30 - Mailbag of Raspberries

631 turns

linkDaniel Midgley - Let's do a show.Why not?
linkHedvig Skirgård - ...finish doing sorry I got excited because I got cinnamon bun.And it's so crispy but I'm going to
linkDaniel Midgley - GASP
linkBen Ainslie - GASPcinnamon buns are the best!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Get yourself a husband who gives you cinnamon buns before recording.Well, maybe not right before recording.
linkBen Ainslie - I'll take yours, thank you.And I meant your husband, not your cinnamon bun.
linkBen Ainslie - MUSIC
linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this special bonus episode of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language.My name is Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team.He didn't get his linguistics knowledge from any Fancy Pants University.He learned about it in the gutter with all of us.It's Ben Ainslie,
linkBen Ainslie - SOUTH LONDON ACCENTThe University of Life, mate.That's where I've been educated
linkDaniel Midgley - There's an accent that has some attitudes with it....
linkLAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - Mm hmm.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Very much so.
linkBen Ainslie - I've just heard that phrase.I can't even remember what film or television show that's from, but I distinctly remember that exact phrase being delivered, probably in a much better version of that accent.
linkDaniel Midgley - Was it Michael Caine?It sounds like you were doing Michael Caine.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Or
linkBen Ainslie - If it was I apologize on behalf of Michael Caine and everyone else.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Mitchell and Webb.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, maybe Mitchell and Webb.That sounds like a Mitchell and Webb thing.Huh?Anyway, you should do Hedvig's now.I'm sure it's much better.
linkDaniel Midgley - She did learn linguistics at a Fancy Pants University.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I did.
linkDaniel Midgley - But she hasn't let that keep her from wearing other forms of clothing besides pants.It's Hedvig Skirgård
linkBen Ainslie - I thought it was going somewhere different.I thought you were gonna go:but that doesn't keep her from rolling around in the gutter with the rest of us.
linkDaniel Midgley - She wears different clothing in the gutter and elsewhere.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no, I do.I am actually wearing Fancy Pants today.Wearing some lovely pants that I bought in Canberra that have a sort of kangaroo pocket.
linkDaniel Midgley - Are you?!
linkBen Ainslie - Do you know what?I'm wearing some fancy pants right now too, some pajama pants.So I feel like Hedvig and I should send pictures of our pants to add to the show notes page.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, I will too.I will also do my pants.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Sure, sure, I'll do that
linkDaniel Midgley - Hang on, getting the pants selfie
linkBen Ainslie - Daniel Daniel, stop.I feel like you're pantsless and we really need to stop here.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's all right.All right.There we go.You'll see what kind of pants I'm wearing.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's...it makes it worse.Definitely didn't improve my suspicions
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm not specifying
linkBen Ainslie - You should definitely introduce the third and most important member.
linkDaniel Midgley - We have a very special guest joining us for this bonus Patreon episode.It's the host of the surpassingly popular Allusionist podcast.It's Helen Zaltzman.Helen, hello.
linkHelen - Hello.I'm sorry that I did not wear special pants for this.I'm wearing a dress.That is zero pants.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Dresses are lovely to wear, though.
linkHelen - Yes.
linkDaniel Midgley - Dresses are great.Does it have pockets?
linkHelen - No, because I made it and I didn't want to make pockets
linkBen Ainslie - My broad understanding of pants could be sort of extended to anything that covers the lower half of the body.
linkHelen - Oh, okay.Well, I'm wearing a...dress pants.
linkBen Ainslie - I'm a very permissive definitionist
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, very.I think they need to have one entrance and two exits.
linkHelen - Hmm.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, interesting.Well, some of us are clearly prescriptivists
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think pants need to have a separator between the legs.I'm, I'm basically a dictator.Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - I'm glad we're on the same page.Moving on.
linkHelen - I'm wearing the British form of pants which is the under kind.
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, of course the British.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah okay, I didn't really expect to go here this quickly in the show.But I will say this.Something strange happened Helen, on this very day.An old high school chum emailed me out of the blue, because this is what you have to do to reach me since I canned my Facebook account.She emailed me, we hadn't heard from each other in years, and the very first thing she wrote was "Hey, there's this podcast maybe you've heard it before.It's The Allusionist, Helen Zaltzman.She's really smart and funny.Also,"
linkHelen - Oh no!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, she's like going on about this and she says also, she says "this Veronica Mars podcast that I really like even though you might not" and then
linkHedvig Skirgård - WHISPERSI love Veronica Mars
linkDaniel Midgley - I was trying to find a way to say that you were on the show with us tonight without it sounding like a total flex you know?Oh, yeah, I totally know Helen.nails emoji.
linkHelen - You should have said "Oh that asshole, no thanks.That amateur podcast?"
linkHelen - LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's some real Truman show vibes there that someone brought it up?
linkDaniel Midgley - I've done Truman Show.
linkBen Ainslie - Wait, what?Hang on Alright, I you were doing a bit I was just like, Wait, is that a code for something that I don't understand?What's doing a Truman Show I want to know about this
linkHedvig Skirgård - To me, Truman's show is like when you when you think about something and then like the radio plays that song you're thinking about
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Or you start seeing ads for stuff
linkHedvig Skirgård - Like when things seem to be like, you'll life seems to be choreographed and like produced.
linkBen Ainslie - I'm trying to think of a witty portmanteau of deja vu and Truman Show to encapsulate that moment.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Truman-du?
linkDaniel Midgley - Deja vuman show
linkHelen - Dejatru
linkBen Ainslie - And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, she is on the far more successful linguistics Podcast.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkHelen - Well, it's just earlier in the day where I am.I have an advantage, cuz you know, I'm not as tired.
linkBen Ainslie - I'm gonna lean on that give me that you've just offered me and say yes, that's definitely.
linkDaniel Midgley - So basically everybody in the world Helen knows you're awesome.But in case there's someone who doesn't.Could you please just give us a quick rundown of all the stuff you're doing?
linkHelen - Well, yeah, I make three podcasts predominantly:The Allusionist, which is an entertainment show about language, and Answer Me This, where we answer questions from the audience on a great range of topics.And then Veronica Mars Investigations, where we're recapping the television show Veronica Mars.And we've nearly finished.So there it is.There it all is.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I just finished my first look through a Veronica Mars songs the movie just a few weeks ago.So it's still all very raw.
linkHelen - Fresh.Yes, it sort of starts stronger than it ends.
linkBen Ainslie - I've never tried it myself.But I'm a huge fan of The Good Place.And so now I have been on sort of cautiously interested in going back and seeing some of her earlier work.
linkHelen - She's amazing in it, but it's a very different show.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's not that similar.I like The Good Place.I like Veronica Mars, but it's not that similar.But it does seem to be a trend I've noticed among boys that I'm interested in.So my ex and my husband are both like Veronica Mars stans.
linkHelen - Interesting!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think I think if you meet a boy, and he says he likes Veronica Mars, apparently, maybe that's a good sign.
linkHelen - I don't know.Because it's it's a show with fairly terrible gender politics and a lot of sexual violence.So maybe not.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.Yes.
linkBen Ainslie - To be fair, the thing you've just described is unfortunately applies to, like 85% of all media being so sad that that isn't a very exclusionary metric for like a lot of things that are on television.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's maybe a little bit different for Veronica Mars, because the male writers, I'm...you, Helen obviously know a lot more about this, but I just watched it.And this is my understanding.The male writers want to make Veronica, the kind of feminist that they think women should be.
linkHelen - One who hates other women,
linkHedvig Skirgård - And who often...exactly hates other women, but then they need to make it so she still likes her super valley girlfriend who passes away and she has some other very feminine type friends.But her best friend is Mack who's also very tomboy and "not like other girls." In general Veronica Mars is "not like other girls."
linkHelen - "Not like other girls"
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that is I agree.And it comes off very often as very, like a male writer has done this.
