9 - OzCLO

1161 turns

• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig, have we ever discussed, while people are writing answers, the whole, like, Swedish Chef / Norwegian Chef thing?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We never have.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Norwegian Chef?
• linkBen Ainslie - So, you know how in the Muppets, there's like the Swedish Chef, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - And you know how whenever anyone meets someone from Sweden— I'm sure this has happened to you a bunch of times —they're like "Oh, the Swedish Chef!A-burky durky durky!IMITATING THE SWEDISH CHEF"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Happened by my Dutch phonology teacher, who should know better.He knows that Swedish doesn't sound like that, and he was still like:"Oh, you're Swedish!Gurdy gurdy gurdy."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Bork bork bork.
• linkBen Ainslie - So what I really like is that, like apparently, you guys don't call it the Swedish Chef in, like, the Muppets of Sweden.You call him the Norwegian Chef.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We have Muppets.
• linkBen Ainslie - But you've got to imagine, right?that you, like everyone else, when you meet someone from that place, you go up to a Norwegian and you're just like:"Oh, Norway, like the Norwegian Chef!A-burky durky durky!" To which the Norwegian, who still calls it the Swedish Chef, is like:"Holy fuck!They speak that way!"LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - THEME MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this episode of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language.I'm Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team.It's bigger than Ben Hur, it's Ben Ainslie.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'll take it.LAUGHTERI'll take it.I haven't seen that movie in a long, long time, but I'll take it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's more than a feeling:Hedvig Skirgård.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I like that one.That's fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's a good song.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't understand that one.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like as well that I have just completely, with no effort at all, handed you the "make up a dumb improv thing every episode"-like yoke, so now you have to pull that terrible, terrible wagon every week.Sucked in!I'm happy to be free of it.You take it, you go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "More Than a Feeling" is a song by the band Boston and it's really, really, really good!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.I am better than it?Yay?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Well, I didn't say you were more than "More Than a Feeling".
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Aaah…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I just said you were more than a feeling.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, just "More Than a Feeling".Which feeling are you more than, Hedvig?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oooh…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ennui?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.Some sort of, like, excitement and some sort of peppiness.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Elation.
• linkBen Ainslie - You're above elation.Jeez Louise, rein it in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.Today on the show, we're going to be meeting up with some Australian high school students who have been participating in OzCLO, the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad.They've agreed to join us later on on this episode with a special purpose-built quiz created by our dear Hedvig Skirgård and Henry Wu, who is also associated with OzCLO.So that's going to be really fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Daniel, are you ready to feel really fucking old?I know I am.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben, when you're as old as I am, you feel like that all the time.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, man.We are about to get absolutely trashed, aren't we?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Gonna get handed, aren't we?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, we are.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But politely, because these are fairly nerdy high school students, so they'll be super nice about it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh no.It's going to be the…it's going to be the worst kind, the worst kind of beating, right?Where they will be really nice while they do it, and then authentically offer their thanks to us after they've beaten us.It's going to be awful.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I feel like it's almost happened already.LAUGHTEROkay!We've had a lot of brand new patrons who make the show possible.I just like to thank all of you patrons who listen and support the show.You are helping us stretch to some new goals.So thank you very much.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do we want to announce what they are?Like, shall we say now what we're going to be spending some of that sweet, sweet cash on?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are going to be spending it on, number one, transcripts because we want to get them out as quickly as possible, because accessibility matters.
• linkBen Ainslie - Absolutely.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The show's not done till the transcript is done.And also, we're going to start offering our guests a small honorarium for being on the show for their time, because we shouldn't be wanting people to work for free.I don't like to;I don't expect anybody else to, either.
• linkBen Ainslie - Totally.It's one of those it's like, kind of like one of the dirty underpinnings of the podcasting world is that often you are sort of generating content off people who come on your show once, and you kind of keep that ball rolling somewhat indefinitely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's true.But at the same time, a lot of people have sort of written into their job descriptions to do public outreach, and they are very bad at it or don't have any other opportunities to do it.
• linkBen Ainslie - A hundred percent.I don't think that it's like…I don't think it's like indentured servitude or anything like that.But I also do know that for a lot of those people, it's yet another instance of like:"Hey, would you like to go on a podcast?We can't pay you, but like, it's fun!" So it's nice to try and split the difference there a little bit, I think, which is to say we understand that your time isn't worthless and that you definitely have many other things that you might be doing with that time other than being on a show with Hedvig, Daniel, and Ben.So here is some money.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And we're really grateful for people who have heretofore given us their time so freely.I mean, I know that outreach is in many people's work descriptions, but it's also compensated very poorly and the system is broken.So we want to do our part to help un-break it, just a little bit.
• linkBen Ainslie - And people be giving us money for good content and our guests help make that good content.So share the love.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There we go.Thanks, patrons, for helping us do that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yarp.Shall we find out what's going on in the world of linguistics before we get to the bit where Daniel and I be made to look really dumb, old and, irrelevant.Should we just do that first?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay!
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This story is about a hesitation noise, and it's a hesitation noise in Mandarin that sounds a lot like a slur.Slurs are one of the things we keep talking about on the show.So be prepared.Muster your resources.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - USC (University of Southern California) Professor Greg Patton has been disciplined over discussion of a Chinese discourse particle.When I was teaching a lot of Chinese students, I would hear them say a thing over and over again.I don't speak Mandarin, but I would hear them say, okay, here it comes, ne-gane.ga.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now you know how we say UM a lot, or what other hesitation noises do you have?
• linkBen Ainslie - Errr.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uhhh.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that's my…that's my go-to.There's UM and AH and ER.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, this one in Mandarin means THAT.So you'd be saying that, that that that that as a way of sort of getting ready to say the next thing you're going to say
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, and you can kind of…you hear that in English sometimes, right?Like when a person is trying to say something, they might sort of go:Oh, do you know what that that, that that is that.Yeah, totally.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But of course, to English speakers, it sounds super offensive.And this USC professor mentioned it, said it a bunch of times in a discussion of hesitation noises, and Black students were very offended, and the teacher has stepped away from teaching that class.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That doesn't sound like the ideal solution of that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I don't know what the ideal solution is, but…because I've taken Mandarin and I've also been taught this discourse particle.And as a Swedish person, not…English is not my first language, I was sort of like:oh, I know that this is a word in English, but to me as a Swede, it didn't matter.And I was taught in Swedish, so I didn't really care about it.It is still a thing if you're learning Mandarin or if you're learning about hesitation noises, you should learn about this one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - True.True.It wasn't a class about Mandarin.It was "communication in business".But reactions have been mixed in the linguistic world.Some reactions have been:Boy, we really need to help students by teaching them linguistics to realise that there's a difference between use and mention.This was definitely on the mention side.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, sorry, for the non-linguist in the trio.The difference between use and mention, what does that mean?
• linkDaniel Midgley - If you're saying a slur to offend somebody, or in the way that people often do, then that's using it.But if you say, hey, you know, there's the slur and it's this, but I'm not actually using it as a slur in that context, then it's mention.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Others have said:Gee, is this is it possible that this is motivated partly by anti-Chinese sentiment?One Sina Weibo user said, is it now forbidden to speak Chinese in the United States?So sort of turning the accusation around onto the Black students.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That, I don't think…that sounds farfetched.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wow.There is…there is a lot of very tricky crossroads intersecting here.Yeah, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.That sounds, that sounds not likely to me.I don't know.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'd have to imagine that if there's a group of African-American students in that class who are upset about the way this word is being used, that their issues with China and Chinese nationalism would have to fall relatively far down the list of grievances that they are experiencing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think so.
• linkBen Ainslie - That would be my impression.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is there any evidence that this teacher intentionally decided to talk about this one because he actually wanted to use the offensive word for some reason?And this was a weird dog whistling or something?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't think so.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Or is there like, I don't know the situation.Is there an argument to be made that, like, the way it was deployed in class with a sort of like a fairly obvious contingent of African-American students?Like, it was one of those situations where I was like, wow, it's weird how many times this particle has now been mentioned.Is it like that sort of situation?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I watched the video and yeah, saying it about five times was…let's just say this.It is possible to discuss sensitive terms in class because I've done it over and over and over again.But you have to do some groundwork.And I do not feel like that really happened in this case.
