Youtube comments of (@NativLang).

  1. It took me a month to animate the history of one single letter...
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  2. Nearly two months of focusing on Egyptian, and this animation is what the inside of my head looks like since last we met. Your turn to float down this phonological river!
    2100
  3. Let's end the year with some epic lost linguistic history.
    1900
  4. I pronounced Moctezuma all funny in a previous video. Time to explain myself...
    1500
  5. I get to be among the first to share the story of Khitan with a wider English-speaking audience! So if you liked Etruscan...
    1400
  6. The dog that provided the panting sfx just passed away. Were he with us, I think he would've lunged at the screen upon seeing the collie.
    1300
  7. I've long wanted this to exist. Winner of an exciting patron poll (over Ancient Egyptian!), the most enthusiasm I've seen when name-dropping a future topic in conversation and the most research I've done for one tale. Enjoy!
    1300
  8. My first foray into ancient Italy that's not about Latin. Apart from the obligatory Roman cameos.
    1300
  9. Oh, Hungarian... I was more ready for your grammar than your sounds. May my art make up for any pronunciation quirks!
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  10. (Insert glyphic comment here once Unicode support is implemented.)
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  11. A link to my sources document, also linked in the description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lo0bvzhli24783Ox5_THM3rHHe4lNV-7iO2jpqS3UF8/ After months of creating and recreating this anim, I'm still unsure what to think. I hope you enjoy. Thank you for watching!
    1200
  12. Un "grazie" ad alta voce per aver pronunciato l'esempio nel latino classico! I'm late to chime in, but must say it's hard to go wrong with this topic.
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  13. Pardon my absence. I return with something meaningful.
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  14. Ok, now I have a tear in my left eye mid-message. Love to you and your family.
    912
  15. To help some confused commenters – the map isn't showing language relatedness, only the number of shared features. Perhaps I should've taken a minute to explain isopleths and isoglosses? Are "language families" just an easier concept for us than "areal" linguistics? Thanks for thinking about this and commenting!
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  16. I got more in character, swapping between what each side was saying. Spending so much time on color-coded quotes was a change. For me, this was more about sharing the story than about asking you to weigh in on a conflict. Are there other tales would you'd like to see animated like this?
    843
  17. It's quirky, but the answer to what "Ancient" Chinese sounded like is less about sounds, more about categories! For me, two things are very unique about this tale: 1. the non-Western linguistic tradition 2. the features of a linguistic period rather than the sounds of a single language So I'm telling a grander story about that tradition and those categories instead of pronouncing many examples. Plus, like I admit, I struggle with Chinese phonology!
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  18. Nope. You don't end up back in the present. You just forgot to look at the code. ;) int year = 2016; travel (year - 1000); travel (year + 1000);
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  19. Your love for that last one took me by surprise - sooo here's more about Egyptian!
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  20. Denser than usual but a nice payoff. When aspect comes up again, may this vid be our natural temporal reference point.
    662
  21. In the works since April 2016! NativLang was much smaller then. It's perhaps the last story I will tell purely because I wanted to, with no one requesting it.
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  22. What are your favorite unique conversational quirks (in any language)? Also, I realize my Japanese is often just "almost ok" - thanks for overlooking that.
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  23. I've practiced saying "gvprtskvni" who knows how many times now - out loud, under my breath, while running... and now I pass it along to you. As ever, check out the sources doc if you want to track down the books, papers and minds I'm leaning on here.
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  24. I've wanted to dig into this since 2017. Each time I reread the research extra bits of nuance emerge. Do you know of another language that's highly unusual because of what it lacks?
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  25. Been a while since last time we gathered together here. 100 papers, 28000 words in notes, 1 spreadsheet and lots of artwork later, I'm excited to share the rest of this series with you!
    583
  26. I spent hours reading through and thinking about your comments this morning. This is some of the best discussion I've seen. You are proving you're an amazing YouTube community.
    579
  27. What a beautiful way of writing ✍📜❣ This one took about 315 hours of work. No breaks, more on the way. My Writing Bee animation leading up to this got less attention ~ check it out if you missed
    579
  28. I got lost reading about this. I'm back. Here's what I found out.
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  29. Another piece of love for the Papuasphere, this time with more grammar.
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  30. Very appreciative you took the time to add to my understanding! The paper I read focused on "intensional" vs "extensional events" in Libras, so it is lovely to have more context around this because of your words.
    532
  31. I hope you are well. May some language love help you pass the time. Life was different when this narration was recorded. So will it be trees, waves or onions?
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  32. So many beautiful glyphs!
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  33. It's been a LONG time since I read it, but I think The Power of Babel poked fun at that reconstruction. A world full of speech, and of all places Italy kept the proto-word intact!
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  34. Do you speak or are you learning a language of Africa? Did I miss yours? Tell us what makes it special...
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  35. Hànzì, Kanji, Hanja... whatever you call em, they're formidable. Join me for just one more of their fun quirks next week!
    511
  36. +Aegon Targaryen Not in the Diachronolinguix! I left a note about this for bewildered users in the comments below.
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  37. At first this almost knocked me out. Then I learned it's really reasonable. With odd exceptions.
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  38. Thank you for sharing your 2016 with me! Let's end the year making odd sounds. If you invented a language, would it have even odder phonemes? Dibs on any good ones.
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  39. Which of these beautiful scripts grab your attention? One interesting note to add: there are many consonant-vowel alphabets here but also syllables, featural signs, logograms...
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  40. Any ideas about how I could start using these in English? Oh, for next time: features English has but other languages lack!
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  41. If I spend winter in a high latitude, can I bill for more temporal hours?
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  42. No promises any one of these languages won't get its own animated tale... Which are new to you? Which interests you most?
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  43. Thanks to thubakabra and Vujčić Luka for the Hungarian subtitles. They're true caption artists!
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  44. My channel passed its 15th birthday. Thanks for joining me in looking back and looking ahead. No burnout (most days), no goodbyes (yet), just a promise for years ahead until our final celebration.
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  45. Learning about Siberia brings me to Ainu – finally! Fans have asked for a while. I also took a moment for a note about the pandemic and how strong but vulnerable communities with last speakers are. (No, not charity-sponsored; I felt it's important.)
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  46. This time, zoom in for grammar. Next time, zoom out for history.
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  47. This one's for you, English. In part one, you lacked. In part two, you're all "have"s.
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  48. Subliminal messaging. Watch your wallet. ;)
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  49. Finished! I have lots of coursework these days, but I'll make time to start on the next one: a tale about an old tongue...
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  50. While I stay inside, I'm animating about people going and getting all muddy for language. Yeah, the "check-yourself"s at the end may be especially relevant during this time.
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  51. Suuuch an instructive comment, loving that you actually have a term for "incorrect" scrambled word orders.
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  52. Whoa... thank you for sharing your stories. We may now have the internet's best collection of asymmetric intelligibility tales right here in the comments! What a treasure. I'm still reading my way through all of them. Oh and yes, I bought the nuts.
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  53. We talked rarest, now for most popular. Come for the syntax, stay for the puns!? Thanks for waiting while I poured months into this 📅❤‍🩹 By the way I turned off ads that play during the middle ("mid-roll"). Less revenue but hopefully a better viewing experience?
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  54. What do you think of the 7 systems? Do you know a language with intriguing kin terms? Also, do you want more cross-language features like this or more individual old languages?
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  55. Birthday plans: exercise, FINALLY launch part 1, code, draw art for part 2!
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  56. That actually came up in the research. Apparently the old form started with an 's' though?
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  57. Not just you – similar feedback for example on my Zeros video. It's a conscious risk, letting my eccentricities shine through a bit more. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts.
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  58. I've read he did this to promote common education. I kept the narrative bound to linguistic motives because that's what I understood best. I thank you for expanding by sharing more insights!
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  59. I've never noticed that. I like it!
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  60. Yes, I think they're tensed. Unlike "perfective" and "irrealis", which aren't. Maybe we could say we're "adding" grammatical tense when we render the tenseless Maya phrases in English?
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  61. Sorry about the audio issue! I uploaded a fixed version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alla2Fqopag
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  62. Yes, those languages pronounce it more like Classical Latin!
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  63. This: how good was their grammar? 🥰 Next: how bad was their grammar? 🧐
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  64. What do the map "holes" really mean? Only this: good data unavailable to the researchers. Feel free to speculate, but I recommend digging into the reported research before filling in the gaps (see Haspelmath and Heine & Kuteva in the info box sources doc). I appreciate all of you who took time out of your day to respond patiently to comments about this!
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  65. One of our sources cited it as a character for "ant", another said it's used as the first element of compounds for insects. Thank you for the feedback!
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  66. Go raibh maith agat!
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  67. Any lopsided intelligibility stories to share? :D
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  68. Tlazohcamati! I hope your studies go really well. Nāhuatl has such amazingly distinct ways of expressing everyday things that seem fresh when we're used to Spanish or English.
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  69. Enough that many rhymes don't rhyme anymore, the consonant sets (like /d/ vs /t/ vs /tʰ/) have been simplified, the four tone categories don't continue as-is in any modern variety, and that "chóngniǔ" I mentioned at the end disappeared entirely (though it's still there in Vietnamese). I read that they continued using rhymes for the imperial exams, so knowledge of the old features wasn't "lost" in China like happens elsewhere. I'd be curious to hear an acoustic impression from a Mandarin vs Cantonese speaker listening to a longer text.
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  70. louisng114 Good call! There are similarities to kunyomi. Maybe not as drastic as Hittite "ana-lugal" = "hassu-i" though, since Japanese uses those helpful hiragana syllables for grammar.
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  71. There are native speakers of Esperanto to test this! A while ago someone mentioned research on Native Esperanto to me. Probably Bergen's "Nativization Processes in L1 Esperanto", which shows how children modify the language and predicts the grammatical changes that would happen should Native Esperanto become the norm.
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  72. Oh yes! This example has intrigued me since the day I heard it in my first historical linguistics class.
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  73. You're right. It's one of a handful of things I wish I could just fix.
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  74. Do European languages feel more "universal" than they really are? Are they actually exotic outliers?
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  75. I think you're the first one to call this out! :D
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  76. +William Randall English picked this habit up from French, so we could blame Latin's troublesome children. But Romance palatals are another story...
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  77. Was that a plus or minus for you? I've had complaints both directions; the one survey I've ever done slanted toward too fast, but that was some time ago. It hasn't been on my mind. Honestly, I mostly set aside running between those two goalposts and focused on practicing animating and storytelling.
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  78. The one where we wrap up our background to animal grammars and pass on the tradition of debunking poor old Hans 🐴
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  79. A good study partner? Did you enjoy this style of video? Next time, something other than nothing(s).
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  80. I can see where you're coming from. It seemed like a fun way to trace paths through linguistic evolution. Years later, I'd tell the story differently.
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  81. Maybe. If I can do it justice, I'll remember you asked for it!
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  82. I think it could be said of Southwestern Turkic languages generally. They're inter-intelligible, but socio-political considerations label them different languages. The map of world languages would look very different if mutual intelligibility were the only variable taken into account!
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  83. My first try had an audio issue the whole way through. Thanks for waiting while I fixed, rendered and uploaded! (Old one is still up if you're eager to compare or you need the audio export error experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQskz_HQnRQ )
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  84. English definitely earns its place on that wheel, even for native speakers.
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  85. Thank you all for watching this series, and for the kind comments! I'll upload the full animation as one video next week. Then I'll crash my head into a pillow for a while. :D
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  86. Thank you for that!
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  87. καλός τε καὶ ἀγαθός· sounds like quite a journey!
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  88. Halfway through the series! But too many especially communicative species remain. Stick with me a bit longer.
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  89. "All". Plus Mongolic and AA/Semitic, counted in the papers I've read (Chirikba, Catford, ...). What's more, the entire diversity of the three indigenous families is contained within the region. The representation of Indo-European and Turkic branches is incredibly varied. This is not a simple area.
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  90. Appreciate your thoughts on this. It was a source of anxiety for me when I began the project, and now I've had good and detailed feedback in both directions. Very valid criticism, especially given how long it takes me to research and animate each minute of content. Thank you.
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  91. Aaagggh so so right. That error is going in the sources doc straightaway. Thanks for correcting me.
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  92. Good questions. I've been wanting to talk about alternatives to linguistic family trees, like the "wave theory". I know biologists/naturalists have long noticed the similar properties between languages and speciation, while linguists have talked about the "areal" issues not accounted for in "genealogical" linguistics.
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  93. There's tough competition, so I humbly appreciate the compliment!
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  94. Oh wow thanks 😆 Played a few of your videos while doing art for this!
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  95. Happy birthday!!! You're the embodiment of who I made this video for.
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  96. Well, that's embarrassing. Guess what I get to try and fix today?
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  97. It isn't my strength, but I can get there...
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  98. Let's play semantics with animal words.
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  99. Some say there's been a rebound, with younger speakers picking up the language, but I have only read basic reports. Linguists claim that it fares better than Lacandón. Do you find it easy to have conversations, or are even native speakers reluctant to use your language? Thank you for sharing your experience.
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  100. I wonder if this is normally the case for ligature-heavy scripts - beautiful and complex at a glance, but internally mostly regular. What you sketched could be abstractly said of Arabic, Byzantine Greek, etc. Thank you for your insights.
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  101. Whew! And woohoo!
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  102. Whew! I studied some good grammars to prepare, so I thank them.
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  103. No other examples would do...
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  104. Congratulations!
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  105. Just Europe. Haspelmath notes the features in question aren't typical of the ancestral languages, hence the "areal" rather than the "genetic" group.
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  106. +Tarin Good ear! Kwaio has "prenasalized voiced stops" (mb, nd, ng). Some Kwaio don't nasalize them at the beginning of an utterance.
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  107. Hmm. I appreciate the feedback! I'll have to rewatch and think about it.
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  108. მადლობა! There is beauty in the challenge. When I read the quote about verbs harder than "anything most learners will have experienced before", I was instantly intrigued.
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  109. Luigi D'Alessandro, grazie mille per il commento positivissimo!
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  110. Good feedback! The few I could find play softly behind my voice (links in sources document). I'll pay more attention to this in the next two
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  111. That's a very kind comment!
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  112. I had this same punchline but no setup for it... until now!
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  113. Superior? Nope. Struggling to grasp something is not the same as rejecting it. I found it the learning process extreme, but the system is fascinating and, ultimately, doable. There's linguistic know-how here that can even help with other writing systems.
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  114. This was my summer 🌞✒ More writing in the fall, then it's back to grammatical animals - Spellers, do you remember "that word" you got out on? - Non-spellers, what linguistic/graphemic games did you play?
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  115. Ah, I was hoping this would be playful and not misleading. I'll add yours as a note to the credits/sources doc.
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  116. 📖 In which appears the suffix that sparked this series – And other amazing feats of sequential animal signaling. 📖
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  117. Nice analogy. I think so. The "abjad" (but not "ABC's") seems named the same way. Also, it's been a while!
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  118. The paper's conclusion gives us the start of a hypothesis shortly after that final quote about definiteness: "the expression of functional categories such as tense... is not necessary for conveying the intended communicative content of linguistic utterances. The relevant conceptual distinctions are made whether or not they are expressed linguistically and speakers can rely on pragmatic means to communicate them where needed." If you accept that, sequenced time still comes up conceptually for the Maya (even if timelines bend into large wheels), but is expressed both grammatically and conceptually in English. But if language is tied more tightly to thought for you, I imagine it's trickier to explain than that.
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  119. Insightful! Discussing Min varieties will be particularly important if we ever get to a lookback on Old Chinese.
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  120. I hear you and thought of similar examples, but my sources don't count it as playing a "productive" and "morphological" role. (Basically, if that counts as productive grammatical reduplication, to be consistent, so does so much repetition in language.) So they count English among "languages that do not employ reduplication as a grammatical device" (Rubino in WALS ch. 27).
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  121. True, this does stay pretty conceptual. I keep wanting to revisit this topic, since it's been a few years and my style's changed. Thanks for the feedback!
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  122. +Michael Turvey Wait... didn't you know that you actually speak Sumerian? ;)
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  123. Haha! Well I'll try to release more frequently so as to lure you from work...
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  124. Even the nasal v phoneme cited for Old Irish? Haven't heard it, but, yes, definitely the w/v allophones.
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  125. +Connor Alford I can't respond directly to your comment... But that's Jessica. She's a computer programmer. I'm trying to convince her to open her own channel (or at least narrate more videos for us here)!
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  126. Thank you!
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  127. Thank you, sir. Oh, and NICE ARMOR!!
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  128. At the time, I thought it explored the options and made predictive headway. I'm not so sure anymore.
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  129. This is a deep well. I had to cut the discussion for time, but you're right to bring it up. It sounds obvious, but soooo much more needs to be said about Turkic for backgrounding this period.
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  130. Danke!
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  131. I listened to a bunch of Tsakonian but never heard it... still holding out hope.
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  132. Ooh... wise man. Thank you!
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  133. Thank you. I'm only happy to share such an inspiring subject with you and help you change your mind about language ;) Have an amazing interview - it already sounds like you will!
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  134. Neh. Comma separated lists all the way!
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  135. I appreciate your appreciation! It's an important part of getting the story right.
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  136. Also I updated the hurricane diagram so that it shows event times around a single topic time. Mentally cross out the old one from last time; this one should be clearer.
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  137. In episode #7 we mention the Phoenician alphabet was being "tested in easy waters". This feature of Egyptian and Semitic was precisely what we had in mind. It's still a problem, which is why even Semitic scripts kept inventing and reinventing vowels to make things easier on the reader!
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  138. Awww, underrepresented!
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  139. +SuperFlyGuyJohnnyP What... that's huuuge! Thank you.
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  140. Thank you
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  141. +tovarischkrasnyjeshi Trickier still, not all Spanish and French j's come from Latin /j/!
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  142. Thanks! I studied after I got that dictionary and course as a gift. I had chances for some stilted practice with friends and acquaintances. I haven't kept up with it. (In fact, Sino-Japanese readings of characters tend to come to mind first when I see a Hanzi I know.) After all this reading I wish I had.
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  143. Sorry to hear that. I had hoped the timeline showing tense pointing from the time you're speaking to some other time, plus the presence of grammatical tense in the audience's language, could overcome that. It was a real challenge to streamline this up to this point. I'll consider this as I work on the more detailed followup.
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  144. Thanks! Never heard of it actually. Have to look it up...
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  145. They're thought of as how those consonants behave ("that's how I pronounce my B's!") instead of separate segments ("I'm combining an M plus a B").
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  146. Hmm, good feedback, and good to know. :)
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  147.  @Mousey10101  The "Rainbow Oracle Script"... and what a name!
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  148. Thank you!
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  149. Wow, I'm honored to have been such a part of your linguistic journey! I know it takes so much of your own work, but reading this really made those late nights researching and animating feel that much more worthwhile.
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  150. Saaaame!
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  151. What goes unsaid, unpaused but not unmeant? Also, any beloved zeros to add to my folder?
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  152. sgghhh.... hope not!
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  153. Christian Jiang Oh yeah! That guy will come back in episode 5!
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  154.  @lime2333  And thank you for watching them!
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  155. Yep. Good eyes, and good correction. I'll put it in the info box.
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  156. They deserve it, but I have quite some learning ahead of me to do justice to any Slavic language.
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  157. Someone's been watching for a while ~ and your count matches mine!
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  158. I reused footage from an older video about Kwaio taboos. Which other past videos feel relevant after watching this "kit"?
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  159. True, intonation matters for context and speaking "like a native". Mandarin teachers even use examples of English intonation in context to give students a feel for the four (well, "five") tones.
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  160. A video with Russian in it and yet none of its cool features were mentioned! I know Slavic deserves better analysis than that :|
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  161. So true!
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  162. +Akhilleus That is a strange idiosyncrasy. Of course, English was once like German in that regard (ic or, later, i). Thanks for watching!
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  163. Thanks! She's Jessica from the channel CompChomp. I tried recording this whole thing myself, but hers turned out much better.
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  164. Awww thanks for sharing. I'm wary of oversharing in 'official' channel videos so it's been years, but I remember!
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  165. Fewest languages per km² – what a superlative! Ok, so far we've spent 2020 in northeast Asia, but next time...
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  166. Muito obrigado! When it comes to Romance, I learned Spanish and French when I was young. I started to study others when I was a little older. The linguistic situation in Italy fascinates me, from Sicily to the Alps to Sardinia. Romance creoles, too. But It's hard to pick a favorite!
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  167. It's too good to be false!
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  168. Definitely a gaffe by someone who's no expert in English linguistics (me!)
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  169. Haha, indeed. Guiness ruled out artificial formulae/terms, so this is the longest known natural word. The debate's healthy though!
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  170. Angel33Demon666 Yessss! :D Had to work that in.
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  171. That's a great parallel, and one I've often enjoyed retelling because it pricks the bubble of familiarity and confronts English speakers with a simple diachronic question. Yogh was like that for me, though a bit less familiar.
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  172. Shhh, don't spoil part 2! Social factors are implicated in language change, and some challenges to Swadesh point to them. I've also read papers that focus on areal (languages in contact - Swadesh recognized this) and geographical factors. Thanks for the birthday wishes!
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  173. +llamapalooza Intonation for sure! I think linguists say that because we don't use tones as building blocks like tonal languages do. When they say a language "has tones", they mean a set of "tonemes".
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  174. It's "suppletion"! Classical Latin had a regular verb 'vado' (infinitive 'vadere') and another verb 'eo' (infinitive 'ire'). They had different connotations but both basically meant "to go". Iberian Romance speakers consistently used forms of one or the other in certain conjugations, eventually treating them as parts of the same verb. It gets worse though. That preterit 'fui' actually comes from yet another verb, 'esse' "to be", which was ALREADY a suppletive form! (Latin 'es-' and 'fu-' represent two different Indo-European roots. The second is the fu- in "future" and, believe it or not, is related to our English word "be"!) Some Romance languages use forms of '*andare' (Classical 'ambulare') "walk" instead of 'ire'. Italian and Catalan do this. French has suppletive forms of 'ire', 'vadere', 'esse' and a fourth verb '*alare'! So there is a pattern here. It's hard to see at first glance, since the forms derive from different Latin verbs. I find it kind of funny that this same thing happened in the history of English. "Go" and "went" come from two different Germanic verbs.
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  175. This video shows how to write every letter and its name (e.g. β βῆτα = b beta). On the left are the letters, on the right are their names. It's actually part of a larger lesson (URL in description box). You'll need more information to read Greek. But here's a start: the beginning of a letter's name is the sound that letter makes. For example, "beta" (βῆτα) is the Greek name for the sound "b" (β). Google "Greek alphabet" for letter names and pronunciation in English. Hope that helps!
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  176. You're kind to say so! Looks like I'm getting fairly mixed reviews on it so far.
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  177. The bilabial fricative? It acquired a pronunciation like that in Late Latin, but reconstructions of the earlier language point to /w/.
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  178. I'd normally read (awkwardly and non-natively) with a more standard modern pronunciation, but warming up for this I did some research on traditional pronunciations for passage reading. Agree that in "safa 'ehad" I didn't hit the alef glottal stop clearly.
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  179. Tom Perry Sometimes it's obvious - right next to them are phonetic characters instructing the reader how to pronounce the word. Other times it takes detective work - words may consistently show up in syllables in normal texts but as Sumerograms in a ritual text, for instance. There are open questions and disputed readings.
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  180. +Marko Đorđević This was deliberate, to show an obvious correspondence between four letters rather than respect any alphabetic sequence. But, of course, you're right! Б & В both derive from Greek "beta", and that could've been shown here.
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  181. Wow, you just made my day. Seriously! These days, these old lessons feel like the boring side of my channel. So glad when I hear they're still helping.
