Who counts as a speaker of a language? | Anna Babel
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
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Backed by research and personal anecdotes, Spanish professor Anna Babel reveals the intricate relationship between language and culture, showing how social categories and underlying biases influence the way we hear, regard and, ultimately, judge each other. A talk that will leave you questioning your assumptions about what it really means to speak a language.
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This is about languages and her name is anna Babel? Amazing...thats like the chimney sweeper named ash.
An aptonym!
like an ice cream man named cone!
😂
You should look into nominative determination! It’s when your name influences your career, hobbies, etc. It seems like that’s why this speaker got into language, seeing as she’s named Babel and spoke of the Tower of Babel.
@@esh92 Who is named cone?
It's interesting how fluency is defined. For so many universities, it is just passing two classes. I think that speaking a language requires not just recognizing linguistic structure and speaking presentably, but also an understanding of the people and culture represented by the language.
That last name though!
It's so on the nose! Thanks for pointing that out. I completely skimmed over the correlation.
In the fifth or sixth grade, after having moved to the States from Guatemala, I was put in special ed so I would start saying "the" instead of "da." But, I never was able to fit in to American culture in spite of learning English well.
In Guatemala, I am a gringa because of the color of my skin and my look. Americans see me expecting an American, but my culture, my mannerisms, not my language, makes them feel that something is not quite right and they don't accept me.
Once I speak to ladino Guatemalans for a while, they do tend to accept me. We share a sense of humor, stories, expressions, mannerisms, many not necessarily grammatical features. It's harder to get that acceptance with the more Mayan population. Not only the language, but many other things are culturally different. I'm also considered a member of the oppressing culture. It's all made much more complicated by politics.
Sad.
I am French. I discovered in the USA that i was not white but Latino. It turns out i get along with latino really well.
Racism is quite real in people s head.
Even mine. Sad.😘
@@aurelienyonrac Je ne me considère pas un parlante de Français, mais je parle un peu. Ils sont des langues latines. Nous sommes latines! 😘
Great talk! I feel you Karen. Interesting how you are perceived. I am half English and half Syrian. In Syria I was always told how British I sound, but here in England I’ve been told more than once that I have an accent except on a couple of occasions. If you’re mixed and people know you’re from a different country then they expect certain behaviours and when they’re not met then things can get complicated...yes, it is very sad
I’ve chosen to embrace the contradiction of it all. Embodying one part of the complicated fabric of a human identity just doesn’t seem to work and it may be accentuating the problem.
It’s easy to believe that people all fit into boxes when the ones who don’t pretend they do.
👍❤️
And this is why I took my husband's name. When people don't realize I'm not a native speaker (we lived so far in two countries, I was fluent in both languages, although I was advanced only in one) they're super collaborative, and shocked to hear I'm from a different country when I finally disclose that information. Before, when they heard my foreign family name, I had doors slamming in my face the whole time
We are perfect with our imperfections , regardless of the language we speak 💫Each person has his own qualities within attention & time 🙂
Fun fact, in Brazilian Portuguese we have a word for that, it's called Variação Linguística, or (quite literally) linguistic variation, where it's understood that people from different regions and backgrounds can say the same word in a different way, or even a different word for the same object (e.g. the north speaks differently from the south).
Fun topic tho, sorry for any mistakes XD
I think that the question "who counts as a speaker of a language" may sound kind of intimidating to non native speaker of a language. My first thought when i read the Title of this video was: a speaker of a language is someone who is able to Express himself and understand others in the language. For me as a highschool student and a non native english speaker the question sounds quite a bit intimidating and IF someone asked me IF i consider myself an english speaker i would say no but IF someone asked me a question: "do you speak english?" i (probably) would have said that i speak english. But does it make me an english speaker?
I do consider myself an English speaker, just not an American. Even though my mother was American and I have the citizenship.
As a native speaker of English I had no trouble reading what you wrote. I would assume you speak the same way (possibly with an accent, but that doesn't matter). So, yes, you are an English speaker.
Another interesting thing to think about is what does expressing yourself really mean? life for example if a person is a computer programmer who knows all the technical language about coding, but isn't all that great at expressing his his feelings and emotions in English, is he an English speaker? or what about the other way around? or what if they know the culture really well, knows all the poetry, but doesn't know how to express themselves in an everyday colloquial sense?
Thank u
I sometimes struggle with speaking english not because of the prononciation but because of the syntax. I m from Slovakia. (so my native language is slovak which has compared to english quite loose order of words in a sentence) for example we have this sentence: Jana vidí Petra. Which can be translated to english as Jane sees Peter or Petra sees John depending on which one of the names is the subject.
