2 - Mailbag of Iconoclasm

638 turns

• linkBen Ainslie - Hey, patrons.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You going to do this saucy?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Uh…saucy?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, Ben sounded saucy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - THEME MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this bonus episode of Because Language, a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.I'm Daniel Midgley, let's meet the team.It's…
• linkAWKWARD PAUSE, LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I suppose I should introduce myself then.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Ben Ainslie.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hi, patrons.It's lovely to see you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What are you drinking, Ben?
• linkBen Ainslie - I just had a sip of cordial.Thank you, by the way, for outing me to everyone.I appreciate that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, this is a bonus episode, so we can, you know, get a little bit casual.You're having…What flavor cordial?
• linkBen Ainslie - Grapefruit.I like things bitter and sour simultaneously.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dang.You know what I'm going to do, since you're having grapefruit cordial, I'm going to break out a can of Squirt from the USA.
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Squirt?!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, lord!
• linkBen Ainslie - That is a revolting sounding thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uhh, anyway, yeah, let's get off track for that.Ask me who I am, Daniel.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, and we've got Hedvig Skirgård.Hi, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hi!I'm here.I'm drinking coffee, like a normal person.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I'm drinking Irish cream coffee.It's just not Irish cream, it's coffee flavored like Irish cream.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dang!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's very nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that just Bailey's?Is that what that's supposed to be?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Um, yeah, sort of.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that what makes it…Irish?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's just a very pleasant…I've gotten into…I think now that I'm over thirty, I'm allowed to drink things that I used to think were silly.So I'm drinking, like, vanilla lattés?LAUGHTERAnd just like, caramel syrupy coffee flavoured things.
• linkBen Ainslie - So you are Benjamin Button-ing, in terms of your palate.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkBen Ainslie - You started off sensibly, and you're now going into ridiculous childhood flavours.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think I'm just secure in my adulthood.
• linkDaniel Midgley - One of the effects of getting a PhD.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, and just like:I can do whatever I want.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I'm just drinking water and the aforementioned carbonated beverage, Squirt.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway, I hear we have a show now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We do.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - On the grapevine.Turns out we're not just chatting to each other for the lolz!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, the response to our first show has been tremendous, so thanks once again, everybody who contributed.Also, everybody who gave us your favorite things about language.And we're going to read those at the end.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.Amazing.
• linkBen Ainslie - I cannot wait.But before we do that, Daniel, should we not check out what's going on in the world of linguistics?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - In the week gone past.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This one has been suggested to us by Bob and Ayesha.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The question here is:what is racism?Definitions differ.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, this one this one floated across my desk, as well.And I really liked the genesis of this story, which was basically:a woman just cracked the shits, and was just so sick of trying to engage people in discussions about what racism is, and the systemic realities of living in a racialised, white supremacist world, and having a whole bunch of numpties be like:~Uh, well, um, I think you'll find that the actual definition of racism doesn't quite match up with that~and she was like:"Fuck.I am so done with this shit." So she just wrote a bunch of letters to Merriam-Webster, being like:"Can you just sort your fucking shit out, please?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are talking, of course, about Kennedy Mitchum, a graduate of Drake University, 22 years old, living in Florissant, Missouri.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, so, like, at 22, I was just getting drunk a lot, and this woman has just, like, fixed the definition of racism, so…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Good job, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think that those bros should have agreed on the unwritten rule for white people and that is:I don't get to decide if something's racist or not.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, but that's the classic thing about dictionaries.And I know, based on our survey that we put out to our listeners — there's a whole bunch of our listeners who charted, like, the same path that I have in being on this show, which is once upon a time feeling very smart and snooty about, like, knowin' the rules and knowin' the dictionary and stuff…
• linkDaniel Midgley - 'Cause that's what makes us special at school, you know.
• linkBen Ainslie - And then…yeah, exactly, right?And then just busting that out whenever you feel like it, like a doofus.And then it's only through this show that I was like:Oh, wait, that's just being a massive douche.And so, yeah— like, I totally… I'm unsurprised that a whole bunch of people have been using the dictionary as a really handy straw man for, like: ~Mmmm but racism is actually really fun still, so I'd rather not accept your definition if I could?~ Essentially, that's what people say, right?When they're just like:"Mmm, yeah, okay.Or…it could be this much narrower thing that doesn't make me need to change any of my behaviour."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's doubling up on bullshit, because dictionaries aren't the end-and-be-all of the meaning of words, and racism…races are socially constructed.It's just a lot.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's get into the definition of racism.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, what's the new and what's the old definition?I want to know.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, let's do that.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I think we can all agree that an integral part of racism is something like:treating people badly because of the color of their skin.But some people are convinced that this necessary condition is in fact a sufficient condition, and that if a Black person treats a white person badly because they're white, then this is somehow racism.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right, so the classic, like, reverse-racism argument.And I'm using, like, the most air-quoty air quotes I can when I put forward the word "argument" to describe that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right.And they would say:~Well, black people can be racist too.~
• linkBen Ainslie - It's almost a game for me to play with my students of just dropping the following sentence, be like:"Oh, but you can't be racist if you're Black." And just watching them lose their minds.It's just…it's so much fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, people who write and think about this would agree that a necessary condition of racism is systemic or structural oppression.The entire system is set up for white supremacy and so, because people of colour don't have access to that kind of unjust social advantage, racism isn't a term that can really be applied to things that people of colour do.You know, you have to call it something else, like being a jerk or being discriminatory or something, but you can't really call it racism unless systemic oppression is in the mix.So the Merriam-Webster dictionary is updating according to Ms Mitchum's emails.Here's a quote:"I basically told them they need to include that there is systematic oppression on people.It's not just 'I don't like someone.' It's a system of oppression for a certain group of people." And the editor Alex Chambers says:"This revision would not have been made without your persistence in contacting us about this problem.We sincerely thank you for repeatedly (!) writing in, and apologize for the harm and offense we have caused in failing to address the issue sooner.I will see to it that the entry for racism is given the attention it sorely needs." Hurrah!
• linkBen Ainslie - She Andy Dufresne'd them!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, she did!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What's that?
• linkBen Ainslie - She wrote a letter every week to the Department of Corrections, asking for money for the library, and then they finally gave it and she's like:Now I'm going to write two letters a week!
• linkDaniel Midgley - So there you go.Kennedy Mitchum, fixing the dictionary.We salute you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Good job.
