0:00
yeah those of you who joined us last week will know that we managed to get through the entire British film in an
0:06
hour we thought well that's not ambitious enough so tonight we're going
0:12
to try and get through the entire history of language from the very beginning in less than an hour and we
0:18
thought we know just the man to do that so let me introduce Simon who I've known
0:24
a pleasure of knowing since the nineteen eighties when we were at university Simon studied Latin and Greek there and
0:31
he specialized in comparative philology and general linguistics and since then
0:37
he's gone on to publish editions of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and indeed he's working on another edition of
0:44
Odyssey as we speak and he's also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society
0:50
and the Oxford Center for Animal Ethics so he has a very broad range of knowledge but the reason for inviting
0:56
Simon tonight is a couple of years ago he published a book called the secret life of language which I won't spoil the
1:04
ending for you but as the title suggests
1:10
it's a overview of language in its many manifestations we're not going to have
1:16
time to go through all of them this evening but Simon has split his talk up into two sections which become apparent
1:23
to you there will be some audience participation at one point although you'll be pleased to know you don't need to turn your microphone on so we owe and
1:31
I still actually say Simon's book secret language is still available from all good online bookstores as well so 610
1:39
this evening please log on and see if you can find a copy so without further
1:44
ado here's Simon with this evening's lecture well thank you Chris thank you
1:51
ang thank you all for asking me to talk to you I'm delighted to be here and I'm
1:56
just going to plunge in this lady is Lois and she died
2:04
in January 2010 at an advanced stage in one of those societies where they don't
2:10
really keep records of births but she was bought in her 80s and she
2:18
was the last speaker of a language called acabou which is spoken in the
2:23
Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal now there may be those of us for whom the
2:30
geography isn't at our fingertips here's a map so it's between India and what
2:37
used to be called Indochina here and it's a little out of the way
2:44
but when she died that was it uh
2:50
acabou like the majority of the languages spoken on earth was not written down we take writing for granted
2:58
a lot of people simply don't and the
3:04
language died with her and everything that had ever been said or known by any
3:09
of those people simply evaporated and if you're of a certain caste of mind you
3:15
might think that's a pity I certainly do and I think there's an issue comparable
3:21
to biodiversity in linguistic ecology which is to say the vanishing completely
3:29
of languages from the earth is happening at a rather surprising rate we reckon
3:36
and we'll come back to this but at the moment they're about seven and a half thousand languages spoken on the planet
3:43
but ballpark about 25 percent of these have fewer than a thousand speakers now
3:52
that may not be endangered or it might but it's generally not a good situation to be in but if you compare it with
3:58
English Arabic Russian Spanish Chinese Hindi unjabi so these languages are
4:05
endangered and disappearing and woke has been going on the rousing foundation has
4:11
been for some years sending out field linguists to record these things and people are literally catching the last
4:17
speakers of these languages in their last days in some cases there are
4:23
stories of people giving interviews and getting stories and being recorded in the weeks before they die so language
4:32
is an extraordinary like languages at all their extraordinary variety and beauty makes you feel rather sad when
4:39
they disappear but you also think well what are they made of what are they and
4:45
I'm not going to answer that for you in an hour but one of the things you need to do if you want to study them go and record them is to know the bits they're
4:52
made at all and just before we go on to
4:57
that ah there's this scale that goes from naught to 10 where English is disgustingly healthy at naught which
5:02
means it's used for law and commerce and education and its international and everyone who visit ah and Sumerian the
5:10
ancient language of the Mesopotamia in the third millennium well 4th and 3rd millennium BC is
5:18
completely dead it died out 4000 years ago and once you get to the level 6 or worse
5:24
then the languages described as only passed on by a fraction of the childbearing generation in Europe 37% of
5:33
the languages are in that boat in Africa 45% in the Americas 61% think of the
5:40
march of English Spanish and Portuguese well linguists are going out and
5:47
recording things what are they recording I'm saying if we look under the bonnet how does it work I
5:54
can't start with the question of how we make sounds because when you find
6:00
languages you don't know one of the difficulties is making sounds and certainly I think to my only young self
6:06
sitting in a lecture theatre age 18 having never really thought about these things and being encouraged to feel
6:13
where my tongue wars what is going on in my throat and so forth so we're going to look at this at that here is the first
6:21
thing you need you need what's called a phonatory system which is rather obvious way of saying a way of making noise in
6:26
the first place once there are two things about language one is you have to be able to make sound and the other is
6:31
you have to be able to shape it into the sort of articulations that I'm projecting into this microphone now
6:39
so this chap here if you look at his Larry's its element and tree Natalie in there
6:45
you've got your vocal chords and they are little fleshing flaps membranes which can be open or closed or vibrated
6:53
and they make noise and if you don't shape them in a really complex way you
6:59
get a foul so I are not doing much there except opening closing your mouth if you
7:05
do other things like put the curve go and you start using your tongue and thing then you get consonants and the
7:11
tongue is terribly important you see does this bit here that's the bit we tend to think of if you stick it out at
7:16
the doctors and say ah submit you see but look at all this there's actually quite a lot of it down the back
7:22
anchor2 the hyoid bone and a lot of other species it's not like that so in a
7:28
dog for example there isn't this there isn't this bit that goes down here it's all anchored at about where my mouth is
7:34
and that means there are fewer articulations possible humans can make
7:40
rather more and the articulations we make are on this diagram now I'm not
7:45
expecting to take an example is I'm just really pointing out that once the sound is coming up once there's a noise coming
7:53
up here then you've got there is things that you can manipulate it with you can let it go through your nose or not by
7:59
closing off your soft palate you've got your tongue which you can leave in his lips ways you've got your
8:06