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm thinking of watching The Good Place again.And they say that the first time you watch as Eleanor the second time you watch it as Janet.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's interesting.I like that.That's a good take.
linkDaniel Midgley - Not mine.This is a special bonus episode for our wonderful patrons.If you're listening to this reasonably soon after its release, thank you for being a patron you are helping us to do stuff like transcripts and you're making it possible for us to do mail outs and keep the show going and do the work we'd love to do.If you're listening to this quite a bit later, because we released it into the wild a few months afterwards, then thank you as well for listening.And if you want to join the movement....If you want to hear bonus episodes, the moment they come out and hang with us on our discord channel, head over to Patreon and support the show and while you're there, Helen are you on?
linkHelen - I am!The Allusionists has a Patreon.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Great
linkDaniel Midgley - Go to The Allusionist, Patreon and support Helen as well.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And if you are a patron right now help me because I need help with my quiz questions.I need quiz questions, please.Thank you.That's it.
linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you.Shall we get to some questions?
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, please.Wait, do we want to do the news first?Don't we have a little news thing?
linkDaniel Midgley - We're just jumping straight in.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - Jumping in.No Words of the Week either.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wow.Yeah, this is, this is exciting.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, shoot.This one comes from TioFrio on twitter, @BeechMeister.We've seen them a few times."Are there any languages that use the raspberry sound as a phoneme?If not, why do you think that is?" Well, how do we start?
linkHelen - Because you'd be spitting everywhere?
linkDaniel Midgley - Straight to the right answer.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, what is the raspberry sound?Let's start there.
linkBen Ainslie - PBBBFFTT
linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it?Is it that?
linkBen Ainslie - It is that
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, do you need to push your lips against something, or not?
linkBen Ainslie - Your tongue
linkDaniel Midgley - your tongue?
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no.Do you need to doFART SOUNDlike towards your something?Okay, you goPBBFFT PBBFFT
linkHelen - No, that's optional.That's just for flair.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's optional.In that case, I would argue, which I argued with Daniel before the show, that this is essentially what is known as a bilabial trill
linkDaniel Midgley - No, no, no, no, no, no, no Hang on.We need to define what this is.This is...using a bilabial trill likeB(BRRR) orP'(PPPFFF).The first one was pulmonaryB.And the second one was ejectiveP'.That's not a raspberry.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, then make a raspberry
linkDaniel Midgley - To do a raspberry, you must put your tongue out.You have to put your tongue outFART/RASBERRY SOUNDlike that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, but when you do it towards like, like I just did towards my armFART/RASBERRY SOUND.I don't put my tongue out.When I do it on like little babies stomachs.I don't put my tongue out.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so no, no, no, Hedvig brings up a good point here, because you can do a raspberry on someone, in which case it does not involve the tongue between the lips, because that would just be super fucking creepy.
linkDaniel Midgley - I know why that's not a speech sound.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, but, but I am also prepared here to back Daniel in that when doing it unassisted, or what we like to call a blonde raspberry.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - Interesting.
linkBen Ainslie - You've got to have your tongue between the two lips to make that sort of that trilling sound.And I would go one step even further, which is to say a true afficionado of the raspberry will do it whilst vibrating both the top and the bottom lip simultaneously against
linkHedvig Skirgård - This I agree with.Yes.Okay.Helen, would you...so even if they're like the prototypical non...when you do a raspberry not on a person,
linkDaniel Midgley - The blonde raspberry
linkHelen - An air raspberry.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you agree that the prototypical one like Daniel and Ben has to have a tongue element outside of the teeth?
linkHelen - Right, I'm gonna have to try it now.Please, excuse me.Okay, so
linkDaniel Midgley - This is good radio
linkHelen - MINOR FART SOUNDthat's with tongue, this is without tongueVERY LOUD FART SOUND.So I would count both versions rasberries.
linkBen Ainslie - No, I disagree.They're clearly different.
linkHedvig Skirgård - See, very similar!Thank you, thank you.
linkBen Ainslie - As similar as M and N
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no.You introduced a guest as a very important part of this show and she's made a judgment call in my favor.
linkHelen - Well I just think if you're, if you're asking this question, you might as well cover the betongued raspberry and the tongueless raspberry right?
linkDaniel Midgley - All right, well, let's start with calling it what it is.So this could be defined that the blonde raspberryBEN SNICKERScould be defined as a voiceless labiolingual trill.
linkBen Ainslie - MUMBLESa voiceless labiolingual trill.Okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - Now, this doesn't appear on the IPA chart, which is why I think, no, there are no languages that use it as a speech sound.If we did find it in a language, we would add it.However, I do notice that it appears on the....well that's what they did with the, with theTHINKING SOUNDSV with the tilda and an R?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but you can probably add a bunch of diacritics and get to one maybe,
linkDaniel Midgley - Absolutely, um, I did find it somewhere though.Not on the IPA chart.But the extIPA, symbols for disordered speech.This is a, this is a thing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.Yes, yes
linkDaniel Midgley - It uses a weird character that I've never seen before.It's the Roman numeral 1000, CD, that's the Unicode name.And what it looks like is imagine a C and then a D butted right up against each other.It looks like a butt, which is...fitting because it makes a butt-like sound.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Right?It's a bit like when you have an O and an E stuck together.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, yeah, but it's two O's or a C or a D.Yeah.Okay, so let's focus on that one for a second.Why not use...I think Helen's answer is probably a really good one, because you're just blowing saliva everywhere.And it's gross.
linkHelen - not ideal.
linkBen Ainslie - Is there not other speech sounds that do that, though?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Exactly.So I, before the show, I sent Daniel two examples of the tongueless voiced bilabial trill.So that no tongue and it's voiced and you use both lips.One of them, the first one is from a song by A Tribe Called Quest, it's called Ham and Eggs.Where he goes, "BBBBRRridge!"
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Which I think really is a good example of bilabial trills, it's my favorite example.The other one is a recording of a language in Vanuatu called Axamb.And it has, yeah, it just has the more it's, the more natural bilabial trill in the middle of a wordDIFFERENT RECORDING, MALE VOICEᵐʙoroᵑgonsu-nThat is what a bilabial natural sound would sound like.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.And that was the word "nose" in Axamb using the bilabial trill, which is definitely a speech sound in lots and lots of languages.So How come nobody goes?Hi, my name is DaRASBERRY SOUNDiel.
linkBen Ainslie - Is it because it's really hard to chain together with other phonemes?Like much harder than other phonemes?Because you have to kind of stop, do it, and then resume?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, you could only really do it if your sounds right before and after are also in a similar position, which most of the sounds aren't.
linkDaniel Midgley - That's a good point.I do find that difficulty is kind of in the mouth of the beholder, though.
linkBen Ainslie - Maybe, are there certain phonemes that only ever sort of start a word in certain languages?Because I could see the raspberry being like, PPFleasantly or something like that.You know what I mean?Yeah.
linkHedvig Skirgård - This bilabial trill, from Axamb example is in the middle of a word.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right.Okay.Well,
linkDaniel Midgley - My guess here, we're always having some tension between putting effort in to make ourselves understood.And then, you know, easing back, if not so much effort is required.And I just feel like theRASBERRYsound takes a lot of effort of...you're putting your articulators pretty far forward
linkBen Ainslie - I...look...I've got to be honest, I, as a not linguist with no experience in the field in any way,
linkDaniel Midgley - Why start now?
linkBen Ainslie - I find that hard to sort of buy into, and the only reason is, all fucking speeches hard.Like it takes human beings a really long time to figure out how to do it and like heaps of trial and error.And to my like, super Western, Anglo-centric, sort of brain, a bunch of the sort of non-English phonemes, from places like Africa, seem really, really hard and difficult to me.But I'm sure they're not, I'm sure they're not any harder or more difficult than any of the phonemes that I speak.And I know classically that like in Japanese, putting a P and an L next to each other.For a Japanese person is like, what?That's impossible.Whereas to me, it's just like:no, that's just the sound in purple.So I don't know, I don't find that it's a bit tougher to do is necessarily that good a reason?