• linkBen Ainslie - Every day hero.Love it.Love it.Making me feel terrible about the deeply mediocre life I've lived right up until this point.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, Ben, you're on this show!
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSI stand by my statement.
• linkDaniel Midgley - One of the news items that floated across the desk is that UKTV, owned by the BBC, removed an episode of Fawlty Towers— it was "The Germans" —from their streaming service.And then they put it back.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Now I haven't dug down into the specifics of this particular story, but there has been this story going on quite a bit across a bunch of different platforms, right?Like, certain episodes of, like, children's cartoons have been taken down."Gone With the Wind" has been removed from streaming services, and a bunch of other things.So the thing that I wanted to ask you guys, because I'm not super familiar with this one, is why did it go back up?Was it kowtowing to a bunch of butthurt people?Or was there something else at work?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I believe the phrase they used was "public outcry", but that meant that the BBC decided against dropping the episode and instead running it with a bit of context.But you know, at first I was unclear on why it even went down in the first place, because I didn't remember that episode incredibly well.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't either.I mean, there's only 12 episodes, but I don't remember all of them super well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I was chatting to Ste about it earlier.So in that episode they used the n-word?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the one.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, dear.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - My understanding is also that the character that does it is not to be understood as, like, an authoritative character.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right, the character is the Major, that elderly conservative mildly racist character.And in the scene, Basil and Polly are sort of listening but not agreeing, so there's a bit of context there.I was actually okay with leaving it out.I think the show works without the joke.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, like, I'm…the one that's just really playing with me is how many people are getting bent out of shape around stuff being taken down.It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.Right?Like, if you take a single episode of Fawlty Towers away, it's not like…Everyone keeps banging on about this, like,~erasure of art and history~and stuff, and I'm like:Um, okay, fine, I guess, but like— one out of 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers going away; is that really just like ~erasing art and history?~ I don't think so.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or even just editing out the joke.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I am not sure I disagree, but I do think that…I don't think, like, the Fawlty Towers joke is like prime history and art that needs to be kept.But it was there, and…I just don't want people to get, like, gaslighted when they look back and they look at these shows and:"Hm, people said these shows were problematic, but they don't seem problematic to me.Am I pretending things?"
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, I see what you mean.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's like:no, there used to be things in there that people then removed.It's like…so I'm a big fan of the podcast "My Brother, My Brother and Me." And they have publicly said several times— they're a bunch of comedians —that the first 100 episodes of their podcast— this is a podcast that's been running for ten years —they have publicly said several times that they think that they did a lot of bad things in it.That that they made jokes that were inappropriate that they don't stand for anymore, but they have decided to keep it up.As in:We did this;we're not gonna pretend we didn't;we changed and we do other kinds of comedy now, and this is what we do now.But they don't want to remove those things because they don't want to…
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I'm not down for sanitising.Like, I'm not down for editing things to make them different from how they were, but I am down for making them not necessarily readily available in a streaming package, right?So like, in this particular instance, if (let's say) Fawlty Towers is available on Netflix, and Netflix just stops that episode, I'm fine with that.'Cause that creates a situation whereby someone goes:"Hang on.It just went from episode 8 to episode 10 and I don't really understand why.Oh, I know what I'll do:I'll go on to the entire compendium of all human knowledge and I'll find out why." And then it's going to be like:"Oh, yeah, in this thing, which is not available on most streaming platforms because a person said the n-word a bunch of times, then…cool!I have my answer, right?" Like, it had a whole bunch of problematic stuff in it and it was kind of fucked up and now people don't play it anymore, because it's kind of fucked up.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And I guess that's the difference between their podcast feed, is that their podcast feed isn't really indexed anywhere else but their storage!So if you start at episode 101, you're like:What happened?You can't really go anywhere else to find out about it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, true.True, true, true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We've had this discussion before about Bugs Bunny cartoons that have been offensive.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I used to be really on board with what they did, which was:put that big message up at the front, which is basically like:So, it turns out this shit's pretty fucked!and then play it anyway.I'm not sure I'm as supportive of that position as I used to be.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm.I agree.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think those things could very much stand not to be played anymore.Because the thing is, right— this stuff is never ever ever disappearing. Right? With the internet the way that it is, a industrious fellow or lady will always be able to find this stuff if they genuinely want to go and find it. So I absolutely do not accept the argument of like ~uh, erasing history.~ False!Like, it's just patently false.Look, don't know about if that's true when it comes to, like, I don't know — statues, or whatever but certainly any kind of digital media is just like forever now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I feel like the historical erasure argument would be stronger if we somehow lived in a post-racial society where we say:Okay, now that we've knocked racism on the head, we must preserve this so that no one ever forgets that racism existed.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, yeah, like one of those terrible teen dystopian films, like The Rememberer or whatever the hell that thing was called.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Exactly.It's not a strong argument in the timeline that we're in, sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry.I was just going to…if we're getting to the end of this, I haven't listened to this yet, but I know there's a new…there's a podcast from Maximum Fun called Fanzi, where they talk about problematic fandoms.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, I heard them doing…
• linkBen Ainslie - God, I hope they talk about Rick and Morty!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They might!Or that might be a good suggestion for them for future episodes.I just heard a little trailer for another podcast I was listening to and I've been meaning to listen to it, and they talk about…the example I heard was Kanye.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh wow, yep, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're like:We like his music, but then there are other things we don't know what to do with.And like, what should we do about our mixed feelings?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.So, problematic on both sides of that equation.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.There's just trying to come to grips with it, and my understanding is that every episode they sort of do another fandom and…yeah!Maybe it's great.Maximum Fun is usually a good podcast, so I'm going to check it out and if anyone else listens to this, and checks it out, we can check back in later.
• linkBen Ainslie - Have fat chats.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is really interesting, because we do need to at some point…are we able to divorce our love of the work from the love of the artist?I'm thinking of, you know, J.K.Rowling, of course.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oof, yeah.Wow.Speaking of.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's been a week, hasn't it?Phwoar.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - My apologies to anybody who's Black or trans, or who's watching this debate play out and maybe even listening to us debate this as well, and you know, I hope you're doing okay.We see you, we support you, and we hope that you're getting what you need from your people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's gotta be rough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Last one from the news.New study by Professor Sean Lowen at Michigan State University.How good are language learning apps?Do they help?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooo, I need to know this because I'm trying to learn German, and I just checked myself into Duolingo for the first time ever yesterday.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, fun!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I've never…
• linkDaniel Midgley - That owl is going to get you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!It's being really friendly to me so far.It was like:"Good job!You're doing so good!"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, sure…
• linkBen Ainslie - I strongly rate Duolingo.It's got a place dear to my heart, for sure.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not everyone digs it.Occasionally when we mention it, people say:Why are you promoting that terrible app that doesn't actually do any good?This study used Babbel.And what they found was that when people completed it, they moved up in proficiency.You know, it actually did pretty well.