2:28
That pretty much sums up the situation here in India. Hindi at home and English at school. It's not a great situation. That's exactly how I feel, languageless.
Great talk.
Language is tools. Helping people to contact and communicate that what led them to develop languages
I agree. Yet this tool should be used correctly. One should distinguish either usage or abusage. Under abusage I don't understand various dialects, these instead contribute to the richness of a particular language. Using a dialect in media, official news or public communication does not make a speaker either interesting or clever, I think.
LOVE VIDEOS LIKE THESE! STAY SAFE EVERYONE 🙏
Cool job!
I figured that out when I started to learn English and It amazed me, though.
figured what out?
"Languages are the containers of history" - Juan Lozano
I like this.
is this a reupload? I feel like I've watched this ted talk before, but this one is brand new
9:08 Well, yes, she evaluated him as a child whose standard English was deficient, because that's what the test was measuring. It wasn't measuring AAVE efficiency. It would've been a huge disservice to the child to mark "Who has Jane pencil" as correct just because it's AAVE. That has nothing to do with racial profiling.
If we start giving a pass to "Who has Jane pencil," the world will laugh at us. 75% of English speakers are non-native from around the world and if your kid opens a business presentation in Korea with "Who has Jane pencil," no one will take him seriously. You can talk about the natural fluidity of language in a non-prescriptive way, but the reality is that the world takes standard English seriously.
Presentation to her very well
Nice video 👌
I don't know about you guys, but I loved her style, it's not that "pant suit, I gotta be here." It's just her being her, don't get me wrong pant suits are amazing, but she really brought her style into this and made it beautiful
“What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”
― G.K. Chesterton
There are video is fantastic))
That was a good talk!
🙌🏼💯
When a message is sent, and understood.
That is then spoken if it is.
If it is, and understood then that person became a speaker.
Bam...
Hey, I speak a language!
❤
I watching this video for learn english. I understand more than 50%.
6,300 languages approximately in world.
95% of world’s population speak 5% of the world’s languages.(I think).
It is a literal historical truth
winner is the have capability to learn most languages. pronunciation of a word or a single letter is most important! Õ Ä Ö Ü BRrr! :-) you dont have to speak but you have to UNDERSTAND.
My sister was in actors school in bavaria and they told her she should work on her polish accent
Now she is in University in Berlin and they tell her she speaks great German
Because they dont see her as a polish girl like they did in bavaria. They are more open in berlin and she really never had an accent but when you now a persons backround u assume they will fail in some categories
That is very true but I do wonder how much are we creating in our minds and how much do we just not see until we are reminded.
@@Grokford sometimes you see or hear tging that arent there but you think they are because someone told you something. Like you would eat a pancake, an ordinary pancake and your mom is apologizing she has put too much salt in. In this situation you are aware of the salt and taste it much stronger then you would normally.
MP King I don’t disagree I was merely wondering to what degree is it imagination and to what degree is the limited scope of our consciousness in relation to various stimuli affecting what we do or do not consciously recognize.
We have to encourage people to learn more than 2 languages from western and eastern in schools, especially there is very rich language like Arabic .it is the most richest language in this planet
I hope one day we can create languages club inside all schools. We can give opportunity to our next generation to learn languages in beautiful way and respectful.
Your right... “What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Isn't this actually about whether African American english is considered a legitimate language?
If the teacher accepted the African American english from other students as native speakers then there would definitely be a problem but I didn't see that demonstrated.
AAVE/Ebonics, etc. exists in a very strange place in American linguistics. Americans are actually very intolerant of linguistic variation but because of the history of racial oppression in America Black Americans are left more unscathed than some. Which is doubly ironic because there is so much of what is called “African American English” that is nearly identical to certain varieties of Southern English spoken by White people. Unfortunately though Southern accents rarely receive such recognition or grace.
Being a White Hispanic in America this is very relevant discussion for me. Despite being raised in America with two anglophone parents People often assumed when I was a child that English was my second language until I intentionally started matching people’s accents and phraseology(and got over my Anti-Southern prejudice). But unfortunately there is nothing I can mimic in English that will make anglophone employers ignore my color. I’ve lost countless job opportunities due in a non-neglible part to the fact that I don’t look the part of Hispanic person to most Americans which is rather a problem when interpreting is the industry. On one occasion a former classmate was hired for a position I had applied for who I had tutored because he always mixed his tenses.
I went to a bakery every month for near on five years and every time I walked in the clerk looked panicked until she remembered that I did in fact speak Spanish.