hard palate you've got this Ridge behind your teeth you've got your teeth you've got your lips and your lips you
8:13
can move your tongue you can move the rest of it's mostly static but that
8:19
combination means you can make any sound that anybody on earth in any language can make any sound that think of those
8:26
languages spoken in Africa where people make clicks and it sounds extremely peculiar anyone can do that
8:32
if trained to with the same apparatus we've got the same kit but of course you
8:39
need a language for describing them you can say it's put or Bert or a bit like it won't do in writing it down here we
8:48
are who has not seen my fair lady Rex Harrison as Henry with his friend Colonel Pickering and
8:56
there in the scenically remember trying to work out how many vowels there are in this phonograph recording that they're
9:02
listening to and Pygmalion to play on which this obviously Rex Higgins wasn't
9:08
in this in 1913 um but Pygmalion the film that mrs. bass he played was based
9:13
on was appeared in 1913 and Higgins was
9:20
actually based on Daniel Jones who lived until 1967 I was professor of phonetics
9:25
at UCL where I now AM and he did a lot
9:30
of work on vowels in particular he was interested in understanding how fouls
9:37
are produced in the mouth now in English we tend to think Alice's boring question AEIOU but even in English there are
9:45
rather more vowels than that machine thing to all sorts of variants and what
9:55
Jones did was to think well could be using these newfangled x-rays to get some sort of handle on what's going on
10:02
so he went to see a doctor friend and said can you help from the doctor phone said not really tongues don't show up on x-rays so they
10:10
contrived to put together some little bits of lead into a sort of string on
10:16
outline in here and put them on Jones's tongue and then tongue out Jones made
10:21
various vowel sounds and had himself x-rayed and can you see when you're
10:27
making an R your tongue comes quite far up as with a U and we call that a high
10:33
front vowel and a high back flower try it eat your tongue is quite high up in
10:41
your mouth the highest part of your tongue is quite high up in your map and then look at these vowels ah ah ah ah in
10:51
those cases your tongue the high spots quite low down front ah back up so Jones
10:58
drew up this quadrilateral which is meant to be your mouth of the cardinal vowels that's to say you need
11:05
peg out the ground and say look the main lots of other vowels but this is the
11:10
extremity of it and we can plot others within this so ah ah or as import are as
11:22
in top so in a nutshell there are the
11:28
vowels plotted out for you and you can say is it's a front close foul because
11:34
it's at the front and close it's a back open vowel and so forth so we have a
11:39
language for that and I hope that homers you know going around is actually quite
11:45
a lot going on here if you've got a degree in linguistics please forgive me
11:50
for being trite um with consonants as I said before there's a lot going on
11:55
because whereas with a vowel you never close off the Airstream get I fact with
12:01
constants you you often do you get up or you bring it quite close sure sure it's a very different kind of
12:09
articulation and you're using your tongue in different ways I think we're
12:14
going to have some participation now please say with your mute on television
12:20
just if you know if you're a native English speaker you'll have a certain effect say television television and
12:26
think about the teeth and you will find that your tongue is numb is it just
12:32
behind your teeth with a ridge it like going into the sea there's a region then
12:37
you drop in behind the teeth of the ridge called the alveolar Ridge and you're touching that television
12:43
television okay now if you're French they call it television television or in
12:52
old textbooks look Tilly deserve um but they don't actually say it in the same
12:57
way if you're French your tongue goes there that's to say you touch it against
13:04
the back of your teeth just try that Tilly busy on the ladies now tryin English to leave is your believe is your
13:11
it it is you know do you know now you may not be used to this or you might um
13:17
but there is a different and people who can hear can hear and I
13:23
show you when you're speaking these films you get on the TV where sensei says I am a great spy I speak that
13:28
language fluently no one will know I'm not whatever well it doesn't take much a vowel a consonant can give it away and those TVs
13:37
are just if you said a French person would understand perfectly just wouldn't sound French now in okay saving this
13:48
word care i don't care care care forget the spelling it's a cake okay and
13:54
your tongue here is in a certain care
14:00
okay you all doing that don't choke i'm care now here's the choking danger in
14:08
arabic they have what's called a uvula que pronounced much further back it's hot i'm practiced at this cop hot hot
14:16
right back okay pop okay we don't have
14:24
that immediate but whereas television and television don't matter very much
14:30
let's look at this in arabic there's a
14:35
word al meaning dog and there's a word uh-oh
14:40
gold meaning heart and you can hear the a is actually lured towards an o quality
14:47
because of being so far that's it how oh oh unfortunately you can say cow
14:55
be married it means my dog is sick if you say I'll be married means my heart
15:00
is sick so in one case you need to go to the vet in the other case you need a
15:05
rapid trip to the emergency room that as they say in America so these sounds that
15:12
we've been looking at these differences in teeth don't matter they're just what we call a matter of phonetics it's just
15:19
slightly different sounds whereas these differences in King or what we call a matter of phonetics you actually get
15:26
there's a phonemic difference between different kinds of k that matter
15:32
and I just thought a bit of linguistic bingo this is the totality of sounds
15:39
that can be made in any language on earth so you can go around the planet ticking them off and shouting full house
15:44
at the right point if you look at how this is arranged front of the mouth with your lips and then your power tools
15:51
you know the palate the hard palate or vela throat so these the places the sounds are made to talk further back
15:59
each kid and this is how they're made now we it would take weeks to go into
16:04
all this and III don't need you to do that but it's interesting to note that these empty boxes the sounds that so far
16:12
in all the recorded language is known on have not been found all of these have
16:17
been heard but humans on the globe only use these sounds these sounds here
16:22
and not use and the black boxes the shaded boxes a sounds that are actually judged to be impossible for anyone to
16:28
make I mean there's a challenge I suppose don't hurt yourself but it's actually judged there's no point looking
16:34
for those because no one actually could make those sounds now I know that's bit
16:40
of a whistle-stop but there's plenty of time for question by my clock it's 20 past I was just going to say to Ange and
16:46