• linkBen Ainslie - That doesn't…I've got to be honest, that doesn't surprise me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, me neither.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, all we're really talking about is gamified flash cards, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, of course that results in at least some measure of upped retention.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Especially the kind of retention that tends to be measured in tests.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, exactly!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, that is the question:does this relate to communicative competency, which is the gold standard.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, well then, I would argue, probably not then, right?Because as we've said on this podcast a billion times over and over…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No — I object!
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, like, we've gone over and over and over, right?Like yes, this can be like a helpful way to augment improving your vocabulary and stuff, but at the end of the day, right, how do you get good at talking a language?Through, like, endless hard work and using the language, and talking to people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, Ben, but that doesn't mean that getting some repetition on some vocabulary items isn't going to make it easier for you in the shop when…It's still good to know words!Words are still good!LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - What kind of radical linguist stance is this — "it's good to know words"!I have no time for that argument!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is good to know words!Yesterday I learned that the…
• linkBen Ainslie - This is what you get when you get a PhD in linguistics!"It's good to know words."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's good to know words!Words help with communication.I learned that, in German, their word for STUFF or THING is 'zeug', and I'm glad I know that.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - All right, fair enough;it's good to know words.You heard it here first, folks.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Here's another stat:36% of the participants who started the study ended up quitting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay…
• linkBen Ainslie - Learning language is hard.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think we need to include them in the total as well.So, language is complicated, there are lots of aspects to language.Communication is one thing, but analysis is another.Different people learn different ways.The key thing is motivation, I think.
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If you're motivated, you'll probably do a pretty good job, no matter what method you're using, although let's remember that communicative approaches are generally considered better in the applied community.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sure, but…yeah.I'm still on the "It's good to know words" camp.
• linkBen Ainslie - But knowing words is important!LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, yeah.the thing of me, of late in general, when people say…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, Hedvig, you radical!LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it's not that…I don't think anyone's suggesting that Babbel or Duolingo are, like, full replacements.I don't think anyone's suggesting that.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.Some people…I do think some people are suggesting that they are, like, a flat-out waste of time, and I don't agree.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, and that's also wrong.Like, you can't…
• linkBen Ainslie - Let's go back to my original point, which is, like, yeah, it's gamified flash cards.Of course it's going to help!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it's almost to a degree like, you know when you're on the toilet, I play a bunch of, like, puzzle, like games.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep!
• linkBen Ainslie - Gross.Gross!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, so some people play Duolingo instead.Even if they don't even learn the language, I'm still like:That's a fine puzzle game to be playing on the toilet.That's fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - I have said it before, and I will say it again:you toilet-doing people are weird!You go in, you do your business, you get out!There's no reading, there's no phone, and it takes less than 30 seconds, all right?Come on, people!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't tell me you poop in 30 seconds.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, but do you have as much fun as we do?Are you learning a language?That's my question.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSYeah, you're right.Yeah, you're right — I've really got to rethink all sorts of life priorities.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I rest my case.
• linkBen Ainslie - Case closed!Shall we move on to, like, actual audience questions?'Cause I'm sure they are well and truly sick of finding out how pitstop-like my toilet breaks are.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - TRANSITION MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - And now we're back with the Mailbag questions.I love a Mailbag episode.
• linkBen Ainslie - I do as well, and when I told my partner that it was a Mailbag episode, she was like:Yay!I love Mailbag episodes.So, that's…from the data set of three, that's three out of three.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's 100 percent.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like Mailbags, as well.My partner likes Mailbags, as well, so he had me go through them.We had our…
• linkBen Ainslie - Five out of five!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Five out of five.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We had our pre…What's it called?We were supposed to get married today, but we didn't because corona.So we went out for a date yesterday.Is that a pre-versary?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, pre-versary!
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I like that!I like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I like the combining form -versary.Awesome!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Pre-versary.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We spent our pre-versary partially going through your Mailbag!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, lovely.Well, pre-gratulations!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah!Pre-commendations!
• linkDaniel Midgley - The first question comes from Lord Mortis on our Discord channel.
• linkBen Ainslie - PS:Lord Mortis:great name!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's a good name, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Having a discussion about FLIP FLOPS / THONGS.and there was a question as to why the Australian word is 'underwear' elsewhere in the world."
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm going to guess that the genesis for THONG in both instances is the same thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Which is?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, a thong is, like, a cord of leather, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.So the cord of leather could go up the crack of your ass, or it could go between your toes and in both instances, the thong (as such) kind of makes sense, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you could have it one or the other, but please not both.
• linkBen Ainslie - SHUDDERYep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This was in fact PharaohKatt's response.She says the back of the underwear looks similar to the toe part of the thongs.But THONG is a really old word.The first reference in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from 950 CE.and it's so old, it was spelled with a letter we don't have anymore, the eth (ð).LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Amazing.
• linkBen Ainslie - You gotta love when something's so OG, it uses, like, a phoneme that doesn't exist anymore.
• linkDaniel Midgley - SURFER VOICEWhoa, that's Viking!
• linkBen Ainslie - SURFER VOICEVicatious, dude!
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's the backward looking 6 with a line through it, and it's known as 'eth' and it referred to a narrow strip of hide or leather, and…yup!It can go between your toes or between your butt cheeks.
• linkBen Ainslie - The only reason I know this is because I read a metric butt-ton of fantasy and so, like, various amulets and important pieces of armour were all fastened via thongs.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, right.Hm.Now thongs versus flip flops:Hedvig, any sense of this?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Australians say THONGS…
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, THONG is just Australian isn't it?Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Everyone else has FLIP FLOPS.Basically.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, woo — hang on…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm?New Zealanders.
• linkBen Ainslie - If I may.New Zealanders say JANDALS.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, they do.
• linkBen Ainslie - Which is my personal favourite.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is true.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I think JANDAL is better than both of the other words.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So it comes from 'Japanese sandal', correct?