• linkBen Ainslie - And we saw like a contextualised, and by we, I mean you Daniel, a contextualised version, right, where you saw, like, the beginning of the class and that sort of stuff?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I just watched the relevant bit.It's on the Language Log.So, you know, I cannot say that I was in that context.I would not say I understand the context fully.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I saw the clip that I think is the same as Daniel saw.And it was very short.It was just that.And he repeated it several times in order to imitate what it sounds like when you hesitate, as in like:um um um um.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Um um um um.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I, I don't know.We don't have the full context, so it feels like we can't really pass judgment on this.It didn't to me.It…just what I saw it didn't seem very problematic, but I think there was more you had to know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So here's my take.If you think that students are sensitive snowflakes who hear a slur and then they have to go home and take a nap because they have a headache or something.And that's, by the way, something that kind of came through in the reporting, I think.If you take that view— Just getting upset over nothing! —then you're going to take the view that they're getting upset over nothing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I trust students.I trust students as adults who, though they may lack some linguistic knowledge, they are not unaware of the situation that they are in.And for whatever reason, they felt the way that they felt about that situation, whatever else happened.Whereas it is possible to discuss slurs and terms and even topics that are offensive, as long as you background it, as long as you have a reasonable justification for doing so, then that can happen satisfactorily.But it needs to be handled extremely carefully.And I feel like in this case, it was not handled extremely carefully.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think also there's a question to be asked around where in the world we are right now.Like, I think this would have potentially been a…how do I say this?Not a different situation.But I think we said it a couple of weeks ago on the show when we talked about how when someone says "I support J.K.Rowling", right?Like saying that at that time, very clearly says "I do not agree with trans rights", kind of thing.Like that was…that was a very clear statement.I don't know anything about the situation.I don't think that's happened like that necessarily.But at the same time, like, America is kind of literally on fire as the racial scar a mile wide in that society is slowly being somewhere between expurgated and healed and torn open.And so I would say that anyone who would want to sort of— and I don't know this professor, I don't know what sort of justifications he or she is making —but anyone who on that professor's behalf, would try and make a justification of like:"Well, it's just knowledge and that's all that needs to happen." I would say there are some pretty significant contextual factors to keep in mind about what's going on here.And if that means that you then correspondingly have to do, like, a butt-ton of qualifications and prep before talking about something like this, well, then that's probably what needs to happen.But I dunno.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I mean, it should be fairly simple as well.So when I was taught that in Sweden, we didn't talk about it because not a word in Swedish that would sound alike, so it wasn't really relevant.But in English, surely all you would have to do is say:"There is a hesitation word in Mandarin that sounds like a slur in English.It's like this.When people use it, it's not a slur and it sounds like this." And like I…we don't know the context of the class and we don't know if he said that or not.And it might, some people might say, oh, it's ridiculous that you have to contextualise it like that.But I agree with Ben.You probably actually still do.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I think like even before Black Lives Matter protests, like, swept America, I think in an American classroom with Black students, you absolutely would need to do groundwork there.Like, if you can look at your students and see black faces in the United States and you want to talk about that word, regardless of the context, you need to like, do some groundwork, absolutely.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Language use happens in a context, and it's not absurd to require a speaker to contextualise their comments.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But it brings some questions about like, so it seems like this might have been, like, someone not thinking through their teaching material from a different light and their ignorance or their incompetence or whatever you want to call it gets recorded because of Zoom and can be spread and shared.And there are a lot of teachers now that are in the situation where they have to confront being scrutinised in a different way as teachers.And yeah, I just…I wonder what's…I wonder what it's like to be a teacher right now.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's interesting, isn't it?Like, it's really easy as a person who's never been, to be like:"Eh, doesn't matter!" I don't know if my tune would change if something super unflattering from one of my classes hit the internet and I became like the Asshole of the Week on the net, perhaps.I'm not sure.The best instances I've seen where something like this goes down is, and it kind of maybe sounds like that's what this professor has done, is a person just goes:"My bad, yup.All that.Fair enough.I'm sorry." And, like, takes a big step back from things.I don't know.It's…I agree with you, Hedvig, but maybe part of me also kind of goes:maybe teaching at any level as a profession has kind of needed this scrutiny for a really long time.And we're just going through the growing pains of…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Exactly.Maybe this is making everyone's education better.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know.It sure is different.
• linkBen Ainslie - And then there's just some unfortunate canaries in the coal mine who are the ones who hit those, like, pockets of gas, for lack of a better phrase.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think I think there's a sort of scale here as well.There's clearly this ignorance and we don't know, maybe there was some malicious intent somehow.Maybe these students knew something we don't know.But if it was just the non-framing of what in the language sounds like a slur, then like Daniel was saying, there's…there is a difference between mention and use.And I think there are teachers that do worse.Yeah, I don't know how to scale this essentially.How much flack should you be getting from this?Some?Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it sounds like it's a learning experience for a lot of people.I don't know how to navigate it, but we might see more of these kinds of cases.We might be talking about it again sometime.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Next!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's see.I have been observing a lot of child language, as I do.It's time for me to subject you to "What's Going on with My Adorable Moppets".
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yay!
• linkDaniel Midgley - So the two-year-old is using "do" support, which is the one where you say, "I DO do the thing", but when she wants to tell us, don't do that, she says "No, do do that".There's two "do"s.She also grabbed a shared container of blueberries from her sister and saidBREATHY VOICE"ALL MINE!"LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - As for the four-year-old, she is saying things in past tense.She's getting irregular, past tenses, wrong, in an interesting way.So she's saying "He hided it" Or "we doed it" or what was the one?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fair enough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We cautchedkɒtʃtit.
• linkBen Ainslie - We cautched it, oh, I like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We cautched up with it, we cautched up to the train.
• linkBen Ainslie - She's doing better with tenses than Ellis does.And I think he's got like two years on her.He is rubbish.His grammar is all over the place!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Don't worry about it, he'll get there.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I'm not worried.I'm just like:just listening to him talk and I'm like:oh bruv, you need to do some work.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Variation in acquisition is the norm.That's all I'm going to say.But there's some research coming from Hannah Sarvasy, a research fellow in linguistics at Western Sydney University, looking at languages where they do clause chains.
• linkBen Ainslie - What the heck is a clause chain?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go ahead, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is when…it's a pattern and usually it gets described in languages of New Guinea, which is also where Hannah Sarvasy does work, so I suspect that's why.It's when you can chain several clauses together and usually the end clause…
• linkDaniel Midgley - What's a clause?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, a clause is a thing with a verb, and a verb is a thing that describes an action or a state.And a clause is where you have at least one subject doing something.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So it's like a very short sentence.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A very short sentence.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So like:"I ate breakfast".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - "I ate breakfast" is a clause."I ate breakfast, then I went outside" is two clauses, one sentence.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so English can clause chain, because you just did it, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, because clause chain is theoretically when you have lots of shorter clauses and then you have a clause at the end where you put all the tense aspect and mood marking.
• linkBen Ainslie - What?So basically all of the words like would, could, did, should, had, have…all that kind of stuff gets sorted out in the very final clause?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and whatever tense and aspect is in the final one, is what applies to the previous one.But they don't get the marker.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So let's take a look at the examples.In English you could say something like "This morning I woke up early"— that's one. "I dressed and ate breakfast" —that's two, stuffed in the same sentence.So, yeah, you can…you can attach them with conjunctions, no problem.But imagine a language where you could say this:"Waking up early this morning, dressing, making breakfast, eating, washing the dishes, gathering my things, saying goodbye to my family, they waving goodbye to me, I drove to work."
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, something like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Except there would be a clause in there somewhere that would communicate to us that that was all past tense.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.That was there at the end.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.The last one that…that Daniel did.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I get, "I drove" past tense "to work." Ah, so, it's not that the clause at the end necessarily has some sort of inherent meaning, it's just, like, the way that that clause plays out will then retroactively apply to all of the preceding clauses in that string.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, that's fun!Isn't that a fun way to do it?Seems economical.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, imagine that you're a kid in one of these languages.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yup.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Would you necessarily be better at planning these sentences?Would you acquire these kinds of structures at the same time that other kids— maybe in English —were just kind of working on combining clauses into two?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I guess in some ways it's a little bit simpler, right?I guess because like, you just use for like eight clauses in a row, the present tense, the vanilla, whatever you want to call it, right?Like the ur-clause with like the substance
• linkDaniel Midgley - The one that does the work, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.And then right at the end you just have to figure out one sense of like tense and mood and all that kind of thing.But then I guess also if you're a little kid, you then have to try and keep all of these moving bits in your head and then retroactively apply.So I don't know.I'm in two minds about it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I actually really, really like Daniel's example that you just did in English with the -ing, like "waving goodbye to my family, I drove to work".It's not exactly usually what, like, this -ing form is a special thing that English does.But it sounded like a reasonable sentence, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Kind of.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, it required a little bit of computing, but yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, what Dr.Sarvasy found was that when children are somewhere between two and two and a half, they go through kind of the same stages that other kids do, say in English or French.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sure, cognitive development is pretty consistent across the species, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - But then they move on really quickly past the two-clause phrase into a clause chain thing.Their language equips them to be able to make those kinds of structures.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.So it's kind of what I said…because it's simpler, they can get the hang of it a bit faster and they only have to do one sort of tensy bit towards the end.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And maybe they don't have to learn BUT and AND and stuff.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.All the rules of clicking it together.It's like Lego, right?If you had a whole bunch of consistent pieces, they all go together super easily.But if you have to try and like Lego-technik them with, like, funky little difficult, like, joiny bits then it gets a lot harder.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm.So hearing that kind of input makes you good at doing those kinds of things.Sounds good.