Chris the second half of this is slightly longer than the first half so it might be best just to watch the time
16:53
for questions for the first bit but I'm very happy I can't see a soul at the moment so I'm just sort of talking into
16:59
space hoping all still there um but I'm very happy to take any questions on the
17:05
first bit and then we can go again well I'll ask it everybody I'm happy to ask your questions so if anybody's got a
17:12
question I think if you're like me you've been practicing these signs and it's amazing when you actually sit and
17:18
think about where your tongue is and your mouth because you don't give it a second thought normally when you're speaking so you
17:23
know that was quite interesting to understand that so if anybody's got anything that you'd like me to put to Simon if you can just put it up on the
17:30
chart now I'm very happy so Pat how much do you need to record to get a full
17:36
range of language how much do you need
17:41
to record to get a full range of like so to understand if you mean in in
17:49
a given language X uh what is that I
17:55
mean it takes a while if you don't know the language at all you have to stay with these people I mean there are
18:01
descriptions of field language experts going out meeting people they've never met and they have to spend quite a long
18:08
time before they get a sense for all the articulations in the words none of the people who've spent months years living
18:15
with people if on the other hand take for example Aramaic the language spoken
18:20
by Jesus but actually is still spoken in certain parts of the Middle East in Iraq
18:26
and Syria in other places that's actually quite a well-known language and so before you know it's been known since
18:33
a thousand BC so before you go out that you can actually write stuff down and
18:39
say please save them the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog on something so the answer is it kind of depends how
18:45
much you know before you set out but generally you get people to record several pages of stuff and hope it's
18:52
representative sorry it'll need to be leave on that I mean it's what I've read about I don't do it myself I I tend to
18:59
stick in libraries reading books what we've got quite a few coming now Simon
19:05
and are all French consonants further forward than in English pass um some of
19:17
them are in I wouldn't say they're all further forward I think quite a few of
19:25
them are in the same place I think the palatal czar in the same place let me just leap out of my seat and this
19:35
can anyone see that yeah lanville price introduction to French Brown is best book on the subject
19:41
you can possibly find it is short and splendid I think the answer is not all
19:46
but I can't run through the inventory in my head fast enough to answer your question we have another couple does the
19:55
chart imply that there are only around 50 across all languages yes
20:02
okay and some languages use all these
20:07
sounds or some languages use 30 or 40 sounds some of them have a consonant
20:12
these are just the conscient these are just the consonants remember these are not the vowels so when we say sounds I
20:18
mean there are lots of vowel sounds with among the consonant sounds yes this is the totality some languages for example
20:23
some of the cart alien languages of the Caucasus have an inventory of 30 or 40
20:29
different phonemes that they and that may add up to more more more homes that are produced are different variations of
20:36
those sounds in certain circumstances but yeah the questions are good one and the answer is yes that's the totality English on the other hand has a
20:43
relatively small phoneme inventory we don't actually use that many individual
20:48
phonemes I've got one how did you make the sound as in law the Scottish lock is
21:02
this can you see where my mouse is yeah it's it's it's a voiceless velar
21:08
fricative so you you put your tongue
21:13
it's fairly far back against the soft palate the vellum your soft palate up at
21:19
the back and it's caught it's a velar fricative and it's it's transcribed as an X in this nah-ah german ii is
21:29
slightly further forward palatal ii ii ii ah is there is there perfect
21:38
watch proportion of language is the sound as opposed to the nonverbal communication well now yes it's an
21:47
excellent question um I it's it's partly a question of definition I mean if you
21:55
define sound as articulations of the sort I'm making now so then it's 100%
22:03
that um but of course we all know and
22:09
zoom is actually a perfect example of this um I can gesture at the thing as much as
22:14
I like but if I were physically present with you you would read me slightly differently from the way you're reading
22:20
me flat so the answer is quite a lot but whether that's language or whether it's
22:26
a if you define language as communication then quite a lot but you
22:32
couldn't put a number on it of course but yeah the points a good one there's a lot of stuff going on between people but
22:37
is lost on the telephone yeah are there languages that use a limited number of
22:43
sounds or do most languages use all the stones no some languages you can get
22:49
books that give you the inventories of sounds used in different languages I have a copy but I'd have to append
22:54
myself to get to get it ah but there are inventories of these things and some
22:59
languages have very small sound in interest and some have very large ones but that doesn't of course have an
23:04
impact on whether these languages are sophisticated or primitive or labels that people like to use in 19th century
23:10
they they just do things in slightly different ways a good one here from
23:16
Wendy does the length of your tongue make any difference to the same that comes out uh I have no idea when I was a
23:26
student I was the one was taught that absolute some sort of problem in your mouth I mean for example some people
23:32
have that little Traynham under the tongue arm that holds it in shorter than
23:37
in others and it causes lisps or other sorts of things and so that does affect speech capacity but absent absent some
23:46
sort of major physiological difference most people should be able to make most of these sounds even if your mouth like
23:54
mine as the dentist is always telling me won't open wide enough um I seem to be able to make quite a wide variety of
24:00
noises when I try is there any evidence that climate or physical environment
24:06
affects the way we articulate vide it varies sorry various sounds eg very horror very cold places very dry very
24:13
humid etc from where and that's coming from wet windy and chilly Scotland although not today
24:20
I'm not aware of this I mean certainly in the 19th century a lot of Victorian anthropologists who had a lot of ideas
24:26
that had less to do with linguistics and more to do with how can one say politics
24:32
um or cultural hegemony I wanted to say
24:38
that yeah people like this because they they they they they they live in different climates um I'm not aware of
24:44
any evidence of that no was there any particular reason for the interest in
24:50
phonetics and the period before 1914 was it linked to the interest in genetics