• linkDaniel Midgley - REALLY??
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I didn't even know that!That makes it even better!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?What do you mean?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Haven't we talked about this on the show?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No!
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't think so.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We have not.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Jandal.Japanese sandal.Googling like a crazy person.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's pretty good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Usually the J means like 'jeans', as in JEGGINGS or JORTS.So I was confused.
• linkBen Ainslie - I just thought it was just them being kooky and basically being like, "It's kind of like a sandal, but it's, like, a jandal!"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no.But you know the particular style of shoe…
• linkBen Ainslie - I do, like the mud walking shoes, yeah?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly, they have a little elevation.They're like a sort of plateau, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.What the samurai would wear when they're doing cool flippy kick things.That's how I know them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Can you really…really?Because they look tricky to walk in.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Hedvig, I need you to watch a anime series called Samurai Champloo, where there are breakdancing Samurai doing all kinds of cool stuff in their elevated mud sandal things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.This is weird for me, because I learned THONGS in my US English upbringing, but now according to the GLOWBE corpus, FLIP FLOPS is heavily American, THONGS strongly Australian.Could this be a case of taboo avoidance, where Americans just didn't want to say that they were wearing thongs because, like, the underwear?
• linkBen Ainslie - Absolutely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait…
• linkBen Ainslie - And the inverse as well, I reckon — I reckon Australians were very resistant to adopting FLIP FLOPS as a word because they were like:Well, that's what the bloody Seppos say, isn't it?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Charming.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So wait, what is underwear called in Australia?Just to recap?
• linkBen Ainslie - Uh, G-string, I think?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - G-string.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, which gave me pause.There I was, planning a musical number for church, back when I was a churchgoer, and I wanted to do a bit of Bach.And the number that I chose was "Air on a G String".LAUGHTER, CHOKING
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry, cough-laugh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What the hell, semantic shift?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, there you go.There is a relation between them, and it's the strap.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Called it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on.This one's from Bill.Bill says:Hello!I've known for awhile that Americans typically write dates month first.April 7th…
• linkBen Ainslie - Wrong.It's the wrong way to write the date.
• linkDaniel Midgley - …whereas most other English speakers write them date-first — 7th of April.But only recently did I realise that this reflects a difference in the way they are spoken, as well.I assumed that all English speakers would say "April 7", or "April the 7th", but apparently people who write "7 April" typically say "the 7th of April".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yep.I think that's true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Bill also adds "Thanks for your time and, as always, love the work y'all do to bring language science to the public in a way that's both enjoyable and rigorous."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's us!Poop and dictionaries.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah!Ben Ainslie:rigorous as hell.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's take a second and complain about middle-endian-ness.
• linkBen Ainslie - Middle-Indian-ness??
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What…what??
• linkDaniel Midgley - Middle-endian-ness.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Americans are middle-endy.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah, I don't care for that at all.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, the fact that…yeah, right.Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're little-endians over here in Australia.But they go…they stick the middle up in front, so they are middle-endians.
• linkBen Ainslie - It just…it inherently makes no sense.Why would you start with not the smallest unit?Come on!Or if you're going to change it up, at least start with the biggest unit— the year —and work your way down.Come on, Americans!What's going on?
• linkDaniel Midgley - By the way, that that you're describing there— the really big endians —is the only kind of date approved by the ISO.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's ISO Standard 8601:YYYY-MM-DD.And I use it all the time.
• linkBen Ainslie - Which— you know what —I'm fine with, right?'cause it still makes sense.But this whole month-first malarky has got to go!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have to say — so, we were chatting about this yesterday, my pre-husband, also known as fiancé.
• linkBen Ainslie - Your Ste and you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - My Ste and me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Your pre-ancé.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …and I'm quite flexible on this.Like, I usually think I…hmm!It depends on if I'm writing the year or not.I'll say it like that.So if I'm writing the year, I prefer to go day-month-year but if I'm just writing the month, I might go either way.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't want to defend weird stuff that only Americans do, like the imperial system of measurement, or US Letter paper, or libertarianism.LAUGHTERBut if the year is assumed, then the order of the day and month doesn't matter so much.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wrong.Wrong!Wrong!WRONG!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like, go from the broad category, then the narrow.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wrong!!!No!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I agree, I agree.
• linkBen Ainslie - Incorrect!!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Eh.
• linkBen Ainslie - SPUTTERSIf this was a thing, right?If this was a thing that was readily differentiate-able by sight, right?Like, if instead of writing the months as numbers, we just used the three-letter abbreviations, I would not give one flying single fuck about what order it went in, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.Yep.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because whether it was "7 Jan" or "Jan 7", that would just be immediately decipherable.But the whole numbers thing just means that we've got to pick a side.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because it's dumb and annoying and it can cause, like, legitimate confusion.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's true.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I know I'm getting all worked up about a very minor thing, but this we know about Ben Ainslie:he gets the most worked up about the most minor things.But to talk about what Bill said:I'd never clocked what he'd clocked, which is really interesting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is.
• linkBen Ainslie - I did not know that that was the case either, because I do.I say, like, the 7th of April.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, is it true?Is it true that Australians do this?Or that British speakers do this?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it is true.I tested it out on Ste and I said:What would you…like, if I said April 17th you'd be like "Hm, that sounds American".I wanted to give another perspective, which is that how we write doesn't necessarily have to reflect how we speak.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I prefer the ISO Standard set of dates and I write that, and I write, you know, 2020- and then 06- and — what date is it today…it's the 14th, yeah, I already knew that.But I'm happy to say it any other way, and this is also true for the clock.So like…and for a while, being abroad, I thought I was the weirdo but now that I'm back in Sweden, I have come home to my people and I've noticed that they're also like this.So we write 24-hour clock…
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …but we always basically speak 12-hour clock.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooo — interesting!I had always assumed you guys spoke 24…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Nope!
• linkBen Ainslie - …as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, we don't.
• linkBen Ainslie - Aw, I've lost a little bit of respect!LAUGHTERLike, I genuinely just thought…'cause 24-hour time, for exactly the same reason makes infinitely more sense.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!No, it's just…am to pm confuses me a lot and I often have to remind myself which is which.There's that song, like, "Party from AM to PM" — which doesn't make any sense because you should be partying from pm to am…
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's true.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway.Even though I've taken three years of Latin, and I know what AM and PM stand for, in order to remember which is which, I have to play that song in my head.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, interesting.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is it like, ante meridian, post meridian?I've never even thought about it before.