And that doesn’t even get into how people perceive my mixed accent in Spanish
Sinbad the sailor said that many people from many nation speaking different languages came over for work. When the building collapsed they naturally lost there jobs and moved away.
I hope it clarified somethings
So cool and fun.💜💜I really like that.😊😊😊With my best regards ❣️❣️ ❤️❤️
That makes so Inspire to speak English 🙄👍👍
Doing well so far, my friend!
She has the best last name for her profession
Bona video
She is talking babel
Her topic is ancient language and her last name is ""BABEL""...is she serious?
My neighborhood baker's name is John BAKER, my seafood chef's name is David FISHER, the guy who installed my new kitchen cabinets is Matthew CARPENTER and the old man who altered my husband's tuxedo is Michael TAYLOR...go figure!
Compelling
I am a Russian and I can understand almost everything in English. But when I am trying to speak english around other people I'm still have an accent, but when I do it on my own it vanishes. I guess that's because of my shyness and because I feel like I never be as good as native speakers
I feel the same way. I get so nervous that I forget how to speak and everyone assume that I don’t understand.
@@Grokford Hi, native English speaker here :) having an accent when speaking a language other than your own is perfectly normal and expected! your worries about not being "as good at" English is perfectly valid, and may be true in some cases. but imagine how a native English speaker would sound trying to speak your language! it'd be a mess! i do the same thing when i study other languages, so just know you guys aren't alone :)
ha her name is babel and she talks about languages. thats something you usually only find in super hero comics
I’m still trying to figure out how to speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently
Practice with native speakers my friend.
I am still trying to figure out English rofl
I use an app call tandem, since I dont know any native Portuguese speakers near me.
The truth as seen from two perspectives, but in this case seen more than heard.
Here's the test: Can you (1) get a job, and (2) get laid, using a foreign language? Then You = Fluent.
“The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one.
He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
What about instinct? I'm most prone to English than my true native language!
I love her dress
The Babel story doesn’t tell us about languages. It tells us how the author thought about language.
Hello l'm Asraa to from lraq.
l Want help.
lWant to translate it in Arabic
So, Who counts as a speaker of a language? I haven't heard the answer
It's old news. Does it just boil down to expectation and expectation management?
Mong rằng điểm anh sẽ cao. Lần sau tôi sẽ bình ti nh làm và chắc chắn hơn :((
Yesssss i got the 1900 like
She could have found a better school for her children! I am from Russia and we dont have the construction in Russian either, but it does not mean I should not use this when I speak english lol Its a silly mistake honestly
Aren't we gonna address how oddly gorgeous her hair looks?
had to watch this in form time smh
My question is: Is it possible to take a breath while speaking in English. Some other language speakers, do not go ahead in so high speaking speed. My God, what is this?
i was with her until she started saying that her kids were racially profiled..... everything the teacher told her was true and it had nothing to do with race.... she or her husband needs to spend more time raising their kids....
@@raharu000 the point, i think, is that social categories influence the perception of a language, so she is saying that just by looking like an african American, the teacher might expect the kid to make that grammatical mistake and let it pass cause it's "cultural", but for someone with a different skin color then the teacher might actually pay attention to the grammar as what it is, a mistake. That's why before she gives that example about using the same audio but showing different pictures and how that changes the perception of what was heard, because of the social categories already established in our minds.
Is it urs to decide ?
Good question. How do we know who decides that someone is a speaker of a language?
@@lexandrosphynx1049 depends on the individual situation of the conversation.
@@therealmaskriz5716 The question was rhetorical. Who chooses? Who is the arbiter? Can there even be an arbiter, given that language is a complex of factors rather than a set of discrete categories? Sociolinguistic concepts of speaker authenticity and group membership are a central topic of study in many linguistic sub-fields. To these questions, there aren't known, concise, validated answers.
"Who has Jane pencil?" Is NOT AAVE. It would probably sound more like "Who got Jane's pencil?"
School evaluations are trash then if the objective and purpose of the evaluation is not completely specified and made understood by the professor.
How could she not make a pun about her name?????
I would have probably enjoyed this TED talk. . . . but I don’t speak Spanish.
Is being Asian a social category?
Everything can be a social category if someone thinks it is. It’s less about actual group identity and more about individual perception in this case. And individual perception is often wrong.
0 viws 50 coments ok ok
Second
well she mispronounced babel, she said babe-l, the correct pronunciation is baa-bel
Well in linguistics, "correct" pronunciation is less of a thing. You still understood. Its still a viable way to pronounce it that I'm sure many people do.