24:56
and Rhys oh I suspect so yes I mean there were people trade I mean III I'm
25:03
no expert on the genetics but people were chasing around the planet I'm trying to work out what their Wars
25:09
because they'd only really just woken up I mean in we're going to talk about the 18th century in the second half of the
25:16
talk but in the 19th century I mean there was this sort of almost encyclopedic desire to think okay we
25:22
just realized Darwin's told us that all these species let's see about the human beings yeah I'm sure that is part of it
25:30
I'm sure that's right yes off but I am slightly aware of the fact that my second likely longer so have another
25:37
question and then I'll do one more question for those of you that have asked questions because there's quite a lot now coming up I will come back at
25:44
the end to try and get some of them but Timon if we don't get through them all
25:50
so don't worry we'll send them on final question before we let Simon continues from Andrew do you think people would be
25:56
able to learn a language better if they spent time understanding how the sound is meat as you've just shown us that's
26:02
coming from a field or level chairman speaker I'm totally sure you can I mean
26:09
I think not I think a lot of language books beginners are very on help because they say oh this sounds like this and
26:14
then they give a word but of course if you're an English person and you look at this and you think oh well yeah I
26:20
pronounce it like that what if you're a Scottish person you pronounce it some different way what if you're a Welsh person you know a lot of these books are
26:26
just written from the point of view of well I mister invariably author um talk
26:32
like this and think this sounds like this and so anybody in any slightly different part of the country
26:37
yeah it's very it's much more helpful to do it scientifically but it won't catch on because the kids won't like it is it
26:45
all right keep your questions coming
26:53
through as you get them and I'll do my best at the end we're going to talk a bit about relationships now you go
26:59
abroad and you notice that some things are similar in other people's languages
27:04
everyone's had the experience I imagine so I put a list here you're not going to go abroad really to hear much not in
27:10
unless you go to the Vatican but let's look at these things in French Italian
27:16
duet Spanish dos german spy English to
27:21
French Dees Italian DHE Spanish yeah German same English 10 French dark to
27:31
dente diente Tom now you might say hang
27:36
on how do you get from czarnian well there are if I had time I could show you
27:42
that there aren't rules of sound change that are is regular and predictable as the rules of mathematics um but here
27:50
you've simply got to if you look and see and trust me these are all d these will D these are all D these are all said
27:55
these are all T there's some regularity there something's going on now if you
28:00
look here sweet sano soit bin oh um this is I am Ben so I saw not just sweet but
28:10
this s you can actually show if you look closely at etymology the original bit of
28:17
the verb is actually the s and everything else comes later the german has this is called secretion they've got
28:23
it from some other bin they've got it's been out of a different wine bin as it were it's a different bit of vocabulary
28:28
like I am you were different words that insult
28:33
French song they are sano-sama zinc and that piece even looks similar of course this isn't pronounced finned it's
28:40
pronounced Sint but you know there are similarities there hair in French
28:45
doesn't vary like Padre Padre fart air father but you can show again regularly if you look at enough
28:52
other words at the same shape you can show beyond peradventure that these
28:57
things are linked and farther and farther you can see German and English really quite closely similar for farter
29:03
father Spanish telling French closely linked as you'd expect because they all
29:08
came from Latin but French changes more as it generally does and we could spend days on this I love this this is my
29:15
favorite bit but I'm not going to taxi with this I'm gonna move on
29:21
Morris radish I just put in because people don't talk about Morris Swadeshi enough he died the year I was born
29:28
he came up with things called Swadesh lists which of the idea is look if you're going to compare things across
29:34
languages like this don't compare words like tetracycline
29:40
supercomputer armed engineer silicon chip because they're likely to be
29:45
borrowed compare words like I you we lug bone see here no black white green and
29:55
he used to have what was called the Swadeshi list at 100 like the top 100 footsie shares we now have what's called
30:01
the suede edge 207 you count 207 words that are likely to be watching my call
30:07
indigenous words not words you borrow from another culture and then you can make big tables like this and make
30:14
comparisons and the results are surprisingly coherent but this was not
30:19
invented in nineteen whatever by Morris why - I want to show you some William
30:24
Jones a Welsh gent who became a High Court judge in Calcutta didn't live that
30:30
long um in the 18th century it was a brilliant linguist knew eight languages
30:35
inside out knew another 15 well enough with dictionaries and got himself taught
30:41
Sanskrit the classical language of India by pundits um scholars gotten soft taught persian and
30:48
he gave this classic speech which is just lovely the Sanskrit language is of
30:55
a wonderful structure that's the language of India of a classical language endlessly more perfect than the
31:01
more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined behind them yet
31:06
barring to both of them a stronger affinity both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar dan could possibly
31:13
have been produced by accident so strong indeed that no philology could examine
31:19
all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source which
31:24
perhaps no longer exists and with that Jones gave a great Philip
31:32
to the science of comparative philology because people started thinking right let's compare all these languages Latin
31:38
Greek Albanian Armenian Persian all the
31:43
Indian languages of northern India Roman II Welsh Irish Gaelic all this compare
31:50
them see what they do and try and reconstruct their earlier phases which
31:57
is a interesting itself and B helps you to understand the linguistic history so that's how that kicked off again it's
32:08
such fun but let's go on to the question of well how many languages are that I
32:14
let the cat out of that at the beginning I said to her about seven and a half thousand of course the question is what
32:21
do you mean I was one started to party by someone how many languages are I was
32:26
about eighteen and even more bumptious perhaps them now and the thought was well we'll squash the boy and ask him
32:32
that and I said seven and a half thousand the closer don't you mean dialect um now the problem dialect but it's an
32:39
enormous Lee politicized term generally linguists don't use it nowadays max fine