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  182.  @Alfonso162008  Thank you!
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  183. Thank youuuu!
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  184. Oh, added one more thing: contest this video's demonetization...
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  185. These terms also get used in sociolinguistics for different registers.
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  186. Not at all!
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  187. +dogcowdogcow I second that, along with his Art of the Maya Scribe. There's also a shorter look, still complete with detective work feel, in Robinson's Lost Languages.
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  188. Sharp question. I can't rule it out myself, but it does fit with other R-L examples like the Kovel spear or the Franks Casket (Anglo-Saxon Futhorc). Even later, runestones have letters that weave every which way! One striking feature: runes are perfectly flipped when written right-to-left. This symmetry also appears in the "mirror runes".
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  189. Much appreciated; I'll keep your tips for the next time I encounter your native tongue! Oh yes I definitely missed that final devoiced /f/.
    35
  190.  @jerkfac310  Thanks!
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  191. Especially when it eats the other languages and spits out numbers!
    34
  192. Thank you for your honest comment. From other responses, I don't think you're alone. I'll give this more thought when I work on the followup.
    34
  193. I have to study more before I can get there...
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  194. I'll take all the likes I can get! I recycle them into animations. Didn't your channel have vids or am I misremembering?
    32
  195. Very meta!
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  196. In particular, a big deal is made out of Övdalsk's nasals.
    31
  197. Isaías J. Muito obrigado!
    31
  198. 😊Thank youuu! 😊
    31
  199. I see many Latin textbooks ditch "j" and go back to the old ways for this reason. Not so common with "u"/"v", though.
    30
  200. I thought it was "Harenosora Mincho", but 漢 does look off.
    30
  201. I'm taking your recommendation - watching now
    30
  202. Ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ.
    30
  203. +Nikolas Powell A quirky American regionalism. When we were recording the audio, I smiled and left it in for personality instead of asking her if she wanted a redo.
    29
  204. It is, in an intricately beautiful way. Languages preserve layers of history in their etymologies, but I'm intrigued how kanji have done that with characters.
    29
  205. This goes to another comment wondering about first contact learning experiences in general. With the Aztec/Mexihcah specifically, I see a contrast between often clumsy attempts in conquest accounts versus say Sahagún, who found informants and spent time learning "the Mexican language" even on the ship ride over. Seems like Pizarro lacked an Inca Malintzin, and this did cause him trouble down in South America. (Perú's story involved the infamous Felipillo.)
    29
  206. This would be a good language to talk about... and not necessarily short from what I read! There's much history here. Thank you for mentioning Taíno.
    29
  207. To be fair, I cut out a lot of the nuance to keep it this short and intuitive. Thank you for the encouragement!
    29
  208. I've had enough feedback about this that I'll leave a note in the info box. Thanks for the thoughts!
    28
  209. "Messy". Any specifics? After a month of hard work, I wouldn't mind polling the audience to see if there's something to this.
    28
  210. Perhaps it wasn't clear enough, but this isn't about "genetic" relatedness. Check out my pinned comment if you're confused!
    28
  211. +Jace Nath Agree - definitely South Indian, even if not from the Tamil script proper. The turning world only showed spread over geography, not a path of chronological inheritance. Thanks for watching and commenting!
    28
  212. ❣your pun! May this series have many long tails!
    28
  213. Indeed! I chose the word "subsystem" to sum it up: all ateji are kanji, but not all kanji are ateji. Haha, sushi is a great example. Thank you for commenting.
    27
  214. Wait, so I can't just drop the "Romance palatalization" bomb and be done with it? ;D
    27
  215. Wow, so you had unexpectedly prepared yourself for this moment just with European languages! Since I think Welsh has VSO word order, I'd say you're set, haha.
    27
  216. +Paul Jones You're right. And that is a great topic to tackle in the future!
    27
  217. I should clarify there. I don't find stroke order to be the most complex thing about Chinese characters. For me, it was like the cherry on top, the "but wait there's more" that really made me stop and laugh. The video will be more about the process of coming to the kind of stroke order intuitions you have, and why even then there are still many quirks. Thanks for sharing examples! Wow, 髪 + 剃 > 剃刀 has quite the character etymology. Painfully exquisite.
    27
  218. I listed the basic credits in the description box - link on the last line. Beyer's book on Classical Tibetan (particularly where he cites modern pronunciations), Jackson T.-S. Sun and Hu on Lhasa tones, thlib.org's papers on Tournadre's proposal for a transliteration reform, along with their online Tibetan dictionary... these might be a good start. It's kind of an aside, but the joke about a correlation between altitude and Tibetan writing came from the paper listed onscreen at 07:32. It's a fun topic for a linguistics presentation. Good luck to you!
    26
  219. +firevenge The latest model of that "Diachronolinguix" machine actually stores a reference pointer to the user's native time period ;)
    26
  220. Merci à vous pour le commentaire! Il me faut encore des sous-titres en français, mais pour le moment j'espère que le texte et les exemples que j'ai donnés ont été assez clairs.
    26
  221. +Tarin At least between vowels (like the b in 'ubule), even if there's a word boundary (like the second b in 'ubule 'e boo).
    25
  222. Indeed! :D
    25
  223. +Cody Beasley Good call! If I'm remembering right, that one even made it into the draft script for this video before I pruned it to 9 examples.
    25
  224. Only brief jabs (the Mesoamerica Sprachbund vid for example) and an old series on alignment (more of a linguistics 101 lecture, and one with errors). I had a long paragraph here in my notes, but I cut it to keep the story moving. I need to find a way to make ergativity entertaining...
    25
  225. Dendy Oh no! Take it all back!!
    25
  226. Ooh, I must check out this channel...
    25
  227. No shame, there's time to learn. Thank you for watching, commenting and sharing emotion. ¡Un abrazo!
    25
  228. Hahh! When I flipped one around I interpreted the wings as inner brows going up, but now I see it your way XD
    25
  229. There's evidence that Vulgar Latin speakers already confused medial /b/ and /v/. The Appendix Probi instructed readers to say "tolerabilis non toleravilis" and "alveus non albeus". The phoneme /β/ (like 'b' in Spanish 'debe') is postulated for Proto-Romance 'v', so 'v' and 'b' were already pretty close. But it wasn't until the later Middle Ages that 'b'/'v' merged completely in Old Spanish.
    25
  230. Portuguese gets used throughout this series, and in this very video. I often use one or another example from Iberian Romance.
    24
  231. Australia! Why is it that you're left out of popular language discussions, yet linguists love to bring up your languages?
    24
  232. Thank you! :D
    24
  233. Welcome! Glad you came to visit! No, just on here doing my own thing. I started with linguistics lessons years ago and gradually shifted to fun animations.
    24
  234.  @jonaswagner4310  Mine might be a downgrade. I mostly use a small USB Samson Go Mic set to -10db, get everything really quiet and try to project close to the source. Still takes hours of cleanup in Audacity.
    24
  235. I've got suggestions for Guaraní, too. All very deserving of attention.
    23
  236. +Lee Cox No, that's entirely correct. Strange, since I don't think it's an error I make when speaking French - it would stick out to me. I guess I mixed myself up pronouncing it alongside the other *lupu, lupo, lobo, lup, etc.
    23
  237. Hahaa!
    23
  238. Ooh, enjoy it! I'm sure you will. Thank you; I'm glad I am able, at times, to show how much of a place language has in our world.
    23
  239. Wow, thank you! And as a bonus double thanks for the patronage! This definitely took time and felt so slow going at times, but when I see a comment like yours it feels worth it. Yes, I am eager to animate more...
    23
  240. Haha, your diligent distraction paid off!!
    22
  241. Very true! You'll hear examples of both (seseo and ceceo) throughout this series. I opted for /θ/ here to showcase diversity - it's markedly different from other Romance languages, which have /s/ or /t͡ʃ/ for Latin /k/ before /e/ or /i/.
    22
  242. Sorry to hear that. It's too bad, since it took a lot out of me to put it together.
    22
  243. Congratulations! Hope you make us look good!! :D
    22
  244. Amazing suggestion - if it makes the cut, your comment will be featured! :D
    22
  245. Seems specific; one quote I included in my sources doc says their creation was "the monopoly of a very restricted intellectual community". Some signs did get popular enough to flow out into regular hieroglyphic texts.
    22
  246. Hah, yeah, thanks for reading. I caught that shortly after upload and facepalmed so hard that we mentioned it in the "Thoth's Pill extras".
    21
  247. If we do, this comment goes in it.
    21
  248. This situation is normal in a "dialect continuum", which brings back to the whole political/cultural clout thing. It's one factor in heated debates over application of the terms "language" and "dialect" in Europe.
    20
  249. Why would you choose to torment yourself like that?!?
    20
  250. Congratulations!!
    20
  251. It's his biggest legacy, both inside and outside of linguistics. Swadesh lists do have some popular currency even among those who shudder at the mention of glottochronology. Still, they come with boilerplate about properly identifying cognates and not just restricting our analysis to vocabulary.
    20
  252. I'd sure think suffixes would increase chances for end rhyme. Chinese has grouped words by all possible rhymes since ancient times. Old Babylonian, huh? Wow!
    19
  253. Nice! I long to practice some more. The Icelandic phonology guide I read taught me some tricky nuances that I want to test out.
    19
  254. Good point! It does in standard European Portuguese and some Brazilian dialects, notably Fluminense. I do hear many Spaniards speak with that more palatal [s̺], though, including every Catalan speaker I've met.
    19
  255. Is this comment self-referential?
    19
  256. +Atticus Stount Sneaky, eh? Actually it's even worse - I have a grating syllabic "r". per~pre merger FTW!
    19
  257. +Reynaldo Ramírez-Arellano Good point. You can go beyond the existing syllabary and invent new characters. Japanese ん /ɴ/ is a tricky example, since it acts as a separate moraic "beat" just like the other kana. The small katakana /ku/ used to write Ainu -k might be an easier example - it modifies an existing kana character to give it a new non-syllable pronunciation. Your third solution in action!
    19
  258. You approve? :) By researching until I couldn't keep my eyes open - a doc in the info box explains more. As a hobby and passion, in college and out. Digital drawing/painting, image editing and 3D animation in Blender, GIMP and Manga Studio.
    19
  259. I want to! I'm learning bits of phrases in Tagalog and a little Ilocano from an auntie who's near and dear to the family. She chuckles at my attempts, it's fun.
    19
  260. I keep teasing it, but an overview like that would be really cool.
    19
  261. +Enrique F. Margarit Thank you. Maya deserves the attention!
    18
  262. I don't mind your opinions, but any specific points of disagreement, for example?
    18
  263. Haha, so much better than the "you sound boring" comments! :D
    18
  264. Way to go with the Bob Ross reference. That has to be a first on the channel.
    18
  265. +sion8 Interesting... There are glimpses of that in the surviving codices. If efforts to reteach the Maya glyphs succeed, maybe we'll see!
    18
  266. It took lots of work 💦so thanks for sticking around to watch 😊 ❤
    18
  267. Thank you! Try the decipherment series starting in January. It's no Grammar of Romance, but I wager it will ease your mind. I enjoyed creating this video and the similar "9 Extreme Language Facts". I might do a few more in the same style if those get enough watch time. I'm definitely continuing to branch out in both content and style. I dream of being as much of a YouTube hub for language as some of my edutainment inspirations are for science, history, etc. But I aim to do that without losing the depth of the material that those of us who love language really value. Hopefully I can hit that target. Comments like yours keep me in check, so thank you again!!
    17
  268. Depends on the time period! In Ancient Athens: /óìnos/ ("óh-ee-noce"). The "oh" was pitched about five notes higher than the "ee", giving /oi/ a falling sing-song sound. In Koine and Early Byzantine: /'ynos/ ("EE-noce"), puckering your lips when you pronounce that "eee" sound. The late Byzantine Greek and Modern Greek pronunciation is /'inos/, same as above but without the rounded lips for "ee". Oh, and in VERY early Greek the word began with /w/, like the English word still does: ϝοἶνος /woinos/. I hope this helps. Let me know if anything wasn't clear.
    17
  269. presuntomr Me, too! It's taking on a life of its own.
    17
  270. Not yet, but it's on the list of topics for patrons to vote on! I want more Austronesian - nothing much since Kwaio.
    17
  271. +Gibreel Alaghbary That's great to hear! I hope to revisit the topic. At the time I had plans for more videos, including more on the definitional features. Thanks for the feedback and encouragement.
    17
  272. dychui Thanks! I simplified for the example, but you're right.
    16
  273. Thanks! I may not be getting many. But here's one for you!
    16
  274. hahaa!
    16
  275. Hmmm, true. I kind of had it in mind that Nostratic deserves its own topic, since I cut the "superfamilies" section down so much.
    16
  276. Now on to the hard work of keeping you around! :D
    16
  277. +Andriy Boubriak Canon D10 that wasn't white balanced. See why I animate all of my videos now? ;)
    16
  278. +Cozy Fallout Thank you!! I don't think I know how to get more views. But I think I'm learning to do better work.
    16
  279. True, it could be more educational. That's the context I know corrections from.
    16
  280. Thanks! Where I grew up it was only -/kɔɪ/. I'd never heard the -/kwɑː/ used in Canada (and some of the US) before I made this video! That pronunciation interested me enough I did some digging and writing: https://www.patreon.com/posts/19032175
    16
  281. Fun stuff, and shows the common Germanic history of the two languages!
    15
  282. I think this is meant to show extents and existence, not dominance (e.g. the Greek spots on the map are not predominantly Greek speaking). I was disappointed the map didn't show Turkish, but this is the best free-use, CC BY map I could track down.
    15
  283. Nice! Yucatec is tonal, but Yokot'an is not. For example, t'àan in QR vs t'an in Tabasco. I gave ejective t' a shot based on the audio I've heard from modern speakers, but my Maya pronunciation is still a work in progress. Isolated words like "yokot'an" should pitch up on the last syllable for prosody, and that's missing from my examples.
    15
  284. Thank you! She's a guest host from the channel "CompChomp". Hopefully you don't mind my plain old voice talking behind animations in my normal videos! ;D
    15
  285. Bias towards my native accent in the flow of storytelling. Having encountered both pronunciations in my research, I felt free to use the mid vowel. Seeing how meaningful this is to commenters, along with a strong tendency toward the pronunciation you mention, I would do more to assimilate to that pronunciation, were I to tackle the subject again.
    15
  286. No hurt feelings here. I sincerely thank you for leaving this feedback! I've taken steps away from this style in my newer topics (the ones without black backgrounds), but the scripts and vocals are still very far from where I want them to be. The future will see if your criticism helps, but it's at least well received.
    15
  287. Nah, go for it - have fun!
    15
  288. We're starting a Commonlounge discussion on how mutations evolved from "sandhi" effects. Learn and share more: https://www.commonlounge.com/discussion/cc821edd1d1a4ae19520bdf66121252e/all/ad43fc4f9cb34a40a2a0eb7dc890cb10
    14
  289. +ArguingFromIgnorance Glad to return the favor after benefitting from yours!
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  290. I had read about that, but I really like your example. It makes my tongue feel like an out-of-control machine!
    14
  291. I'm still on the long road of research for that video. Don't worry, I remember! :D
    14
  292. That's wonderful!
    14
  293. +Political Junkie News Well, thank you! I'm glad you found me, and VERY glad to hear the extra time I spend animating is worth it!
    14
  294. Welcome to the linguistic corner of YouTube! Thought you'd never make it. ;)
    14
  295. I'm not able to, but I can at least pass along these helpful tips: - search "gaelchló"+"seanchló" to download a traditional Gaelic font Looking at the font symbols, you may make these substitutions for a real "old time" feel: - use a dot over 'c' and 'm' instead of writing 'ch' and 'mh' - if you prefer, you may use the squared lowercase r and s instead of what look like a small R and an s I hope this helps you!
    14
  296. I thought of taking a tangent into Slavic aspects in an earlier draft. It's relevant, it was taking momentum from the main story and is really worth its own discussion. To draw on one of my sources (Bohnemeyer), what makes this remarkable isn't the presence of mood and aspect, but instead "[t]he expression of a rich system of aspectual and modal distinctions and simultaneous absence of tense marking" that characterize Maya's binding implicatures and temporal anaphora.
    14
  297. I think you're single-handedly trying to multiply the length of this ideas list through your many travels ;) Hah, much thanks for the message, for sharing your experiences – very good suggestions all!
    14
  298. +sion8 It's a good question. I like that you're going the other direction and thinking about taboo in a modern, invented language!
    13
  299. Uh, guess I'll start name dropping more often? :D
    13
  300. +ModCrafterBot Thank you! I want to restart this series, but I'm having trouble getting back to it. Thoth's Pill was quite a detour... sooo worth it!
    13
  301. 上古汉语, none of the modern variants. "Old Chinese" and "Early Chinese" are broad terms, circularly used for the language that appears on the Oracle Bones from the Shang Dynasty.
    13
  302. It's tangential to the "z" part of the story, since I believe з is also a tailed z!
    13
  303. It actually follows reconstructed Attic Greek phonology. Anything specific you'd do differently? Reasons why?
    13
  304. I read Lendvai's The Hungarians to prep for this, and he talks a lot about this kind of identity conflict. Even ties Trianon into this sentiment.
    13
  305. +notoriouswhitemoth We hope so. Alright, time to go knock on some school doors and get 'em watching!
    13
  306. Thanks for sharing a bit of your experience and expertise! Ah, language varieties - I've seen that term in your guys' literature. Had it come to mind while writing the script, it would've made a good addition to this video.
    13
  307. +Angel33Demon666 WAY!!
    13
  308. Heh, needs refactored in Haskell?
    13
  309. There are hunches it could be a logograms and phonetic signs like early Cuneiform. Still nothing close to consensus on Rongorongo decipherment though, except the calendar tablet.
    13
  310. +mahead True, there are surviving examples of Latin cursive from very early. I wouldn't say that Russian cursive has very distinct uppercase and lowercase, but some letters are good counterexamples. It's definitely more varied than printed Cyrillic. Thanks for watching and commenting!
    13
  311. Happy Birthday! 🎂
    13
  312.  @MiguelX413  Shümom (in some of its phases) and Bagam. Vai is a syllabary, but also has a couple.
    13
  313. For Nāhua (Aztec) glyphs: Gordon Whittaker's book, something to write/draw with and on, slow progress 15-30 minutes a day. Months of quiet fun await. Go for it!
    13
  314. Aah, good point. I'm putting a link in the info box now.
    13
  315. It's for a group of people you're addressing informally (like at 3:47). When a verb is used, it has a matching ending. The meaning is similar to American English 'you guys' / 'you all' or Irish English 'ye'.
    13
  316. ἐπιθυμία is the noun 'desire'. ἐγώ is the pronoun "I". That phrase sounds strange. One thing to keep in mind: Google translate is working with Modern Greek.
    13
  317. Maybe it's unintuitive, but quite a bit of ancient evidence suggests /zd/, at least at some early point and in some dialects. Take the old standby, Dionysius Thrax, for example: ἔτι δὲ τῶν συμφώνων διπλᾶ μέν ἐστι τρία· ζ ξ ψ. διπλᾶ δὲ εἴρηται, ὅτι ἓν ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐκ δύο συμφώνων σύγκειται, τὸ μὲν ζ ἐκ τοῦ σ καὶ δ, τὸ δὲ ξ ἐκ τοῦ κ καὶ σ, τὸ δὲ ψ ἐκ τοῦ π καὶ σ. Some authors do suggest /dz/ instead. The choices (and variability of those choices) still get debated in Hellenic linguistics. Also keep in mind that, at an early point, the letter approached its modern pronunciation /z/ (possibly long thanks to compensatory lengthening). I just found that the English wikipedia page for "Zeta" has a list of pro/contra points about this very debate! If you read some of the points there, you can get a feel for the discussion without digging into too much literature.
    12
  318. Wow. Now let's hope I can live up to those words! Cool example. Is it sacrilegious to have left Bill out? He made it to the second draft, at which point I turned to more "exotic" cases. Hmmm, maybe we should try working obsolete Shakespearean rhymes into casual conversation just to see if anyone bites... On the merry side of language change, those "once rhymed"s can help reverse engineer sound change. I'm told they're super valuable for Old Chinese phonology.
    12
  319. Christian Jiang Happy to share this one! It's definitely a fun extra. I think it didn't even get mentioned in my writing systems class or textbooks.
    12
  320. I really want to make more, but they're draining and now I have even less spare time to make them. :( I think I'll find a compromise.
    12
  321. +areyousatisfied Thanks!! Invite the guests... I'll save seats and buy the popcorn! ;-)
    12
  322. +narsplace Your old Greek friend seems to think so. But the narrator concludes, "Know that the story of writing doesn't stop here. This isn't the be-all and end-all. Not even close."
    12
  323. It may be on the voting list. I'll check and add it if it's not.
    12
  324. Spanish and later French - no exact date, but let's say mid 90's. Portuguese, Latin, Catalan and Romanian in the late 90's. Italian, Old Italian, Old Spanish, Old French and Sardinian in the early 2000's. I was also testing my skills with Greek and intermittently with Irish, Luiseño, some Polynesian languages and Japanese, so I took time to catch up with myself before trying to make more sense of some other Spanish languages, Italian "dialects" and Rhaeto-Romance (2011).
    12
  325. +Flavio Spadavecchia Thank you for taking time to share! The patchwork of Italian differences versus Standard Italian is a crucial topic within Romance languages, so I appreciate your comment.
    12
  326. Any specifics to point out that would help make it better? The video aims for the standard reconstructed pronunciation of Attic, compare Allen's _Vox Graeca_ or the Wikipedia article "Ancient Greek phonology".
    12
  327. Ah, so you want me to roll back that τσακώνικα vid one more step I see... I can almost picture a whole miniseries: Plato's Greek vs Homer's Greek vs Doric Greek.
    12
  328. Wow ~ thank you for that positive encouragement!
    12
  329. Vai, N'ko and Adlam are! Plus some of the markings/letters for writing Ajami.
    12
  330. Thank you! This series tends to focus on commonalities, but I do mention this feature of European Portuguese on the associated website. Thanks for contributing to the discussion by commenting on this noteworthy syntax!
    12
  331. Amazing. You're living the exact situation a linguistics professor of mine once used to illustrate dialect continua.
    11
  332. Try running this search in Google Scholar to get a sense for this use of the words: +"high" +"low" +"sociolinguistics" +"registers" The terms "acrolect" and "basilect" also come to mind.
    11
  333. +Jorge Romero Thanks for sharing! So if your theory's right, it's a grammatical analogy - an interesting case of how sound and morphosyntax play together. The opposite happened in English "apron", where rebracketing turned "a napron" into "an apron".
    11
  334. Not yet. Starting to feel guilty when I think about these whole areas of the world that hardly get any YouTube linguistics love.
    11
  335. Working hard not to be the underdog anymore :D Thank you!!
    11
  336. Thanks for the tips! English linguistics is definitely not my forte...
    11
  337. I found it funny to do a strict etymological parsing after I'd already given the translation ("Middle Low German").
    11
  338. Thank you for saying so! It's been a long struggle, but very worth it to reach into the history of such a beautiful language family.
    10
  339. +Christian Jiang Whew, just in time! I'd hate to leave you wondering.
    10
  340. +Mark Stoleson The Hawaiian story is that the tapu/kapu system was brought to the islands by Tahitians. Do you know if this ever happened with Hawaiian ali'i?
    10
  341. +yvanspijk What a treat to hear! Thank you.
    10
  342. +Erik Karlsson Thanks for taking it with me!
    10
  343. Latin endings repeat often, but most cases are unstressed. I think a string of genitive plurals would do it. Or verb endings outside the present. Still, meter was the order of the day.