• linkBen Ainslie - There you go!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - In other news, there's a new series in town, it's Crash Course.I'm a fan of Crash Course.
• linkBen Ainslie - I do like Crash Course.I really appreciate, though, that YouTube offers the slow videos down by a certain percentage, because John Green is a fast-talking man.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I should mention that I'm an old-school Youtuber from like 2007 era, so I watched like Blog Brothers, Brotherhood 2.0 when it was first airing.And I've been following that ever since.And I sort of dropped off and I'm now returning to them, and like Jenna Marbles.Love Jenna Marbles.And yeah, I've enjoyed all of their Crash Courses.I think they're excellent.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, there's now a Crash Course in linguistics, and the first edition is out and I have watched it and it's actually quite fun.This was written by our friends, Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch of Lingthusiasm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, there we go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Fact checked by Dr Jessi Grieser, who's been on the show once.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So that's our crowd.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's our crowd.
• linkBen Ainslie - Those are our people.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They're our peeps, so…Also narrated by the wonderful Taylor Behnke.I watched the first episode.I really enjoyed it.They brought up Quine's gavagai problem.If you don't know what that is, you should…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oooh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a bit of a philosophy of language.You should check out the Crash Course in linguistics.I'm really looking forward to it.It's going to be a lot of fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there we go.RADIO VOICEBecause Language recommends.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Very much.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Welcome back to this part of Because Language.I'm Daniel Midgley, we've got the whole team here:Ben Ainslie and Hedvig Skirgård.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hey.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hello.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We've also got some great people here.We're doing this on Zoom.
• linkBen Ainslie - The clear implication being that me and Hedvig aren't great, by the way!Cheers.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I didn't say it quite like that.Okay, I'll say it again.
• linkBen Ainslie - No no no, Stick to it.That's fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But we've got some GREAT people here.LAUGHTERMade it more explicit for you!This is all part of a celebration of OzCLO.Hedvig, what is OzCLO?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig;OzCLO is the Australian Computational Linguistics Olympiad.And we actually have one of the organisers here.Elisabeth, do you want to give us a little intro to what OzCLO is?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, what is it and what's it for?
• linkDaniel Midgley - ELISABETH MAYER, OzCLO organiser:OzCLO is a state and national competition for secondary students of the years nine to twelve, also years six to eight are participating clandestinely as well.It's all about cracking the code of an unknown language, logic, deduction, problem solving, lateral thinking, and teamwork.In one word, it's a lot of fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a gateway drug to linguistics.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's one way of phrasing it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Am I right?I'm right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And this year we have the two OzCLO winners here from the Sydney Boys and the Sydney Girls School, and they were unfortunately not able to travel to the International Olympiad, because the current world.So we invited them instead to — instead of testing their minds against the winners from all over the world, the brightest minds from America, Russia, Sweden…
• linkBen Ainslie - Against actual smart people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We are pitting them against my two fellow co-hosts, Daniel and Ben.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're dead.
• linkBen Ainslie - We've got this!I'm really glad I beat my student at that completely inconsequential competition earlier this week, because I am about to get caned!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I'm glad I got you, Ben.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, what's our team name going to be:Old White Guy Tears?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Um, I'm okay with that.
• linkBen Ainslie - O-W-G-T!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, and we've got the Schliemann Stans is what the Sydney Girls teams have chosen as their team names, and Team Inquit is the Sydney Boys.And we've got four lovely youngsters per team here.So you're going to be hearing a lot of voices.We can do a brief little intro.Earlier, I asked them to nominate their favourite root vegetables, but this time you're going to choose your favourite nightshade plant.Now your choices are:tobacco, capsicum, aubergine, potato, tomato, chili.Okay, so those are the biological genera of night shades, and I want to hear what your favorites are.So first we have, I'm going to go in different order that did last time.Ally?
• linkAlly - I guess, capsicum.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Capsicum.Maddy?
• linkMADDY - Tomato.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Great.I should also say Ally and Maddy are from the Sydney Girls team.This is going to be easy to keep track of.LAUGHTERWe're going to go for two boys next.So, Harry.
• linkHARRY - Capsicum.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Capsicum.Nicholas?
• linkNICHOLAS - Chilli.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.And then we do two girls again.Lara?
• linkLARA - Eggplant.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Amy.
• linkAMY - Capsicum.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.And then the last two boys.Ryan
• linkRYAN - Tomato.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Nathan.
• linkNATHAN - Chili.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Great.I didn't keep track now of which one won, but I think it maybe was tomato?
• linkDaniel Midgley - A lot of capsicums out there.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like chili was criminally underrepresented and, man, did we do bad representing Australia's sort of like palate adventurousness.MOCKING AUSTRALIANI like tomatoes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like tomatoes!Tomatoes are great!
• linkBen Ainslie - You're Northern European, you've got the blandest palate of all!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sure, I'll take it, I'm fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Don't throw any nightshade, come on.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I see what you did there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.And then we also have my lovely co-host for this trivia quiz, Henry Wu.Do you want to say what your favorite nightshade is?
• linkHenry Wu - I'll go with tomatoes as well, then.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay!Winning for the bland team.LAUGHTERSo the way we are going to do this is:Henry and I are going to ask you questions and you're going to get points.And these questions are written by me and Henry.Henry, I think it's best if we ask the questions that we wrote.I just realised we should say that.Okay, how is everyone feeling, up for quiz time?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah!
• linkBen Ainslie - Feeling good.Feeling good.Here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, round one is a general warm-up round.There are in total six points on the table, and the first question…
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, warm-up round, meaning the points don't count?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The points count.They're just a little bit of a mixed bag!
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so that is absolutely in no way a warm up round!It is, in fact, just the first round of competition.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - First round of competition.LAUGHTERHenry, what is their first question?
• linkHenry Wu - The first question is:Which was the most common emoji on Twitter between 2018 and 2020?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel muted himself and said something.Oh, he's saying something to Ben on Slack!Oh, they're so smart!They've set up a separate voice channel so they can actually talk to each other.Oh, okay, now I understand why they set up the Slack thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELon a separate voice channel to BEN:Okay, here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BENto DANIEL:Poop?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Face with Tears of Joy.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, Face with Tears of Joy.Got that.
• linkBen Ainslie - DANIELback to everyone:Okay, I've got…I've got an answer for number one.What did you think it was, Ben?
• linkBen Ainslie - Look, I'm always going to go scatological.I thought it was poop.I was…I was coming in strong with poop.But you seemed very confident with your answer.So I defer to the…to the Master.The tears of joy emoji.Smiling with tears of joy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, that's our answer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, let's go to the Schliemann Stans.
• linkMADDY - Our answer was the red heart emoji.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh, that's a good guess.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, I want you to be right now.I want that to be the case because that's just so nice, isn't it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is very nice.Let's see what Team Inquit from the Sydney Boys thinks.
• linkNATHAN - We went with the crying with laughter emoji as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.
• linkHenry Wu - So one of these is the correct answer.It is indeed the crying laughter.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yesss!
• linkBen Ainslie - Although I guess that I feel that's a hollow victory because it means just like love lost in the world for the last two years.So yay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I remember this because it was the most popular emoji…it was the word of the year for the American Dialect Society for, I want to say 2015.And we did a whole bunch of stuff on it like, hey wait a minute, is that a word?It can't be a word of the year.How could it be a word?It's an emoji.Well, emojis, blah blah blah blah blah.So yeah, that was a story.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.Okay, the next question was:What percentage of the world's languages are Indo-European?So, this time I want to hear in the opposite order.So Team Inquit from the Sydney Boys.What do you think?
• linkNATHAN - Well, we know that it's lower than you think it is.Like, that is, it's actually quite low.I'm pretty sure.So we were debating between ten percent, four percent.And we decided to go with four percent.That's our guess, low balled.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay, bold.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Bold.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the Schliemann Stans?
• linkAMY - We didn't go that low.We did think it was low, but a lot higher than that.So we went with twenty percent.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Twenty percent, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the Old White Man Tears?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.That's what…we were kind of in between there.We were at fifteen percent.At least that was my guess.I think I overrode Ben on that one.What did you think, before I said anything?
• linkBen Ainslie - I would have, I would have gone in line with Inquit's, I think.I figured it was one of those things of like total Eurocentric dominance gives us the idea that it's like a third of all the languages.And it's actually like this teeny tiny little percentage.
• linkHARRY - You could have at least strategically undermined us by going like 19.5%.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Had we but known!Had we but known.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, ideally, yeah.I'm going to really have to change the order that you're answering in so that you can…so you can all rip off each other equally much.So the correct percentage, calculated from the Glottolog language catalogue is 7.7%.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oooh.