linkHelen - Why don't know, people are super lazy, I think probably in English anyway, you're just going to lazy it out and say, put instead ofRASBERRY SOUNDbecause it is much less mouth effort, do not underestimate how lazy people are
linkBen Ainslie - Well we dropped to the silent B off the end of things.So I suppose you're right,
linkHedvig Skirgård - Because there's a lot of things we can do with our mouth, but that we don't do and not because they're so difficult, we can't even produce them with our mouths, we often can do that.We can do a lot of weird things with our mouth that we don't use in language all the time.But if you want to say a sentence, you want to say a sound, then another sound and another sound, there are things that don't really meet that threshold of like Ben was saying from the start, that maybe don't go well together.And like Helen was saying, you know, you can't underestimate how lazy you need to be in order for that to be a quick processing thing that you can do in milliseconds.
linkBen Ainslie - So what you're kind of talking about here is the like blank tiles in the IPA chart, right?Some of them because we can't literally pronounce those sounds, but other ones because we kind of could but they're just stupid and dumb and really hard.And so they've just never made their way into language.Would the raspberry sound just be that?Like would it be potentially like a bit of a blank tile in the IPA chart?
linkHedvig Skirgård - There's not even a place in the usually the IPA chart for the lingual stuff, is there?
linkDaniel Midgley - Not labia lingual, no.There's no labiolingual column.
linkHedvig Skirgård - There's labiodental which is your lip to your teeth.But what about?
linkDaniel Midgley - fandv.I got one more.We've heard a number of hypotheses, the living saliva loca theory, the too much effort theory.Could it be that it just sounds taboo?Like it sounds like a fart?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah!
linkHedvig Skirgård - No...
linkDaniel Midgley - Farts are pretty universal.Nobody wants to, nobody wants to sound like that.Nobody wants to hear that.
linkBen Ainslie - I actually think this this one I buy the most.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Really?Why?
linkBen Ainslie - Yep.Taboo hypothesis.
linkDaniel Midgley - Taboo avoidance, it's normal.We know it exists.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So my...when I fart it makes other sounds as well as some of them sound like other language sounds
linkBen Ainslie - Sure.Yeah, yeah.And like the, the this the words people say for a dog barking all over the world are different, right?But like, I don't know, I reckon you could go to just about any culture in the world.And
linkHelen - People love the fart sound.
linkBen Ainslie - Exactly.You could go to any culture in the world and say in that person's language, "Hey, hey hey, what does this sound like?FART SOUND" and I'm pretty sure every culture in the world in their language would be like, that sounds like you farting.
linkHelen - I think if it was that taboo, people wouldn't be blowing raspberries on babies for fun.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes!Yeah
linkHelen - And people do find fart sounds really funny.So I think that's partly because it's like, oooh, but like, they're not a particularly outre forbidden sound are they?
linkBen Ainslie - Just, just to throw it out there, because I just want to throw good money after bad now...Do we perhaps think that we sanction the blowing of raspberries on babies because babies are one of the only areas where those kind of body functions are not seen as particularly taboo, because we have to deal with them all the time?
linkHelen - No, I think it's just because the baby's not verbal yet, so...
linkBen Ainslie - Fair enough, yeah,
linkHelen - You can use the phonemes you're not otherwise using.
linkBen Ainslie - And and at the end of the day, it's really hard not to blow a raspberry on an infant's tumtum, because it's just so satisfying.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I try and blow them on my cats.It's...with limited success
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh my gosh
linkBen Ainslie - That sounds unsuccessful and dangerous simultaneously
linkDaniel Midgley - Inadvisable!
linkHelen - Unless you've got one of those furless cats
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh my god!
linkBen Ainslie - DISGUSTED SOUNDSblowing a raspberry on a Sphinx that that you just wow, you can't gouge out your mind's eye, Helen.
linkDaniel Midgley - If you have one of those cats and you can blow raspberry, please send us what it sounds like.
linkBen Ainslie - Why would you do that?Don't!No!
linkDaniel Midgley - Why would you NOT do that?
linkBen Ainslie - That's like a person who has an aversion to feet and you just going "hey can you just send me like pictures of your stinky feet?" Like no.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I can probably do a raspberry on ???.I'll try.Oh, what's the next theory?
linkDaniel Midgley - Hang on?I did.Oh, that's the only three.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay
linkDaniel Midgley - I've got saliva everywhere.
linkBen Ainslie - I like how Hedvig sounds disappointed.Like, "Daniel, I expected you to come up with more theories."
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no.I like it.These are fair.Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Saliva everywhere.Too hard to make and sounds taboo.I didn't want to do this, but I'm making a Twitter poll right now.And we're gonna come back to it at the end.Okay.Okay, there we go.Next one.This one comes from James on Patreon."I just looked up the origins of confab on Etymonline because you're always going on about it.And then through to confabulation, and from there to *BHA, as a root." Okay, now that means to speak.That's what it was in proto Indo-European.James continues, "however, it seems most of the words connected to *BHA I am familiar with have become more like for from Greek finance, which also means to speak.The broader question is, how can phonetics change so much from a bilabial voiced plosivebto a bilabial, unvoiced fricativef.Are there examples like this in more recent memory, where we can observe perhaps in the last 100 years in other languages, or maybe English as a nod to the language of the show?Totally Love you guys.Keep up the awesome work, et cetera, Kiss Kiss Kiss."
linkBen Ainslie - Thank you for sending us those kisses at the end, James.Helen, Daniel, and Henrik, can you please explain every aspect of this question to me because I don't understand.
linkHelen - Well I'm not a trained linguist.I'm out.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, Daniel and Hedvig, can you please explain to Helen and I?
linkHedvig Skirgård - One of the things to keep in mind about what we're talking about here, is that we have three kinds of sort of evidence.We have modern languages and the sounds they have.We have records of ancient languages, like ancient Greek, where we think we know what ancient Greek sounded like.And then we have reconstructed languages.Now reconstructed languages rely on the first two.And when you do reconstruction and historical linguistics, you try and find the solution to the two you have, and what things you have in the language that you find, try and find the solution that is the most parsimonious.The Occam's razor that is a simplest, but also historical linguists employs specific, they have certain ideas that certain sounds are more likely to change into other sounds.So they'll say, Oh, it's more likely that an S goes through a H, than a H goes to an S, or something like that.
linkBen Ainslie - Like so we've we see this with like, Is it like D and TH as well?Like?I for some reason, in my brain like, pader and father, like cognates, and that sort of thing, right?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, those kinds of things
linkDaniel Midgley - Or dental going to teeth?You know,
linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Yeah.So there are a lot of these.But it means that there are certain sounds, for example, that are just very rare to occur in ancient languages.Do you see my point?Because they are supposed to be in these chains.Right?So if you go backwards, you just sort of go one way.I don't know if...So I was hoping that if I gave you that overview and context that Daniel maybe had looked up the things about the specific root?Is that true.
linkDaniel Midgley - I want to approach it from a slightly different direction.So James is asking, if you have Bblike a stop.That's called a plosive.Because it explodes.B, and then later on, you've got Fffor those words.How did that happen?And it's actually, it's actually has kind of an easy answer.It happens all the time.It's got a name, it's called lenition.And the word lenition just means weakening.And that's where Ben was talking about.Sorry, which What was your example Ben?Was that?
linkBen Ainslie - Father and Pader.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you got Pader going to father so there's a Pp, a nice plosive going to Ff.It also happens with cornus, which in English appears as horn, the Kkgoes to a Hh.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It also happens in Polynesian with S to H, Savai'i becomes Hawaii.
linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, very good.I noticed that Mater, mother in Latin goes mother, so the T in the middle goes to a TH.And, in fact, in French, it goes to mere.It's disappeared entirely.And that's lenition too.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and it's, so because we've seen this pattern over and over again, with ancient languages and modern languages, we've built up this idea that there are these specific rules that like S goes more often to H than H goes to S, or P goes to F more often than F goes to P.But the truth is also that we actually haven't done historical linguistics on that many languages, if we're just honest with ourselves.So some of these rules might also be a bit wrong.So when you see a reconstructed root, there's a reason why they mark them out with an asterisk at the front.It's because you should take the precise phonetics probably with a grain of salt.It's probably more likely to say there's some sort of word that is the ancestor of these words.And it maybe was somewhere along these lines, but maybe the precise phonetics, you should sort of be a bit careful with.
linkDaniel Midgley - We're kind of to the end of my expertise on this.But could it possibly be a cycle where things start out with stops, and then they, they,
linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, that's a fun concept
linkDaniel Midgley - Weaken all the way down?And then they sort of, we start putting stops in again, I know we're talking about very long timescales.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I've heard people suggest that, that if...because if you just go on this lenition path, for example, sooner or later, you'll just end up with a morpheme that's just like a vowel.LikeNON DESCRIPT VOWEL SOUND
linkDaniel Midgley - Everything disappears.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So there's this theory that you add on, maybe not content in the same place, maybe not even in the same morpheme slot of phoneme slot, but that you might be adding on content somewhere else in the word or morpheme to bulk up the phonetic distinctiveness.Because as you go down this lenition path, you end up at, you guessed it, Danish, you know.
linkLAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - As we've done a show on
linkBen Ainslie - Never fail to rely on a Swede to just have a good old swing at the Danes
linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, we had a whole show on it, so I feel entitled to do it.But there's this idea that maybe maybe you don't make the S that went to a H become an S again, but maybe you add an S somewhere else in the word.
linkDaniel Midgley - You do something.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, you, you probably need to do something because otherwise all of the languages that exist today will sort of be like uhhhhh, and they're not
linkBen Ainslie - To be fair, I think you could also criticize that like a broad Australian accent for just being ridiculously valley with not a lot of consonants.So like:[AUSTRALIAN ACCENT AS IF HE DOESN'T HAVE ONE ALREADY AH yeaaa ate,.
linkDaniel Midgley - And then that's that tension between, you know, like, efficiency or what some people call laziness.And yeah, I call it efficiency.And you know, the drive to be understood that, which is, after all, what we're kind of doing around here.We should probably point out also that fortition, the opposite of lenition, fortition is strengthening.That happens to.That's how for example, burthen and murther became burden and murder.Sometimes sounds do strengthen,
linkHedvig Skirgård - But the important part is that doesn't necessitate that it's the same phoneme that gets strengthened.It's probably somewhere else in the word.
linkBen Ainslie - You can just do some crazy other shit in another place.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Okay, so that's lenition.Thanks, James for that question.
linkBen Ainslie - Kiss Kiss Kiss.Sorry, I just had to send it back.It seems rude not to.
linkDaniel Midgley - You don't have to reciprocate.It's okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - For the record.James wrote xX xX.I feel like I need to say that.
linkBen Ainslie - That's what the kiss kisses.
linkDaniel Midgley - Those are kisses.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I know.I'm just saying that if you wrote Kiss, kiss, kiss.K-I-S-S That would be a different vibe.
linkDaniel Midgley - That's true.
linkBen Ainslie - That?Okay, fair enough
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay fair enough.I didn't want to make it weird
linkBen Ainslie - The fidelity of James's message has been heightened.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Maybe it's like the three x's on a cartoon bottle of ale.
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, perhaps poison.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, maybe
linkDaniel Midgley - Cass on Patreon says, "am I burned out or burnt out?Or do I just have burnout?"
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oooh!
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm sorry Cass
linkBen Ainslie - I would like you guys to explain the difference between burned and burnt very much.Because I didn't realize that I had that question until right the second.
linkDaniel Midgley - That's smart Patrons.
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I think we should ask you, Ben.What do you feel when you see the word burned?
linkBen Ainslie - Oh nooo
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, honestly, because this isn't a technical linguistics puzzle.This is a native speaker puzzle.You need to close your eyes.Pull inside of yourself.Take a deep breath.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no, this is just like therapy.And I do really badly in that context.Okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And then when I say, when I say burnt, what do you see?
linkBen Ainslie - What I heard ED just then, is that what you mean?Like voiced?
linkDaniel Midgley - With a T
linkHedvig Skirgård - When I say burnt, what do you see?
linkBen Ainslie - Some...Okay.I see a, maybe this is just like my Australian-ness but like I see a landscape that is black
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, interesting.And then, we'll try it again.We'll take a deep breath.Yep.DEEP BREATH IN
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - Burned
linkBen Ainslie - I see a person who has sustained an injury that we call a burn.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah,
linkDaniel Midgley - Interesting.Okay.
linkBen Ainslie - I don't know, did I pass the test?This is just making me so nervous!Am I a good dancer?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, you did.You said, you said what you saw.That's all you had to do.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, this is like therapy.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you think one is more intentional?
linkBen Ainslie - I think burned, ED, is more intentional, like there has been more intent behind it.
linkDaniel Midgley - If I say the word toast, do you think burned or burnt?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Burnt
linkBen Ainslie - Burnt
linkHedvig Skirgård - But I burned the toast, and the toast is burnt.
linkHelen - So it's more of a state of being and burned is more of a verb.Even though they are the same, aren't they?Like just burnt is older than burned?
linkBen Ainslie - Okay so burnt with a T is older Helen Is that what you're saying?
linkHelen - Yes.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - And also we tend to use it as an adjective.So you have burnt toast, burnt brick, burnt offering.Those all have Ts
linkBen Ainslie - The landscape is burnt.
linkDaniel Midgley - But if you say I burned, you could you could say either I burned the toaster or I burnt I've, I've burnt the toast.They're both okay.So for burnout, you might have burnout, one word, but probably not burn out.Nouns get compounded.I would say that these days, you're probably burned out.So I took a look in the Google Ngram corpus and I found that burned and burned out are more popular than burnt or burnt out in American and British English.
linkBen Ainslie - I wonder though, if that is purely a reflection of our writing habits not really mirroring our speech habits.Because I feel like I've heard people say burnt out more often than I have heard people say burned out.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I did do a little check on Youglish.com which allows you to look through the annotations in YouTube videos and it looks like burned out and burnt out are about 50% 50% in spoken English, at least on YouTube videos.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And as we discovered in our little breathing exercise earlier when I said burnt the first time, Ben thought I said the other word.So they're excessively similar.
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, very, very very very
linkHelen - Well that's probably why burnt with a T existed and then the ED was to make it more regular with other past tenses when people were trying to even up spelling.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah I think that's a good shout
linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, Cass, we hope that you're okay that you're not too burnt out.And thanks a lot for that question.Let's go to Britta on Twitter (twitta!)."Okay, philosophy Twitter, why are they called metaphysicians and not metaphysis????" Four question marks
linkHelen - Oh, err, because physician, well metaphysician is an older word than physicist.Metaphysician’s from about 15th century, physicist from 19th century.
linkDaniel Midgley - Nice.
linkBen Ainslie - Ah, I was gonna have a totally different guess.I want to say what my guess is because really like human beings
linkHelen - Oh, I ruined the game!
linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no
linkDaniel Midgley - No, this is good.
linkBen Ainslie - You didn't ruin the game.I just fully expected that meta-physsulll whatever's whichever one we want to use, chose physicians because far more authority and status is conferred with the position of a physician rather than a physicist, even though a physicist is still a very high status profession.I feel like basically no one beats doctors in terms of them saying stuff and us going:yeah, okay.I'll do that.
linkHelen - Well that's sort of right, because the person who coined physicist as in a student of physics was a man called the Reverend William, we will?Possibly we-will?It's spelled W-H-E-W-E-L-L, which I know it's, I don't know how to do it.Do you?
linkBen Ainslie - Nope
linkDaniel Midgley - Nope
linkHelen - He published a book in 1840 called The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.And he said, "as we cannot use physician for a cultivator of physics, I have called him a physicist.We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general, I should incline to call him a scientist.Thus, we might say that as an artist, as a musician, painter or poet, a scientist as a mathematician, physicist or naturalist." So
linkDaniel Midgley - This guy's on fire.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, he's just dropping the heat.
linkDaniel Midgley - Keep going!
linkHelen - Yeah, I don't, I can'tLAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - Keep going, Whewell (wee-well)
linkHelen - So many W's.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I was gonna say that naturalist must have been the earlier thing.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it was.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's what like Aristotle thought he was.
linkDaniel Midgley - I couldn't believe this but metaphysician has been in use since the mid 15th century?
linkHelen - It was a growth industry.
linkDaniel Midgley - Amazing
linkHelen - The Silicon Valley of its time
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, maybe we should tell our listeners, because I totally know, what is the metaphysicist?
linkBen Ainslie - Well, a metaphysician.
linkDaniel Midgley - Metaphysics is just like making up bullshit about supernatural bullshit.That's what it is.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, let's go to Helen for a definition next
linkBen Ainslie - Is it not a real thing?