Dude?
I'm rather surprised that the professor of the Spanish language is not easy with the fact that her Spanish children do not speak correct English. Her children's exposure to vernacular English is no racism. (She seems to be woke.) It's just the impact of the surroundings with African Americans. Now to the linguistic point. I am Slovak, nonnative "speaker". Jane pencil sounds like the pencil from a Jane company (exactly like Volvo car). Who counts as a speaker of a language??? There was no answer in the video. I think that everybody who speaks a language may be counted as a speaker of a language. One may be a poor nonnative speaker, another one may be a vernacular native speaker. There may exist a speaker of standard English (either American or British English) in case they avoid local dialects they grew up in. One cannot disagree that proper English is necessary to understanding each other properly. I cannot understand the term "Jane pencil", sorry.
Sorry but "Who has Jane Pencil?" was wrong for me a latino, my African American friend and typical Caucasian American. Its wrong. No matter if the meaning is still widely understood.
I thought that too. They were simply testing them from grammar. And it didn't matter who they were, only if they made a mistake.
Oh I don't like to do comment first second but I m the Last one to see for you 🙄🙄😂😂
Hmmm African American English?
Who has Jane’s pencil? Is the correct way to say it in any dialect. I am African American and was never taught this grammatical error of missing possessions lol.
I think she’s confusing ‘s as an abbreviation for is with the possessive ‘s which isn’t deleted. Is/are/am are commonly dropped in some dialects but the possessive ‘s isn’t to my knowledge.
As speaker of southern dialect of Rally English I find this presentation bit too woke.
What do you mean? I might agree that it was a bit dramatic about a problem that everyone has to deal with but is that what you were referring to?
So basically she's saying that ppl have inherent racism. Yeah, we know that. It's inevitable.
Inherent racism is a poor word to use for it. This talk is about more about how expectations affect language perceptions but more generally, pattern driven bias effects every aspect of our lives especially with people from everything as obvious as their race or as subtle as their footwear.
I saw a woman with bad skin and bloated ankles last week and I assumed that she was a drug addict. But perhaps she was pregnant or sick.
Racism is no small problem to be sure but it is easier to identify than Thousands of varieties pattern bias acting simultaneously on every encounter.
@@Grokford I wouldn't call racism a problem until it's a problem. It's good that you are aware of your assumptions and the best lesson is for all of us to be aware of our assumptions, though not necessarily shun them.
We work based on pattern recognition, and the fact is stereotypes work more often than not. We shouldn't send someone to jail/prison based off of them, but asking CYFD to keep an eye out if a bruised and bone thin mom shows up to school with a bruised kid isn't a bad idea either.
Assumptions are necessary and inevitable in our lives and we should be aware of them. I think she could have done a better job explaining this point across but I don't think she did a bad job.
Remember the TED talk that tried to normalize paedophilia, yeah good times. 🤨
oh..
Remember the man who raped all those kids. So yeah all men must be bad. Sounds as stupid as your logic.
One man doesnt represent every man, but what an organisation accepts on their platform is a reflection of the organisation. Your simpleton logic needs updating.
And one man's flawed opinion doesn't implicate a whole organization and it many diverse speakers.
"Let's be mature about pedophilia. Madeleine van der Bruggen". Look at it, it's not "one mans flawed opinion" it's a fact that they supported this talk with their platform and kept it there even with the public backlash. You gobshite. If the BBC supported a talk where the speaker tried to normalise pedophilia and didnt take the talk off air when there is a public backlash it means that the humans in that organisation support the message. It's what they display themselves to be.
I doubt her real name is Babel. 😕
Just found her on Ohio State's website, it's real.
What she is "fighting against" starts when she herself identifies as something else than her "latino" kids.
How not to do research: a) 4:40, flashing a diagram without properly explaining it; b) using an anecdote as proof c) dragging one’s kids into one’s professional life. Worst TED talk I ever heard.
Is she just trying to cope with her kids' low test scores?
"Where Jane pencil." sorry, but the inability to use possessive nouns, makes a person sound, for lack of a better term, dumb. Whether that's attributed to ignorance rather than stupidity, I wouldn't know. However in that circumstance, I would reach the same conclusion either way.
This chick just can't stop throwing her lies in.
Elaborate
@@NikonKanava she draws conclusion from very small pools of subjects.
Yeah like the one that suggests that african Americans were held to alower standard in writing asimple sentence like , huh?
The Real Maskriz yes and no, I don’t think people should have to stop speaking their native language but I also don’t think that not teaching students standard English is helping them.