    10
  344. Thank you!!
    10
  345. There's always variation in handwriting (in fact, there are slight variations between the multiple deltas that appear in the video). For people that are interested in viewing manuscripts and exploring the vast range of written Greek miniscule characters, I highly recommend the British Library's "Digitised Manuscripts" site (http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Default.aspx).  They have high quality scans of ancient manuscripts. We have a video that discusses how to use the site (Medieval manuscripts for language & calligraphy studies (Appendix to Byzantine Greek series)).  For Greek miniscule, you should put "Greek" in as a keyword and set the dates from 800 to 1800 (miniscule continues beyond that and is in fact the Modern Greek script, but, those dates are the heyday). 
    10
  346. Ah, I appreciate the info. I didn't realize I was deviating from the Caighdeán!
    10
  347. I'm grateful that you took the time to share your thoughts!
    10
  348. +Mark Hutchens Thanks! I think we saw Major Moments coming this time and were syntactically prepared. :D When Arabic and Syriac were new to me, the scripts seemed odd. The different letter forms, reversed writing direction, strange vowel marks... but now I'd agree with you!
    10
  349. YESSS! Thanks for catching that! My head's so focused on this next video I almost missed it. Time to CELEBRATE! :D
    10
  350. Linguists have the best jokes!
    10
  351. It is interesting.  Latin "cantare" is actually a regular, "repetitive" form of "canere".
    10
  352. Thanks! Seen his videos, never chatted with him though.
    10
  353. +goomba008 Quite a compliment, especially considering these early videos of mine aren't high quality! My accent varies with my whims, but here I'm leaning towards a later Hellenic qualitative contrast between something like /e/ and /ε/. Ancient evidence and linguistic reconstruction support an earlier Attic quantitative contrast between /e/ and /e:/, with /ε:/ argued as a possible value for η. Some early dialects probably distinguished the long vowel η from the diphthongs αι (closer to /ε:/) or ει (closer to /e:/ or even /i:/), but Classical grammar school pronunciation had multiple values for ει based on which ει it was and insisted on treating αι as a+i. By late Koine, though, η was well on its way to closing in on /i/. Haha, "close"... phonological pun. Wow, I wrote a lot. To oversimplify things: the quality matters, but in the early days quantity (vowel length) was what crucially distinguished ε from η.
    10
  354. +ElizaberthUndEugen Thanks for giving us a shot. The excitement was real - the sound engineer on set had to move the mic because of Jessica's heartbeat!
    10
  355. Thanks for the vote of confidence =D !!
    10
  356. We have good timing, you & me! I hope that smile lasts all day.
    10
  357. That... is cool. Is there a term for this phenomenon? "Exonym" or is there a better one?
    10
  358. +avafrav Merci !
    10
  359. Intense! I'd better make those alerts count.
    10
  360. You'll catch me saying both. This vid's more for play, less "enunciated" so I would expect some non-standard closer-to-home strings from my mouth. Wait, listening to your timestamp, that's pretty close to how I enunciate the orthographic pronunciation (the "standard").
    10
  361. This is one of those rare occasions when someone's stopped to explain the impact these videos had. Logic doesn't have to be so hard. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience, and I really wish you huge success with your major!
    10
  362. Acabo de activar la opción de "traducción comunitaria" y ahora ustedes podrán contribuir al desarrollo de una traducción en castellano. Eso sirve para mostrar los subtítulos pero el doblaje es otra cosa...
    9
  363. I appreciate the feedback!
    9
  364. Ah, the other way around! I hadn't made that connection.
    9
  365. +Sintoolkicks It's an the intro to this collab microseries. Definitely experimental - I go for cold opens myself.
    9
  366. I definitely did flash back and forth between the languages a lot, and that can be a cognitive load with a new subject. Mayan languages like Yokot'an and Yucatec are ergative.
    9
  367. Greek "g" is pronounced this way before another g (and a few similar sounds). The ancients separated it from regular "gamma" and called it "angma" (ἄγμα). The sound isn't quite /n/. It's technically a "velar nasal", which is like moving your tongue to pronounce a "g" while you say "n". For example, you can hear the sound at the end of the English word 'sing'. Greek angma explains why England is spelled Ἀγγλία ("Agglia") instead of Ἀνγλία ("Anglia")!
    9
  368. +EC912 My hunch is that the phonological shape of 'ego' is to blame. Vowels and that vulnerable intervocalic 'g', versus an initial /t/ and a long /u:/, both of which Romance languages generally leave unchanged. I think this is generally true of Indo-European *eǵhom versus *tuh, not just in the Romance branch of the family.
    9
  369. We'll join you for that!
    9
  370. Thank you for saying so!
    9
  371. Thanks! True, I heard the same when editing the audio for blips and pops. Even sounds a bit forward for a true uvular, kind of a mess of a noise. All I can say is I'll try to get closer next time!
    9
  372. Wait, there's one other thing I can do - add your correction to the info box and credit you for bringing it up! Done.
    9
  373. I would really, really love to get back to those. (Fingers crossed!)
    9
  374. +Leon Jia Hua Huang Or at least a "popularizer"! His Edicts (pillars) are the earliest widespread use of the Brahmi script.
    9
  375. +reject I'm very late to respond, but I appreciate your extra information on Romanian. I hadn't thought to include unii/unele in this video, but - now that you point it out - the omission is obvious! Thank you.
    9
  376. Writing the strokes with your finger - I think I've seen 空書 for that in print. Probably a task where an alphabet would be cumbersome.
    9
  377. Thank you for taking the time to comment and leave some tips! This was also pointed out a year ago - see discussion below.
    9
  378. Thanks for saying so. I kept messing with it; values and waveforms looked right, but something felt off. Going to readjust this when I put it all together.
    9
  379. Oh, so close... the correct answer was Umbrian. ;)
    9
  380. Thanks! I've noticed the same thing. I'll have to pass the credit to David Crystal, who penned this idea in his encyclopedia of language.
    9
  381. Thank you everyone!
    9
  382. Ooh. What must one have done to merit such superlatives?
    9
  383. Ah, "Romania submersa", the lost Romance languages...
    9
  384. Hmmm... it depends on what we're using to judge "most conservative". But I think I have a general answer: Nugorese (a Sardinian dialect). Good question, and a fun one!
    9
  385. Awesome! Which of its features did you focus on?
    9
  386. Make animating easier? 😅 Aww, thanks, I miss being here when a month goes by and I haven't posted.
    9
  387. The notice just linked to the advertiser-friendly guidelines. Requesting a manual review – maybe they'll find something specific.
    9
  388. The very same! It's cool to read this personal background. It gives some depth to the person behind the simple name, date, idea citations I encountered while researching the video. Thank you for sharing.
    8
  389. That must be the "part 2" another commenter was asking for ;)
    8
  390. That's definitely a symptom!
    8
  391. The linguistic and cultural concept is, so I long assumed that every aspect of the system was just a direct Austronesian inheritance. However, some follow Pukui and trace the specific characteristics of the Hawaiian kapu system as we know it to that Tahitian invasion you mention.
    8
  392. Ah, I tried to separate them out in my speech, but maybe it would help to have a visual label onscreen more often to avoid confusion.
    8
  393. Thank you!
    8
  394. I've heard it with a slender "g". My professor always pronounced something closer to /ɛi/, which is what I got used to.
    8
  395. Rarely. You often come at it from different angles - writing systems, anthropology, historical linguistics... - and put the pieces together yourself. Which, hey, is kind of what decipherers have always done. Oh wait, I just found one! http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/courses-exams/course-catalog/anthropology-1165-digging-glyphs-adventures-decipherment
    8
  396. And the creoles!
    8
  397. Lucky... ;D
    8
  398. I will never reveal my secrets! Okay, but just this once: lots and lots of practice with native speakers and books on phonetics and phonology. Thanks for the watching, and a big thanks for the compliment!
    8
  399. It depends. Who would you like to share your methods and conclusions with? If with scholars, you would write up a detailed report of your findings and how you arrived at them. This is more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding if you have a good case. If you would simply like to start a conversation (like on YouTube or the internet), you can sketch your findings and see if you can attract interest in a historical linguistics forum. All the best to you!
    8
  400. Nice of you to say so! Mainly Blender and GIMP. Moved from Flash a couple years ago. Saving up for Manga Studio and a pen for digital drawing, since that part beats up my wrist. Everything ultimately goes to Blender where the final scene is animated.
    8
  401. StormKidification Gratias ago! Thank you! It's something I was determined to put together at the time - my first and longest linguistic affair has been with this language family.
    8
  402. +Adriaan Ater :D
    8
  403. +Jurri v (Jurryaany) I just took it as deliberately playful. After all, both Jessica and I are aware of the history of printed thorn - we've talked about this very topic together before.
    8
  404. Thank you so much for sharing your enthusiasm!
    8
  405. Two key pieces of that etymology are dropping the initial vowel and losing the Λ ("L"). Tsakonian regularly lost its l's elsewhere, like "lalōn" giving "lalou(n)" which turned into "aou".
    8
  406. +Louieinoz Yes, Brazil's no monolith. Portugal isn't either, though. So both made it into the series. I swapped in this BP pronunciation here precisely in hopes that this example stretched learners to see the diversity of Romance. I'm not going for detailed conclusions about Brazilian speech, but I don't think this runs afoul of broad-strokes inferences normally made about any named language or dialect.
    8
  407. Hello! The vowel /ɚ/ is a shwa colored by /r/, and it's how words ending with "er" usually sound in US English. Shwa + r is a simple transcription of the two phonemes that compose that ending, an ending whose pronunciation varies from shwa in non-rhotic dialects to vowelless, nucleic "rrr" in others. Thanks for commenting!
    8
  408. Muito brigado :D
    8
  409. Interesting. Thanks for giving the topic some thought!
    8
  410. Good question! It didn't have tonemes per se, but a "pitch accent" like Japanese. Pitch is high or low: ό vs. ο. These get more complex with long vowels or diphthongs: ώ = oó, but ῶ = óo. You can hear this high-low pattern in the word γνῶθι = gnóothi "know".
    8
  411. Spanish is a related language so it's not surprising that they have elements that sound similar.  It's always nice when you're studying a new language and can find similarities to other languages you're familiar with.  Of course, it can also be dangerous if you make the mistake of thinking too many things are the same!
    8
  412. +Little Art Talks Thanks! Early on in planning Thoth's Pill, your channel raised some questions that nudged my design choices. So I'm happy you're enjoying!
    8
  413. Thank you for the feedback!
    8
  414. Thank you! Your question puts me on the spot; feels overdue. Behind the scenes I've been slowww to learn ASL. (Thanks, mom, for teaching me bits when I was young.) Also picking brains of some who have real expertise. I'm tempted to animate more just about the reasons Libras shifts between word orders in this video – intrigued me.
    8
  415. A fan of Ventris and Evans, eh? I suppose I should revisit decipherment at some point...
    8
  416. That's very kind. Thank you for watching!
    8
  417. You're very welcome. Happy to hear that these have something meaningful to share!
    8
  418. The literature uses the "Balkan Sprachbund" to explain regional features like the să/να subjunctive. Older Greek and Latin did not have these features, yet Modern Greek and Romanian do! How did this happen?
    8
  419. This is something I went back and forth on. It wasn't a case of being unfamiliar with Greek phonology, but a case of opting for the English vocable for narrative flow. (The transliteration is <Limnos> rather than <Leemnos>, but the island is routinely known as "Lemnos" in English.)
    8
  420. Thank you!
    8
  421. Not nearly as many as I'd like. And never the one I need at the moment... Thanks for subscribing - I really hope you enjoy the new videos!
    7
  422. Interesting indeed! Modern Romance nouns largely descend from oblique (accusative) forms. The nominative singular slowly faded away. It's very noticeable with third declension nominatives (ars, nox, etc.), isn't it? The next video - noun cases & articles - touches on this.
    7
  423. +aharonly Thanks for sharing some of the things that make characters useful! Your #3 intrigues me. I haven't heard that before.
    7
  424. The use of 'haver' here is indeed archaic, but note that 'ter' and 'haver' still compete outside the present tense, so the suppletion isn't yet complete: 'havia ido'
    7
  425. Khalil Hijazi Those look right to me! Good job!!
    7
  426. It would be good to correct and enhance, too! Unfortunately, this platform hasn't been rewarding for me when it comes to longer videos, nor for this more technical, less personal content. Definitely open to suggestions though.
    7
  427. Siham Kouram These are tricky concepts - thanks for letting me know how much this helped!
    7
  428. +Lee Cox Good point. It's also worth noting that Aromanian still uses the synthetic preterit where Romanian has the compound expression.
    7
  429. Todos los viernes :D
    7
  430. lol! Bzzzt!
    7
  431. Tá fáilte romhat, a chara! I took university Irish with a wonderful professor, so I'm nothing but thrilled when I find a chance to give a nod to the language.
    7
  432. Thank you!!
    7
  433. That's good stuff! I hope you do amazingly well! Thanks for mentioning the music. I was hoping it wouldn't come off as sloppy and amateurish.
    7
  434. You really went to the other side of the world. May you make the most of your time there!
    7
  435. Whew... that's all I was hoping for. Thanks!
    7
  436. I just don't know. Change, chance and loan words really do throw a wrench into long-range comparisons.
    7
  437. +Karmifia I first heard this odd tic when visiting Québec. My hunch at the time was that it developed on analogy with post-vocalic interrogative inversion "-t-il". After digging into it, I found that is indeed the likely explanation.
    7
  438. I definitely like the idea. India hasn't had much coverage on this channel - possibly none besides in Thoth's Pill. Making a note! Also, thanks again for sponsoring!!
    7
  439. +Jinjie Dong Thank you! To your first question, I think most papers are published in phonology, but OT has been applied to syntax. I don't know if it applies outside of linguistics, but I did once read a paper using OT to explain ethics! Logical conditionals (implications) demand that if "thing 1" is true, then "thing 2" must follow. Constraints make no such demands - "thing 2" can in principle always be violated. That's at least one example of a difference.
    7
  440. Thank you for watching and for passing on the knowledge!
    7
  441. dogcowdogcow Thoth knows all the writings! But he's partial to the Maya script and, apparently, is craving some cocoa.
    7
  442. +Ianus Thank you. I suspect the arguments aren't starting from phonological evidence, but from linguistic identity and a tradition of valuing the language (including certain historical forms) as cultural inheritance rather than an object of scientific study.
    7
  443. +Hans Wurst We weren't imagining these as criteria, more resemblances.
    7
  444. Thank you. Here's hoping!
    7
  445. Thank you!
    7
  446. Thank you! Yes, I've since moved on to other topics (and got a lot more into animation). I do realize there's much more Romance to cover though...
    7
  447. Old ones - still in uploads and playlists. New ones - even as I do my coding duties, my digital pen sits beside the keyboard, calling me to animate.
    7
  448. Wonderful, thank you!
    7
  449. Thanks for the feedback. That was one of the potential worries on my mind as I took those creative liberties, so good to know when and where the video concept fails.
    7
  450. WHEW!
    7
  451. I started with something like "orang-orang", but I wanted to go more fun. I found examples in Bambang Kaswanti Purwo's "The categorical system in contemporary Indonesian: pronouns", where examples include "Mengapa hanya saya-saya yang diberi tugas yang berati ini!" with the author's translation "(poor) me" for "saya-saya". Of course, I'm happy to learn more and thanks for the love from Indonesia!
    7
  452. I hadn't thought about epenthesis much until yesterday. I got pre-launch feedback that English speakers will hear added schwas. I shrugged, but I should've listened :D In fact, many Georgian clusters come from removing vowels, rather than adding them epenthetically (xmal + is > xmlis)! I'm always down for theories that can explain the linguistic evidence better - my sources are pretty consistent about the whole vowel nucleus and consonant cluster thing, down to when they're transcribing recorded audio of Georgians speaking. Sometimes they even heard Georgians make clusters clusterier, adding an extra unwritten consonant: "mze" > "mbze" (narrow transcription, which would include schwas if present).
    7
  453. Hi.
    7
  454. So glad they helped. Hopefully the semester's a bit easier now!
    7
  455. Oh yeah! I'm still looking for one that keeps the old Goídelc phoneme /ṽ/ though.
    6
  456. +ick709 Eu não sei bem como contá-las, mas... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tb9DVWb2Fs
    6
  457. Just found and watched fractals a few weeks back!
    6
  458. You're very right. I got corrected right when this launched, and I haven't forgot since! XD Thanks for keeping me in check - I could use some more experience with Philippine languages.
    6
  459. SacredTemplar8 Ah, thank you! And thanks for spending some time chatting about language!
    6
  460. I was so into making this vid it almost passed right by me!
    6
  461. Well, thank you! Yep, that's the idea. Later Romance seems to have started palatalizing those k's - [kʲ] or [c] in IPA.
    6
  462. I get that. I go easier (and have more fun) in my newer videos. Thanks for watching at least!
    6
  463. True, but Linear B at least made a cameo! 28:17
    6
  464. Khmer vowels look scary... it might be a while before I accept your offer! ;)
    6
  465. Luisdaniel Acosta ¡Gracias! me gustó el proceso de hacerlo, quizás haga más de estos videítos...
    6
  466. Thanks for the kind comment. I'm happy you're finding these so useful!
    6
  467. +Karry Otaku (Kessy107) Fear not! You and a few other commenters failed to consider the Diachronolinguix code base. Example session: current_year = 2016 log (travel(current_year - 1000)) log (travel(current_year + 1000)) log (current_year) The output reads: 1016 3016 2016 ;-)
    6
  468. YESSS! She should know your wit is legendary.
    6
  469. ***** Gratias ago! Sermo anglicus :)
    6
  470. Thanks! I'm still intrigued by bees for their combo of individual + swarm learning and communication. I did a separate video on them before I got sucked into animations about writing systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb1lRI-YePU
    6
  471. "Cod estis fui et quod sum essere abetis" Both in a row, from seventh-century Rome. These are Common Romance forms. Not "not Latin" per se, but agree you won't find them in Latin dictionaries. *Essere looks funny and misleading if your game is Latin proper, but within Romance linguistics it explains what Latin became on the tongues of the vulgus. Conjugation II-IV verbs sometimes reshuffled, and II's thematic e turned "yod", like vid-y-o (*vídiō for videō).
    6
  472. Haha! Yeah, that's a mistake you'll only make once.
    6
  473. George Yule seems to say that morphemes are single abstract units (an underlying concept), while morphs are the actual things you speak (the various ways a morpheme gets pronounced). This is very much in line with the traditional approach to morphology. When there are multiple morphs for a single morpheme (multiple ways to pronounce it), that's when Yule calls them "allomorphs" - Greek for "other forms". Otherwise a "morpheme" just has a "morph" - a single way to pronounce it. Let's map Yule's difference between "morpheme" and "morph"/"allomorphs" to my video: In this video, the concept (the morpheme) "dog" has the real-life pronunciation (the morph) [dɑːg]. Since there are no other morphs for that morpheme (no other ways to pronounce it), it has no "allo" (other) "morphs" (forms).
    6
  474. +Willem van de Beek Soooo close. Your first line is off by 3.
    6
  475. Haha, you're onto me.
    6
  476. Thank you both for the feedback!  I've spent some time researching presentation styles and am definitely open for trying new things to engage my audience.  I'm still working to find the right balance of excitement/engagement vs understandability.  Because many of my audience members are non-native English speakers, I do tend to speak more slowly and evenly in order to ensure they are able to follow along too.
    6
  477. +Sachin Shukla Very true. This term didn't make it into neo-Latin languages, but the syntax survived. I'm not sure if they're related. I just looked up "ut" in Lewis & Short, which gives quo- + -ti (shares a root with tum) for the origin of ut(i). If that's correct, you have good instincts!
    6
  478. +Jordi Mule A good addition!
    6
  479. I was wondering that same thing for Tocharian... I thought it had that intrigue factor.
    6
  480. +Charlotte Pannell Thanks for the kind comment!
    6
  481. It was strange the first time I saw it in my Catalan grammar book, and still odd the first time I heard "vares cantar". It no longer takes me back, but I still find it very unique!
    6
  482. Very hard to say. With its short examples, we probably won't make much of it even if it is language. :(
    6
  483. Altaic... sounds like another epic video covering a lot of languages! I didn't realize how much of a difference it would make to include Ainu just once in the video, but, wow, I love to see so many requests for it!
    6
  484. The symbol (in this context) means "varies with".  In other words, both of the pronunciations shown are in use in the language.  In English a common example used is "Tuh-may-to" vs "Tuh-mah-to" (for the word tomato).
    6
  485. In Hungarian's case, there are distant relatives (in space and time), so it's a Uralic isolate. "Isolates" also gets used for languages with no known genetic relatives, or no living ones.
    6
  486. Thanks!
    6
  487. A good guess - but not this time!
    6
  488. I'm sorry to hear that. I'm actively seeking out ways to update my presentation style. Do you have any specific feedback that would make future videos better? Also, you say that "students" (and not just you) feel this way. Did you use this in a classroom or as a group presentation? Are you, yourself, an educator with some tips to pass along? Thank you for taking the time to comment!
    6
  489. Thanks! I know what it's like to hear a language pronounced oddly, so I try my best to avoid adding to that problem when I can. I started reading Baxter & Sagart recently, but Zhengzhang Shangfang's reconstructions were my earlier point of reference, so I guess I have a bias in that it's where I started from! I don't have enough expertise to favor one yet. They look different on the surface, but many of the phonological differences strike me as subtle.
    6
  490. Woops! Forgivable though. Even basic Irish pronunciation can be punishingly tough as European languages come. We can't all be expected to keep our "slenders" and "broads" straight! How did she say it, by the way?
    6
  491. ἐπιθυμέω (often contracted to ἐπιθυμῶ) This can also be written ΕΠΙΘΥΜΕΩ (contraction: ΕΠΙΘΥΜΩ) for that old epigraphic look. Hope that helps!
    6
  492. 🎨 pona! 🐱
    6
  493. Awesome; I will!
    6
  494. This subtopic interests me, since I've been reading through _Introducing Maltese Linguistics_ (Comrie et al.) in my spare time! I think that phonology, lexis and morphosyntax unite to classify Maltese as Semitic. It doesn't look like a divergent case.
    6
  495. Thanks for watching! The main sources date back about 1400 years. The Hanzi and rhymes those analyze are even older, sometimes much older. Sources (link in the description box) tell me that modern varieties don't trace back far enough to shed light on Early Middle Chinese, that the old dictionaries actually juggle pronunciations that are older than their publication dates, and that those pronunciations come from different literary/poetic traditions. (So they're early and comparative!) "Ancient Chinese" is an older term for "Middle Chinese"; the parallel is "Archaic Chinese" for "Old Chinese". If you want a counterargument for the idea that "going back to [Old] Chinese will also be flawed or can't be attempted", check out the intro to Baxter & Sagart for a start. They're not native Chinese, but they at least draw on native Chinese material and write about it with clarity. But I'd be interested in hearing the perspective of native speakers on this, too!
    6
  496. Thanks for sharing your perspective! "if you do the research you will find these" Any specific research you can cite for people reading the comments?
    6
  497. Aristophanes. Or, in my animated character's filename, "charistophanes".
    5
  498. +Munlika Wintachai Thanks for the nice comment!
    5
  499. I promise one more for now. Then it's time to show other languages some love before we return to this beast!
    5
  500. Ooh, especially interesting are the different ways those two scripts deal with vowel harmony, at least from what I remember from college linguistics.
    5
  501. You're welcome!
    5
  502. That etymology is definitely controversial - may or may not be correct. The glyphs are treated as phonetic by some academics and pictographic by others. It's interesting that the same two glyphs were used post-contact for remembering "pate nochte" (pater noster).