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, an early definition of metaphysics from 1569 is things of supernatural and the science of them.So I think it's just pin balanced Angel counting.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I believe there.Isn't there a non Christian kind of metaphysics as well?
linkDaniel Midgley - That's bullshit too.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, wow coming out strong.
linkDaniel Midgley - No but anything supernatural, I don't care if it's Christian or not,
linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you not have a spiritual bone in your body anymore?
linkBen Ainslie - Have you not met excommunicated religious people before?
linkDaniel Midgley - I was not excommunicated, I resigned.
linkBen Ainslie - Sorry, like, people who have turned away from their community like, like they go harder than any other group of atheists.Like, I'm like a casual atheists.I'm like:Yeah, man, God isn't real, but like, whatever you do you, whereas people from those religions are just like no
linkHelen - Evangelical atheists.
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, exactly.
linkDaniel Midgley - I'll change my mind with any evidence of supernatural anything.
linkBen Ainslie - But Daniel, this one time, I put a crystal on my friend, and then they got better.So
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that's it.Okay.
linkBen Ainslie - So metaphysics is hippy wawa nonsense, like, just if we put just like a big line under it, is that fundamentally what we're talking about?
linkDaniel Midgley - Study of the supernatural
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's it's no, but it's also the study of the world as it is.It's actually, the way I learned about it for the first time, which I thought was how you're using, it is from Aristotle of like, is answering question like:What is there?And what is it like?And what are objects?And what is knowing?And what is time is?
linkBen Ainslie - Well, that sounds like philosophy.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah
linkDaniel Midgley - Epistemology
linkHelen - All questions.No answers.
linkBen Ainslie - So is metaphysics just philosophy?Or is it different?
linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it's a kind of philosophy.I just pulled up Wikipedia.And it's this is the kind of philosophy
linkHelen - Yeah, the science of the inward in the central nature of things.But also science itself didn't mean what we now use the term to mean until fairly recently, I think.I thought it just meant knowledge more generally for hundreds of years.
linkBen Ainslie - This is why we need Helen on the show more often because she has such wonderful things like the Reading Rainbow of like cool etymologies.Now you know,
linkHelen - I just, you know, as an evangelical atheist for pedantry.Now, I just delight in telling people you know, these things aren't concrete meant something else for ages don't get too possessive about.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no science for sure.
linkBen Ainslie - It's really hard to be like linguistics adjacent.Before you just almost like, against your will have to adopt that idea.Like, at a certain point, the amount of evidence about how fucking up in the air all of this shit is just on a long timeline.You're just like:aw, I can't really have a strong view on much now.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkHelen - Will release in a way
linkHedvig Skirgård - Sobering
linkDaniel Midgley - seems to me that metaphysics had a lot of stuff, but bit by bit people took it away and said:Okay, we're carving this off and it's epistemology.Okay, we're carving that off, and it's ontology.And pretty much all that was left was the supernatural.Because everything else became science.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I think maybe this is a discussion about classification.Because as I'm reading about here, I think people use metaphysics as the umbrella category for ontology and epistemology.So, but but I don't know.
linkDaniel Midgley - So not entirely supernatural.
linkHedvig Skirgård - No
linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel” Okay, that's cool.
linkBen Ainslie - I think that the real test here would be call up like a sort of academic specializing in ontology and be like:do you describe yourself as a metaphysician?And if the answer is no, then I think we have a fairly clear answer about who this would probably pertains to a
linkDaniel Midgley - Twitter poll!Bye for now, the answer to this question and it kind of was in the tweet replies already, but metaphysician came first because they had access to the word physician whereas physicist wouldn't be around for a long time.Couldn't be used.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's a really cool piece of evidence.Helen, thank you for bringing it to show.
linkHelen - Oh, my pleasure.Couldn't come empty handed!
linkBen Ainslie - Shooting from the hit with the etymology, pew pew
linkDaniel Midgley - Bill on Patreon says "Hey, y'all love the pod.Keep up the good work.Can you help me find a non-ablest replacement for lame in my lexicon?"
linkBen Ainslie - I've been struggling with this myself, Bill.
linkDaniel Midgley - "Your replace a slur from your lexicon series is one of my favorite segments and I haven't been able to figure this one out.You'd do a great service to me and my friends.I've heard people try to use pathetic as a replacement but pathetic lacks the useful connotations that lame has.At least it has them here in North Carolina, USA.I think those useful connotations, there's something like pathetic because your social privilege separates you from reality.I've also described lame as evoking an idiot white suburban dad who thinks he's figured the world out because he had an easy life.I don't know y'all.Maybe something like Karen-ish could work?But since I'm a white man, Karen-ish has sexist overtones." Boy, Bill, you are really exploring every angle on this one.
linkHelen - Listen, Bill real talk.Okay?Lame doesn't really mean any of the connotations that you have listed.What it really means is physical disability.Every other meaning it has is just the connotations of ableism, which means, I don't think you'll find an exact synonym for what you think it means.And you won't find one term for all circumstances in which you would use this word.So think about what it is you're trying to say in each of these specific circumstances.Like sometimes people are being pathetic.Sometimes you just want to dismiss whatever they're saying, without really specifying why.Sometimes they're being boring, sometimes just rubbish, we would say, in Britain.Insipid, inadequate
linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that's an excellent point.I was also thinking that it's going to be really hard to find a perfect match.One that came to mind for me that might cover some of the use cases is basic.I think that it's not going to be...listen, we can't...we can sit here and list like some ideas for Bill but we're never gonna be able to find one perfect replacement.But I like the ones you were listening to Helen, I think there we good.
linkHelen - Parochial maybe?For what he's describing, as well.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Parochial.That's quite fancy
linkBen Ainslie - I've always favored....Because I've struggled with this a lot.I really like, in terms of, I'm going to try and answer in terms of the spirit of the question for Bill.Like a good, versatile, non-ablest non-homophobic, you know, all the all the various umbrella kind of thing.I really like wanker
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkHelen - I wish Americans would get on board with wanker, I think they'd enjoy it so much.They don't really have those, like mid tier swears.
linkBen Ainslie - It's just such a Yeah, they don't have a masturbatory thing I know.
linkHelen - Bollocks as well
linkHedvig Skirgård - But what's wrong with masturbating?I don't get
linkBen Ainslie - Nothing.And I guess I guess at worst, it's not particularly sex positive.But I've got to be honest, in the like, in the spectrum of people who probably need people looking out for them.People who masturbate are probably not on that list right now.Like maybe we'll get there one day, but unless we get to some, I don't know.Bizarre Handmaid's Tale type future.I think for now, people who masturbate probably don't need their stuff protected as much as say, people with a disability or Black people or whatever.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh yeah, definitely that
linkHelen - I don't use this word.And I'm never stuck for a criticism of something.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know if this is helpful or not.But I, recent lockdown and also end of my PhD, I find it sometimes a hard time to express myself when I'm a little bit stressed or anxious.And I've come into this pattern of using very basic, very small sentences.Like, I don't feel well.Period.I don't like this.Period.I want to go lie down now.Period.I don't want go to that thing.
linkBen Ainslie - You've basically become a simplistic automaton basically.
