starting point about languages disappearing, is to point out that neural network based AI language models have improved so vastly, along with speech to text AI, that we are on the cusp of having technology that could be compared to a star trek translator or a babelfish. Once translation can be conducted electronically, accurately and immediately between any languages, and when that technology is cheap and universally available, then the economic disadvantage of speaking a minority language in a globalist world is diminished or removed entirely. I predict that languages which survive the next forty to fifty years are going to be safe from extinction on an ongoing basis.
It seems counterintuitive that most languages would evolve being hard (even if only with respect to English) as opposed to tending to be simplistic since you'd expect that to attain common usage in any community it would need to be easy to grasp. 🤔 I'm an English native speaker but have seen through co-workers from other countries how difficult English can be, e.g. phrasal verbs.
He put out a set lectures on on audio years ago that go into far more depth as to why that is. I think it was released through the The Great Courses company. This little talk is almost like an updated summary of some of that. I found it really interesting and entertaining. In a nutshell, languages developed passed along verbally to children. Children have an almost surreal ability to learn all the crazy stuff like tones, really weird sounds like clicks and gutturals and all these complex irregularities that many languages have. In addition to that, when language isn't written it's free to morph and develop all sorts of quirks and leave old stuff lost to the past. Those quirks are not a problem for children to pick up, even seemingly crazy ones. But when people started amassing in larger civilizations people from different areas started interacting and those interactions tend to eliminate the parts of a language that are hard to pick up for people who didn't grow up with it. Old English went through some major interactions with Norse, Latin and French that left modern English a very simplified language that makes it fairly easy to learn for non-native speakers. Which helped in it's adoption as a second language for many across the world. That's a very broad oversimplification.
The interesting aspect is within a decade we may have an actually functional Universal Translator app. Like...a really good one. Not google translate mode. Full on natural language processing with nuanced grammar and slang and everything. Thanks to GPT-4++ (once it is repurposed for that)
What about when the nouns and the adjectives are mixed together? The Eskimos have around 30 names for snow. If there was to be a World language it would need to have sensible and standard rules, with absolutely no exceptions. So it was easy to teach and learn.
I'm English and I'm proud of my countries language being the first language of the world. Its a beautiful complex language like many around the world. I'm sorry this person who no doubt speaks this language most of all, thinks so little of it. oppressive he said. this man speaks as a native English speaker, most common people I meet who speak English as a second language cant get it right, even after decades, they never seem to grasp the little things. example: they will say "is it" instead of "isn't it" very minor things though id be the same with Chinese.
Having listened to McWhorter on many an occasion, I think that bit about English being oppressive may have been said a bit tongue in cheek. Regarding English not being complex, as far as languages go it is a very streamlined one. I don't think he's criticizing English in saying so. It's a significant reason that it's become the dominant language. Despite non-native speakers having a hard time mastering it, getting to point that you can communicate is far easier than with the majority of the world's languages. I'd encourage you to listen to more of his content and I think you'll find that he doesn't think poorly of English, but rather as a linguist enjoys the ways that languages can be so utterly ridiculous in how complex they can be.
Dr. McWhorter is being ironic. He's the guy who wrote a book about English called "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue", after all. It's worth reading. He just has a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor.
At the risk of being a bit cheeky, if you were as proud of the English as you claim, one would think you'd be more mindful of your own spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar. Just saying...
You forget one thing John, immigrants into cities already in the first generation loose language. People living out in the countryside have far more words and concepts describing the physical world around Them, to convey messages amongst each other, you need to be very precise as to where food,livestock etc is
Always enjoy McWhorter. Always clever and informative.
Brilliant man
Never does John not amaze me. Always a massive pleasure and engaging activity to hear him speak. I wish I were a tenth as articulate.
Great talk. McWhorter, as always, is "ON IT!"
Exceptional!
Mr McWorther is inspiring. Listening to him makes me feel happy🎉
When I was a recent college graduate my first job was in a library. On my first day I went through an orientation that included a tour of materials arranged by languages. It went well until I heard, “Here are the Russian-Haitian items.” After pondering the impossibility of this combination, I later discovered that this was a strange designation for “rush and hasten” these items ASAP. As weird as this is, I have adopted “rush and hasten” into my personal vocabulary because I love seeing the reactions.
A kind of cabaret for thinkers! I like it. Mr McWhorter always talks sense.
Excellent man.
Great lecture!
A interesting presentation.
Crikey! I think John could recite the phone book and make it sound fascinating! His amazing breadth of knowledge continues to amaze me, and he's gradually becoming one of my intellectual heroes.
Absolutely brilliant...