    5
  503. +The Creative Process Diet This gave me HUGE smiles!
    5
  504. So very kind! It's comments like this that inspire me to keep going.
    5
  505. +seamus finnerty US English pronunciation FTW! ;-)
    5
  506. +Bon Bon This was, in a fun way, trying to shift the focus to a segmental script that had vowel-only symbols - roughly, vowels are "equal" to consonants. The next video in the series does get into matres lectionis (Semitic consonants used as vowels). Still, that was an uncommon practice in the Phoenician "abgad". Was it all that common in Paleo-Hebrew? I think that's the only Hebrew that predates the Greek alphabet.
    5
  507. ***** Impressive. And clever. I think that should've netted you extra credit!
    5
  508. +alexvlad94 Mulțumesc!
    5
  509. I entertained the idea. It's on to more popular topics for now (my new videos shoot for a wider audience, fingers crossed). Along the way, I am getting to some fun stuff about all kinds of languages!
    5
  510. Yes, sir!
    5
  511. Very deserving suggestions. I need more hours in the day to do them all!
    5
  512. lXBlackWolfXl The good old explanation: dissimilation's motivated by two or more nearby sounds that are too similar (too tedious to pronounce in sequence, perhaps with a nod to speech planning and anticipation). In this account, the words or surrounding environment - the sounds not involved in the dissimilation - don't matter much. The few examples of dissimilation that come to mind all replace the sound with an existing phone. Assimilation strikes me as a better way to set a language up for phonemic splits. In your example of Germanic, I think Umlaut did this. Other processes like nasalization and tonogenesis can create whole batches of new sounds. Depending what's meant by "new phones coming into the language", this may be different from an increase in the phoneme inventory. Chain shifts may maintain the number of phonemes while significantly changing the value of each phoneme involved in the shift. Phoneme inventories can also increase without adding new phones to a language if a phone acquires phonemic status. I only have a sketchy understanding of the history of the futhark, but I'm told that the later Swedish runes ended up adding extra symbols for those additional sounds you mention.
    5
  513. And yet it might be fun to see all the first year neuroscience and anatomy students blush at those names!
    5
  514. +Languagelover24 That chic Greek pronunciation was nativized to /i/ by most Romans, since it was foreign to Latin. On the other hand, Germans still imitate the fashionable Greek /y/ in Latin loans like Analyse and, sometimes, System. I'm told some even hypercorrect the i in Algorithmus to sound more Greeky.
    5
  515. Rather easy to pick up and start reading for sure. But a bit less than I expected - LOTS of assimilation and other little features if you get picky. Hey, that's why we love language though!
    5
  516. Thank you, thank you, thank you. At points, this made me pause and think about this channel's past. And smile. I really enjoyed reading a bit about your journey with this channel, and HUGELY appreciate the encouragement. You said it all better than I ever could!!
    5
  517. ***** I don't know about Luxemburgish, but the others are often said to have a "pitch accent". This is the idea that intonation matters at the word level, yet tones aren't independent building blocks like vowels and consonants. Ancient Greek and Japanese are two other commonly used examples. Good question, and definitely would make a good video!
    5
  518. Can't respond directly to Dwojy18's comment, but 2 music pieces by Kevin MacLeod play in the background of this video: 1) Deliberate Thoughts 2) Calm Riff Both are free on his site, incompetech.com!
    5
  519. School, university, library, on the street with locals - everywhere I could!
    5
  520. Desert World You're welcome! Here are some examples. See how this respected linguist briefly attempts to link two languages: Dene-Yensieian Workshop 2012, Edward Vajda (from 1:10:00 to 1:23:00) Also, see how people interact and raise curiosities on this forum: http://linguistforum.com/historical-linguistics/ My 3rd and 4th videos in this Historical Linguistics series are quick examples of presenting simple data, avoiding pitfalls (like chance relationships) and constructing a family relationship. I do this with Polynesian. If you can do the same with your language pair, you might be able to start finding an interested audience. If you're not already a linguist, it will be good to go through this series, other lessons on this channel and also on The Virtual Linguistics Campus channel. I would guess that linguists will initially be very skeptical of your claim, as there are already very many competing claims, well established facts and very few large mysteries around these languages. You will have to show that these relationships are not just due to chance. Scholars will understand your case much better if you use linguistic methods for presenting your hypothesis and your data. Good luck!
    5
  521. Thank you all SO MUCH for casting your votes in youtu.be/MV-yDD_L_Zw New video next Friday (Oct 17): we tally the votes, compare them to the YouTube notes and start to walk into our future. Either way, language has never before been this much fun!! The feedback has all been spot on. A few comments are even making their way into that green notebook for reference!
    5
  522. Your year is now complete. Sleep soundly and dream of language! :D
    5
  523. No, thank you! Your greetings and gratitude mean a lot to me.
    5
  524. +Lee Cox Hmmm, that is an intriguing similarity, and a plausible sort of Sprachbund feature given the history. You're right. I thought to focus on their use as light verbs. Which still doesn't fully explain my omission - Portuguese ter also gets used this way.
    5
  525. Good point. I've mentally lumped that together with idiosyncratic retentions like existential "há", but, now that you mention it, the verb's not defective there. Spanish and Catalan have a cognate expression, syntactically speaking, but not with that same meaning - semantically, it's an obligation.
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  526. I'm glad you enjoyed! After completing these "intro" playlists, I switched to broader topics in hopes of attracting a wider audience. Yours is an interesting and uncommon request, though. Do you have a background in linguistics? I danced with syllables in a video analyzing Latin American Spanish (Intro to Phonology 3) and another on the pronunciation of Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages. Sigh, sorry to have nothing that meets your interests on this one :(
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  527. Just that it wasn't tallied in his research, like a number of other languages. Assuming these tallies are representative, why Basque and Irish ended up this way while Hungarian and Russian did not are interesting questions indeed. That the papers I read consistently ruled out the straightforward relevance of common ancestry just makes it more so!
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  528. English speakers naturally aspirate that /k/, so I thought it was worth saying that the popular pronunciation of CAELVM was ['kɛlʊ] not ['khɛlʊ].
    5
  529. You've got quite the linguistic resume! Thank you for appreciating the course. Language change is a fascinating topic in general, and comparative Romance linguistics has almost zero presence on YouTube, particularly beyond superficial observations about the family.
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  530. +Chaimae NAJDINI You're kind to say so. Thank you!
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  531. I understand. Thanks! Some, but I'm very rusty for lack of sustained practice in the past years. Since phonology always caught my interest, that's one of the first things I polish up when learning a Romance language.
    5
  532. +David Sullivan I'm grateful that you made an exception. This was a meaningful series to create. I appreciate hearing that you found value in them.
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  533. Yes!! But he's tempting me to get even more into language origins...
    5
  534. Thank you, but the word 'sânge' is already listed under Romanian in the 'sanguinem' table.
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  535. I would've said yes to Cantonese before reading up for this. Now I'm in the "it depends" camp. Japanese on'yomi do preserve things, like that -k, but they also have so many of their own quirks.
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  536. Might sound like a curveball - web development and comp sci!
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  537. Thanks for that info. I often see subscribers or fans create draft translations for captions during the month or so after a video launches. It's a lot of work for them, but it's greatly appreciated.
    5
  538. Wow. Hmm, well I missed that in Janhunen, Onon, the SH, ... and my other sources. Guess they were too focused on the Mongol texts and not reading enough from Europe? ;-)
    5
  539. I've certainly found "bridges" between Romanian and other branches, as you mention. But, like you said before, Romanian languages have features and vocabulary (both innovations and retentions) that set them apart.
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  540. Thanks for suggesting. The way I hear the grammar of verbs and pronouns, singulars and plurals in flux when Brazilians from different states speak, that alone could be a video
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  541. It's from the sixteenth century with some normalized spelling. There's a link in my sources doc, but you can find the whole "Verdadera historia" online through the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. People used to write funny, huh?
    5
  542.  @Catastropheshe  To echo @Vyasama, these numbers represent a long human endeavor. Classifications are debated but the numbers are directionally correct, probably not orders of magnitude off. Glottolog (https://glottolog.org) is a good starting point, since we can click around all the dots and find sources and references behind each one. Ultimately answers are with speakers themselves, their words and features, and that has meant sooo much study.
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  543. It is possible. (<--- And that's how!)
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  544. And, as for Sardinia - there's definitely an internal movement for greater autonomy, sovereignty or even full separatism.
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  545. Ooh, do it!
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  546. You're welcome. I don't know. How much success have syntacticians have had with OT? I wish you great luck with your program!
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  547. Keep in mind this is about Proto-Romance and the evolution of Latin. I agree that the complementary distribution you describe holds for Iberian languages like Spanish, but these were not two phonemes in Latin.
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  548. I'm vaguely familiar with that sense of 国字 in Chinese, but in Japanese the only meaning I was taught for 国字 is explicitly the "made in Japan" sense. For example, saying that 働 was 国字 because it appeared in Japan first. Could just be my experience - I'm still a struggling outsider!
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  549. +mac5565 Thanks! I'm glad to answer this lingering question!
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  550. Totally agree. A professor of mine fell head over heels for Mayan late in his career and introduced me to Mesoamerican linguistics.
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  551. Catalan, too. I don't think they were ignored, but rather the researchers didn't have complete data on those features in those languages, hence the "holes".
    4
  552. Love that you lay these out for me! Thanks - they go right into my list of suggestions. I skated over aphasia once in "Your Brain on Language" and polyglots in "Of Mezzofanti and Edutainment". I'd definitely enjoy videoifying those topics head on. And everything else you mention.
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  553. Malinche is La Llorona? I don't know whether to be scared or intrigued! I could have paid more tribute to modern Mexican Spanish here. The pronunciation I used is for Classical Nahuatl, but "Moctezuma" and "Tlaxcala" are of course more correct, or standard, now. When I was reading colonial histories, I kept seeing another version "Muteçuma", which looked very funny to me.
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  554. +Lukas Lessing Arrrgh, so right. Thank you for the correction! I added annotations with the correct words.
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  555. +Bon Bon Good question. This starts to pull apart the notions of "different sounds" and "different meanings" implied by phonemes. Some conventional answers: look for near-minimal pairs or determine if the features are distinct enough that two phones wouldn't reasonably be considered allophones of the same sound. For modern phonologists who don't hang their hat on minimal pairs, this is less of an issue.
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  556. It's epic history, and super linguistic. I couldn't ignore it. Ooh, I like that motto. I would've expected ixcauhcopa - but I keep seeing both -uh and -hu for /w/ at the end of a syllable, even when it's always -uh at the end of a word. (Same thing with Moteuczoma and Motecuzoma.)
    4
  557. Handrea Alexandru I'm not alone then!? I thought it looked like a cross between a garden gnome and something out of Zelda.
    4
  558. The cases I'm aware of build up slowly, with long lists of variants grouped by index number. You might hypothesize that A and a represent distinct syllables, while a colleague asserts that sequences like "Apple" show up after a dot, while "apple" appears in the middle of other letters, suggesting that the two symbols are just variants. Then you show instances of "Apple" not preceded by a dot. The colleague replies that his count would fit known bicameral alphabets so well, while yours would be a poor syllabary for writing a late Germanic language, which this is suspected to be.
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  559. +giuseppe cesati YEAH! That's AMAZING!
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  560. Khalil Hijazi Oh, haha. Have you put aside time to sit down and work through problem sets on oiling.org? Finding friends who like to do this sort of stuff and working together helps, too. Good luck to you!
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  561. +Christian Jiang I enjoy modern pronunciations of Latin by Italians and Koine by Greeks. Reconstructed pronunciations like /w/ are known to be accurate for a certain time and place in the past, but modern pronunciations are a living continuity with the ancient language.
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  562. Thanks! I left a lot of writing system loose ends, and many commenters are right to point them out.
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  563. +Angel33Demon666 I'm currently talking myself into talking myself out of not making videos. After that, the sky's the limit!!
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  564. LeonAmarantos This is true for Modern Greek, which changed the aspirate stop χ from /kh/ to fricative /x/. Notice that Modern Greek no longer pronounces ἄγμα before μ and χ, but still does before γ.
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  565. Yeah, you're welcome! Since the basic test for different morphemes (and other -emes) looks for a difference in meaning, we can separate the morpheme "man" from the morpheme "men". When sounds inside of a word mutate to produce different grammatical forms (instead of adding a prefix/suffix/infix), the change goes by the name "apophony". You might find allomorphs of "men", though. US speakers with the pin/pen (min/men?) merger might be a source of allomorphs.
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  566. Ary Bu  Suppletion might not work in the man/men example for historical reasons. I think of the past tense form of GO as suppletive ("goes", "going", "gone"... but... "went" !?!). GO and WENT have separate etymologies - English took forms from one word ("wenden") and shoved them into another word's ("gon") grammatical paradigm. However, man/men did not take its forms from another lexical item. Consider the history of English and Germanic. Initially, Germanic mann- took a regular plural ending -iz: *mann-iz. That little "i" influenced the pronunciation of the root "a" (assimilation, more specifically, Germanic "Umlaut"). For comparison, these are the German words for man/men: Mann, Männer (roughly pronounced Menner). Unlike German, English lost the plural noun ending on "men". That loss obscured the etymology of "men", giving the impression that the only factor is a vowel switch. English now has internal inflection where Germanic once had a suffix morpheme + assimilation in the root morpheme. Now we have three analyses: 1 morpheme analysis: "men" (unbreakable, and means something different than "man") "mice" (unbreakable, and means something different than "mouse") 2 morpheme analysis, using Germanic ROOT + UMLAUT: "man" + UMLAUT = "men" "mouse" + UMLAUT = "mice" Historical analysis, using suffix > assimilation > apocope: mann + iz > menn + iz > men When it comes to stem homosemy, "man" and "men" may belong to the same lexeme. But basic definitions of allomorph do not allow for changes in meaning, so "man" and "men" don't work like allomorphs of the same morpheme would. I hope this makes things a bit clearer (well, as clear as Umlaut can be... sheesh!).
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  567. So it's kind of like the lumpers vs. splitters thing or the Sorites paradox rearing its head again... interesting take. Thanks for sharing!
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  568. +RealDubstepTunes You're welcome!
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  569. True (like 今日 pictured in the video), but decipherment is still ongoing, with many, many characters still unknown. Did the Oracle Bone characters you learned feel familiar to you? Or did they strike you as very "foreign"? Speaking of China, the Jiahu symbols would've perhaps been a bigger and older mystery worth mentioning. Thanks for writing in from Hong Kong!!
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  570. Thanks for the suggestion, and for watching!
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  571. Here's a short answer: Particles are words. Affixes are pieces of words. There's more to say, especially when we consider the concept of "clitics".
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  572. ***** That book's worth a video on its own!
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  573. Thanks! Yeah, I did use some, but it's super low volume and cut short. Hopefully we'll get it closer to feeling a bit fuller next time!
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  574. What!? I hadn't even realized! Thank you.
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  575. Hi again! Hmm, other than the lack of Hanja up north, I've never heard of these differences. I'll jot it down!
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  576. Thanks to you for sharing some words about your journey. It's an amazing group of languages with a fascinating history.
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  577. MrEthanhines Whew, tough question! But a good one. This gets called the "T-V distinction", and I can only speculate on its sociolinguistic origins. The distribution of plural honorifics around the world make me suspect it's unrelated to a specific philosophical stance (like dualism). On the other hand, there are often religious uses of the T-V distinction in languages that have it. If instead we take the view of Brown & Gilman (Pronouns of Power and Solidarity), it has to do with groups, control, mutual security, influence and change over time. Again, good question.
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  578. +Languagelover24 Romans treated "y" as Greek, so that sounds right. Cicero himself explicitly calls it "a Greek letter". Being a more faithful representation of upsilon in borrowed words (graphically and phonetically), it also provided an opportunity for the educated elite to show off their language skills.
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  579. +rockleah18 That scary, huh? Hah, then I'm in the wrong line of work!
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  580. If Everett's analysis of Pirahã is right (that it lacks recursion), it's at least a big dent in Chomsky's Minimalist Program.
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  581. ***** Well, thank you for commenting! It was a treat for me to get animated about your wonderful event.
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  582. Will do! I'm focusing my animation powers on writing systems these days, but I'm sure I'll find reasons to return to this topic.
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  583. You saw it even when I didn't. It's a total switch, huh? Wow. You're optimistic with that 1m+ - but here's hoping you're right!
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  584. Sounds like a good plan. There are also loads of resources for koiné dialect, most focusing on Biblical/NT Gk. No matter what, you will end up learning some dialectal and register differences. You're welcome!
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  585. tomislav13 This sounds right. The deixis came to stand for personal distance, leading to this suppletion in the clitic pronoun system.
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  586. +Neon Markov Didn't you hear? València is already living in the future!
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  587. I hope you do great! Thank you for leaving this nice comment!
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  588. You have keen senses. It's possible I'm botching something, but I think the difference is that moraic n. In practice, Japanese phonology is much trickier than the basics they taught us in the textbooks.
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  589. +PluT0iD 733 I strive to make these as distracting as possible! :D
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  590. Hijodeganas1 Wow, thanks for the enthusiasm! I'm definitely glad you're able to peek behind these terms and distinguish the phenomena they label. Even some linguists aren't that clear!
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  591. +brybry26 Thanks for feedback - I'm far from a professional when it comes to cutting live footage. No new digs here, just a new experience for us as we participated in YouTube Space Women Create 2016.
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  592. Thank you! And thanks for pointing out my mistakes... :|
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  593. Yes, it's regressive. Did I mix up the terms in the video? Thanks for the correction!
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  594. Is that maybe ŋ͡m?
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  595. I left it out of the "modding" vid since it existed for early Latin but went out of fashion. However, K vs C is about to come up again in my next linguistic tale!
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  596. Nice. Hope you enjoy them!
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  597. +uçan erişte Thank you! I'm aware of diachronic "opening" taking place in other language. Still, that's only part of Grimm's consonant shift. Modern Icelandic devoicing of b-d-g and aspiration of p-t-k isn't too far off the mark, but it's in the same family!
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  598. I've heard the pronunciation you describe. Yeah, linguistically it strikes me as a more conservative dialect, preserving older features than European Portuguese. I like the analogy with Galician. That makes sense.
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  599. +EC912 Would you be too sad if I circle back to details like that about some writing systems? I still have some basics to cover...
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  600. Excellent, you're welcome! Enjoy the clear head!
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  601. Thank you!
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  602. Don't jump the gun!  The next video I'm releasing on this topic tackles situations where the pattern may be wrong.  I'm glad you're enjoying the series.
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  603. +NovusOrdoNapoleonis Thanks! Ah, so it looks like I'm not the first to interpret this story!
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  604. +Lee Cox Those are valuable observations. Thank you for sharing them.
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  605. No problem! Your notion of logic is made explicit in quantification theory, so at the very least it's relevant to what logic can do.
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  606.  @yumallah  The voice was set to come out of the left channel only. Whoops!
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  607. No fear! It really is a challenge. I think that's why I found it fun. It took me months to wrap my mind around this, and there are so many little loose ends. I try to stop myself and narrate with this thought: "What if I was learning about this for the first time?" Hopefully that helped somewhat this time. Your curiosity is beautiful, and if you practice, I bet it will pay off. :D
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  608. Ah, okay. This I have seen before, and it makes sense given the deep ties between Puglia and Greece. And the 'Griko' speakers still in Grecia Salentina. Thanks for sharing!
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  609. I'll definitely mention a few of the challenges to Swadesh's idea next time, including the wonky results when glottochronology was used on Norwegian vs Icelandic!
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  610. The input tree on the left (1:07) shows sources into Mongolic, including some of the many Turkic borrowings (like *baxatur as well). Apologies if that wasn't clear. They are also Mongolic, or became so.
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  611. Hah, good answer!
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  612. Thank you for the correction!
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  613. It's in the sources doc, but I have the transliterated "tumhī" from Pandharipande's 1997 grammar with the semantic note "used to address strangers; used in case of uncertainty of status".
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  614. Oh, and you're right to point out that Romanian and Italian share features, but that Romanian also has vocabulary and features not found outside its branch. The genitive-dative case is an easy example, as are the Slavic loans. Speaking of case, I doubt that Germanic influence could explain case loss in e.g. Spain. Those old Germanic languages still had gen & dat cases. (I'm not denying the more general Germanic influence on Western Romance.)
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  615. Happy birthday!
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  616. Hi
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  617. Also, I can think of times when "soy casado/a" makes sense, but it changes the semantics.
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  618. Thank you for watching!
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  619. Thank you! It's been a long road to open up this voice - a lot less sparkle in old videos.
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  620. No, this is a good topic for a lively discussion! Relativity vs. universals in numbers, color terms, Hopi tenses, false beliefs... there are so many directions you can take this. Of course, there are many ways of pinning down the hypothesis, which is an interesting topic in and of itself. (How would you operationalize it?) But if you must move on, pretty much every section of Aitchinson's _Articulate Mammal_ has some bit of language psychology worth researching.
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  621. I had to restrain myself from making that reference. XD Even though her tones and vowels are different, they sound so similar in English.
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  622. Happy Birthday!
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  623. I was careful with that site, so if there are mistakes, I would genuinely like to know. Ideally, for each mistake, I want: (1) the page where the mistake occurs (2) the existing text that needs corrected (3) your suggested correction (4) source to back up your correction I'll settle for a list of (2) if necessary. We could do this through my inbox so that we don't clutter this video's comments. But either way, really. Thanks in advance!
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  624. Tenkyu!
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  625. "Fanqie", rime tables and filling in contrastive categories with phonemes! :D
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  626. Me, too!
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  627. I've read linguists caution about drawing too many parallels with bio and evo-devo, but I like the parallels you draw. My hunch is there could be an engaging linguistic tale behind each of your questions!
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  628. I get you. You're taking a logic or math class, right? I'll assume so for this answer. Distributing universal quantifiers over a conjunction (P ∧ Q) works as you'd expect: (∀x)(Fx ∧ Gx) = (∀x)(Fx) ∧ (∀x)(Gx) If F and G are true of every element in domain, then F is true of every element in the domain and G is true of every element in the domain. "All cats and dogs" doesn't differ logically from "all cats and all dogs", if you don't mind the rough example. Distributing universal quantifiers over a disjunction (P ∨ Q) doesn't work: DANGER! : (∀x)(Fx ∨ Gx) =/= (∀x)(Fx) ∨ (∀x)(Gx) If F or G is true of every element in the domain, then F isn't necessarily true of every element in the domain and G isn't necessarily true of every element in the domain. The first means that for each individual x, F is true of x or G is true of x. The second one means that F is true of every x, or G is true of every x. "All the ones that are cats or dogs" does differ logically from "all the ones that are cats or all the ones that are dogs", to extend my rough example. Agreed? Imagine going through members of a set one by one. Conjunction expects you to take this one AND that one AND the next one... You end up with all of them. This is like the universal quantifier, which distributes nicely over conjunctions: (∀x)(Fx ∧ Gx) = (∀x)(Fx) ∧ (∀x)(Gx) Disjunction lets you go through the members and take this one OR that one OR the next one... You end up with one (or maybe more) of them. This is like an existential quantifier, which distributes nicely over disjunctions: (∃x)(Fx ∨ Gx) = (∃x)(Fx) ∨ (∃x)(Gx) Now the fun part. P → Q is equivalent to ~P ∨ Q. It's worth deriving this yourself if you don't see it right away, with truth tables or Venn diagrams for visual help. So your examples (∀x)(Fx → Gx) and (∀x)(Fx) → (∀x)(Gx) are equivalent to (∀x)(~Fx ∨ Gx) and (∀x)(~Fx) ∨ (∀x)(Gx). Now what was that we agreed to earlier about universal quantifiers and their distribution over a disjunction? ;) Let me know if this helps!