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, but but I, but I like it.Like just it's again, to go back to like therapyLAUGHS.Like restating things in the simplest of terms, when it's like, I don't like this thing.I don't like this person.I would like to not have to do anything with this person anymore.
linkBen Ainslie - You've basically become Hal from 2001 as Dave is shutting him down.AS HALNo, Dave do that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no, a little bit.I'm an advocate for this type of thing.And if you're really into this kind of thing, I recommend checking out natural semantic meta-language.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is when people try and come up with definitions for words, maybe such as lame, using only about 60 to 70 basic words.And there'll be like:"there is the thing, that the person talking doesn't like the thing," that will be like a description of something like lame, I'm into it.
linkDaniel Midgley - I like this too.And my guide is, when there's something you're trying to avoid saying, try to get to the bottom of what you're really trying to say, because the word you want is probably lurking in there waiting for you to find it.
linkHelen - Always
linkDaniel Midgley - For example, let's just try this together.You put lame next to other words, and it's different.So if there's a lame attempt, what are we really saying we don't like about it?That it's?
linkBen Ainslie - Ineffectual, basically
linkHedvig Skirgård - Half bad?
linkHelen - Misguided
linkDaniel Midgley - Pedestrian, right.Okay, good.How about a lame excuse...it's an excuse that is?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Insincere?
linkBen Ainslie - Inadequate
linkHelen - Not even trying?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, transparent?See something like that.We can say that.Lame Duck period, which is when a leader has been voted out but the new person hasn't come in yet.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that that would be like a gap
linkHedvig Skirgård - That sounds American
linkHelen - Yeah.That doesn't seem like something that really needs its own term.Fair enough.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Limbo.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, limbo's good.
linkHelen - Hiatus.
linkDaniel Midgley - Kalani Harris from the prompts suggests the zero fucks period.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know what that is either.
linkDaniel Midgley - When you give no fucks
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh okay, fair enough.
linkDaniel Midgley - Presidential Twilight or pre inauguration.You know, if you need it, it's there and we don't have to use lame duck.But let's remember that the reason we go to all this effort of using language thoughtfully is that, that way we don't make people feel bad or we don't further discrimination.And we get our meaning across into way that doesn't distract our audience with things that we don't mean.
linkBen Ainslie - Can I give Bill one final honorable mention?So this one comes by way of my partner, Ayesha.She came across a bit of a like a I think it was like a Twitter feed with exactly this type of thing.Like I'm trying to remove like ablest slurs from my lexicon, but I really want to insult people still, how do I do that?LAUGHTERAnd Bill, in opposition to the answer I gave you before, wanker, which I think is like really versatile.I'm going to give you a an incredibly specific and bespoke one that was on this twitter feed that Ayesha shared with me, which was "you are as bad as an inescapable shower fart"
linkDaniel Midgley - Goodness.
linkBen Ainslie - And I just think that is possibly going to only ever be useful to you once in your life.But in that one instance, it's just going to be mwah, chef's kiss.Perfect.
linkDaniel Midgley - You know how a lot of sentences are one offs and never to be spoken again?
linkHedvig Skirgård - What's bad about a fart in the shower?
linkBen Ainslie - Have you never farted in the shower and it smells really bad
linkHedvig Skirgård - I frequently fart in the shower, it's my favorite place to fart
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah but you fart and you are trapped in that small cubicle with your fart?
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, because when I sense a fart coming, I direct the water towards the area where the fart is about to come out.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTERThis is so not what I need to know
linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry!You're the one who...
linkBen Ainslie - All I say is that I and other people in the world are able to identify that being in a shower with your own stinky fart is sub optimal life.
linkDaniel Midgley - What do YOU think, Helen?Just kidding.
linkHelen - Well I was just thinking if you if you want words that are a similar tier of swear to wanker, there's pillock that means penis or belland, which means the end of the penis.Bringing the connotation that the penis is bad there.But I suppose there's a time and a place for penises.And out of those places they aren't welcome, as the people that Bill is trying to describe may not be.
linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, very good.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's a fair point.
linkDaniel Midgley - I had a good one.I'm trying to stop saying tone-deaf and I thought of a good substitute:off-key.
linkBen Ainslie - As a person who has been off-key for his entire life, I find that personally offensive.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, okay fine
linkBen Ainslie - No no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm sorry to the off-key community.By the way, all of us, we need to work on crazy and insane.I've been doing the transcripts and it comes up a lot.Let's try bonkers, bananas, wild, and weird.Next, from Paul via email.Paul says "I love listening to Daniel with Russell on the 720 weekly segment." This is something else that I do on ABC Radio of Australia."It's such an island of refuge in the bombastic ocean of morning radio show assaults on the ear hole."CLEARS THROAT POINTEDLY"My question is, why does the prefix amphi seem like a linguistic orphan?It makes an appearance in the words like amphitheatre and amphibian, and seems related in meaning to ambidextrous.But after a couple of honorable mentions, amphi seems to run out of friends to headline with."
linkBen Ainslie - What a great way to phrase that.I love it.It's so evocative.
linkDaniel Midgley - It gets better."With the generic meaning of both sides or all sides, I would have thought it could collaborate with greater frequency with other words to enrich their lives.For example, amphivision, to see both sides.I'm amphivisual.Amphiemotional, shortened to Hey, you're a bit amphi lately.Amphi intelligent, well rounded knowledge.So what's happened?Is it the case that amphi didn't play well with others at the beginning of language construction to be show up like a bad mannered Greek uncle uninvited to the Christmas lunch?Or did those uppity prefix also rans like omni beat him out of everyday usage?Why is it sort of the same as ambidextrous?Do they share a common ancestor?Great show love, your work"
linkHelen - Yes
linkBen Ainslie - Helen with the early answer,
linkHelen - Yes, let's all go home.Common ancestor, done.Yeah, they are similar.So it is actually in loads of words that have amb- in, ambulance, and loads that I didn't expect as well.
linkBen Ainslie - Ambulatory is that also one?
linkHelen - Yeah.perambulate all of those.Umlaut as well, apparently.
linkDaniel Midgley - What?!
linkHelen - You know, you're saying it doesn't appear in many places, but it's like put on a fake beard and popped up in loads of words.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTERYou just carried on with the great evocativeness I love it.
linkDaniel Midgley - We got to break down ambi, alright?So the am is from, away from, and the bi is both or both sides or from just all around.So an ambulance used to be a field hospital where you would walk around and check on everybody.In the same way that embassy was, an ambassador was somebody who goes around to all the different places.
linkBen Ainslie - So then how do we get to amphi?
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, amphi is just Greek and ambi is Latin.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.So those are just the two Greek ones that showed up and Latin kind of did most of the heavy lifting and also as Helen said, on like Groucho Marx glasses and just kind of hit in plain sight.
linkDaniel Midgley - Helen's absolutely right, it hides in plain sight.There are ambis everywhere except it might just be the latter half.Because when we have by as in both, like bicycle, like two that's, that's the bi in ambi.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, right
linkHelen - Amputate as well.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Amputate.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, you're cutting around.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow, so cool, so many places so the answer to the question is it's actually in lots of places?
linkDaniel Midgley - It's actually everywhere.Everywhere you're seeing a bi that's actually ambi as well.
linkHelen - Do you think Paul will be relieved or he'll be like, Oh, it's ubiquitous, not cool anymore?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah.He's, he's got the hipster prefix like affection.And now that everyone's got it, he's like:I'll move on to the next thing.
linkDaniel Midgley - Let's move on to the next thing.I asked our Discord friends.Did they have any questions for Helen and there's one of course from PharoahKatt Here we go."So we all know that etymologies that sound interesting are probably false, like the one for fuck, F-U-C-K What's the most interesting etymology you've come across that was actually true.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yes!What's the surprisingly true folk etymology?
linkHelen - Well, if they're folk etymology is, then they're not true, are they?
linkBen Ainslie - Then folk-sounding etymology, how's that?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, what's one that you couldn't believe
linkBen Ainslie - You're like that's folk as fuck, and it turns out to be not folk at all.
linkHelen - Okay.Login, I would say is one of these.It's our, it's a genuine log that was thrown overboard from a ship on a knotted rope in order to measure speed.So they would count out the rate of knots, another expression, and then log that in a book.Well, I mean, at the time, they didn't log it, they wrote it in a book and later we call that logging it.
linkBen Ainslie - The book itself.The book.Yeah, it was the log book, right.So you would record things in the logbook, and then you would log in?