32:47
right who is an expert on the yiddish said a dialect is a spark make an army
32:52
or to plot a language is a dialect a language is a dialect with an army and a
32:58
navy in other words it's not a point about linguistics it's a point about power and projection about the BBC about
33:06
the radio about media in general so you know I was brought up in Yorkshire not
33:13
speaking like other kids in your cuz I went to a school where people didn't but you know people in Yorkshire
33:19
don't speak like people in London and people in Glasgow don't speak like people in Somerset people in Somerset
33:25
don't speak like people in Newcastle but of course it's a step from that so the more disturbing proposition which is
33:31
people in London talk proper and these other forms are dialects which are if
33:38
you like some falling away from the standard now in a linguistic point of view that's simply nonsense because
33:45
who's to say what's proper that is politics and it's not languages so when
33:51
we're counting varieties the variety is the word preferred by linguists um we
33:57
look at all sorts of things in one criterion is mutual intelligibility if you ask for a cup of coffee and French
34:03
or Spanish or sorry in Spanish or Italian the expression will be more or less the same worked at Sur and Cafe
34:10
about the same but that doesn't mean Spanish and Italian a mutually intelligible if you say to someone in
34:17
Spanish tell me your opinions about the love ODEs of a pet rock um you may find
34:23
that the two sentences are just completely different in two different languages and so we say that Spanish and
34:30
Italian are non are separate languages even though looked at in a certain optic
34:35
you could say they were just dialects at the larger Romance group but in terms of mutual intelligibility in terms of the
34:43
other sort factors of that kind we generally say there are seven laughs and here are the families look at this this
34:49
is not languages this is families of languages so each of these breaks up so look at this one two three four five the
34:57
first six on this slightly blurred slide or maybe it's my specs are the indo-european languages that I've been
35:02
talking to that quite a lot so you've got the Indic languages of northern India the non-indo-european languages of
35:09
the south the Dravidian languages the indo-iranian languages of Central Asia and the caucus
35:16
you've got the Celtic languages and the Germanic languages here you've got the
35:25
Slavic languages which ultimately did come from the in the European and then you've got
35:33
these North American Indian languages you've got a vast number of languages in Africa the Bantam languages and the Kois
35:38
and languages you've got the afro-asiatic languages that's to say the Semitic Arabic Hebrew and then the
35:45
Berber idioms of the north and look at that just wonderful variety here in
35:52
Papua New Guinea are 8 million speak people speak 830 languages and it's
36:00
interesting the nearing get to the equator you get the greatest massing of languages in small spaces it's not yet
36:06
fully understood why that is still this is a whistle-stop so just bear with me
36:12
with this I just want to whet your appetites and then carry on I want to talk a bit about language writing
36:17
because there's no necessary connection between writing and language it appears that languages started to be
36:25
written down simply because people wanted to record how much stuff they had so look at this from 3200 BC 500,000
36:35
years ago two marks here and what may be some bread I don't know so you look at
36:41
this secure sneaker of Cimmerian and you say whatever the Cimmerian is for two loaves of bread here's something in a
36:48
bottle is something a different bottle there's a fish here's something else is
36:53
something else we count these things up with tallies but the point is I could say two loaves
36:59
of bread this could be English there's no necessary connection between this form of writing and the Sumerians and
37:08
rotate a Frenchman could say whatever it might be
37:13
okay whatever it is and that works up to
37:19
a certain point if you want to say on the other hand I ate two loaves of bread
37:24
how do you say x8y suppose you could write it like that that is if I put that
37:32
down I say eight a Frenchman would say weeks a German would say act of course
37:38
Act in German means eight but it also means attention which also finding the related word at all um
37:44
but we could also use it to be X or 8 as in I ate something or I hate you you
37:51
know and rebus is what this is acting meaning by things so writing people can
37:58
give Natalia sup but then they realize actually you know what some things sound like other things and we can extend them
38:05
and start playing around well look at that just for a second
38:16
well you've probably got it I mean either I'm telling you I've got two honeybees a thing for boats and string
38:21
two more honeybees or it's a bit of Shakespeare to be or not to be but it
38:27
could be used for both but you can see how you can actually write really quite an abstract idea to be or not to be with
38:34
some really quite concrete symbols and this is how language kicks off in the earliest texts that we have in terms of
38:42
writing not in terms of language which is always separate but just in terms of writing language let's look at the
38:50
Cimmerians now I've mentioned them before they spoke a rather interesting language unrelated to any other in the
38:55
region they were in the area in the floodplain between the Tigris and Euphrates and mostly modern Iraq and
39:02
they started writing symbols like this which is obviously ahead and then they
39:08
flipped it on its side after one water flickered on its side star or flip a
39:16
star and you get a star and then they started writing with these styluses that they've cut off at an angle and you put
39:22
triangles and strokes and you make this writing called cuneiform and can you see this looks a bit like this
39:27
you've got the forehead the back of the head here this line here two lines of the neck here we can show looking at
39:35
enough text this historical progression
39:40
but how do you say it hmm well that's this sign here just look
39:47
yes I it turns into this eventually they start playing about with it it turns into this and they use it to say
39:55
the word car which means mouth in Sumerian but then they have the bright
40:00
plan we could use it for any other syllable that goes cap in any other word even if it's not I thinking with mouth
40:07
but come to think of it we could also use it to write the word in in meaning word or Zook meaning to for dog
40:14
meaning speak or good meaning shout and that's what they do and then you ask
40:19
yourself if it's any wonder that in those societies literacy was not terribly widespread but tended to be
40:25
linked to a fairly narrowly educated scribal class who knew how to handle this stuff um because this one symbol
40:33
could be now come or just a word with cut in it or any of these words which is
40:39
fine if you're used to it not fine if you are a European scholar trying to read it thousands of years later takes
40:46