• linkDaniel MidgleyHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It is.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, I wanted to check out to see if Australians and UK people really do say "7th of April".
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, you did science!
• linkDaniel Midgley - So I decided to check in two ways:one using the GLOWBE corpus, which is the Global Corpus of Web-Based English, so this is in writing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But I also wanted to check speaking, and so I used Youglish.com to see…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mmm!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now I couldn't…it's hard to check for dates broadly, but I decided to focus on one, and that's June 30th of June.Okay?The 30th of June 30th.LAUGHTERNow…
• linkBen Ainslie - I see what you're doing there.That's good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you.Using GLOWBE, I looked up "* June" and "June *" and that gave me all the numbers."June _NUMBER_" is strongly favored in US and Canada, whereas "_NUMBER_ June" happens in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand.Okay, but that's writing.In speaking, I used Youglish.com, which allows you to look up words as they're spoken in YouTube annotations.I just typed in "June 30".
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "June 30":156 hits for the US, but for the UK, only 2, for Australia only 4.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, then we go to "30 June", which also gives you hits for when people say "the 30th of June".Only one hit for US videos, but in the UK, 13, in Australia 10.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, snap, that is definitive!
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, you know, for at least that…well, only for that one date, but at least for that one date, and we could do more— and I invite other people to follow up, because I don't have time, I had to do this episode —but it looks like there is, in speaking, a tendency for UK English speakers and so on to say "30 June" or "the 30th of June", whereas Americans and Canadians tend to say "June 30" or "June 30th".
• linkBen Ainslie - I hate to be a proponent of bad science, but I'm willing to call that case closed.Like, that's huge!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Are you saying that Daniel's doing bad science?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, more just like that's— like Daniel said —it's, like, a single day blah blah blah, but at the same time, that was pretty overwhelming.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yep, yep, yep.You got to know…There's something I've also learned through my youth, being 30— [SINGS] 32-year-old lady… 31-year-old lady —is:just because it's not…you can never fully prove something and sometimes you just got to stop digging, because like, it's overwhelming in one way or another.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Science doesn't tell us what's true;it tells us what's false.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wow.That's pretty deep!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We can always critique.We've got to decide where to, like, stop digging.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.Okay!
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, let's go on the next question.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ellie on Facebook:"I love your podcast and wanted to see if you guys might know more about how the word UP has become softening in English for some verbs typically as commands like CUT UP, CHOP UP, TEAR UP.Seems a little softer then to CUT or to CHOP or to TEAR."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, so I was thinking about this!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't know if I agree!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't think…I am a little bit unsure of…so Ellie is using the word 'softening'.And I don't think it's softening.But I think it's something.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.What do you think it's doing?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it's changingPOSH ACCENTthe temporal aspect of the verb.
• linkDaniel Midgley - YESSS!
• linkBen Ainslie - Tell me what you mean by that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Getting excited!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So there's tense, which is a relationship between the event or the state that you're describing, and either the time of speaking or some other time of speaking.So, is it before?Past.Is it after?Future.Blah blah blah blah.Aspect has to do with the internal temporal consistency.Is it a repetitive event?Is it an elongated event that goes on at the same time as something else?And, important for this one:is it an event that has a clear end point?
• linkDaniel Midgley - There we go.
• linkBen Ainslie - Aah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When you CUT UP a pig, there is a point when you have cut enough, such that you have completed the action:CUT UP the pig.
• linkBen Ainslie - Or WASH UP the dishes…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - WASH UP the dishes…
• linkBen Ainslie - CLEAN UP the room…or EAT UP your food.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The word that I like for this is "telic".It's "telic".So the test is:if you got interrupted, did you do it?So, you know:He ATE the food.If he got interrupted, well, he still ate the food.But:He ATE UP the food.If he got interrupted in the middle of it, he didn't really EAT UP the food.It wasn't finished.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mmm!This is fascinating!So what do we call this?Telic.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it's got a perfective aspect, or a telic aspect.
• linkBen Ainslie - Interesting.So when it is followed by UP, it acquires the telic aspect?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It has telic….UP is, like, a telic aspect marker.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's more fine nuances within telic.There's, like, accomplishments versus achievements, and blah blah blah blah, but basically if you have a clear end point…
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.You know, there are other examples that aren't as telic to me.Like, it does seem like a goal state.Like for example:He's fixing the car.He's fixing UP the car.It sounds to me like fixing UP the car for some kind of goal, okay?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, fixing up the car suggests you're reconditioning some, like, vintage machine into, like, some immaculate condition.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whereas fixing the car means, like, I have to get it working again.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or getting DRESSED — He's upstairs getting DRESSED.He's upstairs getting DRESSED UP.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah, interesting!LAUGHS
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.It's…
• linkBen Ainslie - Both denote like a level of fanciness!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Kinda.Yeah.But that's telic as well, kind of, I think, because it implies some sort of purpose, or some sort of goal that you have.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mmm.Very cool!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The question then becomes:why is it UP?And Ellie also has some examples when there's a pair where you can also use DOWN.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm?
• linkDaniel Midgley - So TEAR UP a piece of paper;TEAR DOWN the establishment.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, interesting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Both of them sound telic to me.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think TEARING DOWN is vaguely directional.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, but in a way that UP isn't.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think so too.
• linkBen Ainslie - So like, when you TEAR DOWN wallpaper, or you TEAR DOWN the establishment, it is evocative of something crumbling down.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is DOWN.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Whereas chopping UP something doesn't throw it up in the air, do you know what I mean?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, it does it for a certain purpose, I guess.Whereas chopping DOWN, it really is coming down.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And I was wondering what might have made Ellie think of softening.And so I was thinking about the commands — that maybe if you give a command that has a clear end point, that is a bit nicerLAUGHTERthan say, you know, dish…like, do the dishes…wash, like, indefinitely.You know, sounds like you're becoming a servant or something.Whereas:Can you wash up these dishes right now?It's more like:can you do this thing?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, there's a difference between cleaning and cleaning UP the kitchen.Why don't you clean up the kitchen, or…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.So I think…I don't know, I'm not sure, but I was trying to…'cause she did describe it as softening, and I was trying to think of what that comes from.That's my only theory.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A gentler way.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that's an interesting question.So the concept here is telicity or perfective.And that's an aspect, not a tense.