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh my gosh!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ohh!And now it's just log.Like,ROBOT VOICECaptain's log, Stargate 234.5 We encountered
linkBen Ainslie - That is actually based on a real log, and I can't believe this, but I actually also knew that
linkHelen - You know how people are like:oh, podcasts is a ridiculous word because no one uses iPods anymore.There's so many bits of detritus, in the English language when it comes to things.People don't use a real log to log into a computer now.So I just wish they could concentrate on other matters.Really.
linkBen Ainslie - I feel like there's a really good TikTok skit in that somewhere, like a person just holding an actual logbook, very delicately trying to type into a keyboard with it.
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm going to!I found a good one.This one came up on the speakeasy on ABC Radio last week.Why do we call it taking a gander?
linkBen Ainslie - Ooh!Ooh!Ooh!I want to guess.Because male geese are just fucking pricks, and are in everyone's business all the time.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yup, that's it.
linkBen Ainslie - Fuck off!Really?!
linkDaniel Midgley - Take a gander at me.You know, geese, they have that neck and they're just always moving that neck around, looking around having a good old sticky beak, looking for whatever.So having a gander is one of them.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Geese are such bullies when I lived in the Netherlands, where there were streets when I walked down, and there were geese on the road and I would like cross the road.Because like the geese...
linkDaniel Midgley - Roaming gangs of geese
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's why it's so funny
linkBen Ainslie - They are awful creatures.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Earlier today, a friend of mine said that they knew a dog that would like frequently attack geese and kill them by biting their necks.And I was like, what kind of a dog?What kind of brave dog?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, like what, have you got a Tibetan Mastiff or something like that?What is that?
linkHedvig Skirgård - What is that?It's...smurf!We said the same word at the same time.
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - Wait, smurf?!Do you guys say smurf instead of jinx?
linkDaniel Midgley - You say smurf?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, we say smurf.What do you say?Jinx?Oh, jinx!You can't say anything until I say your name.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, well shit.
linkDaniel Midgley - While Ben's recovering.Why is it called the tank top?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I am actually wearing a tank top.No, I'm wearing a crop top.Sorry.
linkDaniel Midgley - Everything's a crop top.I did a search for crop top and every conceivable shirt was in there.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I love crop tops.Why is it called a tank top?Because men who were in the...Ben maybe has an answer?
linkDaniel Midgley - BenLAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - There we go.Yeah, I think it's because tanks are hot as fuck.And soldiers had to wear like yeah, light shirts, otherwise it would just be horrendously umcomfortable
linkHedvig Skirgård - I second this
linkDaniel Midgley - Nope.
linkBen Ainslie - Ah fuck!Fuck!
linkHelen - What happened to their tank pants then?Maybe they didn't wear any, just the tops.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah well, look I would be, if you had told me that most personnel on board tanks in both World War I and World War II were mostly naked, I would immediately believe you
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - It's because you...Helen, your guess?
linkHelen - Well, I've looked it up so it wouldn't be fair.
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTERIt's because you were in a tank of water -- swimming pool.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, like early Victorian swimming cossies kind of thing?
linkHedvig Skirgård - OHH!I should say for non Australia's, cossie is short for swimming costume.
linkBen Ainslie - Sorry, apologies.
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, that's fine.It’s just words that I've learned that I know that other people don't know
linkHelen - That's bathing suit for Americans, or swimsuit
linkDaniel Midgley - It's now coming back to our Twitter poll.Why is the raspberry sound not a speech sound in languages?The least common answer for our 31 votes so far:"sounds taboo."
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, boo, screw you guys.
linkDaniel Midgley - 12.9% The next least popular answer, number two:"saliva everywhere," 29%.And the most common answer from our Twitter fans
linkBen Ainslie - Laziness
linkDaniel Midgley - "Too hard to make" 58.1%
linkHelen - See?!Lazy, lazy people!
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTERLet's hear it
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I identify as a lazy person.And I'm sort of vaguely proud of it.It means I just I use a lot of effort to try and get work done in less time.
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkHelen - Smart way to live.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.Love it
linkDaniel Midgley - We did have some other questions, but they were a little bit more involved, Bianca and PharaohKatt.So we wanted to do a good job on them.We'll be getting to those in a bit.Okay, thanks to everyone for their great questions.We got some comments to get through from Raya on Twitter.About our last episode, we did the word apartheid as it applies to the Palestinian situation.She says, "great episode as usual.I feel like I should chime in on the whole apartheid debate.We Palestinians call it apartheid."
linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And during the show, I also looked up the Jewish Voice for Peace, which is an American Jewish organization, which is mostly pro-Palestine, and they also use apartheid.
linkDaniel Midgley - There we go.Raya continues, "South Africans also referred to it as apartheid.Human Rights Watch calls that apartheid and it is an apartheid system under international law.The term crime of apartheid originated in the South African context but can definitely be applied elsewhere.Debating It only hurts the case in my opinion." Peter also on Patreon says, "the points on apartheid were interesting but in this case, it is a legal term in international law so it has been defined already in a way abstract from the South African context." There we go.
linkBen Ainslie - I was, look, as soon as Raya chimed in and was like:I'm a Palestinian, I'm like:Yep, I believe you
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm on board
linkBen Ainslie - And that's what I said at the time as well, like if a Palestinian wants say that there is no way whitey McWhiteyson over here is going to be like:well you shouldn't do that.
linkDaniel Midgley - Awesome.From Joanna via email, Hello@becauselanguage.com:"Hello everyone.I'm a relatively new listener and appreciater, also a speech therapist among other things.Loved the episode about VIP.Kamala Harris' speech and terrific for hosting David Crystal whose work I've met via Theatre Arts.Re the question in your latest episode about doubling of x in anti-vaxxer, etc.Daniel came close with the comment about how consonant spelling changes the preceding vowel, I just go a step further.Consider the alternative:If I were to read the word vaxer single x with no meaningful context, I'd probably pronounce it vay-xer or rhyming with brakser, or so to my eye, the double x confirms that the correct vowel is the shorter A, as in vaccine, thank you for the podcast." Tone of friendliness with just the right amount of brain tickling.What do you think, folks?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I like it
linkDaniel Midgley - Would you mistake it for vay-xer?
linkBen Ainslie - I mean, we have a D in fridge for a similar reason.So I don't see why not?
linkHedvig Skirgård - What do you call a person who waxes people's legs?
linkHelen - Oh!!
linkBen Ainslie - I call her Carol, personally
linkLAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I think that's fair enough.I mean, it's a Germanic thing to have a short vowel when you have two consonants after, so it makes sense.You might need some guidance on that.Now that said, English is famously you know, not one to play well with the other Germanic children.So, you know, whatever.