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  629. Bird calls and bird songs definitely deserved more than the couple seconds of attention they got here! I read research about swallows in particular - songs communicating something about hormone levels and fitness. I can't recall specifics... I'll have to dig it up.
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  630. Can't respond directly to that last comment (?!), but you caught me on my copy/paste error from 0:39. Thank you!
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  631. I should be ashamed of myself, having taken university classes...
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  632. :-D
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  633. Not ignorant at all - it's actually a tricky question. There's still a LOT of debate around that. Linguists use a combination of direct textual evidence (like misspellings in Latin graffiti), contemporary reports (like ancient grammarians telling us how a sound was pronounced) and comparative reconstruction. If you're up for more videos, I have a series that walks through the basics of historical linguistics and reconstruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFki9X-4WQ&index=1&list=PLD11358A8871F8587 I thought about doing a video on linguistic evidence in the context of Romance, but it got dropped when I moved on to animated videos about language in general. Perhaps it's worth it if I return to these more serious topics. Oh, and if you're up for a longer dip into the evidence, Sydney Allen's book Vox Latina is one place to start. It's a good crash course in the possibilities and limitations of our modern ability to "know how to" pronounce an ancient language. Really, really good question.
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  634. That's just the logical horseshoe! It's a variant of the arrow sometimes instead used for "implies".
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  635. Erik Karlsson I hope to look at the development of writing as a whole, and then the decipherment of Cuneiform. It's a cool topic, isn't it?
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  636. Talking louder vs singing...
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  637. Visually it's very striking. There's an image somewhere of what Wikipedia would look like if it supported Traditional Mongolian - topsy turvy!
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  638. +Ailin Lee For English semantics and etymology, you can try the Online Etymology Dictionary. Wiktionary attempts to do this for many languages, but entries often lack detailed etymologies.
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  639. +Kate Gladstone I've added annotations. I mislabeled the "shape keys", so the animations got switched. A full fix will require deleting this video, rerendering animations, reediting, then reuploading - I'm not prepared to do that yet.
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  640. I have other topics to cover, but I definitely plan to return!
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  641. Thinking about it, I probably wouldn't have either, had I not grown up among programmers. Smiling to hear that the topic excites!!
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  642. Below I'll link to a paper with some examples. That pdf goes beyond ergativity. It breaks down the arguments into S, A and O that get combined to make different alignments. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Balthasar_Bickel/publication/41879805_Case_Marking_and_Alignment/links/53f47e080cf2fceacc6e83cb.pdf I hope that helps. For language!!
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  643. Seriously happy this helped! These kinds of comparisons across space (dialects/languages) and time (chronolects) have massively shaped how I view Romance. I can see why they would contribute to your effort. Drawing these lines out further, I wonder what would have come of Latin had it persisted in areas where it has since ceased to be spoken. What would modern African Romance sound like? Anyhow, I wish you the best with Scuian. Any examples (lexical, grammatical or otherwise)?
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  644. I noticed the issue with French and Mongolian – glad to have you confirm. By my count, the number for Arabic was right, but I didn't count pharyngealization. I wasn't familiar enough with Ket or Ainu to catch those.
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  645. After spending 90 hours on it, I liked the result. I'm very glad you do, too!
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  646. Masculine 'ille' meant "that one". It had an accusative form 'illu[m]'. The accusative gets used as a determiner (see my vid on noun cases). Since Romance pronouns still make a distinction between nominative and accusative, pronouns keep a nominative 'ille' as well. As a pronoun, 'illu' doesn't become 'ille'. 'ille' is the nominative and 'illu' is the accusative: Italian 'EGLI vede' (from 'ille') versus 'LO vedo' (from 'illu').
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  647. That's awesome to hear! Sorry to say I stopped shy of tackling proofs. My videos just covered the basics of first-order logic, truth values and propositional logic in arguments (mainly syllogisms and modus ponens).
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  648. I'm happy that it helped a little. Even for a fast learner, it is a lot to learn! Minimal pairs treat two sounds as two different sounds (phonemes) in the same environment. But you understand that already. Complementary distribution treats two sounds as the same sound (allophones) in two different environments. You also understand that. Free variation treats two sounds as the same sound (allophones) in the same environment. You can find a good example in my video "How do you say Hawai'i?" Hawai'i gets pronounced Ha[w]ai'i AND Ha[v]ai'i. The environment is Ha_ai'i. The sounds [w] and [v] vary in that environment. (Spoiler alert: I also mention one linguist's idea that free variation isn't really free!) How do you say Hawai'i? - Eavesdropping Traveler Let me know if that helps, or if you have more questions.
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  649. That's Syriac!
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  650. That's awesome. Do you write secret messages in your code?
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  651. I see. Thanks for taking the time to explain. I suspect it's the typical case of linguistic variations at work. The "ash" vowel you cite is indeed found in British RP, but US English has a phonemic diphthong, even in more prescriptive/standardized speech.
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  652. We think alike! This was my first thought when I saw ads for the movie. In a different way, their words also hold the story of the people's migration.
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  653. I should open back up the whole linguistic determinism thing, eh?
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  654. Thank you!
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  655. Pedro Vidinha Thank you! I don't know the specifics of how this change happened. There are parallels in other Romance languages, and the etymology you give sounds correct. Actually, from what I've read, linguists consider this a change in transition, with shifting verb paradigms (as you mentioned) and alternate pronoun choices (e.g. 'contigo') in dialects.
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  656. That's a kind compliment. Thank you for watching and leaving a comment!
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  657. Lots of wildly different readings claimed, but no solutions have been checked and accepted. It's a particularly strange example, and trying to read its "writing system" for yourself turns up some of those oddities pretty quickly.
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  658. +ihugapples We split the audience with this one. Love it / hate it, I guess. It's just play - not to be taken seriously!
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  659. Looks like. :|
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  660. +Seth Langston That's two votes for yes! I'll have to start taking this seriously...
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  661. An interesting point I hadn't considered. Thank you!
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  662. +Robert Fuqua Thank you! You're awesome!!
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  663. Can't respond to Toka Soliman directly. There isn't one answer here. It depends. It depends on the grammatical framework you're using. It depends on your reasoning - students are expected to make a good case for why the tree they draw is consistent with that framework. What are your thoughts so far? How are you diagramming these sentences?
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  664. Are we talking about flawed use of a good logic? Check out "Logic & Arguments - logical fallacies". One simple example is if I say that something is both true and false: "This is definitely a sentence. But this is totally not a sentence." Or are we talking about a flawed logic? Many people think that once your logic can prove a single contradiction, it can prove anything and stops making sense. If paradoxes kill a logic, then here's a flawed logic: Impromptu Logic (1) everything I say is false Compare that to a classical logic: (a) something is itself: A = A (b) something is not true and false at the same time: ~(A & ~A) (c) something is either true or false: A V ~A But not everyone thinks their logic needs to be this allergic to paradoxes - "paraconsistency" comes to mind. It's just one example of how non-classical logics often reject (b) or (c). Hope all of this helps!
    3
  665. +Lukáš Marek Thanks for your kind words. We have a few more collaborative videos in this style to share.
    3
  666. +Joe Wilson Indeed! Neither did the familiar Greek minuscule, incidentally.
    3
  667. Check out my latest! The rough answer dropped last week. More specific answer tomorrow. Drawing up a storm over here - don't want you to miss it.
    3
  668. Good question - it's both! The script comes from Imperial Aramaic, but it has since been used to write many varieties of Aramaic and Hebrew. Before borrowing the square script, Paleo-Hebrew was used. Speakers traditionally acknowledge this borrowing - what we call the Hebrew alphabet has the name "ktav ashuri", or Assyrian writing.
    3
  669. That's it! :)
    3
  670. Good question! A very short answer: They compared more data. A better answer: For fun, let's just look at the 3 languages on that tree (Spanish, Italian and Romanian). How does each language treat Latin 'ct' in 'octo'? What about Latin 'pt', like in the word 'septem'? Latin > Spanish, Italian, Romanian sePTem > sieTe, seTTe, șaPTe oCTo > oCHo, oTTo, oPT In Italian, both words have 'tt'. In Romanian, both have 'pt'. This doesn't give us a good reason to prefer 'pt'. On the other hand, Spanish 'ch' favors an ancestor with 'ct' (octo) instead of 'pt' (opto).
    3
  671. Variants make typology tough! Chirikba's paper is counting phonemes in the standard language following common phonemic identifications, making /h/ our only postvelar.
    3
  672. +Rohan Pandey Thanks for the feedback! It was fun (and exhausting!) to have YT push us to try something new, but I'm very comfortable getting back to normal. :D
    3
  673. Willem van de Beek Indeed I have. Thanks for being such a regular watcher and commenter! Heh, I like your colorful lexicography of Future English!
    3
  674. Dhon't khnow if I gcan! ;)
    3
  675. I'm the first result if you search for "X-Bar Theory". The video is older and rougher than I like, including a mistake at one point and lack of clarity at another. But it's a start. Adjunct substitution tests, notably "do so" or "did so" in English syntax, are popular checks among generative grammarians. For instance, you're likely to hear "you went to the store" -> "you did so" but not "you did so to the store", suggesting that "to the store" is a complement. On the other hand, you might hear "you went on Saturday" -> "you did so on Saturday", suggesting that "on Saturday" is an adjunct. Here's a link with discussion and examples on that front: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/ch4.html#adjuncts Does this make sense?
    3
  676. Sam Ahmed Good luck to you!
    3
  677. Broadly, yes. That's the Ethiopian term for this same phenomenon.
    3
  678. Thank you so much and welcome to linguistics! I'm not impartial here, but you stumbled across the right channel. I have over 100 videos about language, from basic lessons (e.g. "IPA for Language Learning") to quirky questions (e.g. "What will Future English be like?", "How do you say Hawai'i?"). This video itself is from one of my playlists: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc4s09N3L2h3vKfPZq1AqhOrPoIT_b4m4 Enjoy the journey and have a great day, too!
    3
  679. Ahh, if that's the case then the Wikimedia image must be mislabeled. Thanks for the info and thanks for commenting from Tenerife!
    3
  680. At least you've had lots of exposure to the languages, even if not to linguistics. And thanks!!
    3
  681. +LD PRODUCTIONS I think 2:12 to 2:30 works as a basic definition. The theory breaks language into chunks of words grouped by the kinds of words that get used in those chunks.
    3
  682. +Hammu Rabi Yes, it's the same as "Ktav Ashuri" (Syrian script), a term for all Hebrew scripts derived from Aramaic instead of Paleo-Hebrew.
    3
  683. ***** Also, congrats on being the first one to take a swipe at the hidden gems and tributes throughout this series!
    3
  684. +Keric Alvarez I have a video called "Logic & Arguments - Truth Tables". It uses an analogy to show how operators return values T or F. I hope that helps!
    3
  685. I guess I just don't stop! Sometimes I hit a wall and it takes extra weeks to get the research done. Like twice last fall. Feel free to check out my Patreon, but I'm really here to get you to share in my awe!
    3
  686. LeBadman So glad it works for you. Thanks for watching!!
    3
  687. Gladly! Thanks for letting me know it's helping.
    3
  688. Sort of. It would have to be adapted just like the Latin alphabet does, but it's possibly easier to extend graphically because of the visual feature components. I think a Korean speaker or, better yet, a Korean linguist could give a fuller perspective here.
    3
  689. I'm nervous. SO MUCH HISTORY!
    3
  690. Lama Taha You're welcome! I hope your exam will be super easy now!!
    3
  691. Thank you! I hadn't considered that that could be read as an appeal to consequences. Now that you bring it up, it strikes me that way, too. Perhaps the title should've just been appeal to emotion.
    3
  692. Haha, I guess it's a meme now? ;)
    3
  693. +geekygeniusgg Alright! A huge WELCOME to you!
    3
  694. I could imagine that being very confusing!
    3
  695. I need to get all the too fast / too slow commenters in a conference room together, have you debate my pacing, and then file a report with your conclusions for me! ;)
    3
  696. +Wasweiß Ich Ah, I missed an opportunity to use long-s!
    3
  697. I'm told there's evidence that he created Glagolitic. Cyrillic seems to have been spread, and possibly created, by his students.
    3
  698. The logic's often the same as 'and' (the conjunction). happy but confused (H & C) happy and confused (H & C)
    3
  699. +AnaTCKLife Wow, I'm glad to hear that! Hopefully that course is a breeze now. ;)
    3
  700. You can find my main sources in the "credits" document. I've walked through some of Mexico's streets, but I'd love to walk through more. You're right, it's true, the linguistic diversity is dazzling. I could only capture a snapshot of it here. This is a story about change, but also about discovery. I think there can be respect in pursuing both with honesty. Thank you for watching.
    3
  701. Yusss!!
    3
  702. Good eye! This series is a kind of fragmented, derivative "baby syntax".
    3
  703. Not anytime soon. After this series, I returned to the basics of my channel - linguistics and logic lessons. And now I'm moving to big questions about language for a wider audience. You can find much more material on the Grammar of Romance website (link in description), and there's also a book.
    3
  704. It's usually treated that way, e.g. Berthon & Starkey's _Tables synoptiques_. Now -s- before a consonant, that's another story (and a more complicated one)! Keep in mind that sometimes modern -s actually comes from older /ts/ instead of /s/.
    3
  705. By all means! To avoid mistakes, I checked online corpora, dictionaries and university resources for each language. If we do find mistakes in that word list, we can submit corrections those resources for the benefit of others.
    3
  706. It's like you called this forth :D
    3
  707. Nope, but you do need to work on your comedy. Unless you were just going for the personal attack, then touché. I'm definitely working on my presentation skills! More importantly, what are your thoughts on the TOPIC?
    3
  708. Awesome to hear. It could use a tune up, especially compared to my more recent videos, but I'm happy it's a keeper!
    3
  709. I put a link in my sources doc, but here's an easy way to find it - search "Popol Vuh en escritura maya". My uninformed hunch is the author/ajtz'ib will earn more from a purchase through Lulu, but I see it on other sites too.
    3
  710. Thanks!
    3
  711. Thanks for chatting about language. It's always a pleasure!
    3
  712. Johanna Nichols' book is the only place I've seen a chart with a continent-by-continent breakdown; trying to peek through all the mapped dots in Hammarström's 2015 presentation, another guess would be a circle somewhere in Australia+Western-Oceania+Papuasphere. (Tobati has basic OSV, rigidified rather recently.)
    3
  713. Hi!
    3
  714. Maybe it makes more sense in the context of Thoth's Pill (the whole longer animation)? It is a very short take on a complex system though.
    3
  715. I haven't seen that structure in Sicilian before - I'll have to check it out. I'm more familiar with "vogghiu durmiri" type structures in Sicilian.
    3
  716. I'm working on selling voters on Italian dialectology and Sardinian over on Patreon. Along with Hawaiʻian, sa limba sarda was the first language I studied starting from a "linguistics" perspective rather than a language lesson book.
    3
  717. The "periphery" map labels (near Galician-Portuguese & Romanian) only show the extent of Romance-speaking Europe. They make no declarations about features or vocabulary, and certainly say nothing about who is or who is not Latin enough! Also, note that this map names branches of Romance, so "Romanian" there refers to all descendants of Proto-Romanian, not just Daco-Romanian.
    3
  718. My pleasure!
    3
  719. I'll take the snipe, but only if accurate. This one's actually: "Why doesn't English change to be more like other languages?"
    3
  720. +Hammu Rabi Thank you! Yes, indeed. I went back and forth about discussing triliteral/biliteral roots, but in the end opted for keeping the discussion focused on the graphemics. Oh, and the past tense was meant to place the innovation in this history (its origin, not its end).
    2
  721. In this context, I think so. Thank you for sticking around - doodling your pic was a fun tribute!
    2
  722. +Mark Stoleson 'A'ole pilikia! I enjoyed reading your thoughts on Tahitian and Hawaiian taboo systems and look forward to having you watch in the future. A hui hou.
    2
  723. Less free association, more a graspable contrast (at least for the US audience) followed by a tour of the deep end of that contrast. I'm getting similar feedback that the tour rambled - I'll have to see how much the audience agrees and if so change my story-telling habits to compensate.
    2
  724. Yuè is in fact another reading of 钥. There is a problem here, though - as other comments mention, 钥 is a simplified character and "moon" wasn't its original phonetic component!
    2
  725. Not lectured at all! Chinese just has so many layers when it comes to the relationship between characters and sounds! http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/94A5.html
    2
  726. Arrrgh, u beat me to it!
    2
  727. First-order logic with the primary notation I use here: (∃x) Sx ⊃ ~Px (∃x) Sx ⊃ Px Or with the arrow notation I gave as a secondary option: (∃x) Sx → ¬Px (∃x) Sx → Px Hope that helps!
    2
  728. Thanks for the correction, and for enjoying! We feel the same way - it was just as intriguing to develop and narrate.
    2
  729. That's a kind and helpful message to pass along. I hope yo do well on that test!
    2
  730. It depends. Logic is an important "harness" for the learning process. But I am suspicious that courses explicitly use terms like "logic" as a sales/marketing gimmick, even when they are somewhat applicable. I don't recommend specific courses unless I've tried them. I find that paying attention to good examples and practicing consistently helps, no matter the method. All the best to you as you learn!
    2
  731. +Mika Hara Thanks! If I can clean the audio up, maybe it will make it to my soundcloud one day.
    2
  732. I guess it would be a language with a small sound inventory, easy syllables and a writing system that was implemented and standardized not long ago. Ainu in katakana could be one candidate. Still, every language I try, even "simple" ones like this or that Polynesian language, ends up having real phonological wrinkles.
    2
  733. +Zulhilmi Ghouse (Bubbles) Thank you!
    2
  734. +Wasweiß Ich Whoa, jumping ahead! ;) We'll cover that in #6.
    2
  735. Sure! Here's the IPA playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL790D33882C5EF41A For the future, here are ALL of my playlists: https://www.youtube.com/user/NativLang/playlists?sort=dd&view=1 I hope this helps, and good luck! :-)
    2
  736. +squigoo Oh yeah! Wish I could read it.
    2
  737. Re-found it! Have fun... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mongolian_wikipedia_preview.png
    2
  738. It's a real alphabet, like the other scripts in the Sogdian family. In fact, for Thoth's Pill I originally wanted to talk about the evolution of the alphabet through Central Asia, but ended up going with the more familiar tale of Greece and Rome for viewers.
    2
  739. Stian Olsnes It depends. Are both parties under the impression that helping to reduce a fine is a laudable way of earning money? If so, his statement may just be drawing on that premise. If not, he may be unduly biasing the discussion. The word "earn" here might be particularly misleading in the latter case. I think that we need both the full argument and the framework used for evaluating fallacies. Without those, I'm stuck with "I suppose" and "it depends".
    2
  740. You're welcome!
    2
  741. +Aurelio de Canton So cool I could bring back that feeling for you ;)
    2
  742. Thanks for watching and sharing!
    2
  743. +Vanessa C. Got it! Thanks for watching. YouTube's been a great outlet for me but barely a success. Moving away from the business side and scaling down to gain back some time. I appreciate your message though!
    2
  744. +Stephanus Tavilrond How Latinate!
    2
  745. +Zach Johnson You're welcome, por nada, bitte, prego och ingen orsak!! (Whew, that was some fun codeswitching to do really fast!)
    2
  746. You've definitely reaching outside of Germanic with that grammar. :D There's something Proto-Indo-European about it.
    2
  747. I caught the auxlang-type regularization (morphological leveling) in your examples even before you mentioned it outright. Kudos! Do your nouns mark case, or is the distinction analytic/syntactic as in most modern Romance languages?
    2
  748. Thanks for spending time sharing some tidbits. Grazias! :D
    2
  749. Yes, but simplified to fit into a more general introduction to syntax.
    2
  750. The Valve guy? Lol. Roger.
    2
  751. Understood. It's kind of you to take my time into account. :) Oh, and thanks for the good wishes - I'm definitely feeling a bit better already!
    2
  752. Erik Karlsson Funny, I haven't noticed myself speaking more like other YouTubers. I wonder if that's the case. On the other hand, I have been building up my sfx library. I enjoy the audio-visual connection they add (often find it missing in other videos). It really helps my mind understand the movement/animation and solidify key points. I'll pay attention and see how much that's just my quirks, though.
    2
  753. +Jacob Griffin Eke then there be wilders birthed. 'Eac', later 'eke', for 'also'. The verb 'ācennan' means 'give birth'. And those savage beasts are why you have a WILDER-ness, etymologically speaking. I ripped that sentence from this old manuscript: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_vitellius_a_xv_f099r
    2
  754. Thank you! No NativLang Facebook yet :( But we're on Google+ and Twitter!
    2
  755. You're very welcome
    2
  756. I have many other linguistic videos on this channel (under playlists). That's a good place to start!
    2
  757. Ismail Othelo I understand. Probably not anytime soon. My videos have become less academic over time. But if I figure out how to present these theoretical topics creatively to the wider YouTube audience (and in a way that's exciting and attractive), I'd consider returning to them.
    2
  758. Ismail Othelo Oh, thank you, thank you! I appreciate such kind words. 
    2
  759. True. It's critical to know what's being counted, and - for this algorithm - to pare it down to the linguistic info. Interestingly, mathematical notation may be "discovered" within an undeciphered text even before the rest is cracked, like Maya. Understanding which glyphs are variants and which are distinct graphemes definitely matters.
    2
  760. You guys let me know and I watched last night!
    2
  761. Alright! More of that if you can to sharpen your skills. I should go do some, too. Maybe after I finish just one more video... just one more....
    2
  762. Woohoo! I LOVE that stuff. Please do!
    2
  763. I think "ezh" (ʒ) actually has its own separate origin in z. It played a role in this story, though, since it helped foster confusion between zed and yogh that made it easier for printers to swap one for the other.
    2
  764. +sion8 YOU earned it! :) Clearly, we sure hope so, too.
    2
  765. It looks like we got ourselves involved in a bit of an official project over the next couple months. Want to go for kanji/hanzi after that wraps up.
    2
  766. +Sangita K You're wonderful to say so!
    2
  767. You rock. Thanks for the like!
    2
  768. +magicbirthday Is that "Nüshu"? If so, I found it fascinating, and almost referenced it when discussing the similar phenomenon with early hiragana.
    2
  769. Thuy Le You're very welcome! These two videos should help. The first one builds a phonological rule, step by step, in four minutes: Intro to Phonology: Environments & Rules (lesson 4 of 4) This next one talks about the order of application of rules in historical linguistics: Sound Change - Phonological Rules, Rule Orders & Relative Chronology (part 5 of 5) (Extra credit!) Not everyone thinks that languages work with rules. In the United States, there's a more recent trend towards Optimality Theory: Optimality Theory - is grammar about rules or constraints? Have fun with linguistics!!
    2
  770. Took a while before gb stopped tripping me up. I don't know if this helps, but the g is expected to release slightly before, then g and b overlap. (Same goes for k in the voiceless version kp or ŋ in the nasal version ŋm.)
    2
  771. +Ailin Lee Etymological dictionaries for specific languages (like the one I listed) do indeed try to track semantic shifts. Separately, there are academic works on the mechanisms behind meaning change.
    2
  772. +Erik Karlsson Hmm - well, Jessica works with Ruby, so it may show up on CompChomp sometime!
    2
  773. How did I start? With a notebook for keeping track of what I learned from anything marked "linguistics" at the library, and from the internet and wonderful native speakers. It was a rough diy way of starting, but I had questions and I wanted answers. I hope that your courses are a bit more streamlined than that, but may they also keep you just as curious as I was! :)
    2
  774. +areyousatisfied Ohh yeah! Thanks for subscribing!! I'm guessing that's the 7th-9th centuries. On the other hand, Persian has a few underattested periods considering its role and long history of literacy. Interesting thought...