quite a while let's look at Egyptian which is likely to be a bit more familiar to most people cause you've
40:54
seen it around in museums and so forth this is Egyptian 101 from gardeners
40:59
ground this little bird here does not mean bird it's the sound of work and
41:05
this foot here looks like a hockey stick this foot here doesn't mean foot it's
41:11
the sound but sorry does it pouring with
41:16
rain suddenly this foot is the sound but this nut is the sound is not it looks
41:24
like water but it's not so this word is worth but no and here we've got a circle
41:31
which fairly obviously could be something circular like the Sun this
41:36
symbol is rough this symbol is up so and then the Sun again the bird is not birdy it's MA this
41:44
is a perp this is a Terp and this is the symbol for the sky so it's no longer actually quite so weird you're not
41:51
required to go birdy leg water circle mouth arm buddy it's actually web n ro M
41:59
pet I could tell you how you know the pronunciation but trust me again we do and it means the Sun rises in the sky
42:05
but here's the thing I'm the English were pruned it might be something you meet for pudding or it
42:12
might be something you do to the rosies and it's what we call a homophone and a hominin this word here WebM means to
42:19
rise but there's another word web end which means to over look and if they
42:25
write that meaning overflow then instead of writing the Sun here they write an image of a heap of corn a sort of lump
42:32
of corn here that doesn't like it looks like imagine if he um looks a bit like that anymore he um and so if you want to
42:40
say the waters overflowing you would like this different image so actually
42:45
these have no sound at all they're what they call determinants and they help you to read and vigorous
42:51
clusters like this other interesting factor you can write Egyptian left-to-right right-to-left up to down
42:57
you always read into the direction of the animals so because all these animals are facing to the left we read it this
43:03
way if it was slipped round you read into the face of the animals from right to there and the sentence means the Sun
43:10
rises in the sky but again this is not simple there aren't like 24 write your
43:17
name in Egyptian symbols there are hundreds and hundreds of these symbols and to be literate you have to learn
43:22
them so it's tricky and it's not good for democracy you might say not that they wanted democracy of course large
43:30
Kingdom armed but let's look at other ways of doing it
43:35
linear B which you may have heard of was an early form of writing um used in the
43:41
Minoan culture in Crete and in Greece from about 1500 BC to about a thousand
43:46
and here they wrote but then for all the
43:52
other things they had to have syllables so instead of just having if you want to write that you could have a symbol for D
43:57
and the symbol for a but they didn't they said no that is this but there is that and it is this wholly different
44:04
thing and Jar is this and you see so in each case you've got a completely separate now Greek isn't that sort of
44:11
language Japanese is which say it's mostly made up of syllables half etc
44:17
Greek isn't it's made up of lots of clusters like and amethyst or Protoss or square as hard as
44:25
it's not actually and white is it this system of writing wasn't invented for Greek they nicked it from people who
44:32
wrote a thing called linear a which so far as we know was not a Greek language misses the place with so many alphabets
44:38
the alphabet I'm using here today this Roman alphabet stolen from the Romans stolen from them by them from the Greeks
44:44
stolen by them from the Phoenician stone and borrow taken over not original but
44:49
again very difficult to write in it tricky to learn you need an awful lot of symbols as you can see and let's take a
44:58
Greek word I'm sure the word and throw pass is not unknown if you think of a word like philanthropic someone who
45:04
likes human beings anthropology the study of humanity and the Greek word for a human being is anthropods but look at
45:14
this system you can't write that where's the how do you write and you could write and how do you write it because you've
45:22
got clusters you see this is not that net need not know this is not tak-tek
45:28
tip-top - this is not how so there's a problem with writing this sort of thing and the way they in fact wrote it was to
45:34
use these symbols ah top row pop ah top
45:40
row pop that's how you wrote anthropods ah table pop but in your head as a
45:48
scribe or a reader you'd hear a Torah pop but in your language you'll be
45:53
saying and drop us and actually if you've done any Greek or Latin you'll note sorry you'll know that the ends of
45:59
these words matter that's to say Greek anthropos is different from Greek and throw pon one is the subject of the sentence one is
46:06
the object but mini-b doesn't care about that it just means the map and this
46:11
means that you couldn't actually write down with complex text practically everything written in this is just lists
46:18
you try writing a literary text and it will be a nightmare or a news report or something terribly other ways of doing
46:27
it well coming towards the out of it we have a thing called an object now some of you will be familiar with Hebrew
46:33
and this is the beginning of the book of Genesis and it's just the consonants and why for these purposes is a consonant
46:40
arm not fraud uh and it's written like is worship but awesome but Schmo will
46:47
hope but that's not how you say it in fact in Hebrew you say Bereshit bara
46:53
Elohim F Hashem a fire pirates in the beginning created God the heavens and
47:02
the earth but all you write is the consonants which is fine up to a point
47:08
because luckily we happen to have a set of texts that preserve the vowels boards
47:13
but if we didn't we'd be in some difficulty understanding these texts and
47:19
it's actually in the end when you get to what's called the alphabet that you
47:27
actually have a full functioning system where the point about alphabet is not just its alpha-beta but the vowels have
47:35
their own symbols no symbols here for vowels and no separate symbols here but
47:42
suddenly in the Roman alphabet which came from the Greek and from the Phoenicians you start to get vowels
47:49
written separately I'm not trying to suggest that any of these things are better than any others what I am in a
47:56
sense suggesting is actually our languages that use alphabets or a great deal simpler and a lot easier they favor
48:04
mass illiteracy rather more but uh the point is imagine you dropped out these
48:11
vowels and it looked like that okay now it might need it because this is a very
48:16
famous bit of a poem by William Blake and also famous bit of a hymn you could get this eventually I think stare at it
48:24
for a bit you might find some ambiguities but you probably get there but what if this was an 800 paging novel
48:31
that have just landed through your letterbox and someone had Snapple all the vowels or it's your large Sunday
48:37
newspaper and again the vowels of all magically disappeared English is not the sort of language that you can readily
48:43