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkHelen - Do you think people want the double x because vaccine has a double C and so
linkHedvig Skirgård - WHISPERING LOUDLYThat's what I said!
linkDaniel Midgley - That was Hedvig's, Yeah, that was a good one.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I like this guest, we should have her on more often.I’ve agreed with her at least twice so far
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - At first, I thought, I would not see laxer and think lay-xer, but then you know what?Maybe there is just something about double consonants that straightens it out for us and makes our brains go:change that vowel!I mean, it's not an incompatible explanation.
linkHelen - Do you think it's also we don't often get to write a word with a double x in it.And so people are like, well, this seems fancy.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, this is fun!
linkHelen - It's a snazzy word
linkBen Ainslie - It feels like it's a little dead person in the middle.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's sexxy.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh god.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, I'm gonna take that one back.Scroggie on Twitter says BecauseLangPod have talked about the no languages of Australia.Remember them?
linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
linkDaniel Midgley - The Aboriginal Australian languages that are quite similar to each other and they distinguish them by saying:Oh, those are the folks who say bun for no and there was people that say wan for No.Yeah, I immediately thought about the yes languages of France.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.Yes.
linkDaniel Midgley - What a fun and interesting way to name your language rather than naming it after a country or a group of people.I did not know about this.Did you Helen or Hedvig?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, Langue d'Oc.Langue d'Oc.
linkDaniel Midgley - Tell me more.Tell me more.
linkHedvig Skirgård - There used to be a lot more diversity in French than there is now, and they used to refer to different varieties by the different words for yes.Most famous one is Langue d'Oc where, I think Oc or something like that is the, so Langue de Oc.Lang du Oc I think it is.
linkDaniel Midgley - It was originally hoc in Latin, which is this.You want a bagel?This?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.We I think in that episode we talked about some more cases as well because there's a language isn't the guinea where, if I'm correct in my memory, it's the language name.Sorry the words for what?Yeah, it's a great if you have like a Shibboleth that people are aware of it's pretty neat way of distinguishing nearby varieties
linkBen Ainslie - Especially if they really really really common aspects of the language, right?Like yes, no, or what
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTERYeah, yeah, it's never like you know, microphone or pizza.Thank you for that.And then last of all from Bill on Twitter he says, "next EP you should vote to make bi-monthly aligned to the opposite configuration of bi-weekly" and then he included the fire Elmo GIF.
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - Fire elmo GIF is pretty great.
linkDaniel Midgley - From now on bi-monthly means twice a month and bi-weekly means every two weeks.Hmm, okay.
linkHelen - BOOO
linkBen Ainslie - Some people, some people just want to watch the world burn, clearly.
linkDaniel Midgley - Helen Zaltzman, thank you so much for hanging out with us and being on this special episode.
linkHelen - Pleasure!thanks for having me.
linkBen Ainslie - We should get you on way more often,
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, this was fun!
linkBen Ainslie - Because you are super successful, by virtue of the fact that you're really really really smart and interesting and talented.
linkHelen - No, I'm just good at sounding like I am.That is my one true gift in life.
linkBen Ainslie - To be fair, that is exactly the premise by which I have conducted nearly all of the successes in my life as well.So in this regard, I really resonate with that.You should invite me onto your show where you just answer ransom questions.Ransom questions?
linkDaniel Midgley - Ransom questions
linkBen Ainslie - Ransom questions.
linkDaniel Midgley - How do I pay?
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - Make sure you make them jump in a pool first, so they can get rid of any wire there
linkHelen - What kind of suitcase do I put the cash into?
linkHelen - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - steady, hardshell, definitely
linkDaniel Midgley - How can people find out where you are or get in touch with you online, if you want them to?
linkHelen - Oh, well, I'm sure you can find my podcasts:Answer Me This, The Allusionist with an A and Veronica Mars Investigations in the pod places.And I mean, you can probably figure out how to find me on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook as well if you so wish.
linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you
linkDaniel Midgley - MUSIC
linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you so much, Helen, for being on the show, that was tons of fun.If you listen to the show, and you like this and you have something to say to us.If you listen to this show in the near future, it means you're a Patreon so you can DM or ask us things on the discord channel.But if you listen to this at a later date, you can always contact us through all of the other ways as well.We are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mastadon, Patreon, TikTok and clubhouse and on all of the places we are BecauseLangPod, one word
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh and substack.We're on substack now too
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, and we have a new one as well that isn't on my list.Daniel, please tell us
linkDaniel Midgley - This sub stack at this point is just claiming the name for everywhere.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.Apparently we've claimed, staked out a claim on substack as well.You can ask us a question comment or if you just want to say hi.And we would also love it if you help the show by telling a friend about us, or leaving us a review and other places we do reviews.And of course I should mention, you can also send a good old fashioned email at Hello@becauselanguage.com.And if you're as brave as Sadman Stories, feel free to tweet about us and recommend people on the Twee-ters to listen to us that also be tons of fun.
linkBen Ainslie - As Hedvig just alluded to, if you're listening to this shortly after it's aired, you're probably already a Patron.But we also drop our Patron only episodes much later on.So you might be listening to this ages away.This is the magic of podcasts from when we actually recorded this.Basically, I'm traveling through time right now and speaking to a future version of you.How cool is that?And I'm basically saying to you, hey, if you wanted to be a Patron of the show, one really, really cool thing that that does.Like the vast majority of the money that we get from our Patrons we devote to transcribing our shows through the wonderful work of Maya Klein of Voicing Words, who we've have actually had on the show.You can go and listen to the show with Maya Klein.That is a really good episode, you should definitely check it out.But yeah, the vast majority of the money we get at the moment goes towards transcribing the shows which has the advantage of allowing people who are unable to listen to things to be able to enjoy our shows, but also, it makes the show's searchable.So if you are having that argument at the pub, and the person's like:Mmm, this thing is definitely this way and you think to yourself, fuckin I remember Daniel said a thing about this, you can quickly jump on search it and you will actually be able to find Find that little that nugget.It's like a Shazam for interesting podcast shit.That's what we have basically created by transcribing our shows.And that is only possible because of our Patrons, some of whom I'm going to name right now.Thank you to Dustin, Termy, Chris B, Chris L, Matt, Whitney, Damien, JoAnna, Helen, Bob, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Elías, Erica, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Andy, Maj, James, Nigel, Kate, Jen, Nasrin, River, Nikoli, Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Andrew, Manú, James, Shane, Rodger, Rhian, Jonathan, Colleen, glyph, Ignacio, Kevin thank you to all of our patrons.
linkDaniel Midgley - Our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who is a member of Ryan Beno, and of the very great band Dideon’s Bible.Thanks for listening.We'll catch you next time.Don't let your dreams become memes, because language
linkBen Ainslie - That was so fucking cheesy.Oh my god.Don't let your dreams become memes?!
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, you should let your dreams become memes!
linkBen Ainslie - Like what the fuck?
linkHedvig Skirgård - That sounds great.
linkDaniel Midgley - It resonated with me.I'm leaving it
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - Okay boomer, whatever you say
linkHedvig Skirgård - Speaking of dad humor....
linkHedvig Skirgård - BEEP
linkDaniel Midgley - I had forgotten for the moment which one is older.
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
linkHelen - Burnt is older
linkBen Ainslie - Did you just drop like a like a gavel on us linguists?
linkHedvig Skirgård - It was a teaspoon.I had a cup of tea and I moved a teaspoon.I don't know why I'm so noisy today.I just touched a teaspoon.
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - It really sounded like Daniel was Judge Judy-ing burned and burnt.
linkHedvig Skirgård - This one is gained down like mad.Okay, here we get, that's super low gain.
linkHedvig Skirgård - BEEP
linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go to Britta on Twitta.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Hang on.Hang on.Hang on.Hang on.Hedvig just Community call-back right now.Go.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, she she's a Swedish dog?
linkBen Ainslie - No, damnit!I was expecting you to be like, oh, Britta, you're the worst!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I was just I thought I'd go a bit niche or niche.
linkBen Ainslie - Sorry, I went I
linkHedvig Skirgård - Which canonically of Swedish descent on the show Britta, the comedy show Community.And yeah, I don't know.when time???calls her a Swedish dog.
linkBen Ainslie - I rolled too deep with a homie who was packing too much heat.I'm sorry.Sorry.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry.Sorry.Yeah.Britta on Twitta, you're the worst.
linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you.