• linkBen Ainslie - I hope everyone had their notebooks out for that particular answer!It got very technical.I liked it, though!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I did too!This one comes from Brooke on Patreon.
• linkBen Ainslie - We've had two Washington-arians…Washingtonians?in a row!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Washingtonians.Yes, that's right."Hello, Talk the Talk friends!I am a long time listener from the US, currently in Daniel's native WA state, who will be moving to Australia in a few short months." Whoa, she's probably here by now.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, hang on — she's moving from WA to WA?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, she is.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fun!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Going through whiplash like I did."If ever I'm in Perth, I'd love to attend one of your live events." Oh, that sounds fun, doesn't it?"The reason for my message is that I'd like you to address a question that has baffled me for years:how can a word like SANCTION have two completely contradictory meanings:'to punish' versus 'to allow'?Not only are the meanings contradictory, but they are also used within the same semantic sphere, that of rules and laws.How did this happen?Why is this still a thing?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - True — I've never clocked that!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think we…have…Daniel, something tells me we've talked about these before.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think we've talked about these before.We call them contronyms.They're also called Janus words, named after the Roman god who had two faces looking in opposite directions.We've got SANCTION, we've got TRIM — where you can TRIM something off, or you can TRIM the tree and add something on.The same thing happens with CLIP.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh my god, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you can CLIP, which means you remove, or you can CLIP things together, which means you add.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You can also CLEAVE things apart, or you can CLEAVE together with someone.What's going on?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ste added SCREEN — as in:it used to be that SCREEN meant dividing and shielding something.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But then when you started projecting to it, it means showing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, good one, Ste!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah.Nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - From the deep cuts!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And that one is like, we can sort of understand the etymology.If that theory is correct, then we can understand that path.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So any insights here?Why is this happening?
• linkBen Ainslie - The SANCTION one seems to me to be, like, the most ridiculous of the contronyms, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, the TRIMs and the CLIPs and stuff — you kind of think about it for a second, and you're like:Oh, yeah, I guess it does mean that.And then you think about SANCTION, and you're like:They literally mean as opposite a thing as it's possible to mean!LAUGHTERAnd Brooke is absolutely right:in exactly the same semantic sphere, as well.Right?Like, these are things that, like, diplomats will say to each other, and that sort of stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.Well, so, for SANCTION, this is a legal term about what is permitted and not permitted, because sometimes people were talking about something that was okay, and something that was not okay, and the word kind of absorbed both of those meanings.So that's one thing that can happen— it's just, you know, a bit of semantic flippery. The same thing with WEATHER —you know, we say the ship weathered the storm, which means it did great, but:"The boards looked weathered", which means they don't look great.The other thing that can happen is that two unrelated words will join together, and that's what happened with CLEAVE.The two meanings of CLEAVE came from totally different words.When you use your cleaver to CLEAVE apart something, that comes from Old English cleofan "to split".But when you CLEAVE unto someone, you stick to them, and that comes from Old English clifian— totally different word —"to stick", and that's also where we get CLAGGY and also CLAY, which can be quite sticky.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there you go.So this is just literally — like, this is just language actually just being kind of a bit shit, if we're being honest.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, basically everyone is like:~Aw, SANCTION kinda means this but I guess it kinda also means this other thing. Ah, well! We'll just leave it like that.~
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's imprecise.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I think the question also— that Brooke might want to know —is if there's, like, a general process that can account for all of these.But you seem to say it's all, like, independent trajectories.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well — so again, there's two things.Sometimes a word will split in meaning, but then sometimes two other unrelated words will join in meaning.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So the principle here is that meaning jumps, and sometimes it jumps to an adjacent thing.Sometimes it even jumps to an opposite thing.Although there's an interesting observation here with computational linguistics.You know how we know what words mean because we look at what other words are in the same neighborhood?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uh-huh.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sure.Yeah, you know it by its friends.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.So BREAK and SHATTER often appear in the same neighborhood, near GLASS and WINDOW and that's how we know that BREAK and SHATTER mean similar things.But the funny thing that we've discovered computationally is that sometimes opposites appear in the same neighbourhood, like BLACK and WHITE.So a computer will think that they're synonyms, and they're not.So opposites are closer than we think sometimes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fascinating!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I often confuse opposites.
• linkBen Ainslie - As in, in your mother tongue?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkBen Ainslie - Really??
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Just like, you know the thing below your mouth?Chin?
• linkBen Ainslie - The chin, yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the thing above your eyebrows?Forehead?
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - The forehead.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Are those two words similar in Swedish?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No!
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just…they're live in the same block.LAUGHTERIt's like left and right!They live close to each other.Sometimes I'll swap them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Interesting.Interesting.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay — fair enough!And you take your phone to the toilet.Like, this we know.We're the other kind of person.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do you stroke your forehead when you're confused?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - N…n…Only words!LAUGHTERIt's not a Sapir-Whorf thing.Only…Like, I think people can recognise this about LEFT and RIGHT.That I struggle with remembering which one's LEFT and RIGHT, but I always put forward the right hand when I shake someone's hand.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.Yeah, I guess that is true.LEFT and RIGHT is more confusing.Like, there is something deeply wrong feeling about shaking the left hand.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, so like, if I don't remember which one is right, I'm like:Hmm, which one do I shake WITH?Ah, it's this one.I know that I shake with the right, therefore that must be the right.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's way better than the left and right from the shape of the fingers.That's…I like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Shape of the fingers?
• linkBen Ainslie - You know, if you hold your hands up with the…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - OH MY GOD I JUST SAW ITLAUGHTEROkay!
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm so glad that I was able to bring that to your life.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now you can't unsee it, can you?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No!But I'm also going to struggle with it.LAUGHTERI'm going to stick with the shaking hands.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, sounds good.That's all the questions that we have time for today, but we're going to get to more of these.We're going to try to do them a little more often than we have done before, so get those questions to us.We'll have contact information at the tail end of the show.
• linkDaniel Midgley - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkBen Ainslie - Are we going to do our normal read?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wait, it's Word of the Week.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - After Word of the Week.
• linkBen Ainslie - VERY SLOWLY AND SARCASTICALLYOh…yay.LAUGHTERI had forgotten.But goody!It's still there!Even in the bonus episodes!
