Hearted Youtube comments on NativLang (@NativLang) channel.
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Interesting video (as always), though I have to agree somewhat with the other commenters complaining that it's a bit rambling.
Hey!!! Is 7:04 a citation of Aert H. Kuipers? That's my (parents') old neighbour. I do recall him telling about Caucasian languages once. Also about the difficulty posed by the roots not appearing to have any vowels, and the discussions he'd had about the existence of a (proto-) language with no vowels at all.
I'm so glad his work is still relevant today!
He was such an amazing man; quite reclusive, yet very sociable. When asked, he could talk at length about the most diverse subjects -- mathematics, Japanese art, 19th century pianists, the many quirks of Slavic people (his wife, who lived in Canada, was Ukrainian by birth, and he himself taught Slavic languages at Leiden University). But his real passion was for languages.
Upon retiring, he first spent some 15 years finishing his English <-> Salish dictionary, before finally getting to learn Mandarin; something he'd wanted to do ever since walking through Chinatown in New York when he was teaching there (somewhere in the 1950s, I think).
I first met him when he was already aged 74; a nephew had left him a computer, and he'd heard I knew a thing or two about them. (Back then, I used to help people with computer problems after school). I explained to him how to turn it on, start Windows, & told him of drives and disks. He appeared interested, so I mentioned in passing that QBasic could be used for programming. When I met him again a week later, he'd written his first piece of software! 74 years old!
He passed away a few years ago.
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