• linkBen Ainslie - So I think that's Sydney Girls, that's Schliemann Stans.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, they guessed, Team Inquit guessed…
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, sorry, I had that the wrong way around.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Team Inquit gets it!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The Sydney Boys get it.Good job!
• linkBen Ainslie - Next question, next question!
• linkHenry Wu - The next question is mine.And when Hedvig approached me to write this quiz, she basically said, include some things that young people might have an advantage in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Awww!
• linkHenry Wu - So this question actually has nothing to do with linguistics, really.But it's:What was TikTok called before it was TikTok.What was the precursor of TikTok?
• linkHARRY - You know we're, like, super unrepresentative of young people.Like, we're just uber nerds who just know linguistics.
• linkAlly - Speak for yourself, Harry.I live on TikTok.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I was about to say, like…
• linkHARRY - Oh, no!
• linkBen Ainslie - Harry, you've got to remember as well that what you don't understand is that even deeply nerdy, unpopular teenagers — which I very much was, are still a 100 billion percent more cooler and relevant than actual old people.LAUGHTER
• linkAMY - Trust year twelves, as well:TikTok is a perfect way to procrastinate exams studying.So I've been very active on there.
• linkAMY - DANIELprivately to BEN:Okay Ben, I got no idea.let's make up something.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh ooh, I know.Let's call it New Vine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, okay.I'm okay with that.
• linkBen Ainslie - All right.DANIEL and BEN go back to the main channel.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think Lingthusiasm is on TikTok and we're not, which maybe we should be.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, Hedvig, whenever you're ready, mate, you start doing those funky little dances to good numbers and giving all of your personal data to the Chinese national government.You go right ahead!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Don't look at me.I'm too old for Instagram, okay?LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.All right.We've got…we've got our 100 percent, definitely correct Old White Guy Tears answer ready to go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Definitely.Definitely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, okay.All right.Well, let's start with the ones we think are going to do worse.So White Guys Tears?
• linkBen Ainslie - Present!We thought it started out life as New Vine.
• linkHenry Wu - That is a terrible answer.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - No, it wasn't New Vine?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We were wrong?
• linkHenry Wu - Unfortunately not.
• linkBen Ainslie - All right.Well, moving right along!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Henry, which one do you think is, if we're going in order of least likely to answer correctly?
• linkHARRY - Probably us.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Inquit's just like:oh, that's us.
• linkLARA - With zero percent record.
• linkRYAN - We think it's musical.ly, with a dot before the ly.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.
• linkHenry Wu - And what about the girls?
• linkLARA - Um, coincidentally, we have the same thing:musical.ly.
• linkHenry Wu - Well, we have two correct answers here.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - What were they?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, we answered New Vine twice, that's so weird!
• linkHenry Wu - It was called musical.ly with a dot after the first l.
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
• linkDANIL - Good job, good job.
• linkMADDY - I have that answer written down, just to prove we didn't cheat.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, very good.
• linkBen Ainslie - I love, I love how like, no one…I love as a teacher when you don't accuse anyone of anything, and they just supply defenses to stuff, and you're just like:Well, I wasn't suspicious, but now…!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Now I am!
• linkRYAN - Yeah, I wonder who copied us.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Next question!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Next question.What language is, or has been written in the most writing systems?So the same language has been found written down in a number of different writing systems, and if you look at many languages, and you look at how many writing systems per language, which language has the most?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - hums Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega as quiz think music
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELon separate channel to BEN:Hmm, okay Ben.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think Latin?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, no.They only ever used the Latin script.Could it be Hindi, because you've got it in Devanagari and you've got it in…
• linkBen Ainslie - Maybe Chinese?How many registers do they have?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nah, they just always use the same one.What about Kazakh?Because it was written in…no, it was written in three different ones.
• linkBen Ainslie - So you're thinking Japanese then?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, I'm thinking…I'm thinking like Hindi.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cool, Hindi.Let's go Hindi.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool, okay.I think that's about enough thinking time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELto everyone:Okay, okay, we're back.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So we're going to go Schliemann Stans first.How many, which is the language with the most writing systems?
• linkAlly - We really don't have a clue.But because of the USSR, maybe Mongolian?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm
• linkBen Ainslie - Interesting.Good, good answer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What about Old White Man's Tears?
• linkBen Ainslie - We have gone Hindi.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And we thought that because maybe there's a lot of different people from lots of different traditions, lots of different writing systems, lots of different language groups, but they will all pick up Hindi and sort of use it with their own script.That's just a guess.We're not sure.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.And what about Team Inquit?
• linkNICOLAS - We thought it was Arabic, because of like all the different kinds of nations and communities that have used it over the years, so we thought Arabic would probably have a lot of different ones.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Arabic.That is a good guess.None of you were correct.
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - Aww.
• linkBen Ainslie - Who was geographically closest?How about that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You were.Old White Man Tears.
• linkBen Ainslie - We were?Oh.So what is it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because it's Sanskrit.
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - Ooooh.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like I don't have the grounds to say that we should get that point, but I want to say that anyway.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no, you don't get that point.You don't get that point.You can…you know.
• linkBen Ainslie - I suppose it's the same as us guessing English and then you going:"Oh, it's Latin".And us being like:~That's basically the same thing!~Which is 100 percent not true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah, a little bit.It's also, like…it's an old language that was used in ritual and used over a large area and for a very long time.So it acquired a lot of writing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was a good question, I really like that question.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I'm actually going to decide to skip one question, because it was a little bit similar to the other one.So now there are five points with this round.Suck it.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - The question had better not have been "What's the oldest language in the world?" and the answer was Sanskrit.That is not…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it's not.
• linkBen Ainslie - Also, what a great host:Hey, everyone.I'm changing the rules if you don't like, suuck it!LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Next one is, how many sign languages are there in the world?
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - Ooooh
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, going to mute!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So for extra information, we're again going with information from Glottolog and Ethnolog.So they actually have different numbers.So, if you guess within that range.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BENto DANIEL on separate channel:Oh, dear, Daniel, what are you thinking?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think there's kind of a lot.I think it's either 200 or 2000.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm going to go with 2000 because, like, does it, does it…does the gestural side of, say, like indigenous Australian languages count?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - VOCALISES QUIZ WAITING SOUNDS IN THE BACKGROUND
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - In that case, it's going to be close to 2K, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Are you okay with that?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - HEDVIG CONTINUES HUMMING
• linkDaniel Midgley - BENto everyone:I really wish I knew some Auslan or ASL BSL or something so I could come back into this Zoom call and try and sign our answer.But I don't, so no.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, you can do, you can do numbers, but anyway.
• linkBen Ainslie - But probably not in a decipherable way to people who actually speak sign languages!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fair enough, fair enough.Okay.I can't remember who started last time, so I'm going to decide that Team Inquit starts.
• linkNATHAN - Okay, our guess is something like 50.Fifty sign languages.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, low balling, that's interesting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And then Schliemann Stans?
• linkMADDY - We're going to guess about a hundred and fifty, maybe.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, dang.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Daniel, I'm worried about us!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I said to Ben:okay, it's either two hundred or two thousand.That's what I thought.And we said it's probably a lot.Probably two thousand.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.My logic was, right, if we are counting sort of like the gestural side of a lot of Aboriginal Australian languages and presuming that, like a bunch of other languages in the world have that as well, then that's going to be heaps!It's going to be heaps.Half the languages in the world?No worries.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So no, we're not…
• linkDaniel Midgley - No wait, hang on.They couldn't possibly be 2000.There's only 7000 languages in the world.What I was thinking?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So we aren't counting auxiliary gestural systems.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ohh….SOUNDING MADbut Daniel I asked you that specifically, and you were like yes!!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, they mean that.Okay, but in that case, I'm happy to be wrong.
• linkBen Ainslie - No no!Not "in that case"!
• linkDaniel Midgley - But now I think it's probably going to be more closer to two hundred.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no.Your guess is two thousand.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our guess is two thousand.
• linkBen Ainslie - We do not get to change.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And honestly, like there's probably a lot of sign language researchers who would agree with you, who would count some of those systems as languages, so….But they're not in charge of this quiz.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was way high, by the way.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So there are between…So given Glottolog and Ethnolog, two language catalogs, there are between one hundred and thirty eight, and one hundred and sixty six, which means that the Schliemann Stans got it bang on.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, the Schliemann Stans!And I can see them all gesturing what I interpret to be happiness and joy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Two hundred was a pretty good guess.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Great, okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Which would have been great had we guessed it, Daniel, which we didn't, at your suggestion.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.So at the end of that round, Henry do you want to give us the score?
• linkHenry Wu - I can definitely do that.So in third place…um, starting from the bottom, is Old White Man's Tears, with just one point.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Woo!