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.I decided to throw it in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeahhhhh…
• linkBen Ainslie - QUIET MANIC VOICESo happyyyyyy!Let's go — Word of the Week, yay!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, it's been a bad week to be a statue.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSNot necessarily — there's that really cool Swedish statue of the woman smashing a guy in the…the Nazi.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?Oh, but that's, like, old, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - There's a statue of an old lady smacking a neo-Nazi in the head with her handbag.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Awesome!
• linkBen Ainslie - That's a cool statue.I love that statue!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, Christopher Columbus has been beheaded, I think twice.Awesome.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Good job, everyone.
• linkBen Ainslie - I actually feel like that number is a bit low.Come on, society!There has to be how many frickin' Columbus statues peppered around the place.Let's get a few more of those heads on the ground.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Who else — Ghandi?
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooo, yeah, Gandhi's an interesting one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhmm.Robert E.Lee — there have been lots of Confederate statues where people have finally lost patience and ripped those things out.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't want to…I know the statue issue has been at play for a lot longer than this, like, recent resurgence of Black Lives Matters awareness.But the current, sort of, spate of statue situations was all kicked off by the Bristol one, yeah?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm, tell me more.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, a statue of a slave owner in Bristol was dumped into the bay that his slave ships used to, like, pull up to.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the one.Closer to Perth, the King Leopold Ranges— it's a mountain range in Western Australia —named after…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …the Belgian king??
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Why…is it…why…I…mmm!
• linkBen Ainslie - It seems a long way away.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Australia!Yeah!I was surprised when I heard this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ten million dead.He never visited WA.Has no connection to the state.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You guys!I don't know how to say this, but like, at least like…I don't know, like, at least James Cook, like, visited Australia!Like, why'd you go and name something after some dickhead who wasn't even here!Like, 😡!
• linkBen Ainslie - It gets worse.The only other mountain range we have in WA — so for everyone outside of Western Australia, Hedvig included, like one of the most consistent features of Western Australia as a place is:it's just fucking flat, right?Like, we are one of the flattest places on Earth.and the quote-unquote mountain ranges that we have are laughably small by any normal person's standards, right?Like, so I grew up in the Rocky Mountains, and then I saw real mountains, and I came back to WA, and I saw these hills!LAUGHTERAnd I was like:Oh, wow, we're really reaching on this one.So anyway, the only other mountain range we have is called the Stirling Ranges, also named after a person who just ordered the massacres of a whole bunch of Indigenous Australians.So we're really not doing well when it comes to naming our mountains at all.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But we're renaming them to something else.It's going to be in…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Really?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes!King Leopold Ranges…King Leopold is going to be out.It's been announced by Minister Ben Wyatt of WA.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wow!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yay!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it going to be, like, a contest for another name?or…?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, god, I hope not.Please no.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think the people whose land it is are going to get to name it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That sounds like a good idea.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is a great way to do it.Yeah.Maybe even…they're not going to name it.They're just going to tell us what they've always called it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, there you go.There we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's what I want.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know how long this mountain range is, but sometimes local names aren't necessarily of the entire range.That's the thing that can happen when people want to use local names and you might have to say:"Oh, okay.We're going to use three different names." Or:we're going to, like, append them, or make up a new name.When I've been making these maps with Indigenous place names of the Pacific, many times I've found that for a certain large land mass, like the big landmass of New Guinea, people don't have a word for all of that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's the case here, too.The ranges span at least three different language groups.There's going to have to be some consultation.Well, in the midst of all this iconoclasm, some conservative folks are fretting over the disappearance of the old order…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, here we go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And this brings us to US Senator Tom Cotton, who is auditioning for Donald Trump's job in 2024.
• linkBen Ainslie - SHUDDER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Most recently he's notable for writing an op-ed in The New York Times where he encouraged the military to show a "overwhelming show of force" against Americans who are protesting.How about that.He says:"Are we going to tear the Washington Monument down?Are we going to rename it the Obelisk of Wokeness?" Which…I thought the Obelisk of Wokeness was the best thing I've heard sinceHEAVY METAL VOICE"The Vagenda of Manocide".LAUGHTERTermy suggested:Can we call it the Pointy Thing of Getting Along with One Another?which I thought was a nice Rodney King callback.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's very good.
• linkBen Ainslie - Could we just call it the Black-built Stone Dick?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now you're getting into Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, who once in a song referred to it as the Great Eternal Klansman.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's like…it's just…it's so clearly a cock, you guys!How is that not clear to everybody?Like, there's just no other…We've built this giant spire!Why?'Cause.How is that not the very definition of a giant dick measuring contest?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So that was one.And then I noticed something about FOMO, so I wanted to bring it to our attention.I think it's going through some semantic extension.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooo!So, okay, other than a fear of missing out, what could it be?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I think it's not only a fear of missing out on something in the future, but I think it's also being applied to things that you've already missed, and you regret.
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Ohh…
• linkDaniel Midgley - So tell me if this sounds weird to you:"Oh, I didn't go to that concert last week and now I'm suffering serious FOMO." Is that okay or does it sound weird?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it sounds okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it sounds okay but my brain is like:🌀 No…no…no…!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It wouldn't be okay to say "…and now I'm suffering serious fear of missing out." That I wouldn't accept.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.There I draw the line!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But FOMO…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I took a look in the NOW Corpus.There are lots of references to buying stocks…you know, in the future you will miss out if you don't buy it now.There are some about regret, like for example:"They took a cooking class together in Florence, giving the rest of us a serious case of FOMO", because we missed out.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah!
• linkDaniel Midgley - "In short, I've been suffering from Sonos FOMO for years." Sonos…the headphone company, I guess?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, the speaker system you have in your house.
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So I did a little Twitter survey.
• linkBen Ainslie - Look at you doing the science this week!Settle down, you lab-coat-wearing nerd!
• linkDaniel Midgley - You think a Twitter poll is scientific, then I have some news.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSIt's 100 percent more scientific than my lived life.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, in this case, 62% of everyone said that it's just a fear of missing out on something in the future, but 27.6% said it could be a regret for something that you've already missed out on in the past.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.I reckon this is definitely semantically shifting up.For sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.I think so.Let's watch out for that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hm, interesting.What would be an alternative?Maybe ROMO.
• linkBen Ainslie - Regret of missing out.That's good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think Paul says RAHMO.Regret At Having Missed Out.I'm suffering from RAHMO.