read without them and you would soon get fed up um there isn't time because I see it's
48:49
10:00 to 6:00 we have questions to discuss Chinese and Japanese which is simply fascinating and all the beautiful
48:55
interesting and very difficult and yet spoken and written by large numbers of people but because I mindful that it's
49:03
question time I breathlessly hand over again to Angie thank you that's
49:12
absolutely fascinating Simon honestly I wish that's not you teaching me at school and so let me go back and see
49:18
where did I get to I'm I think it yeah how does an infant child learn to
49:25
articulate in his society's tongue I don't know I mean it appears that
49:33
children have very plastic brains and they just know this I mean they don't need to study all this the reason that
49:40
we study it is because we lack the information the infant has but I do
49:45
remember as a child my mother who brought up bilingual in English and
49:52
German training me at quite an early stage saying no say this after me say
49:57
this after me no not like that like this and she didn't say to me put your tongue
50:02
here or do that but some of us I'm a reasonable mimic some people aren't but
50:10
I think children are rather good minks and then we grow out of it
50:16
and I think the answer to the question how do they learn is the same as how they learn the language they are very plastic and they somehow know that to
50:24
mimic the thing that they hear they just need to arrange their mouths in this way they didn't think about it of course
50:30
they just do it and and of course we get to a certain age and we lose that capacity we can get it back by studying
50:38
but it's never quite so easy another question does dialect make a difference within a language to the
50:44
action of the tongue well different
50:50
sounds may be used I mean that's to say that there may be diet there may be fouls for example you know the way that
50:57
southerners say plow and grass and northerners safe happened your tongue is in a different position
51:03
then maybe consonantal things although there that I think in English less in
51:10
Arabic was rather more the Arabic sound caught that we were talking about cop is
51:15
in some Arabic dialects simply deleted 2-0 and said as are so corner beat mom
51:22
can be used as well as a worker sort of flower or a cauliflower but in certain
51:27
parts of the Lebanon they say Anna beat so yeah I mean it can matter entirely is
51:36
this sound of ancient Egyptian similar to the Arabic that's spoken in modern Egypt if it's similar to anything it's
51:44
similar to the Coptic that is preserved in the Coptic Church in Egypt so not so
51:51
much to the Arabic although it's related but it's it's more like the Coptic still spoken by Coptic Christians in Egypt
52:00
I've got a couple of questions about the ruling R and the double ll of Welsh yeah
52:08
sure let's go back to the table the norther are in English Rose okay is here
52:17
it's called an approximate it's an alveolar approximant Rose which is to
52:22
say you take your tongue and you don't quite bring it up to the alveolar Ridge Rose but the rolling art is this one
52:30
here and it's a trill so pause pause pause you can also be pronounced right
52:36
back applause as a sort of gargle as in French glassy glassy so yeah that's here
52:44
um the Welsh is down here you've got these that they're called lateral
52:50
approximants arm so they're down here then another one they're Northumbrian
52:56
why the sunny Zambian are I'm not sure I
53:02
know what it is I'm sorry I'm feeling terribly ignorant I've spent time in Northumbria but I I'm not sure I can
53:07
bring it to my eye I'm embarrassed and feel ridiculously for a northerner I
53:13
feel ridiculous the southern all of a what is the most efficient language and
53:20
transmission of information with the least amount of fanatical sounds with it
53:26
and would it be Chinese well now that's
53:32
very interesting I mean there is what's called a word to morpheme ratio a
53:41
morpheme is things that words are made up of so if you take a word like violinist the East bit at the end you
53:49
can put it on pianist yeah arm so we can split words up into what they're made of
53:54
look at this big bigger a is a morpheme and it means be good um
54:01
now in Chinese it tends to be that the word and the morpheme is precisely the
54:07
same element and so um that's to say you don't get words of the made up of
54:12
complex bits like bigger or you don't get words like polyvalent made up of lots of different elements you tend to
54:19
get one word one morpheme however it doesn't follow from that that Chinese is
54:24
more efficient and in fact I'm not sure that if you difficult to talk about efficiency really um I you might talk
54:32
about it in computer languages but in humor speech it's often said for example
54:37
Oh Welsh has a small vocabulary its primitive Sanskrit has a huge vocabulary
54:44
it's complicated um but in fact it's not like that um the number of words in your
54:51
dictionary says very little about your information repertoire because you can simply be using words that you've got in
54:57
different senses and so in terms of efficiency I'm not really sure that one can I mean I'm sure there's more written
55:03
about this and I I don't want to pretend to be the Delphic Oracle yet but and I can't give you the definitely is a big
55:09
good question but I'm not sure that you can pin it to two functions of morphemes
55:19
or sounds or other things in that sort of way or to say this language is logical inefficient this one is flabby
55:24
and needs to go and lose some weight I think it's just that the information content is bagged up in a different way and
55:31
focuses on different things we could talk more about that but let's have another question probably Duke
55:38
how does someone look feet when the movements of their larynx and the tongue are largely obscured I have no idea um
55:44
I've often wondered about I mean I assume that I mean IIIi do know one or
55:50
two lip readers now I've always been too idle to ask them but I assume but you
55:56
simply get very good at working out at a particular lip movement doesn't mean one thing that could be several words and
56:02
you just have to be good at the context I imagine well it's your theory about the great vowel shift ah but it existed I mean um
56:13
there are in various armed Germanic languages which I think what we're
56:18
talking about the Grimm's laws the notion that these things are able to be
56:28
plotted and shown and we can say yeah there was this and then there was this now with the consonant laws of Grimm
56:34
it's actually very easy to show them with the vowels people have said what can it quite have happened in that order
56:40
um I tend to believe what it says in my standard Germanic text books because I'm
56:45
not a German zoologist so I don't have an individual contribution I'm afraid to the great vowel shift beyond I tend to
56:51
believe what it tells me in the standard genetic book sorry we are just accent
56:57
and and dialect begin well you see question isn't it I mean um we can all we can all
57:05
experiment with accents and I suppose the answer is to some extent you only
57:10