    2
  775. AlexIncarnate911 Should be in credited in the infobox... whew... yeah. It's: https://soundcloud.com/kevin-9-1/jalandhar "Jalandhar" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Have fun! But don't wear it out, since I'm likely using it for an upcoming trailer. :D
    2
  776. At first glance. Grammarians point out these work as nouns with possessives: mohuān 'with you' could parse as '[it is] your togetherness/company'.
    2
  777. None right now. This series is linguistically "internal" to the Romance languages.
    2
  778. Thank you!
    2
  779. We never leave people hanging too long.  We promise!
    2
  780. +Emilie Guerlain That's great to hear. Thanks for watching!
    2
  781. Hah, well I'm just happy that you helped to inspire the continued discussion! I hadn't thought that's how I was approaching it, but now I do ;)
    2
  782. Excellent. Just followed. Like you, I have no problem with Python enforcing whitespace! I've heard complaints from Rubyists on that point.
    2
  783. While reading up on this did I find some, like the Shona sound spelled "sv". Apparently, when the BBC Pronunciation Unit had to make a decision on the whistled affricate "tsv" in the name Tsvangirai, they recommended the pronunciation "ch" (t͡ʃ).
    2
  784. The lack of attention, and a particular area of linguistic interest for years now. I recently read a few Nahuatl grammars and a Maya one, so it's very much on my mind.
    2
  785. The first response I hear to that suggestion is that, by being ambiguous and prescriptive, standardized spelling lets people with different dialects communicate. I'm not sure, but I really think you're right that IPA is simple and makes language learning easier!
    2
  786. It will help me if you define "properly" in the context of phonology. And, using that definition, what motivates your preferred transcriptions? (For example, why the alveolar nasal instead of the velar? Why /æ/ instead of the diphthong?)
    2
  787. The Cypress Station I'm glad you found me, too! Thanks for leaving such a positive comment!
    2
  788. Angel33Demon666 My glyphs? ;) I like the "emic" Hanzi perspective. It's even a good touchstone for other writing systems. Scholars of writing seem to use "glyph" or "grapheme" on the level of 字. That is, for them, each "zì" is an example of a grapheme and, therefore, a glyph. Consider also that Mandarin equivalents of European vocabulary may contain multiple characters (similar to "compounding" in Germanic languages). Smaller components like strokes and radicals are still super important, but don't meet that traditional cutoff of "consistently standing alone as a meaningful unit" (a common theme in linguistics).
    2
  789. ***** Thinking about it, 'glyph' doesn't stand opposed to 'words'. The theoretical 'word' is lexical, semantic, maybe morphosyntactic. That intersects with the study of writing, but may be a stronger term for some languages (like written English) than others (like Arabic or Syriac, where glyphs and spaces are sensitive to other features like the shape of preceding or following glyphs, or like Chinese and Mayan, where glyphs may be quite complex on their own). Your question's pretty interesting at second glance. Thanks for thinking about this and commenting!
    2
  790. +Duck Good enough for Heian novels, good enough for me! Oh Japanese writing, why are you systems within systems?!?
    2
  791. ***** Thank you!
    2
  792. Christian Jiang Oh yeah, that bee dance is definitely worth a look! And thanks! :D
    2
  793. Gotta give those bees credit!
    2
  794. georg cantor Love these real-life examples. From your comment (and the only info I have about this comes from your comment), my hunch was a self-referential ad verecundiam: I'm in charge; I know better; therefore, accept/comply. You're right to point out that elusive knowledge though.... like there's some compliance psychology going on to shrug off the onus probandi. In that psychological way, it seems like naïve realism.
    2
  795. georg cantor It's hard to see if this particular formulation of this heated argument does contain logical fallacies, since it's more of a snippet than a fleshed-out argument. (To be fair, much communication is like that.) It may actually be gesturing at an argument from analogy, and in that case there's an added layer of reasoning required to evaluate it. That said, reparations for slavery isn't in and of itself a logical fallacy. It evaluates on other terms - the premise that there is a relationship between slavery and modern economic inequality (proponents); the premise that systemic factors range over individuals and across time (some proponents); the premise that reparations shouldn't be demanded of individuals who did not commit the injustices (opponents); etc. It's certainly possible to argue right or wrong here, only there's no logic card to write the idea off right out of the gate.
    2
  796. +Roepeenswatleuks Your comment just made me smile... :D like all the hard work was worth it!
    2
  797. Practice has made me better, but you'll definitely catch me tripping up sometimes.
    2
  798. +giuseppe cesati It really was my pleasure. I feel like this managed to do some justice to the topic that literally made history. I'm thankful to you for watching and sharing.
    2
  799. You're kind to think of me. I'm happy to have you watching - anything else really is a bonus! Even if you can't contribute, I do post some extras there.
    2
  800. Sinodaur You're welcome, and thanks for leaving a comment! You might be interested in my series on syntax ("Grammar of Sentences") and then verb+noun morphosyntax ("Verb and Its Arguments") too.
    2
  801. Nice!! That's fascinating material for sure! They'll get a nod in next week's video, but there's so much more to say...
    2
  802. Critical Lit I'll work hard to make sure it's something worth getting excited about!
    2
  803. Thanks for bringing up this interesting topic, Unlike rex-, some of these perfects do of course leave traces in the modern languages (including other sigmatics, like dic-s- > dix-). In synchronic studies, the Latin morphology goes unmentioned and these verbs get lumped together as "irregulars" of the passato remoto or pretérito or passé simple, etc. I'm sure Latin and Romance preterites will be going through my head all day now...
    2
  804. So much agreement! Which is why I spent my Saturday messing with an algorithm to solve such problems instead of working on animations for my next project (tsk tsk tsk)... btw, please keep making vids :) !
    2
  805. So glad you're enjoying! Thanks for the nod to the English subjunctive. It's good info! Yes, I chose forms that come from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive with its telltale ss (hence Spanish cantase), since it's easier for cross-family comparisons. Spanish integrated another option: -ra from the Latin pluperfect indicative.
    2
  806. Finnish sounds tough, so different. You're so right - it's not related to Latin! But maybe Latin and Russian make all those Finnish noun cases easier... ;)
    2
  807. Wow, tricky stuff. I definitely mentioned t > d as an example of lenition... you may be silly but you have a good memory! Looking at some of the research on Finno-Ugric consonant gradation, lenition might actually be very related!!
    2
  808. Maybe just silly enough : ) ... and you're welcome!
    2
  809. Not yet - but you've been heard! :)
    2
  810. Thank you! I'm glad you did and look forward to having you around for upcoming videos.
    2
  811. Let me check my dragon anatomy book... ;) I think my reference that day was one of those double-hinge models, maybe so it can spit high-stroke kanji. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dragonn4.jpg Good to see you comment again. Thanks for enjoying!
    2
  812. Awesome! I loved seeing Finnish and Hungarian compared while I was researching this one. Don't know Paul and team, but it's funny, I kept expecting they would've got to Hungarian before I did.
    2
  813. +Edizon del Valle The rest of this series may help give more context. The wikipedia article on assimilation is a good start - if you read the article in another language, there are often examples in that language. Here's a link with many examples of assimilation in English. They're all "anticipatory": http://www.tedpower.co.uk/assimilation.html
    2
  814. +dalekman tardis I put the source code on github - easy to find if you search "classify writing". I haven't tied it up in a neat little easy-to-run package though :(
    2
  815. +ninjae4976 That means a lot - thank you!
    2
  816. +Officialhelpkenet I think that analysis fits the paradigm. There's historical support behind that accusative morpheme eroding even while the good people of Iceland still differentiate the accusative grammatically!
    2
  817. afielsch I doubt you're alone here. Logic 5 is the least watched and most "thumbed down" vid in the series. In any case, I really do appreciate the feedback. The new videos are animated language "curiosities". I hope you enjoy, or at least find them more intuitive than Logic 5!
    2
  818. +Alejandra Palomeque plosive
    2
  819. That's quite a powerful statement! Thank you.
    2
  820. Well, that put a smile on my face for the day :D Basque is on my radar, but I do like the Romani idea. Sometimes I wish the research and animation weren't so demanding – I want to unleash all the topics!
    2
  821. Well then, you get to say it however you like! :D
    2
  822. It's my pleasure. Thanks for commenting!
    2
  823. AlexIncarnate911 Graphemics and phonology. 'Letters' are written marks (usually the graphemes of an alphabet). 'Phonemes' are sounds (regardless of the writing system). Some written languages are touted as 'phonemic', their alphabets mapping 1:1 to their phonemes. This is what teachers mean when they say something like, "Spanish is a phonetic language." Such an odd sentence, but one I've heard many times!
    2
  824. Spencer O'Dowd My guess here: New-England's future language will look like this. ??? will look like this.
    2
  825. Thank you, and happy new year to you!
    2
  826. Woohooo! Even use the VSE for all cutting and edits!
    2
  827. Critical Lit Thanks, that's encouraging! Which is exactly what I need to keep this up. Well, that, and more time in a day.
    2
  828. +Fatima Elma This was a wonderful expression of gratitude, thank you! I really work hard to make these that easy to understand. I wish you success!
    2
  829. ***** This branches out into the entire Indo-European family - even more complex with much more data to compare! Your examples hint at the fact that dates matter. The "oldest" and "most conservative" (least changed) languages in a family are given huge weight. So, whence cometh Latin? Sanskrit? Lithuanian? Old Latin is a sister to other Italic languages like Faliscan and Umbrian. Vedic Sanskrit is a very conservative Indic language. Indic and Italic both descend from Proto-Indo-European. Lithuanian is from yet another branch of the same family, and possibly the most conservative living Indo-European language. In classes and books, I've seen Lithuanian noun declensions compared to Sanskrit many times. In my (very, very limited) Sanskrit studies, I only saw texts dating from around 2,200 years. However, the amazingly structured oral tradition of Ancient India makes many people confident that the recited Vedic texts are far older, with 3,500 years often quoted.
    2
  830. AlexIncarnate911 Hi there. Prepare yourself for 12 weekly releases starting August 14! It's been tough to squeeze in video updates. I've quietly documented some of my progress through Patreon posts and a bit on Twitter.
    2
  831. Sonatina by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).
    2
  832. In an academic or "splitter" context, I take it you're right. Plus, I'm all for endogenous terms! It's just harder to get "lumper" YouTube keyword traffic for a more general audience with the more precise term, since it's not (yet?) common sense for English speakers. (I suppose European terms like Mandarin are, though.) Thanks for the feedback. And the endorsement of Grammar of Romance! 
    2
  833. Wonderful to hear that! I wish you the best on your lecture.
    2
  834. Well, of course your vote counts! :D
    2
  835. You have a good ear - they're related! Their alphabets are linked via the Nabatean alphabet.
    2
  836. Oh no, we're caught in a thumbs-up recursion!
    2
  837. Thank you!
    2
  838. Ooh, good tip. I'll keep it.
    2
  839. Polish subtitles? You're amazing! Where are they? I don't see them in the community contributions / CC yet!
    2
  840. I'm glad to see you sticking around while I improve!
    2
  841. Thank you for watching!
    2
  842. Thank you!
    2
  843. +Pakanahymni Very true!
    2
  844. Thank you!
    2
  845. You may have fewer "readings" for most characters, but you regularly use even more Hànzì! Foreign service stats say Japanese takes longer for us, but Cantonese is a real beast for English speakers.
    2
  846. Appreciate the heads up. I'll check it out. Thank you, and thanks for enjoying my hard work!
    2
  847. +Angel33Demon666 12. Which means it's wrapping up next week! :(
    2
  848. Indeed...
    2
  849. +ninjae4976 YAY! Only two episodes left... how is this going by so fast?
    2
  850. Split-S, Fluid-S, so much S!
    2
  851. +Christian Jiang I appreciate you following the series and sharing your thoughts along the way!
    2
  852. +Step Back History I used Blender for both pre-render anims and post stuff. Not all of the art was built in Blender, but the meshes were.
    2
  853. I've done amateur work for years and experimented with it off and on since I was a kid (starting with TrueSpace). Even the basics require serious time. Also, some tasks are much easier with a programming language (Python for Blender, MEL for Maya). Each step can be simple and clear, but there are very many small steps. I'm happy to talk more - you or your friend can feel free to "send message" or "view email" from my channel's About tab.
    2
  854. +Misaki Mei I think it takes lots of practice. Yangyang Cheng's channel relates Mandarin tones to words we already say in English with certain intonations in certain contexts, which might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wV8B4bx1lM
    2
  855. I guess I could've translated that fragment "I eat..." with a blank (ni___cua, usually filled by "niccua" or indefinite "nitlacua" as you mention). I was starting simple and building the word so that the audience could follow.
    2
  856. Thanks! I'm going to add it as a correction to the description box and credit you for bringing it up.
    2
  857. +Ellisiv Ørnes Vestre You're welcome!!
    2
  858. It's a thoughtful question. Thanks for digging into the topic a bit! I'm interested in the waggle dance, and it's the topic of my next video. Hockett's checklist marks bees as a "no" for duality. http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/jcoleman/design_features.htm Threat/opportunity imitations are common in animal communication. So one question is: are the two core building blocks you mentioned more like those meaningful imitations, or are they more like our meaningless sounds? Good comment! :)
    2
  859. +logos 88888 I think it does. Do you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki4W4QVm2Hk&t=39s
    2
  860. It wasn't when this went live. I'll look into it.
    2
  861. Perfect timing! :D Is teanga ró-dheacair é, ach is maith liom an gramadach. Tá súil agam go n-éirí na scrúduithe leat.
    2
  862. No, I understand. I'm happy it was clear. Shukran! 
    2
  863. I clearly agree. Thank you for the kind comment!
    2
  864. Thank you! If you ever need a text version, you can find it on the website: http://www.nativlang.com/romance-languages/
    2
  865. True. If I take on tonal languages again, there should be more, and better, examples.
    2
  866. +steve redfield Thank you! I played this piece on the piano and added some light studio fx. I don't have a link, just a file on my comp. I guess I should clean these up and put them on my soundcloud then!
    2
  867. Here's one way to come at it: imperfective verbs have both progressive and habitual meanings, so perhaps the imperfective includes progressive aspects. This fits with what you're saying, but keeps the imperfective and progressive separate (it kind of makes the progressive a subset of imperfective aspect). There might be other, even better ways of approaching this. Ah, the beauty of ontologies!
    2
  868. Haha! It's great that you can do any of them. Really good that you're doing this kind of problem solving already in the 9th grade. Good luck with the harder ones!
    2
  869. +Bon Bon It's all BS? No, honestly, cabeza de chivo is for reals! ;)
    2
  870. I do need to make it back to Romance, and in a bigger way than just "where did ñ come from?"
    2
  871. Yes. They go by other names, but the typologists seem to call that second set "intensifiers" when they contrast them with "reflexives".
    2
  872. Steve Caruso (search "Aramaic Designs") does this professionally. If you already have Syriac fonts installed and know the word you're looking for, you can see it in script here: http://www.assyrianlanguages.org/sureth/search.php All the best!
    2
  873. You're welcome!
    2
  874. Inventory size is a nifty angle for exploring this topic. Thank you for expanding on what I missed!
    2
  875. In an effort to diversify my cast of characters, I created what was supposed to be a long-haired girl holding flowers.  It appears that my attempt to pull this off with a limited tool set failed.  Definitely not intending to take the channel in a more 'adult' direction!The newer videos I'm working on right now involve more asset creation using a 3D graphics program which should help to avoid this in the future (and makes for some interesting visuals).I hope you were still able to learn something useful from the video in spite of the ridiculous graphics.
    2
  876. Thanks!
    2
  877. Indeed it is!!
    2
  878. +Sonzai shinai Thanks! The nagari "varnamala" is definitely a marvel in its own right!
    2
  879. None that I know, but I'm finding it hard to think outside of minuscule/majuscule. Alphabets are very often unicameral.
    2
  880. You're welcome!
    2
  881. +Ismail Othelo Awww, shyuks... that's very kind!!
    2
  882. +Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro Yesss, so much entropy!!
    2
  883. J'y pige que dalle ! :P Non, je déconne. T'as dit que tu parles pas français mais je comprends quand même. Il faut apprendre avant de rencontrer Champollion dans cette série ;) Merci bien !!
    2
  884. Nice! It follows the book section by section, but doesn't quite cover as much material or use the same examples.
    2
  885. +Bart Kuivenhoven I'm curious now, too.
    2
  886. +PluT0iD 733 I appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts on it and give us a bit of analysis. Go raibh maith agat! In guess (2), is the variant form still the past passive? It looks like this is implied by your conclusion, but I'm double checking my reading.
    2
  887. Thank you! I have another video coming out on Friday, too!
    2
  888. My pleasure - such a fun topic. I'm glad you subscribed for more language!
    2
  889. I'll bear that in mind! I realize it just scratches the surface, but I'm testing how much grammar we can stomach for fun.
    2
  890. +himssendol Thank you for watching the whole thing! You're right - I caught that error caught early and noted it in our extras video: https://youtu.be/4rjn7yo3NJU?t=12m24s Early in the planning phase, I went back and forth on IPA. I decided against detailed transcriptions to make things palatable for non-linguists and to keep scenes uncluttered. I can see how if you're comfortable with phonetic transcription it would feel lacking here. Thanks again!
    2
  891. Oh, I get it... calling out the IPA specifically as a development. One step further: introduce distinctive feature matrices underlying all of this!
    2
  892. Hello! This whole series ("Grammar of Romance" playlist) goes over the history of grammar and sound changes from Latin to the Romance languages. It's history in the "historical linguistics" sense of the word. I don't have anything that refers to specific dates or political history.
    2
  893. Erik Karlsson She'll be glad to hear that!! That's Jessica. She's the resident professional :D I've done several takes of this with my own voice, but preferred her audio. Unlike me, she's had training! On the other hand, you miss things like me reading several words from Thamus' quote in Greek, saying "What.... in English?!? Fine!" and then switching to my translation. Worth the trade off? I thought so!
    2
  894. Erik Karlsson Not sure if she wants the publicity, but I can say that I got a good deal, and that she'll be the main narrator throughout the series!
    2
  895. +srinesh shenoi I think so, too! It's Thingamajig by Jason Shaw.
    2
  896. Grazie a te per l'entusiasmo!!
    2
  897. Sorry!  This is the only video we have that touches on that topic. For more information I would recommend starting here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penultimate_rule#Syllables_and_stress.
    2
  898. +sion8 I love that you brought cartouches into the discussion - that's a cool connection. Lacking these leads to ambiguities sometimes, but I suspect only occasionally anything that stumps native readers. I'll add two other ancient "highlighters" to your Egyptian example: Greek once had no lowercase or word spaces, but religious writers signaled key names by abbreviating them and putting a bar above those letters. Sanskrit used the word 'iti' kind of like quotation marks.
    2
  899. Is it maybe -ca, like in īca?
    2
  900. Thanks for the kind words, and for watching!
    2
  901. +sion8 Syllabics, Mongolian, Ogham, Cherokeee... there are unseen episodes that haunt me for not having the time to get to them... Just imagine a Thoth's Pill-style Genghis Khan!
    2
  902. The continuum of Cree cultures certainly helped syllabics spread fast. Cherokee weren't surrounded by related languages and dialects when Sequoyah invented the script in the 1820's, though it was marvelously successful among the Cherokee. Maybe in some alternate history without the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the rapid adoption of the Latin alphabet for writing native languages, we would've seen the syllabary catch on...
    2
  903. You're welcome!
    2
  904. lama Abdulaziz Thank you! As I understand the history, X-Bar built on Standard TG. Extended Theory saw transformations operating on trees instead of through rewrite rules. The transformations were also interpreted more generally (move DP) instead of specific (turn this sentence into a yes/no question), as in Principles & Parameters. From a theoretical perspective, there's a deeper contrast between constituency theories (like TG and Principles and Parameters) and dependency grammars.
    2
  905. +ross boss The awl and the female of the species stump people. Plus, it's an old school rebus. I liked your 'well bear' == 'Wilbur' tho! -- SPOILER ALERT -- eye bee leaf ant rose can well bear awl four ewe
    2
  906. +Facundo Madariaga Thank you!
    2
  907. +Nikolas Powell +Ptrk Hrnk I considered Glagolitic but left it out to simplify the story. The path from Greek to Cyrillic is clearer and cleaner. I went with the legend that Cyril created the script - it's a fun way to introduce the script that bears his name! Historically, this legend is questionable. The Cyrillic versus Glagolitic thing gets into some sticky debates within Slavic linguistics.
    2
  908. +NativLang Another comment here (by Froid) claims that Clement of Ohrid is responsible for Cyrillic. I wouldn't know the evidence for this, but perhaps that commenter does?
    2
  909. tomislav13 They also seem to be constructed from the dative. They even had this value in Old Italian: Dante has phrases like 'rispuosi lui' with dative use. If this explanation is correct, clitic and stressed forms diverged both grammatically and phonologically, which is common for oblique pronouns in Romance.
    2
  910. That's no problem. Glad to help!
    2
  911. I did a small personal university project comparing "Takic" languages and enjoyed Luiseño so much that I kept studying it. I read comparative stuff on Yaqui some time ago.
    2
  912. Nice! This was my first time explaining it, but you probably have it down pat.
    2
  913. Windows: Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Keyboards Mac: System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources The square script is under Hebrew. You may or may not need the Meltho fonts for Syriac. You'll have to adjust to the layouts and typing from right to left: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard#mediaviewer/File:Hebrew_keyboard_layout.png http://www.chrismary.com/languagekeyboard/layouts/syriac_keyboard500.jpg
    2
  914. I hear you! Thank you for taking the time to comment. Thoughts like these leave me with something to think about as I make future videos.
    2
  915. +TheJordanChronicles Thank you! We set up a little laptop below the camera for our collaboration at YouTube Space. Things are different when we film for Jessica's channel CompChomp (lower pressure, not so much reading), but we'll keep an eye on this! ;)
    2
  916. Not too basic, but gets covered in an earlier lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL88C203ACF0564351&feature=player_detailpage&v=CAI6xn6SUQQ#t=174 Hope that helps you!
    2
  917. +Zulhilmi Ghouse (Bubbles) That's amazing to hear - thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we got to have fun making this miniseries. Maybe too much fun? It cost us time and money, so I hope you'll bear with me while I try to earn back my sanity in my editing experiments!
    2
  918. Indeed! The practice problems on ioling.org are a good place to start!
    2
  919. Awesome! Well we're going to keep heading down this path then :)
    2
  920. +Lord Marcellus Thoth says just 1 more episode to wrap things up. I say I hope there's a season 2.
    2
  921. Aah, got it!
    2
  922. Sorry, I could have been clearer. My YouTube account has an "inbox". I can send and receive "personal messages" from there. If you don't find / don't have that function, it's okay to post here, too - it's still relevant to the video's topic!
    2
  923. Right you are, thanks! I've corrected it with an annotation.
    2
  924. Aahh, all fantastic suggestions!!
    2
  925. Very happy to hear that. Thanks for the kind words!
    2
  926. I feel that! It's the scope I could take on and still finish it this month, but there's so much more history at almost every point in the video.
    2
  927. Sure thing! It was a bit unnerving to see adjectives conjugated for the first time, wasn't it?
    2
  928. I like your enthusiasm, and you seem to be checking out data and comparisons. That's very good. I've noticed that the most useful grammatical explanations pay attention to both features that fit and the exceptions. This becomes even harder when you're working with not just one language, but a whole family!