• linkBen Ainslie - On the board .
• linkHenry Wu - In second place we have the Schliemann Stans, with two points.And in first place at the moment, we have Team Inquit, with three points.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, it's anybody's game.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool!I didn't realise this is going to be that hard.I'm pleased.
• linkBen Ainslie - Round two, round two, round two!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, now it's round two, which is Henry's round.
• linkHenry Wu - So following on from my comment about trying to make this quiz more accessible to young people…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, dear.
• linkHenry Wu - I decided to plan a round around internet language, the language we use on the internet.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no!
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, no, this is good.This is good.We got this.
• linkHenry Wu - And so this round is called:The Internet We Stan, and it's questions about language use on the internet.So here we go.
• linkBen Ainslie - I, Henry, can I, I just…I don't know if I can do this.Point for Henry for wicked round name!
• linkHenry Wu - Thank you.Thank you.So without further ado, the first question— this is a true or false, so fifty fifty —True or false, there are more languages supported by Google Translate than there are languages represented on Wikipedia, with more than ten thousand articles in those languages.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oooo.To Cast!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHenry Wu - To say that again, languages that are on Google Translate, that you can use Google Translate for.
• linkHenry Wu - DANIELto BEN on private channel:There's about a hundred.
• linkHenry Wu - Versus languages on Wikipedia with more than ten thousand articles in that language.
• linkBen Ainslie - to DANIEL on private channelI think it's true.So the truth is that Google Translate can do more.
• linkHEDVIG SINGS 'TOM'S DINER' AS QUIZ THINK MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ten thousand Wikipedia articles is not a lot, but I think you might be right.I think it is true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe we should also say, is that including the Scots kerfuffle, Henry?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, callback!
• linkHenry Wu - I don't think…I made this, I think before this came out, so.
• linkHenry Wu - DANIELBACK TO MAIN CHANNEL:I gotta ask, is it close?
• linkBen Ainslie - SPUTTERINGWHAT
• linkHenry Wu - It's fairly close.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - What, what, in what region of quizzing is it fair to be like:Okay, quizmaster, would you mind just quickly giving me a hint?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's not a hint.I'm just curious.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - He can do that, and everyone heard it.Both teams heard it, all three terms heard it.
• linkBen Ainslie - True.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It doesn't give anything away.
• linkBen Ainslie - But it's also like not in spirit of quizzing at all!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, okay, okay.I haven't been to many of these things.
• linkBen Ainslie - BRIEF PAUSELiar.
• linkDaniel Midgley - LONGER PAUSEAll right.You're right.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I think I think we have our answer.We agreed, didn't we, Daniel?Okay, I'm just going to let you answer.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We did agree.We think that this is true.We think that Google Translate has about a hundred languages and Wikipedia is going to have a few fewer.
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, so we have one True.How about the Schliemann Stans?
• linkAMY - We're going to agree that it's true, and I have it written down if you need proof.
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, another true.Is Team Inquit going to go with the same answer?
• linkNATHAN - We are:true.
• linkHenry Wu - Interesting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And…?
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, that's either points across the board or no points…and it is actually false.
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Arghh!
• linkNATHAN - Wow.
• linkHenry Wu - So Google Translate has 108 languages, but there are 148 languages with Wikipedias that have more than ten thousand articles.
• linkBen Ainslie - I wonder if that is anything to do with how Duolingo is lowkey, a translation provider?And if they have been sort of big data-ing their way through translating a whole bunch of Wikipedia articles.If anyone's interested, go and look up like the TED talk by the guy who made Duolingo, because the back end of Duolingo is just providing translation services for like a bunch of other organisations.So when you get to a certain level, you start translating like Wikipedia articles and stuff.
• linkAlly - I think Duolingo stopped doing that, like a few years ago.
• linkBen Ainslie - Really?
• linkAlly - Like, it used to.Our entire team actually spends pretty much our life on Duolingo.So Maddy, like, correct me if I'm wrong?I haven't seen that for like, since like 2015 or something.
• linkMADDY - I don't remember that specifically, but I…yeah, we do spend a lot of time on Duolingo.I did, like, an hour of Welsh instead of studying for maths.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh my God.Can we just sit for a moment and acknowledge that there is a team of teenagers whose methodology of, like, hanging out is doing Welsh on…That is the greatest thing I have ever heard!
• linkDaniel Midgley - And we're up against them, too.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah, no worries.Yeah.We're going to….How much Welsh did you do today, Daniel?Zero?Is it like me, zero?Okay, great!Well, let's move on!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think it's about zero.
• linkBen Ainslie - Zero, yeah.
• linkMADDY - Hasn't correlated into our performance yet, though, so don't worry.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Just wait till you get to the questions about like town names with 60 syllables though, and— phwoar —it's your time to shine!
• linkDaniel Midgley - You've got double our score, what are you talking about?
• linkHenry Wu - Anyway, they're still playing to play for, so let's keep moving.
• linkBen Ainslie - All right.
• linkHenry Wu - So the second question.This is my favorite question because I had a dispute with Hedvig about how difficult it was.So hopefully I'm proven correct, that someone knows the answer to this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, it's a quiz within the quiz!There's like a meta quiz point here.
• linkHenry Wu - So the second question is, what does OOMF mean?And that's spelled o-o-m-f.And I have three options for you.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, multi-choice, yay!
• linkHenry Wu - With usage as well.So:
• linkHenry Wu - A - It stands for "One Of My Followers", and you might use it like "just lost an oomf :cryingface:"
• linkHenry Wu - B - A word that denotes a positive reaction.So "oomf, that fit", as in, that is a great fit.
• linkBen Ainslie - So kind of like the opposite of WOOF.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHenry Wu - Or C:it stands for "Out Of My Feed" as in "get this oomf" as in, I do not want to see this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, man!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dang.Okay.Here we go, Ben.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, yep.Going to Cast.
• linkBen Ainslie - HEDVIG MAKING BACKGROUND QUIZ NOISES
• linkBen Ainslie - BEN [to DANIEL on separate channel:Jeez Louise.That's tough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I like the first one.I hate the second answer.I think the second one is definitely wrong.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - STOP SINGINGThis is not a song that exists.Just had to make waiting music.
• linkBen Ainslie - Um, ooh, uh, I reckon I'm going to go with third, Out Of My Feed.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm having trouble.I select the first one.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, I will defer.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, no, no, no!I'm the guy that argues you out of the right answer!
• linkBen Ainslie - Uh, probably.
• linkHenry Wu - Let's have some answers.What does Team Inquit think?
• linkHARRY - We're going consensus, consensus decision, with C:Out Of My Feed.
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, and what about the Schliemann Stans?
• linkLARA - We actually think it's B.Not cheating this time.
• linkHenry Wu - Positive?
• linkBen Ainslie - We were going to go with C:Out Of My Feed, but then Daniel decided to argue me out of that answer and go with A, which was the one about…lost a follower.
• linkDaniel Midgley - One Of My Followers.This is all my fault.This is all my fault.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, now we've got a good spread.We've got A, B and C, all viable answers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.
• linkBen Ainslie - So two people are definitely going to lose.
• linkHenry Wu - Right.And incredibly, the correct answer is actually A.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, yes!LAUGHTER, CHEERING
• linkHenry Wu - Which means that Old White Man's Tears understand stan Twitter language better than nerdy teenagers!
• linkBen Ainslie - Dabbing those white tears off my eyes, you guys.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is so satisfying.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeahhh.
• linkMADDY - It's because we're spending a lot of time on Duolingo, not Facebook unfortunately.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, you're on TikTok!
• linkBen Ainslie - The Schliemann Stans just had like a very long four-word Welsh, like, acronym as their D that you can't circle.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was a good question.
• linkBen Ainslie - That was great.
• linkAlly - Yeah, actually we don't spend that much time on GenX social media, so we wouldn't really know.
• linkAlly - BEN, DANIEL, HEDVIG:OOOOOOHHHHHH!
• linkBen Ainslie - I will have you know, that I am a Millennial, which quite frankly is a really bad defense to bust out, because it just makes me sound hell old anyway.Like:WHINY VOICE~I'm a millennial. I think I'm young, but I'm not.~
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I got off of Facebook years ago.
• linkHARRY - What's Facebook?LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know!
• linkBen Ainslie - That place where grandparents hang out and share racist memes!
• linkDaniel Midgley - That place for GenXers.Oh, my God.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway, that was great fun.That was very satisfying.What is next, Henry?
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, so the third question:You probably know that the most viewed video on YouTube is Despacito, which is a song in Spanish.But you may not know that the second most viewed video is a version of the now ubiquitous children's song, Baby Shark.But what was the language of the original version of the song?
• linkBen Ainslie - Ohhh.