Brilliant John. As usual. Thank you. Language is SO basic, but few understand that
The end book title had me laughing out loud. I believe a famous actress video taped (er, digitally recorded?) herself reading that book for the internets amusement. :)
Thank you John, wonderfully informative, wonderfully delivered
This guy is like the Cary Grant of linquist. Effortlessly charming.
You mean Cary grant is the John McWhorter of linquist?
No wait, who is Cary grant
@@gwho Meh, don't worry about it.
Not important.
Wonderful little impromptu talk from John McWhorter
We have 11 official languages in South Africa!
13 irregular plurals only? I collected 15 of them without much effort: women, geese, children, moose, dear, mice, dice, lice, peas, feet, teeth, men, oxen, people, pence.
I wold have liked John to have addressed whether the simplification of language occurs wiithout loss of precision.
I can't articulate life John but I want to say it saddens me to the core. All we have, as humans, is our heritage and the extra-ordinary things we have achieved as a species from the African Svana to Marian colonies (hopefully to happen soon), need to be preserved at any cost.
oh my god he's delightful.
My initial reaction to his starting point about languages disappearing, is to point out that neural network based AI language models have improved so vastly, along with speech to text AI, that we are on the cusp of having technology that could be compared to a star trek translator or a babelfish.
Once translation can be conducted electronically, accurately and immediately between any languages, and when that technology is cheap and universally available, then the economic disadvantage of speaking a minority language in a globalist world is diminished or removed entirely.
I predict that languages which survive the next forty to fifty years are going to be safe from extinction on an ongoing basis.
It seems counterintuitive that most languages would evolve being hard (even if only with respect to English) as opposed to tending to be simplistic since you'd expect that to attain common usage in any community it would need to be easy to grasp. 🤔
I'm an English native speaker but have seen through co-workers from other countries how difficult English can be, e.g. phrasal verbs.
He put out a set lectures on on audio years ago that go into far more depth as to why that is. I think it was released through the The Great Courses company. This little talk is almost like an updated summary of some of that. I found it really interesting and entertaining.
In a nutshell, languages developed passed along verbally to children. Children have an almost surreal ability to learn all the crazy stuff like tones, really weird sounds like clicks and gutturals and all these complex irregularities that many languages have. In addition to that, when language isn't written it's free to morph and develop all sorts of quirks and leave old stuff lost to the past. Those quirks are not a problem for children to pick up, even seemingly crazy ones. But when people started amassing in larger civilizations people from different areas started interacting and those interactions tend to eliminate the parts of a language that are hard to pick up for people who didn't grow up with it. Old English went through some major interactions with Norse, Latin and French that left modern English a very simplified language that makes it fairly easy to learn for non-native speakers. Which helped in it's adoption as a second language for many across the world. That's a very broad oversimplification.
😎
What, no Italian in top 20?
Globally? Ovviamente no!
The interesting aspect is within a decade we may have an actually functional Universal Translator app.
Like...a really good one. Not google translate mode. Full on natural language processing with nuanced grammar and slang and everything.
Thanks to GPT-4++ (once it is repurposed for that)
7000 to 500? That's quite sad.
You missed out Persian.
What about when the nouns and the adjectives are mixed together? The Eskimos have around 30 names for snow. If there was to be a World language it would need to have sensible and standard rules, with absolutely no exceptions. So it was easy to teach and learn.
BYE!
I'm English and I'm proud of my countries language being the first language of the world. Its a beautiful complex language like many around the world. I'm sorry this person who no doubt speaks this language most of all, thinks so little of it. oppressive he said. this man speaks as a native English speaker, most common people I meet who speak English as a second language cant get it right, even after decades, they never seem to grasp the little things. example: they will say "is it" instead of "isn't it" very minor things though id be the same with Chinese.
Having listened to McWhorter on many an occasion, I think that bit about English being oppressive may have been said a bit tongue in cheek. Regarding English not being complex, as far as languages go it is a very streamlined one. I don't think he's criticizing English in saying so. It's a significant reason that it's become the dominant language. Despite non-native speakers having a hard time mastering it, getting to point that you can communicate is far easier than with the majority of the world's languages.
I'd encourage you to listen to more of his content and I think you'll find that he doesn't think poorly of English, but rather as a linguist enjoys the ways that languages can be so utterly ridiculous in how complex they can be.
Dr. McWhorter is being ironic. He's the guy who wrote a book about English called "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue", after all. It's worth reading. He just has a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor.
At the risk of being a bit cheeky, if you were as proud of the English as you claim, one would think you'd be more mindful of your own spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar. Just saying...
No African language in top 20.
@homerdummy5639I suspect he meant _native_ African language.
What boring about English?
You forget one thing John, immigrants into cities already in the first generation loose language. People living out in the countryside have far more words and concepts describing the physical world around Them, to convey messages amongst each other, you need to be very precise as to where food,livestock etc is