get certain accents in certain regions but you get other things too for example
57:15
you get words that are not used so if you go to Newcastle and someone says do
57:21
you want to study that person from London is likely not to know that what is meant is a very large type of
57:27
sandwich back if you're in Somerset and
57:32
someone says how be he and you might say just a minute don't you mean how are you and they don't know no this is how we
57:39
talk not of course in the large towns but in the country so there are differences as
57:46
well in words the vocabulary and in the actual grammar be instead of our or is
57:52
so the answer is you've got a mixture of accent I think from comparative studies
58:01
of Old English and German have linguists determined if old English was spoken in England before the Romans or was it
58:07
imported after the Romans left I have no idea I mean purely ignorantly I've
58:14
always imagined that there is an indigenous group and the fact that we
58:19
tend to in our language textbook say oh yes well I'm anglo-saxons bear wolf eighth ninth century
58:26
etc etc before that possibly something else well it's often just what you can
58:32
tell from the writing you see and we are rather bound with the writing and in our books we say yeah there was anglo-saxon
58:38
then there was Middle English and Chaucer then there was Shakespeare now there's this but actually caught all of
58:44
that is fairly arbitrary and you can run it backwards and say well now we don't
58:49
have any written text we may just have a few scratches on stones or whatever um but I think the problem is if one says
58:56
it was imported you'd have to be able to show where from and you might have other
59:01
candidates for those countries already and excuse me if the dog barks because
59:09
he's women so and some languages have come to form a written form and some of
59:14
not what your views on the differences on their communication development in
59:22
terms of pure language I don't think it matters at all because language is purely a spoken phenomenon the writing
59:29
is something else but of course the development is interesting I mean look at for example at the moment southern
59:35
Arabia you've got Yemen where Arabic is spoken but you also have other languages spoken
59:41
in that area socotra have that I'm outtie there are there is other languages that do not map quite nicely
59:49
onto Arabic and that they started getting mobile phones and they want to write their
59:54
which and they learn the Arabic alphabet to do it but the things you can't quite write their language with it cause it's
1:00:00
not made for that so they start thinking one of them and we'll just blow around the edges and the answer is people are
1:00:07
endlessly creative and inventive about these things and they will communicate how they like um sometimes they don't
1:00:13
bother I mean some people just talk other people think actually writing books is not helpful and destroys memory
1:00:20
across large parts of the Near East and Africa people actually think book learnings a bit off they don't read
1:00:25
anywhere near as many books as we do but they know a lot of stuff because they remember it um but they don't they don't
1:00:32
put the same weight on the writing so people communicate in the ways that suit them in the end
1:00:38
yeah thanks sorry Linda was asking yes
1:00:43
she was told you had to have a fringe throat to be able to pronounce the double are infringed is that a
1:00:48
recognised thing no you can perfectly well do it I I've known perfect
1:00:55
they might might might my mother was a perfect which was born in Germany sorry
1:01:01
it was there certainly wasn't she was born in Yorkshire I've brought up in Germany and I traveled with her in
1:01:06
Germany and they thought she was German um not in that polite way of oh you speak German so well which is something
1:01:12
you say to foreigners um but they simply never thought she was anything other arm and when she said oh well back home they
1:01:20
say what what you mean um so you can perfectly well do this and I've known perfect bilinguals who can do this but
1:01:27
it takes an effort in years of study and it depends what you're really aiming at
1:01:34
perfection is hard to get so we've had we've had lots of lovely comments Simon
1:01:39
thanking you wanted you to come back and do some more for us we've got Chris for a Chinese Japanese so I think we'll need
1:01:46
to to bring you back to do it I am they're asking for a CD so you've actually you've got a huge fan club now
1:01:54
Simon and just one last one that somebody asked that they were fascinated but an absolute norfolk's could you
1:02:00
recommend any reading to further their knowledge and understanding and
1:02:06
we do that right now but maybe if you could drop us a line with that we could add that on to the website when we put
1:02:12
the recording up sure I mean I I absolutely I mean I'm not going to plug
1:02:18
my own book because that would be cheap um but I can and I can think of things and yeah let me just I I could drop you
1:02:27
at some sort of side of a4 with some stuff yes that would be fantastic and
1:02:35
I'm just gonna run the poll now for those that are running and I'll pass back to Chris and and he can do the
1:02:41
thank-yous on behalf of all of us but from me Simon amazing really fascinating
1:02:46
and I hopefully will get you back thank you so much for asking me I'm delighted
1:02:52
to be I'm delighted to be here thank you
1:02:57
thank you very much I'm very disappointed we're not doing the feedback poll in hieroglyphics this week
1:03:06
loking site you will see the scores on the doors are going up it was a fantastic hour that was an awful lot to
1:03:13
cover I think he did an amazing job but even scratching the surface in such a
1:03:18
complex subjects making it very accessible and understandable which exactly what we aim for in these
1:03:24
lectures so thank you very much and I understand you can plug your own book
1:03:30
but I'm here to do that for you so the secret life of language dr. song of the line available through all good online
1:03:37
bookstores yes um if you could send through some further reading I'm sure our viewers
1:03:44
very much appreciate that so thank you very much and did you want to say anything at the
1:03:50
end about tuning in next week or other things yeah we've got lots of late lectures I'd be lying if I could
1:03:57
remember what next week as there's been so many of them but you will get your lecture reminders please and let
1:04:04
everybody know that some member look at your remainder that comes to on the third the thirsty we've had a lot of new
1:04:10
members coming through obviously part of the membership offered as the priority booking for our classes it starts on the
1:04:16
13th of July so if some of you renew this evening welcome I hope you'll join us again and
1:04:21
again I decide my thanks Simon brilliant thanks so much for giving us your time and hopefully would love to
1:04:28
have you back if you're a happy to do that and Chris and I will be in touch thanks to all the members have a lovely
1:04:34
evening and we'll catch up soon thank you for watching good night good night night