• linkBen AinslieDaniel MidgleyHedvig Skirgård - MUSINGNo.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like ROMO.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - ROMO's fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So:FOMO and Obelisk of Wokeness — our Words of the Week.Let's get to some comments from our last episode.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yes, please let's do!Where are we reading those out?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Twitter and Facebook.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fun!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh gosh, there's a lot here.Okay, I'm just going to read them pretty fast.The first person to kick this off was Byron:"Thinking about what my favorite thing about language is after listening to @becauselangpod's inaugural episode.It's hard for me to say, but one of them is that the patterns in language are fractal.Patterns in patterns in patterns, which means there's so much to discover."
• linkBen Ainslie - It's the Ian Malcolm of language.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's constructions all the way down.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Kelly Wright— we're going to be talking to her later on —"Language as part of our evolution is the externalisation of thought.We willed ourselves to be able to do that as a species.It is this skill that allows us to reflect on what we've accomplished, to build a history.This is what defines us biologically.Universal human knowledge." Wow!Mark and Aven from the Endless Knot podcast:"Two things:that it's a record of human culture like fossil remains of every version of humanity that's gone by, and that it's an endless playground because it's so malleable and mercurial, and any individual can shape it into whatever they want it to be." Good one, huh?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like malleable as a word.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's so good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's good.
• linkBen Ainslie - Bendy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Lynnika says, "Lots of cool stuff, but polysynthesis and voiceless lateral fricatives are definitely in my large and growing collection of favourite things." Can you make a voiceless lateral fricative?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
• linkDaniel Midgley - ɬ
• linkHedvig Skirgård - ɬ
• linkBen Ainslie - SHUDDERS
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I can do it ingressive.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - ingressive ɬ
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good.So put your tongue like you're going to make an <L> sound.l.Now don't make any sound, just blow.
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - ɬ
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a speech sound in some languages.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The trick to doing voiceless things is often to think that you're whispering.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Very good.Very good.
• linkBen Ainslie - There you go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Or just being gross.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.That's how I did it.Okay, I'm going to be gross now.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - ɬɬ
• linkDaniel Midgley - Termy says, "The huge variety of different grammatical features that languages 'choose' to include or not, plus the fact that every language is still capable of expressing the same concepts regardless.Oh, and the infinite creativity of people when they want to express something in a novel way."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah…
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's a good one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Termy likes himself some Boaz.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's a paraphrase of Boaz.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Elías says, "One thing I love about language is the various scripts humanity came up with.I find scripts fascinating, both for the aura of mystery when you see a new one like a new code to crack, to unlock the door to a whole new facet of the world or humanity, and for their incredible aesthetics." Mm, mm, mm.Natalia:"What fascinates me in language is that it can be bland, simple and seemingly unoriginal.It can also be juicy, flourishing, recognisable.Either way it's still individual, nearly like your DNA."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I like this one.And it made me think of another thing that I have discovered as I'm growing older…question mark?besides liking vanilla lattés.It's also that I think I started appreciating poetry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, interesting!
• linkBen Ainslie - SPUTTERINGThat…how…what…augh!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We've talked about this before.
• linkBen Ainslie - Every week, Hedvig, you do this!LAUGHTEREvery week, you just do this, like, mind-splinter, stereotype-defying…HEDVIG VOICE"I've decided that as a 30-year-old hhhwoman, I like vanilla lattés, and also poetry."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!I'm fine with it!It's a fun ride, actually, 'cause someone wrote a poem about the Bristol statue tearing down.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh!
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I read the poem, and I was like:Oh, this is poetry!Oh, I like this!LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Cool.Nancy says, "I am charmed that we have this shared, agreed-upon abstraction." That's cool.And then finally we'll end with Erika:"My favorite thing about language is that it is one of the very few necessary and sufficient conditions to be human.If we study language…"
• linkBen AinslieDaniel MidgleyHedvig Skirgård - Oooo…
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's an assumption there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is…yeah.There was a someone earlier who said something similar, and is it?Is it really?SMALL COMPLAINING NOISES!
• linkDaniel Midgley - "If we study language," she says, "we study the essence of being human." Whether I agree with her or not, I think it's an intriguing thought to kick around.What do you think?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.No.I'm being a bit contrarian for the sake of being contrary and there's something quite…Clearly, monkeys don't write poems, you know?Right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is something different about us.It might be a bit more gradual than we might be comfortable thinking about but…hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that's awesome.I am so glad to hear everyone's views.Thank you so much for sending these to us.And we hope that you enjoyed hearing us reading your thing on the air.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Thank you so much.
• linkDaniel Midgley - On the air?On the air.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - On the air.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - END THEME
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, you know what that music means.That means we're coming to the end of this episode.But…
• linkBen Ainslie - We'll be back!LAUGHTERIs that…is that what you were leading towards?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We have a little tail text.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, that's what I thought, but like, I didn't want to start with like:"So now it's time for us to read some script!"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We will be back.And in the meantime, it's really lovely hearing all of your comments from our inaugural episode.And keep 'em coming.You can send them to us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, and Patreon.On all of these platforms, we are becauselangpod.And you can also email us, if you want to do that.That is hello@becauselanguage.com.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hello!LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig SkirgårdDaniel Midgley - Hello!
• linkBen Ainslie - It just seems so weirdly nice, I can't help…I think every time anyone reads that, I'm just going to follow it with, like:Hello!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If you like what we do, and you want to help promote good language science podcasting, you can tell a friend about us or leave us a review wherever you're getting your podcasts.You can also write about us on Facebook or just, in general, spread the good news.
• linkBen Ainslie - Thanks to everybody who's become a patron.It…gee willikers, it's really nice to get a little bit of money for doing this show, which takes, like, a lot of time and effort.Mostly of Daniel.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - For Daniel, yes.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ahem.
• linkBen Ainslie - But of Hedvig and I, as well.We hope that you really enjoyed this episode.Patrons, please let us know what we can do to make your patronage experience better.A special thanks this week to Lyssa, Kate, Termy, Chris, Carolin, Anna, Helen, Christelle, Andy, Jack, Kristofer, Kate, Michael, Nasrin, Binh, Elías, Jen, Dustin, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Larry, Whitney, Matt, Nigel, Damien, and Bob.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our music's written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, and you can hear him in two bands:Ryan Beno and Didion's Bible, worth checking out.Thanks for listening.Catch you next time.Because Language.
• linkBen Ainslie - PEACE!!!