    2
  929. I am familiar with the modern German pronunciation. Still, I guess my layered English etymological jest ("middle-nether-dutch") isn't going to catch on... Ah, well.
    2
  930. I'll receive a message if you send it to the channel inbox (personal message to NativLang).
    2
  931. Does your school have a course catalog? Anyone you can call / e-mail to get a description? If you don't do that, you can at least google +"semantics and logic" +"high school". Some info there.
    2
  932. I think you're on the right track! The kind of comparisons you're doing are central to understanding Romance as a whole.
    2
  933. Oh yeah! Glad to make your day :D
    2
  934. Excellent, thanks!
    2
  935. Thanks for the feedback and for talking about your experience! I used "interrupting" thinking of Miller's remark in the conclusion of the paper shown here that for "American speakers" aizuchi can seem like "Japanese interactants" are "interrupting their talk". I thought it set up a fun contrast between English and Japanese, one that went with the research, but didn't mean that these end your turn. I'll see if I can get more input and think about this title.
    2
  936. For sure. That quote called it out for its lack of definiteness (lack of 'the'). The author drew a parallel between languages that have vs lack different grammatical categories. Basically, if we're not surprised that Koreans can still conceive of definite individual things without a definite article, we can accept the Maya can do the same for time without tenses.
    2
  937. Wait but I am not a capybara though!? ;) My way of connecting on a personal level, to people and the material. But secret clue: if you follow my vignette, you have an intuition for everything that unravels in the rest of the video.
    2
  938. That's awesome!
    2
  939. No problem! The East-West-Sardinian split is the popular model, and it looks like you agree. With one exception: you classify Rhaeto-Romance as a top-level branch (E-W-Sard-Rhaet). It's normally classified within Western Romance (leaving us with just E-W-Sard). Why this difference - evidence from lexicostatistics, grammar, phonology? There is the so-called "Ladin Question" (la Questione Ladina), but even its solutions still place Rhaetian inside Western Romance.
    2
  940. The sound of IPA /j/, or like English "y" in "yes".
    2
  941. Ah, thank you for pointing out the error!
    2
  942. Not enough information. As in the previous video, the comparative method looks for core cognate relationships. Here, if we determine that this language has Turkic words because it comes from Turkic, then it's also Turkic. But if it borrowed those lexical items (like English did from French), then it's not Turkic. This video series just looks at basic core vocabulary and phonological changes to determine relatedness. But there are limitations! As you point out, grammar also matters.
    2
  943. Oh, if you can't reach it on your phone, you can leave it here! Don't inconvenience yourself - I'll see it either way.
    2
  944. Definitely come hang out on Patreon :) I give updates there. This one was particularly challenging. Much of it was new to me, so I really was lost in papers and books on historical Chinese phonology for a while. It also required a turn from what was originally supposed to be the entire linguistic history of Chinese!
    2
  945. Thanks for the tip - I'll take a look!
    2
  946. It could be, especially if I found a way to keep us engaged and not lost in other phonologies... Tom Scott? Heh, I haven't watched his vids in a while.
    2
  947. I read through some papers and a chapter full of examples, and this was my favorite. Bambang Kaswanti Purwo's "The categorical system in contemporary Indonesian: pronouns" describes it and gives context.
    2
  948. Correct, it sure is!
    2
  949. *corrections to those resources
    2
  950. Aah, I missed that I'd typed the topic particle there... Good catch, and thanks!
    2
  951. Oh yes, perfective and irrealis both show up around the world.
    2
  952. True, it feels rushed for this to be such a quick point on the road to "...therefore flexibility". Thank you for highlighting.
    2
  953. At first it's quite a puzzle, huh? There are adverbs, but they aren't required and they aren't more frequent. The main strategy is using aspect or mood markers. I'll get into more of the details next time.
    2
  954. Very close. The diphthong 'oi' was still /oj/. Nasal vowels worked differently, too. I'd go with: /li vojzins/ ("lee voy-zeen-s") with a nasal /i/. /le vojzins/ ("leh voy-zeen-s"), also nasalizing that /i/. /in/ is the trickiest part. The /n/ was still pronounced, and the vowel /i/ kept its original quality but was pronounced through the nose: [ĩn].
    2
  955. You're welcome. That's a nice example, and requires fewer words!
    1
  956. That sounds like an amazing treat! There's an email address in my channel page's "about" tab.
    1
  957. ***** It's old, but I was thinking of "Song correlates with social context, testosterone and body condition in male barn swallows". Google Scholar seems to link to a full PDF. There's also: http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/3/580.full Back to the tubes for something a bit less dense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP2A9tStTo
    1
  958. +Tsavorite Prince You're totally right. Especially if you flip some of the letters. Old Latin and Greek are even more similar.
    1
  959. Fascinating indeed! I try to keep up with comments, but they're more active than ever! My Twitter's still low-volume. I post and reply on Patreon. There's gmail on my channel page "about" tab.
    1
  960. Maybe that one shouldn't have gone all the way over into the right-hand column...
    1
  961. Just one more video tomorrow. I agree these deserve more attention. These will live in my "language tales" playlist for now.
    1
  962. +Tarek Khalil French may have lost /w/ for the letter "v", but it regained that phoneme for the letters "ou". There are borrowed words like "week-end" that use the phoneme. I don't know how "wagon" (like vagone, vagão, vagón and vagon) ended up without it, but the initial [v] feels more Romance. Incidentally, I have heard some French speakers pronounce that as [wagõ].
    1
  963. +Frahamen I can't think of an expression that is similar in form and meaning. Many Romance languages achieve a similar verbal aspect with 'stāre V-ndu': sto cantando, estoy cantando, etc.
    1
  964. "Manner of articulation" typically identifies consonants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luYZnqmjWaI&index=2&list=PL790D33882C5EF41A The features of vowels are height and backness (discussed in this video). There are other features, like nasal/oral vowels or rounded/unrounded vowels.
    1
  965. +Eduardo Juarez It was truly a pleasure to create and share.
    1
  966. +Heather Toomey You're welcome! Good luck with your conlang, especially if its writing system takes inspiration from Hanzi!
    1
  967. Something I've never heard of... I'll check this out!
    1
  968. new mommy Thank you for letting me know!
    1
  969. Awesome!  Glad it was useful.
    1
  970. Impeccable sleuthing!
    1
  971. +Hermitix Partly because, at least in linguistics, Han and Chinese aren't equivalent. Partly because I adopted a principle of sacrificing perfection for narrative consistency (something I promised the day I announced this series). For the audience, "characters" are a touchpoint already introduced in Thoth's Pill.
    1
  972. Yes, I'm familiar. However, I'm sure you can think of other terms that translate to Chinese, including 中华民族. In this sense there are, in English, "non-Han Chinese".
    1
  973. FiveADay Kanji Good point - and in the Russian case there are ethnic-Russians living outside of Russia and non-ethnic-Russians in Russia. Too bad Russian doesn't also have simple terms for this! 汉 "hàn" and 中 "Middle" kingdom - again, I'm familiar. However, my initial response in this comment line was about connotations among an audience, not denotations based on etymology. Actually, 汉 isn't dissimilar from 中 historically, since it originally labeled the Han dynasty. European languages, on the other hand, take "China" from the Qin. It may be a retrojection to call all Sinitic languages "hàn", but I understand that's done in Chinese? That would explain English "Han", used for the ethnicity and language family.
    1
  974. +Eduardo Bedoya I like the way you think. Awesome, thanks for watching!
    1
  975. absojake Thanks! I hope this helped.
    1
  976. +geekygeniusgg Interesting. Makes me wonder if there's research on how different coders read code, and how code readings go for the same coder in different paradigms (OOP vs functional).
    1
  977. There are definitely variations for dialect and politeness, but I'm not confident that the Catalan division between "en" as subject marker and "el" as object marker presented here is representative.
    1
  978. +Zulhilmi Ghouse (Bubbles) It really is fun stuff! Agree - though the same skill is required across the problems, they vary in difficulty dramatically.
    1
  979. P. Lu No name yet - I recorded it for these videos!
    1
  980. Très bien, vas-y ! :)
    1
  981. Never crossed my mind. But if it ever does, now I know who to blame.
    1
  982. +Kristian B When it's the specifier for that VP. For example, if you're a fan of the VP Internal Subject Hypothesis, your subject starts out at [Spec, VP]. Your second part's complex, but here's a heuristic: any time the VP brings a new clause with it. In a phrase structure analysis of 'Juan said that you run marathons', you might add an IP under a CP under a VP for the complementizer phrase (where 'that' is a complementizer): [ IP John [ VP said [ CP that [ IP you run marathons ]]]]
    1
  983. +Adam Stewart But seriously, test it out: http://www.cojak.org/ You get to 钥 by clicking on the radical 钅, not 月! :)
    1
  984. georg cantor Without thinking all that much about it, I suppose this kind of reasoning could be a case of "appeal to consequences". There's a whole literature on identifying, categorizing and accusing someone of fallacies. (After all, logic expects us to support our conclusion that some line of reasoning was fallacious just as much as it does any other conclusion we draw.) So I expect that someone making a judgment call about this case would have more to add...
    1
  985. I almost edited that out. But it seemed so right.
    1
  986. Tá cupla focal agam. Rinne mé cursaí ollscoile agus is maith liom an teanga a chleachtadh nuair is féidir liom.
    1
  987. Sé que fue como un golpe de información pero seguiremos aprendiendo juntos. Un abrazo desde EEUU
    1
  988. Classical Arabic only distinguished 3 points of a vowel triangle!
    1
  989. My pleasure! Lol, just a bunch of grunting sounds...
    1
  990. Welcome to nativlang! I've got you covered, at least when it comes to the basics. Everything's organized on YouTube (playlists) and the site (lesson pages): http://www.nativlang.com/linguistics/lesson-map.php (Btw, every video shows up in the webpages in the same order as in the YT playlists. The difference is that the pages have extra text and sometimes include exercises.) From start to finish, these lessons/playlists build on each other: 1. IPA for language learning 2. Intro to phonology 3. Intro to historical linguistics 4. Sound change (<- you are here :-) ) 5. Intro to etymology The "Grammar of Words" might also come in handy. It's about the structure and function of words. (1-5 above are mainly about pronunciation.) My newer playful, conceptual videos will also be fun and helpful: - YouTube search: "what is human language", playlist - nativlang.com click: Linguistics > General or Logic > Meta stuff Hope that gets you started, and happy learning!
    1
  991. +nidal sarieddine Wow. Thank you!
    1
  992. The ones I use here, more or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tb9DVWb2Fs Plus some similar Romance languages. I'm very rusty. :(
    1
  993. Ooh, you have a good knowledge of Germanic!
    1
  994. What flavor of conlang?
    1
  995. The genders and even cases, and to a lesser extent the verb morphology (moods, tenses and aspects) look familiar to IE langs. Is that Germanic influence in the vocab? Or is it just my eyes?
    1
  996. Sounds like it's a fun first conlang for you to explore! I enjoy "alternate history" family langs like this. Have you ever studied a non-IE language?
    1
  997. Excellent, you know your bounds then! Beyond the morphology and lexicon, what about developing a consistent phonological history? Which sounds changed and in which environments? If sounds don't turn out as expected, why not? - borrowing, sporadic change, competing sound laws? It's a lot of work. Maybe you've done some of it already, but those "tips" came to mind.
    1
  998. Keep it up! You're giving Basque some competition with all those noun cases!!
    1
  999. A new one, or changes to the old? It makes me wonder about the history hiding behind your words, in a good way.
    1
  1000. Thanks for commenting! That sounds like a fun class to me, though I confess I'm a nerd for this stuff. There's so much more to say about Spanish, but I hope this broad context helps you succeed!
    1
  1001. you're quick!
    1
  1002. +Zulhilmi Ghouse (Bubbles) Thanks for being a regular commenter! :D
    1
  1003. There's no "reply" on Joseph Martin's comment below, but here's where you get your feet wet: http://www.ioling.org/problems/samples/ Once you're through those, jump right in: http://www.ioling.org/problems/
    1
  1004. You're very welcome. It's nice to hear that they help!
    1
  1005. +Adriaan Ater Haha, is it that eerie? Almost always Blender.
    1
  1006. Thank you! I don't know of any undeciphered Native American scripts outside of Mesoamerica. None of the petroglyphs remind me of these tablets. Making connections between Polynesia and the Americas gets into a whole thing academically, especially when speculating about cultural contact. There have been many attempts at cracking this script. I might tell its story sometime.
    1
  1007. Nice!! Hmmm, that's a question for you to answer. In a hallway that's empty, decently creepy and maybe even a bit scary. There are no windows, just picture frames and a closed door at the end. As you can see, I picked the knight for my fan art contribution. Seemed to lighten up the place but keep the mood.
    1
  1008. Ahaha, thank you! :-)
    1
  1009. インフィニチキウィ Yep, I think you're getting the hang of this! The glyphs used to represent one grapheme (like 'V') are allographs of that grapheme. In this sense, 'glyph' is a general term for any single written or printed character. (Some fun logic here: all allographs of the grapheme "v" are glyphs, but not all glyphs are allographs of the grapheme "v". Wow, that's a mouthful!) Linguists love these "eme" and "allo" terms. The "emes" are conceptual and abstract ("the letter v"). The "allos" are specific variants (v serif, v sans serif, cursive v, capital v, lowercase v, ...). Some glyphs do get standardized (this happened long ago for Han Characters), but even those standard allographs compete with other allographs (like rough script / "grass script" forms).
    1
  1010. A fair bit of criticism. Timing and example counts are things I'll test out the next time I do one of these grammar sessions.
    1
  1011. +Spencer T (branefreez) Hey, any little bit of randomness helps.
    1
  1012. You're welcome! :)
    1
  1013. Khalil Hijazi Ah, no. I've only done like you have - practice problems. My guess? A lot of hunching over paper, biting pens (or do they let you use pencil?), and furrowed brows thinking really hard :)
    1
  1014. Khalil Hijazi I don't know average times on these things. If you're already familiar with the system (like I was for Maori or Phoenician), some of them can be done in less than five minutes. Other ones (like Sk8 Parsr) took me much longer.
    1
  1015. Grrr, I expect nothing less from a honey badger. Ahem, THE honey badger.
    1
  1016. The tree diagrams are not themselves specific to a theory. However, some of the specific examples in this video fit with Government & Binding.
    1
  1017. You're right about that! Nāhuatl grammar is fun.
    1
  1018. +Zulhilmi Ghouse (Bubbles) All look good but 1 and 4. HINTS: (only if you want them) 4th blank (tricky!) is translating a word from "abenduaren azken astea". This word appears nowhere else on its own but is found within other Basque words. 1st blank should be in Basque. It contains the same month as 4, and could be written with the same syntax in English and Basque (but the English translation here inverts the month and the number).
    1
  1019. I listed some in the sources doc (info box). Old ones like Viëtor are archived online. David Crystal has multiple books on the subject.
    1
  1020. I use many programs, but the basics for these visuals were: Blender for animations, GIMP for image editing, Adobe Premiere for non-linear editing. Now I use Blender for non-linear editing, too, instead of Adobe.
    1
  1021. You're very welcome! Thank you for watching!! :D
    1
  1022. Whew! Thank you so much :D
    1
  1023. vereistesHaff You're welcome. Yes indeed! γ, κ, (ξ) and χ are all velars, so they trigger this "angma". People may transliterate the word as plankhthe, plangkhthe or plaŋkhthe to capture that velar nasal sound.
    1
  1024. Thank you!
    1
  1025. Awesome! It really was a nail-biter not to know what I was doing next. Go raibh maith agat!
    1
  1026. Ary Bu My pleasure! Glad the answer helped even though it's so looooong...
    1
  1027. Thanks! I've played with music and volume over the years. Hope I've gotten better!
    1
  1028. You're welcome. :)
    1
  1029. Nice! So this is easy stuff for you, huh?
    1
  1030. Ahmed Mohamed Abdellahi I don't actually know how.
    1
  1031. +Nick Giroux Did you enjoy it? I recorded myself playing around on the piano and added light fx. The file's called "Worriless". It's sitting on my computer - haven't cleaned it up or uploaded it anywhere.
    1
  1032. Thanks, you're kind to say so!
    1
  1033. +srinesh shenoi Jessica, from Thoth's Pill? She'll definitely be doing more videos with us.
    1
  1034. +Stephen Jones Thank you! Yes, I do wish I could've told it all though. ALL the writings deserve this kind of attention.
    1
  1035. Hi, and thanks! I have a link at the bottom of the description box with some sources. If you can find classes or a chat friend who speaks it, that's excellent.
    1
  1036. Ooh, I wish you many happy languages in your studies. As for me, this is how I quench that thirst!
    1
  1037. +Ragnarok EX Dictionaries give both pronunciations. Yes, I wish I had selected clearer examples - these ones are definitely "manufactured". Fortunately, most viewers don't seem to be missing the forest for the trees here, which is the point of the video.
    1
  1038. I'm happy to hear from you! Feel free to share via Google plus (to +NativLang), or even use the old youtube.com/inbox.
    1
  1039. Noted! Any example of a video that you really enjoyed?
    1
  1040. Adrian Vas Thanks for the feedback, and congratulations!
    1
  1041. +Spencer T (branefreez) That's quite ambitious.
    1
  1042. I can imagine. What are your constraints/goals? (Assuming you don't mind sharing or giving an example.)
    1
  1043. Thanks! Yeah, there's a lot that's rough about these older videos. I still struggle a bit with audio.
    1
  1044. The short answer: "binary branching hypothesis". Basically, those intermediate nodes allow phrases to grow and grow. If you take away the intermediates, the tree only allows phrases (cohesive constituent chunks) and terminals (the actual nouns, verbs, etc.). Added material (like adjuncts) doesn't behave like the phrase or the terminal, so proponents use X' to add extra levels inside the phrase.
    1
  1045. Thank you!! I probably won't keep doing once a week. I'm aiming for twice a month. But I do enjoy being more active on YouTube, too! :)
    1
  1046. "Don't shoot!" Assuming they didn't, my instinct would be to look/listen for linguistic data.
    1
  1047. ...ipampa ca nechpactia in chilli ihuan cacahuatl! Jaja. Many reasons, but here's one: my close friends and their parents have shared Mexican culture throughout life, which greatly influenced me. Entiendo un poco más con cada idioma. Cenca tlazohcamati.
    1
  1048. I see. Plus, it would be easier to clearly indicate nonstandard/dialect pronunciations!
    1
  1049. Aww, thank you for saying so.
    1
  1050. +Yassine Battal You're kind to say so!
    1
  1051. I'll let her know you said so. She'll be flattered I'm sure!
    1
  1052. +Bonnie McLean You're very welcome!
    1
  1053. Not really sure without context, but it sounds like it's telling you that S' is for a subordinate clause? Subordinate clauses are often introduced by "empty conjunctions", like "0 she was there" in "I knew she was there."
    1
  1054. Thanks!
    1
  1055. The name appears in WAY too many forms in the early works, at least one of which starts with "Mont-". I can only guess why some people heard or wrote an "-n-" there. Analogy with other Spanish words? "Octe" is an uncommon Spanish sequence, but still plausible. Hmm...
    1
  1056. +Nicola Payne You're welcome!
    1
  1057. It's definitely a challenge to find nice, all-in-one lesson packages. But there are free online dictionaries, there's Wikipedia in Scots and even some fine commenters here who clearly know their stuff!
    1
  1058. I'm happy to hear that!
    1
  1059. I'm showing your comment to Javier. He's called me Keanu since we were kids.
    1
  1060. +StudyingInFinlandVlogs Thanks! How's Finland? :D
    1
  1061. I want to. First, a few topics I've been neglecting.
    1
  1062. Steven Eddings, since I can't reply directly: Thanks for thinking about my plight and for sharing a bit of your own NativLang story! I'll take those days into account. I appreciate the comment.
    1
  1063. Thank you! I'll strive to live up to that reputation in future videos. Stylistic choice I guess - shooting for very relatable, non-academic language. Different fonts and colors for the two "language"s helped distinguish them.
    1
  1064. +Jihoon Kim Good catch! Thanks for the correction.
    1
  1065. Thank you!
    1
  1066. Hello! Not sure. I once built a small tool (now broken) that grabbed linguistics-related news. Searching "language" or "linguistics" social media or a search engine's news tab could be a good start. Some good linguistics blogs also touch on language in the news.
    1
  1067. You're very welcome!
    1
  1068. Ooh, taking it up a notch. I like!
    1
  1069. You brought up a tricky topic here! Think about it: - What makes a pronunciation correct? How do you know that it's correct? - When does a sequence of sounds count as an English word? Who decides? Why? Phonology tells us that people say both i[n]put and i[m]put. That's not about right or wrong. It's about how the language gets used. Back in Ancient Rome, people also pronounced /n/ as [m] before /p/. They even wrote it that way: in+possibilis = impossibilis. If the sound [m] is an allophone of /n/ in the word 'impossibilis', does that mean 'impossibilis' was incorrect in Latin? No, this question isn't really about phonology. Correctness involves other things. It's a bigger matter, or at least a different one: Good Grammar, Bad Grammar - prescriptivism vs. descriptivism It's a fun topic, but, yeah, tricky!
    1
  1070. Thanks for leaving your thoughts! Dan Everett uses the word 'xibipíío' to refer to that Pirahã phenomenon. You can read more in his book - Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. I believe he also has links to other info on his website, or at least used to.
    1
  1071. Agreed. Sign language is actually a great topic for a nativlang video!
    1
  1072. I had that exact thought (that I'd love to make a video on sign language) while attending a YouTube event and watching the ASL interpreter. As a child, I learned a bit from my mother and her friend, but going from my limited "emic" background to a broad "etic" perspective will mean digging into the literature. The grammatical conceptualization you bring up is intriguing. I'll definitely go do some learning. Thanks for bringing up sign language!
    1
  1073. +HorusNikopol Provocative, yes. Misleading though? Ancient Egypt was many things... including fancy hieroglyph-toting priests and Semitic script-simplifying miners.
    1
  1074. +uneliasmarsu Thank you!! Have you seen the Thoth's Pill "alphasyllabaries" episode? Creating that, I thought of getting more into the differences between scripts. It got messy fast. Such an intriguing family of scripts. Thanks for the suggestion!
    1
  1075. Good to know. Thanks for voting!
    1
  1076. Pacing's definitely important, but here's a compromise - I'll bring up your point as a poll to get more feedback from the wider audience.
    1
  1077. Wow, thank you!
    1
  1078. ...and that's the right way to solve those problems! ;) Nice.
    1
  1079. Understood. Computer programming by any chance? Thanks for loving and commenting!
    1
  1080. Noted. Thanks!
    1
  1081. Awww. Try again next time! Thanks :) See, I wasn't kidding when I said I started paying attention to thumbnails around Halloween!
    1
  1082. +Galloh That's the first I've heard of Thoth's Pill as a dinner and a movie!! Excellent questions - the emoji one in particular gets attention from linguists. So what you're saying is we need a sequel...
    1
  1083. +Bon Bon I've played with those sets and wondered if there's something beyond just where you place the tip of your tongue. I haven't seen research on the actual articulation though. The somewhat similar 3-way contrast in Mandarin comes to mind, too. "Voiced bilabial lateral" - I can vaguely imagine it, but what exactly would it sound like? I suppose there are quite a few phonological gaps in the IPA consonant chart.
    1
  1084. +Wat Howard I've messed with audio levels a lot since 2013 (this vid) - better more often. Thanks for your comment! It helps me keep this in mind.
    1
  1085. Of course!
    1
  1086. That's wonderful!
    1
  1087. afielsch Thank you for the feedback. Answers to the exercises are on the website: http://www.nativlang.com/logic/logic.php "from here on out this series goes downhill." That's too bad. I've swung to a different approach since 2011, but I still think there's some good material in the next video - 5 of 5 - and the next series - Logic & Arguments. (Personally, I find the exercise lists here cumbersome. I prefer practicing in other formats.)