• linkHenry Wu - So what was the language of the original version of Baby Shark?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I need to have some waiting music going.So I goSINGING BABY SHARKbaby shark do do do do do, baby shark do do do do
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BENto DANIEL on private channel:Daniel, I've got a little thing, clicking in my head.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I have no idea.I'm totally deferring to you on this one.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.I actually think it's relatively bespoke and not what you would expect.I think it might be Vietnamese.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - CONTINUES SERANADING US SOFTLY WITH BABY SHARKmama shark do do do do do, mama shark
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, interesting!Yeah, okay, I'm down with that.I like that answer.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig, knowing what I know about your musical proclivities, I'm thinking you actually have a relatively decent and vibrant library of, like, disco remixes of Baby Shark by various…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't, but I will acquire it.LAUGHTERIt is too much in fitting with my aesthetic.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.A hundred percent.
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, so let's have some answers.Let's start with the Schliemann Stans.What did you think?
• linkAlly - We thought maybe Japanese.
• linkHenry Wu - What about Old White Man Tears?
• linkBen Ainslie - So I…you know how sometimes you hear a question and then just like clear as a bell, a completely contextless answer, like appears in your head and you don't know why you think that, and you have no idea if it's right or not?I just:Vietnamese.For some reason, that was in my head.
• linkHenry Wu - And what about Team Inquit?
• linkRYAN - We're thinking Korean.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's a good answer.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You're all sure it's East Asia?
• linkHenry Wu - Yeah.Oh, I guess depending on how you classify Vietnam.There is one correct answer in this group of three answers,
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's not us.
• linkHenry Wu - Which is good.It's Team Inquit with Korean.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Very good.Very good.
• linkBen Ainslie - As I was listening to the question, I was like:oh it's a the J-pop or K-pop, but I'm going to go with a wrong answer anyway!That was a very good question.
• linkHenry Wu - Out of interest, the original title was actually 상어 가족 (Sang-eo Gajok), or Shark Family.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's a bit…that's a bit nicer, isn't it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So we have a Swedish version of the song, which is a different melody, which is also about a shark family, which is pappa haj de de, de de de de de, oma haj de, de de de de de.So I think.
• linkDaniel Midgley - SINGS THE MUPPET SONGMa na ma na.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking!Ma na ma na, do doo do do do.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, that's true.But we also made it about sharks.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do you even have sharks in Sweden?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And this is like 20 years before.very small ones in the Baltic, but they're not a thing.Anyway, Henry…
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, the last question in this round…
• linkBen Ainslie - Which was called what, Henry?
• linkHenry Wu - The Internet We Stan
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, so good.
• linkHenry Wu - The hint will be that it is a relevant question, a question that is in, it's zeitgeist.And the question is:Who is Miss Rona?Who is Miss Rona?
• linkBen Ainslie - Who is Miss Rona?
• linkHenry Wu - Mhm.
• linkHenry Wu - BENto DANIEL on separate channel:Daniel…?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is a personification of the coronavirus.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ohh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm just guessing.I'm just guessing.But I think that's a pretty good answer.What do you think?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.So, but like a non-Australian one, obviously.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because I've got to…I have to feel like in Australia it's like THE RONA.
• linkDaniel Midgley - THE RONA.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - HEDVIG HUMS "SWEDISH SHARK FAMILY" AS A WAITING SONG
• linkHenry Wu - Team Inquit, who did you think Miss Rona was?
• linkNATHAN - Based purely off the sound of the name, we think that Miss Rona is coronavirus.
• linkHenry Wu - Uh huh.What about the Schliemann Stans?
• linkMADDY - Yes, we think that Miss Rona is the person who is responsible for us, unfortunately, not being able to be in Latvia earlier this year, which is coronavirus.
• linkHenry Wu - And Old White Man Tears?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We think it is the novel coronavirus.
• linkBen Ainslie - We went the same way as well.
• linkHenry Wu - Daniel has drawn the model.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Very technical.
• linkHenry Wu - We have correct answers across the board.JUBILATIONA slang term for the current coronavirus.
• linkBen Ainslie - I would just like to acknowledge, I only just found out that you guys would have been in Latvia.Were you guys going to go to Riga?Is that where it was supposed to be?
• linkHenry Wu - I think it was meant to be in Ventspils?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, my God.You guys, I just, like I'm sure you already feel terrible about it, but let me just say, Latvia is incredible.You would have had such a good time.Like, it's just the dopest place.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Remember Ben, they're doing this with you instead.So you need to…
• linkDaniel Midgley - We hope that you're having fun doing this.NERVOUS LAUGH
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You need to be as fun as you had in Latvia.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay, cool.Sorted.Give me a second and I'm just going to construct like the world's best indoor botanical garden that I've ever seen.Just bear with me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.
• linkBen Ainslie - Next round.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What's the scores?
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, so after that round, the Old White Man Tears team have moved into shared second place with the Schliemann Stans.So you're both on three points.And Team Inquit is running away with the lead at the moment, with five points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, dear.All right Schliemann Stans, I'm thinking we pool resources.We just we tear the king off the throne.LAUGHTER
• linkMADDY - Sounds like a plan.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Are you unloading me?Is that's what's happening here?LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, you could do that as well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm not upset.I'm just disappointed.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So at the next round I like to call:Where Are We Going?So I'm going to be giving you clues, and they're going to get progressively easier.And the sooner you answer, the more points you get, but the sooner you answer, the more uncertain you're likely to be.So after I give each clue, you can either decide as a team to say, okay, we're going to give an answer.In that case, you write it down on a piece of paper.You write down the number where I gave the clue.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right so if it was round one, round two, round three, round four of clues.I got you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I trust you to not cheat on this.This is the ultimate trust exercise.Okay, so I'll be giving one clue at a time.Yeah.Okay, so there's two of these and the theme is…
• linkHARRY - I feel bad right now because I still haven't even found a way to cheat.LAUGHTERIt's like, you know the feeling, right?Like, when the teacher's like:It's a great trust exercise!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When you can't find a way to cheat.
• linkHARRY - And you're like:So what am I supposed to be trusted with?I don't get it.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I love it.It's just like:it's not a trust exercise if I'm too stupid to cheat in the first place!LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So both of these are languages.You're going to guess what language you're hearing.The first clue in both cases are going to be a bit of audio.Okay, so here is the first bit of thing you're going to listen to.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - MUSIC: ACOUSTIC GUITAR AND MALE VOICE SINGING
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So at four points, first level.If you get the language now, you can get four points.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELto BEN on private channel:Ben, are you there?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BENto DANIEL:Yeah, yeah, yeah.I'm here.I'm listening.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm totally convinced this is Portuguese.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so it sounded super romantic.The only one I was wondering is, could it be Basque?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Uhhh, ummm, uhh, or…it just had it just had theʒ,ʒ,ʒsounds, but not as manyʒʒʒs as you think.
• linkBen Ainslie - But there was also quite a few Frenchy sounds as well.Does Portuguese sound a bit French?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can do.Can do.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, what do you want to do?Do you want to lock it in early?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh but what if it's what if it's…what if it's the Barcelona one.What if it's Catalan?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Catalan.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, let's, let's hold off.Let's hold off.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Back to the main channel
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Schliemann Stans, do you want to guess already now?
• linkAMY - I don't think we're talented enough for that.Sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, that's fine.Just, just making sure.Old White Man Tears, do you want to guess already now?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're going to hold off.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, we would…that was really close to the wire.We were so convincedm and now we've argued ourselves out of being certain in any way, shape, or form.So we are going to wait.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, all right.So the next clue is:It is the official language of the country which has the eighth most languages in the world.So out of all the countries in the world, if you rank them by how many languages each country has, this country comes in at number eight.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BENto DANIEL on private channel:Oh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELto BEN:Okay, now, I'm totally convinced that it's Portuguese.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because of Brazil?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay okay okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And Catalan and…
• linkBen Ainslie - Basque.No, no way.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It wasn't…It's not official of anything.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, 100%.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go for it.Back to the main channel.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm a bit nervous.I wasn't sure how this was going to go, and I'm really glad they haven't guessed yet.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, sorry to disappoint you Hedvig, but we are locking in an answer in round two.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - MIMICS THE "DEAL OR NO DEAL" SOUND
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.We got it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Write down please, below.
• linkBen Ainslie - I can't remember what the, like, the gesture from that terrible TV quiz show is when you have to lock things in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DOES THE "DEAL OR NO DEAL" SOUND AGAIN
• linkBen Ainslie - But just like whatever.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, yeah.To our listeners rated for the podcast:we all see each other on video.So we're all doing, like, gestures with our hands.Which is great radio!
• linkBen Ainslie - All right.What about the other…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Does the Schliemann Stans or Team Inquit want to guess the second level at three points?
• linkNATHAN - We would like to make our guess.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, write it down a piece of paper.Don't say it.
• linkNATHAN - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Schliemann Stans?