    1
  1088. That brought a smile to my face. Awesome!
    1
  1089. I do the art by hand with a digital drawing pad, then put together final animations in Blender.
    1
  1090. ***** That sounds like an interesting topic for an exhibition. We'll talk about the origins of "true" writing around the world in episode 3.
    1
  1091. +Sima Zhi Ahaha, indeed!
    1
  1092. Awesome, thanks!
    1
  1093. +Bobby Bermuda I enjoyed Robinson's Story of Writing. Coe's Breaking the Maya Code is an intriguing case study. The Alphabet Effect (I think it's Letter Perfect now) was an even easier read.
    1
  1094. I wish!
    1
  1095. Thanks for sharing! The case in your link is basically as follows: (1) It's not unheard of for languages to borrow their word for 'yes', so Romanian could have borrowed 'da'. (2) Alternatively, we could imagine it coming from Latin 'ita'. Those are both interesting but thin speculations. TBH I haven't read his paper, so there's probably more to it.
    1
  1096. bdbdo 4545 Glad to hear it! You can reply here or directly on my channel (youtube.com/nativlang "about" tab), which has a "send message" button.
    1
  1097. You're so very welcome. Thanks for watching!
    1
  1098. +Jia Jun Koh Thank you!!!
    1
  1099. Nice! I think I should've asked directly for predictions like these in the comments - they're fun to read.
    1
  1100. Thank you!
    1
  1101. Thanks for the input! Since the video touches on a basic definition of human language and then moves on to ask questions about its status as a human ability (1 - is it innate, 2 - is it uniquely human and uniquely linguistic, 3 - what does it have to do with reasoning and formal languages), I think the title is a fit in an open-ended sort of way. I have an older video specifically about the nativist/empiricist debate (#1 above), which only gets brought up once here.
    1
  1102. I appreciate your insights :) ! You've got your finger right on a sore point (the academics/entertainment balance) - that's become an incredibly difficult juggling act. The proposal for a second channel was my attempt to conjure up an outlet for the tangents, musical compositions and behind-the-scenes creator vlogs that otherwise infect our nativlang channel. Much gratitude for sticking around through the many changes, and big thanks for sharing your passion for language!
    1
  1103. ***** The phonology, grammar and core vocabulary of Romanian are very Romance. (For lexical items, Marius Sala of the Romanian Academy has quoted 30% directly inherited from Latin, with another 40% borrowed from other Romance languages and a mere <1% from earlier Thracian/Dacian.) Using the method in this video, I think we would easily conclude that it is Latinic. At the same time, Romanian does have "exotic" influences like loan words, Balkan Sprachbund features and a substrate.
    1
  1104. I was messing around being goofy, didn't expect to stumble into an underground subgenre! Yikes! XD
    1
  1105. I'd normally read כָל with /k/ (not to mention resh as /ɣ/), but researching a traditional reading pronunciation led me to [xol haˈʔaːɾets], and sure enough when I looked again at a text with full vocalization there it was "soft"!
    1
  1106. Sé que no son perfectos para principiantes pero he destacado algunos recursos en el Google Doc para este video. Para el Náhuatl clásico sigue siendo buena opción consultar la Arte de Carochi. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BGaFnFZ9SJN1QjK2-FlgnvoF5EGoRiIkTZd09mCVEVo#heading=h.e7i5kn7l1ubs https://archive.org/details/compendiodelarte00carouoft
    1
  1107. Discovios What don't you believe?
    1
  1108. You're welcome!
    1
  1109. +. Have you seen the whole animation? Sumerians show up early there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8
    1
  1110. Ahhh thanks. Welcome in!
    1
  1111. We count from zero! You're welcome, and thanks for leaving a comment!
    1
  1112. You're welcome! Thanks for appreciating!!
    1
  1113. It'll be a few videos down the line - still doing background reading. I'm very intrigued by the topic. Thanks for enjoying longest word!
    1
  1114. Mohammed Alasaad My pleasure, and thanks for watching!
    1
  1115. That's a phonetic connection I never made... they're just missing hr!
    1
  1116. You caught that? Even after cleanup, the audio file was getting to me...
    1
  1117. That's awesome to hear! Thanks for watching!
    1
  1118. Good digging! I hear that the realization of South Slavic pitch varies based on dialect. Plus there's an interplay of length, pitch and stress that can complicate things! I wonder, does pitch in BiH complicate things beyond word boundaries like Japanese downstep does or Greek enclitics did?
    1
  1119. +Largemouth Bass (esp) :D !
    1
  1120. Sherilyn Foreman Wow, greetings from around the world then! I hope your exams go very well.
    1
  1121. In some ways, but there were key differences. The Maya languages were already more diverse, removed from the largest political centers and the conquest took much longer (though the Chichimeca War did stretch on for decades).
    1
  1122. You're right about the flower and pick. The final one is read directly, but not as 'lamb'.
    1
  1123. Thank you for at least leaving one here! I feel equally bad that I can't get to all the comments any longer without slacking on research and animation.
    1
  1124. Thank you!
    1
  1125. Thanks, you are too kind.
    1
  1126. ¡Gracias por tus observaciones sobre el contenido formal! Las voy a tomar en cuenta.
    1
  1127. Ericka Gilliland ...but easier with practice, right?
    1
  1128. +Theophilus Zhou Yikes! Thanks, you're so right. I'll leave annotations.
    1
  1129. Two hints, since I'm up way too late: it's written from top-to-bottom, and it also uses Cyrillic.
    1
  1130. Wikipedia gives [aːˈʃóːloːtɬ] with that second syllable having both stress and a high pitch. All three vowels are loooong. I'd add that the final tɬ is an affricate and that it's ok for your mouth to go towards an /u/ sound with the o's.
    1
  1131. Ahahaha, thanks! And very punny!!
    1
  1132. +Hammu Rabi We hope that changes soon!
    1
  1133. +Daire Grimes You're welcome!
    1
  1134. Right on, and thanks for watching!!
    1
  1135. AARGH! NOOO! I just got to feel 3 years of embarrassment in 10 seconds. May metathesis never strike me again.
    1
  1136. This way lies strangeness :-) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN52PyC7vNClvk_aUMq-81g You'll also see the icon on my main channel in the right "Featured Channels" menu. Enjoy!
    1
  1137. That makes sense. I think I said "any accent" because I've heard it used of other marks. But, you're very right, I normally hear it for "acute accent". I think in Catalan they say ñ has a "titlla" and the ç has a "trencat"!
    1
  1138. +DeclaaannnL Awesome - Thanks for watching!!
    1
  1139. I've heard vowels nasalized before "moraic n" plus a glide. I think it's [õɴjomi] with phonemic distinction between n and y (since ny would be its own onset), which explains the apostrophe. Hopefully I got close!
    1
  1140. +Hanane Af That is the other side of the world to me! Thank you for your comment.
    1
  1141. Thank you!
    1
  1142. presuntomr Amazing to hear! And to think it gets better from here!
    1
  1143. +Paul Pedziwiatr Woohoo! Thank you!!
    1
  1144. "Ashuri" and "Assyrian" are definitely related, but I'm not sure of the sequence of sound changes. The mainstream linguistic opinion is that "Neo-Aramaic" comes earlier Aramaic, but that Eastern dialects/languages were definitely influenced by Akkadian (word choices and even grammatical structures). In a way, it's like inheriting both traditions!
    1
  1145. You're welcome!
    1
  1146. +Kate Gladstone I'll give it a thought. Right now, I can't come up with an intriguing way to do it - these shapes over time turned into these other shapes... :|
    1
  1147. +Adriaan Ater Thank you for watching all the way through!! Yeah, I went for an art style with personality but quick to create so many environments and characters and easy to render on my laptop.
    1
  1148. +Sachin Shukla Quick mind! Using Mora-Marín's terminology, I think those Egyptian examples would be. He sees classifiers and determinatives as two kinds of "semantograms".
    1
  1149. インフィニチキウィ Thanks for the input! With each upload I learn a bit more about what works best.
    1
  1150. Thanks for clarifying. I'll definitely keep this distinction in mind!
    1
  1151. Sinodaur Excellent! I'm glad it simplified things. The associated website has a handful of practice questions with answers (link in the description box).
    1
  1152. Thank you so much. I appreciate you!
    1
  1153. +‫يبليبليبل يبليبليبل‬‎ Your words traveled from far away. Thank you for watching, and for leaving a comment!
    1
  1154. +mergingslinky Yay!
    1
  1155. +Noah Williams Do you mean instead of adding an intermediate V'? Or instead of abstracting the whole model to XP, X', X?
    1
  1156. +Noah Williams This makes the tree a "binary branching" one. Say we wanted to add a bunch of PPs next to that verb. Using V' -> V', V, PP lets us stack them nicely inside a single phrase with a single verb. Also, it keeps the small-but-important specifier material branching from the VP: VP -> Spec, V'. Now phrases have a single specifier and a single terminal (verb, preposition, ...), but lots of other phrases can fall in between. I tried to simplify the jargon here but still keep my answer honest to X-Bar Theory. Does it work for you?
    1
  1157. V' could expand to one V' and one (just one!) PP. Then that second V' would expand to another V' and PP. Repeat as necessary. See it in action! Visit the Syntax Tree Generator and type in this syntax for an example tree. http://mshang.ca/syntree/ [S [DP the bear] [VP [V' [V' [V' [V' [V dined] ] [PP in the rain] ] [PP with friends] ] [PP for hours] ] ] ]
    1
  1158. That sounds right to me. Definitely didn't mean to confuse things!
    1
  1159. StormKidification I'm humbled to hear that. Thank you again!
    1
  1160. ***** By the way, which is your language?
    1
  1161. StormKidification Awesome! Having command of multiple languages probably lets you see connections between them.
    1
  1162. I read and enjoyed it about, I guess, 6 years ago.
    1
  1163. Thank you. I hope you enjoy the rest of the book, though that was the most memorable part for me.
    1
  1164. Thanks!
    1
  1165. +Seth Langston Could we have guessed it's an alphasyllabary without knowing? It does have similar-looking glyphs and special marks (in a way, like Japanese kana diacritics). For me, the Yi syllabary is a real outlier for this trick.
    1
  1166. That's wonderful! I hope that you'll now do better than ever!!
    1
  1167. Wow!
    1
  1168. Yeah, it looks like they want a teacher to contact them. Maybe you know one who's really interested in language, linguistics, or code breaking? It's an easy sell if they are.
    1
  1169. Well, I wish you success. I started Ancient Greek at the same age! Tough, but really enjoyed it.
    1
  1170. Hmmm. Same here. I can find their solutions for the contest problems, but not those sample problems.
    1
  1171. Of course!
    1
  1172. Thanks! It's been a balancing act. I hope to combine the best of both and attract a wider audience in the process.
    1
  1173. +Rex Su I'm fairly sure I only used the oracle bone character for turtle here, and not the more recent script. Just to check myself, where does 萬 appear in the video?
    1
  1174. +Julia Ong You're welcome!
    1
  1175. Thanks!  Glad the videos are useful.
    1
  1176. Tobberz I love hearing that. Thank you!!
    1
  1177. OriginalRipndip Here's the playlist, if that shows up on mobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAVTLjhDjuw&list=PLc4s09N3L2h3vKfPZq1AqhOrPoIT_b4m4&index=12
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  1178. +Blaire Lawrence Just saw this - thanks! I'm no expert here, but you can get to my e-mail if you visit the /NativLang channel page and click the About tab.
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  1179. You're welcome! I feel for you. This is getting into the nitty-gritty. Whew, deep breath... let me see if I can jot some thoughts down. The "t" gets pronounced [t] in Rat as expected, but that "d" gets devoiced to [t] in Rad. What's surprising (or tough) isn't that the two sounds and the two words become the same. It's that the two sounds "neutralize" in that context even though the two words remain different. Phonemes are diagnosed based on changes in meaning. Since they're still two different words, the usual conclusion is that there are two "underlying" phonemes (/t/ and /d/), and that the two phonemes can't be distinguished acoustically in that environment. Changing the environment reveals the phonemes again. What happens when you add German suffixes to nouns or verbs ending in a devoiced /d/ > [t]? The [d] resurfaces!
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  1180. +Gordon Ingram Wonderful - thank YOU for watching and finding it useful!
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  1181. Thanks for leaving such kind words! I enjoyed recording the music, and am so glad to hear that it works with the topic.
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  1182. You're welcome. I'm glad you like it!
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  1183. Thanks for noticing! That'll give me a bit more confidence in my broken German.
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  1184. I do hide secrets, but that was coincidental!
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  1185. +Bart Kuivenhoven A dialectal conjugation of téigh - interesting. Sorry to have opened a mystery - it was an orthographic example that stuck with me since Irish class.
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  1186. I'll jot down a note in my future ideas. :D
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  1187. Toby Kral I plan to! Thanks for your comment.
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  1188. Heh, maybe it's just me, but I'm finding this a bit tricky. I can imagine a small set that fits your description: qih pih aq op Assuming all four are different words, I'd propose that /p/ and /q/ are two phonemes. If the data set were really large yet still missing minimal pairs, I might look for other characteristics (do various sounds behave like phonemes would?). On a language-wide scale, I'd expect to dig up more than two contrastive sounds. Because of the "networked" nature of phonology, it's typical for sounds held constant in one environment to contrast in other environments. I'm familiar with cases of marginal phonemes, where two sounds contrast in very few environments. Spanish dialects that have borrowed words with /ʃ/ are one example. Thanks for the question! Any thoughts yourself?
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  1189. +nguyễn thị hoài thương You're welcome!
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  1190. Erik Karlsson L'attente en vaudra la peine !
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  1191. 12 videos, a new one each Friday for 12 weeks. After that's done, I hope to release a 45 minute long form cut of the whole thing.
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  1192. +CArolina Diaz You got it!
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  1193. You're very welcome!
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  1194. Drew Perkins It's one of a few piano and guitar "improv" pieces I recorded just for these linguistics series.
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  1195. Ahh, well, I'm glad to hear that!
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  1196. Thanks for enjoying my videos! Mexicans pronounce words incorrectly? Hmm, I disagree. "Moctezuma" is not "incorrect".
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  1197. Hi! It'd be convenient if you can list it as nativlang.com. Upload date and video & channel info should all be around YouTube somewhere...
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  1198. japhet abalde Incidentally, this video was about that very question! After watching, do you have specific questions?
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  1199. japhet abalde I can't answer those questions. But I can point you in a direction: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anomalist http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~langendoen/Varro.pdf http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/#4
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  1200. carj31 Thanks for the feedback!
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  1201. Thanks for sharing a bit about your creation! What are your letters styled like - any particular script? Are they something entirely unique? So happy you like Thoth's Pill and hope to keep you watching :D
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  1202. Smart! Sounds more linguistic than any of the writing systems I've created. What kind of language is Sorrelic?
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  1203. Wow, that's quite a family history!! I haven't heard of such a thing for an invented language.
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  1204. Challenge accepted. I hope your 2015 is off to a great start!
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  1205. That's awesome! Glad it's useful for you.
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  1206. Gracias por dejarme un comentario. ¡Me alegra mucho que le haya sido útil!
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  1207. Thank you!
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  1208. Awesome! Also, I've been intrigued by your logo but haven't figured it out. Any hints?
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  1209. Ahah, that makes sense. Thank you for clearing that up, and have fun conlanging!
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  1210. Vicky Bedwell Thanks! And good question!! Such contrasts played a large role in developing concepts like "displacement" and "double articulation". The idea that human language is unique still holds sway, but there's healthy debate and new findings. My video on the "Bee dance language" gives an example that throws up challenges when we try to pinpoint the differences between human language as distinct from animal communication.
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  1211. +Handrea Alexandru Thank you!
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  1212. I've always found that was a good way to fit the sound into the then-emerging Mexican phonology. Mi ejemplo preferido es el vocablo "cempasúchil". I can think of a few x's that have the "sh" sound, too.
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  1213. +Largemouth Bass (esp) You picked up the scent - looking for what's unique. The 'si' and 'ngi' are throwing you off. I won't give anything away, but I will say that the pronouns are tricky here.
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  1214. Thanks for taking the time to leave your thoughts.
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  1215. Thanks for watching!
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  1216. Lol! Do you think we could get them to change their name, cuz that's just plain BRILLIANT! (I'm referring to FIFA, of course.)
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  1217. Malcolm Little Thank you very much. I'll strive to!
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  1218. Very happy to hear that. Thank you!
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  1219. Thanks for the kind words!
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  1220. Thank you!
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  1221. So glad to hear that. I hope it makes linguistics a bit more enjoyable, and that you do well in the class!
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  1222. Hahah, thanks!
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  1223. Thanks for sharing some extras! Pôr as a first conjugation verb!? That's quite unique! 
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  1224. Well I thought it worked. Plus, I was happy to include it! Even after dozens of hours of seeing it during production, that hallway still creeps me out.
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  1225. I understand - happens to me every time. :D
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  1226. Thank you!!
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  1227. German weak past participles are sometimes analyzed this way: root sag- 'say' + circumfix ge-_-t = ge-sag-t 'said'. Classical Tibetan has the past tense b-(verb)-s. Hope these help!
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  1228. Good guess! It was the winner in my python calculation. I gave a nod to this video in the Hungarian one.
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  1229. +Kate Gladstone No phone! But I'll simplify: what's the one sharable "whoa, did you know...?" about the history of cursive? With that in hand, my idea funnel can compare it to other topics on the table (starting summer, since I'm now in the middle of 3 others).
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  1230. Very kind, thank you!
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  1231. JRios270 Glad you're into this! There's much more info in the book and website ( http://www.nativlang.com/romance-languages/ ). Solodow, Posner, and Harris & Vincent are also good places to start comparing the languages. Allen's Vox Latina reconstructs the changing pronunciations of Latin and early Romance. The ATILF DÉROM project may be worth a look (stella.atilf.fr/DEROM - it's in French), and there's an associated paper by Eva Buchi findable on Google Scholar. Have fun!!
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  1232. You're welcome!
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  1233. I've thought about a video on neography in general. Maybe, if I can motivate myself to spend my free time making more videos...
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  1234. Thanks, good sir! Yeah, I've exchanged words with Xidnaf. I think we're among the only ones going for popular consumption on this topic. Linguisticae, too, in French. I have a long list of things to talk about, but those pesky time/money variables get in the way!
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  1235. It very much depends on your method and your data. The method in these four videos just compares basic word lists. Applied more broadly, this method may merge with a kind of lexicostatistics. A Swadesh list betrays the Sicilian Arabic origins of Maltese. Even with fancier terms, a type of codeswitching is well known in Malta. Speakers can choose between for example 'l-ilsien malti' or 'il-lingwa maltija' to say "the Maltese language".
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  1236. "Genetically" of course. "Areally" it seems to be high in Euroversals.
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  1237. Thanks for giving it some thought and posting your idea here! I've read a similar analysis of Mexican Spanish, but focusing on "unaccusatives" instead of intransitivites more generally. For example, 'cair' and 'correr' are both intransitive (no direct object), but just 'cair' is unaccusative (no agent initiates the action). Is VS word order also dominant for 'correu o rapaz'? Similarly, are 'Morto o cão, ...' and 'Corrido o cão, ...' both heard?
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  1238. What do you want to start learning today? Weʻre a whole community here. I bet we can track down an online course you wonʻt have to pay for or a book to send you!
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  1239. Well, that impossible stamina at least speaks to your potential! If you ever feel you can give it a try, some people here spent time thinking about you and coming up with some ideas, mostly constructive: https://twitter.com/NativLang/status/969311878835875840
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  1240. I may end up splitting between a couple, but here's a link for one quoted near the end of the vid: https://mailchi.mp/culturalsurvival.org/covid19
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  1241. If this hypothetical language is a creole, it might indeed be classified as a separate and unique line. (Even then, terms like "lexifier language" exist for creole lineages.)
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  1242. Not sure. I haven't heard of "innate determinism". Sounds like it might be genetic determinism? If so, they're quite different.
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  1243. Whoa, I see you have a lot of passion for such a little mark! ;) True, that's how I most often hear "tilde" used. However, there is a linguistic use of "tilde" that's closer in meaning to "the set of superscript diacritics". Leaning on that use, Wikcionario lists both "acento" and "diéresis" as hyponyms of "tilde". Like so many words, its use depends on context.
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  1244. It ended up being with the Japanese complexity around kanji (the "systems within systems") rather than just the Han characters. Incidentally, Korea and Vietnam have historically had similar systems.
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  1245. I don't know, not sure if it's related to that seemingly pervasive "indirectness". Then again, Japanese conversation has struck me as surprisingly direct at times. If there is a connection, maybe it's by way of politeness or even "wa"...
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  1246. Hmm, that comment didn't post the way it looked in the input box. The example with VP, V', V and "give" has them all stacked above each other in a tree, if that helps.
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  1247. I'm working through a backlog of scripts, but I've put your idea on my list of suggestions for the future! Next up is a video on language and the brain.
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  1248. That's amazing - thank you for saying so!
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  1249. Thank you. Perhaps I'll keep it ;)
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  1250. WHEW!
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  1251. Do you understand the tree? If so, you can compare the rewrite rules: a verb phrase branches out into an intermediate verb node, and an intermediate verb node branches off into a verb. This is just: VP | V' | V give Since the same applies to prepositions, etc., call them all X phrases (XP), intermediate X-bar projections (X'), and just the category X. This is just a simple application of Backus-Naur Form or BNF. Let me know if that helps!
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  1252. I read their books and papers, but I refuse to follow their unnatural rules ;)
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  1253. Thank you!!
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  1254. No no, aizuchi is a thing. Maybe you anchored to a word (interrupt) I was using playfully? Are you familiar with these studies? You can follow the trail in my sources doc. That said, the epiphany you shared doesn't fall out of line with that research. Careful though, as an analogy, it might not fit the "looping" (or floor-building) conversational data from the last study I showed.
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  1255. Do you think there's a language that's trickier to pronounce than Danish? If so, which? Also, if you're not a voting patron and want to become one, this weekend is a good time – we're on the final poll for the next linguistic tale! https://www.patreon.com/posts/20879708/
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  1256. Nice. We're in the same boat!
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  1257. I'm a bit confused. But, if I understand the gist of what you're saying, origins matter for determining language family relationships. That's definitely the key component of this method.
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  1258. Thank you!
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  1259. I read a bit of a Manchu grammar a decade ago, got lost, put it down. I started to read more again when doing a patron project for Altaic (released as a post but not as a video), and now I can say I agree with you. Polish though? Very, very little :(
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  1260. Hah, it's rare to hear that said!
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  1261. And in two places! Notes about this in the infobox, along with annotations.
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  1262. Ἰωτακισμός! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nxD4GDJXCw&t=3m24s
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  1263. Thank you for timing and commenting about ads. I looked into it. Seems like YT places ads in the middle of videos longer than 8 minutes now. I found a way to turn those kind off, but I'll have to learn more about the other options. Much appreciated!
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  1264. The sources doc is linked in the info box. I don't know who those people are, nor if they use the same sources for their understanding of Middle Chinese, but I guess if they follow the scholarship they might.
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  1265. Thanks for sharing your perspective!
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  1266. I'm so glad to hear it!
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  1267. Thank you!
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  1268. Excellent. Thanks for sharing some more examples. I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoy the videos!
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  1269. I gave some references I used in my sources doc (info box). Thanks for cheering for the channel, and happy learning!
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  1270. What is your take on Lacadena's "Nahuatl syllabary"?
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  1271. Sure, 'iréis al partido' or maybe just 'vais al partido' for a match.
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