• linkAMY - I think we're going to guess, too, as well.Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - kay, so all of you…
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like Schliemann Stans should have the edge here, given that the bulk of their leisure time is spent hanging out on a language learning software.I'm just putting it out there.So if you guys don't get this right, that…You shouldn't have told people basically that, you hang out on Duolingo, because now it's just going to make your failures look so much worse!
• linkMADDY - I agree.But also, I'm going to point out that Duolingo is pretty bad at teaching you how to, like, listen and speak a language.Like I know personally, I only use it to read and write because I think it's really difficult.Like, I don't know if the pronunciation is always, like, right.And it's very difficult to interpret.So I think it's…I think Duolingo is better for reading and writing.And also, I'm pretty sure that wasn't Welsh, so…LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, pretty sure it wasn't Welsh.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wales:The eighth-most populous, linguistically diverse place in the world.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Scratching out my answer now.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, so point three, at level two of this quiz, all of our teams have said that they want to lock in an answer, which means I have two clues left and I don't know what to do with them.Do you want to all say…would you want to hear the last two clues?Maybe then you can change.No.
• linkBen Ainslie - No,
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, no, no, no, no.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I want to hear your answers now.
• linkBen Ainslie - You'll absolutely be able to see the bitter shame, and regret run across people's faces as they realise they've got the wrong answer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, let's go in the order you said that you were certain, so, Old White Man Tears first.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Portuguese.
• linkBen Ainslie - Portuguese.Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Portuguese.Team Inquit?
• linkNATHAN - We also wrote down Portuguese.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Portuguese.Schliemann Stans?
• linkAMY - We also wrote down Portuguese.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You are all correct.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yay!!CLAPPING
• linkBen Ainslie - These feel like hollow victories, right, because it's not really winning unless you're winning against someone else.Like if everybody wins, no one wins!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - SHUSHING NOISESNo no, shh shh shh, you get points, shut up.So the other two clues I had prepared for you was one of the official languages of Timor-Leste.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wow.I did not know that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is a fun one and…
• linkBen Ainslie - That feels like that should have been the second clue.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, or the first.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?You're in Australia!You know that Timor-Leste used to be a Portuguese colony.
• linkBen Ainslie - I did not know that.No, because I, like most Australians, am an uneducated slob.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You know, the Leste there?It means East.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I did know that.
• linkBen Ainslie - So much learning is happening!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So much learning.The last one:At one point, originally spoken in a country in Europe which borders Spain.
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Oh, wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - What a gimme.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, could have been like Andorra!
• linkBen Ainslie - Catalan!
• linkDaniel Midgley - But it was the last one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That was the last one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Who knew with just the song?Who kinda…
• linkLARA - I actually lowkey guessed it, but then I was like no, and double backed myself.Regrets.But that's cool.
• linkBen Ainslie - We did exactly the same thing, to be fair.Daniel was just like:I'm ninety nine on this being Portuguese for sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know what convinced me was the style of the music actually, because I've heard a lot of Portuguese music that way.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh really?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I should say that was that Seu Jorge— I can't speak Portuguese —doing a cover of David Bowie's "Life on Mars".You can see him do that in the movie "Life Aquatic".Very beautiful.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nice.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, okay.You ready for your second audio clip?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, we're doing it again?Same thing, same structure?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, same structure.Okay, I'm sure sharing computer sounds.Okay.Everyone ready?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkBen Ainslie - MUSIC PLAYS: COVER OF "DON'T DREAM IT'S OVER" BY CROWDED HOUSE
• linkBen Ainslie - DANIEL [to BEN on private channel:Pretty sure it's a Pacific language.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Samoan or Maori?
• linkBen Ainslie - Possibly Hawaiian?No, it's not Hawaiian.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But think about…Samoan and Maori speakers would have a special relationship to Crowded House.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So I'm going with Samoan or Maori.But you want to want to go for it?Let's…let's wait one.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I want to see what other people do.If everyone's going to wait, I recommend we just go hard, go early, and we lock an answer in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ohh…
• linkBen Ainslie - It's like poker, right?If everyone checks, you got to do something.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Schliemann Stans?Do you want to lock in?
• linkHARRY - Oooh.
• linkAlly - We're debating the merits.Can you come back to us?LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Inquits?Oh no, they're typing away too furiously to have an answer yet.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.For something for some participants, we can see their hands when they're typing and for some we can't, so we see likeMIMICS FURIOUS TYPING SOUNDS
• linkBen Ainslie - All right, Daniel, you know what, I'm going to do it.Let's lock it in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's do it.Okay, we're locking it in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Locking it in.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I'm going to guess.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, but not yet.Don't say anything yet, okay?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no.Of course not.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Writ it on a piece of paper.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.The answer that's in my head when I say it to you, Daniel, is the answer that we've locked in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, sounds like the other teams don't want to lock it.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, it's shaking heads in Inquits.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So you get the next clue.At three points, I'm going to tell you that:Dwayne the Rock Johnson speaks this language.
• linkBen Ainslie - ARGHHHHH
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is either a lot of information or not very much information, but it is the next tier.I don't understand why Team Old White Man's Tears are talking so much to each other, because they've already locked something in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because we like each other.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yup, that's the reason for sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're just…we're just saying this is going to be so awesome when we get this right.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is…this is a nail biter.These two teams are really, like, they are…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dang, I'm on the edge!Oh my gosh.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like I need to convey to our listeners that what I'm seeing right now is like two sets of four people who are very intently communicating with each other.There's no, it's not casual anymore.There's no calmness.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I hope we got this.
• linkLARA - The Schliemann Stans would like to lock in an answer at this stage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Team Inquit?
• linkHARRY - Yeah we are, we are locking it in.
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I think that means Team Inquit starts?
• linkHARRY - Yup, we guessed Hawaiian.Wait, wait, wait, you still can't see it.There you go.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hawaiian.There you go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I trust you.Next up is Schliemann Stans.
• linkLARA - We too got Hawaiian.I've also got it written down, if you can…Can you see that?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We suck.
• linkLARA - I don't know if that's how you spell it, I hope so.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Old White Man's Tears?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, we in our first round, we were like, it's either Samoan sorry, Samoan or Maori, based purely on it being Crowded House, basically.And those two cultures having a lot to do with New Zealand.And then Dwayne the Rock Johnson is American Samoan.So I'm…we said Samoan.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is correct!
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - CHEERSYES!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - He, I think…Dwayne the Rock Johnson also has Hawaiian ancestry.So you weren't way off there.
• linkBen Ainslie - In the first round, we were like:Maori, Samoan, or Hawaiian.But my mum— weirdly —has lived in Hawaii for the last 20 years, so I've had occasion to hear a lot of Hawaiian, and I was like:mm, nah, it's not Hawaiian.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Very cool.Very good.Good job.So the next clues were:Spoken in an American overseas territory, which is…it's also spoken in American Samoa.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That would have knocked out Hawaiian.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It would have.And well, unless someone thought that Hawaii was an overseas territory, not a state.And the first one that, so I should also say that I work on Samoan.So I thought that this last clue was super easy, which is:it's the third most spoken language in New Zealand.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's good.
• linkBen Ainslie - SPUTTERINGWait, what?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, that works.
• linkBen Ainslie - You were dropping the easy ones super early on, and then you're burying the lede way later on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, Dwayne, I knew you guys were going to go either Hawaiian or Samoan, so I was like:yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool!So that was the Where Are We Going round.
• linkBen Ainslie - Never before has my needlessly deep pop culture, and more specifically American wrestling back catalogue of, like, biographical detail has been more useful.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Amazing.So as…I don't remember if it was Daniel or Ben or, Ben…Beniel mentioned, that was Crowded House:Don't Dream it's Over performed by Nyssa Collins on New Zealand's X-Factor.I've listened to that version so much that actually when I listen to the original, I think it's worse.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - By the way, if you want to keep throwing as, I believe Ally so cattily put it, Gen-X-relevant pop culture references our way, you go right ahead.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I knew Henry was going to, you know, blather on with like the TikTok and stuff.But I also gave it a bit of an Australian antipodean twist.
• linkBen Ainslie - Next round!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Next round!
• linkBen Ainslie - What's the score, what's the score?
• linkHenry Wu - Okay, so exciting update, which is that Old White Man Tears with the last question have leapt into first place with 10 points.
• linkBen Ainslie - SLAMS HAND ON DESKYEAH!!GET SOME
• linkHenry Wu - Followed closely by Team Inquit with eight points, and in third place is the Schliemann Stans with six points.So the scores are still close.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yup, still tight, still tight.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool.So this next one has a bit of an interesting question structure.So pay attention.
• linkBen Ainslie - Buckle up.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So what I'm going to ask you to do, is name the top 10 largest languages spoken in Australia.So, with the most speakers in Australia.However, so these are ranked one to 1 to 10.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right, one being the most populous?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - One being the most populous.So one being the language we're currently speaking, and all the way down to ten.If you guess the one that comes in at place six, you get six points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I see.So three, three points.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So the closer you get to ten…So what you want to do is you want to guess something that is large enough to be in top 10, but you don't want to guess too high.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, okay, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So this is where we're going to see how risk averse you all are.
• linkHenry Wu - Nothing like a bit of gambling in trivia.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, so I should also say this is from the 2016 Census of Australian, Australians, it's the spoken language at home.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELto BEN on private channel:Okay, English, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Italian.I also want to say Arabic.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, this is going to be, I reckon this is just going to be a chance game if we go further down.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mandarin
• linkDaniel Midgley - Spanish?Is Spanish up there?
• linkBen Ainslie - Nah.Surely not.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cantonese?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Lebanese…do you reckon Japanese hits the top 10?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't think it is.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, neither do I.All right, Daniel, what do we what are we thinking?Which spot do we feel confident about?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I feel like Arabic is one of those that's going to be a little lower down.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do we want to go to Arabic fifth?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.What was the number four?
• linkBen Ainslie - So I've got English, Vietnamese, Mandarin.Do we want to put Italian above Arabic?Probably not.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, probably not.Okay, Arabic four, Italian five.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Persian at number six?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, but which one do we feel confident about?Because we're only guessing one of these.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - HEDVIGto EVERYONE:All right, let's go with Schliemann Stans first.Which is a language that you think is in the top 10 most spoken languages in Australia?
• linkAlly - Um, we were thinking Greek.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good answer.
• linkBen Ainslie - Good answer.Good answer.Second biggest Greek city in the world, Melbourne.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Let's go with Team Inquit next.
• linkHARRY - We're locking it in at Vietnamese.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm, okay.Old White Man's Tears?
• linkBen Ainslie - We have decided to lock in Persian.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.Okay, so the results are that Schliemann Stans guessed Greek, which gives them seven points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooooh, this might be…they could rocket into the lead in a proper breakaway right now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Aw man!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, congratulations.And Team Inquit guessed Vietnamese, which gives them five points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Daniel.Oh, mate.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Old White Man's Tears guessed Persian, Farsi, Dari, Pari, I would accept any one of those and none of those made it into the top 10.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no!
• linkDaniel Midgley - That hurts.That hurts.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So the list…
• linkBen Ainslie - This is it, Daniel.This is where it changed.This is where we lose, right here.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Old friend, old friend.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The list for the 2016 census goes:English, Mandarin, Arabic– unclear exactly which Arabic –Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish, Punjabi, Spanish.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Spanish!Is on the list.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm surprised Spanish is on the list.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm surprised.I'm surprised.
• linkBen Ainslie - Also, our list was actually pretty accurate.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our list was pretty good, we just didn't have Persian.
• linkBen Ainslie - We really really bought the farm on Persian!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, our list.Now, I taught a lesson where it was the top ten languages, but it was in WA.And Dari is on that list, but just not for Australia as a whole.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I also tried to dig through the 2016 census to see which ones were in the top 20 to just be able to tell you where the Farsi is, but the Census website is too complicated for me to extract that information.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah the ABS is brutal.I reckon the ABS should just do a Reddit, and so you can just be like:what's hot and like that sort of stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So they have that kind of stuff.They have like a question form and things, but it's all very confusing.And I…Yeah, I didn't find.Okay, what does that mean for the school right now?
• linkBen Ainslie - That was a good question.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well played, everyone.
• linkHenry Wu - So another very exciting development, Team Inquit and the Schliemann Stans are now tied for first.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oohhh
• linkHenry Wu - With thirteen points apiece, and Old White Man Tears has fallen behind with ten points still.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So we're still in this.We're still in this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Nah, I don't…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Come on.We can make up three!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So the next question is the same format.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, fun, fun, fun.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So this time…
• linkBen Ainslie - We did so well on the last one, I can't wait for this one
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This time, I want you to say one country in the top ten countries with the most languages.Now, earlier, I gave you the clue that Brazil was on spot eight.So I'm going to remove Brazil.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so like Brazil, like eight is blank and we move what would have been nine, ten and eleven up?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So I've just added in the eleven one.Yeah.So I want you to say a country that has a lot of languages in it, and these are excluding what might be called immigrant languages, so that populations that have been less than…what is it?Usually it's about five to three generations in a country.And we are including languages with very very few speakers or languages that are sleeping, so that don't have speakers right now.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so we are including those languages.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BENto DANIEL on the private:What are you thinking, Daniel?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, India's got to be at the top.
• linkBen Ainslie - I, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Indonesia's at the top.Australia?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, because of indigenous languages.Oh, my goodness, Daniel.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What?
• linkBen Ainslie - Papua New Guinea.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's going to be a huge number.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah, that's right, we want to go further down.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We want to go further down.
• linkBen Ainslie - What about Mexico?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mexico's okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - So like, quite a few indigenous languages.
• linkDaniel Midgley - True!That's true.Should we go, should we go safe and just go like India?
• linkBen Ainslie - What do you reckon?What do you reckon?What do you reckon?Because by that…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Russia
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, Russia.Interesting because you've got all of the like various Tatar groups and that sort of thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Are you having fun, Henry?
• linkHenry Wu - This is very entertaining.
• linkBen Ainslie - Arghh
• linkDaniel Midgley - Arghh
• linkDaniel Midgley - BENto EVERYONE:I would just like to quickly interject and say a hearty screw you to Hedvig and Henry, because this is very difficult and I'm not enjoying it at all.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Excellent.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - DANIELback to the private channel:Okay, what do you reckon?Australia or Russia or India?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I think Russia and Australia are not safe bets.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - So let's go India.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - BENback to the main channel:Old White Man Tears, who are particularly teary at the moment, given how thoroughly we just got thumped, we have an answer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Let's see what Schliemann Stans, if they have locked one in.
• linkMADDY - I think we have, yes
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, cool.Well, why don't we go into reverse order then.So Maddy from Schliemann Stans, you want to tell us what your answer is?
• linkMADDY - Oh, this is very stressful, but I think…LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Hey, if you want to jump in on the screw you that I offered, by the way, you go right ahead.I'm happy to share that "screw you" amongst all of us.
• linkMADDY - We will share that sentiment.We are guessing Mexico.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, we talked about that.We talked about it.That was definitely featured in our discussions, for sure.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And then the Team Inquit?
• linkRYAN - Yeah.I agree with Maddy, this is quite stressful.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Sounds like all three teams are on the "screw you guys" bandwagon.That's great.
• linkHenry Wu - I thought…I thought you were going to say you had the same answer, and you were just like I have the same sentiment.
• linkRYAN - We are guessing Russia.
• linkBen Ainslie - Also discussed by us.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also guessed.Yes.So we decided to play a little bit safe, maybe.
• linkBen Ainslie - What we presume is safe.I really hope this doesn't make us look even more stupid by going like:oh, yeah, we went really safe and we're not even on the list, which will be like a double loss.
• linkDaniel Midgley - India.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - India.All right.So the Schliemann Stans guessed Mexico, which gives them six points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Aw, nicely done!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Inquit guessed Russia, which gives them no points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oooh!Can I just say Inquit, I know exactly how you feel right now, and my heart really goes out to you.That was…that…woof.Woof.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Russia comes in at spot twenty.
• linkBen Ainslie - I would have thought Russia must have had far more indigenous languages cruising across that just epically huge landmass.That's…I'm surprised.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Could it be
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There are quite a few!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Could it be that seventy years of autocracy has crushed out minority languages?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, but the sleeping ones!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, we're counting sleeping ones.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's true.But it's true that there are a lot of indigenous languages in Russia, especially down in the Caucasus and stuff, but it's not that many.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right.And?And?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Old White Man Tears, you guessed India, correct?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which gives you five points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Phew, okay, better than nothing, better than nothing
• linkDaniel Midgley - Phew!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which means, Henry, if I'm correct, do you want to say the winner of the whole quiz is?
• linkHenry Wu - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa, whoa, whoa, was that the final round?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkHenry Wu - That was the last question.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, you didn't build that up at all, geez louise!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That was the final question.Sorry, Henry our sheet, and we're like obviously, it's the last one on the paper!
• linkAlly - Wait, can we have the list of the languages in order?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Of the countries, yes.
• linkAlly - Learning experience.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Thank you, Ally.Number one, do you all want to get it together, because I think you're going to say it:
• linkDaniel Midgley - Indonesia.
• linkBen Ainslie - PNG?
• linkHARRY - Papua New Guinea?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Papua New Guinea.
• linkBen Ainslie - Bam.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Spot number two.Indonesia, largely because of West Papua.If New Guinea was one country it would be like…
• linkBen Ainslie - And that's also kind of a political thing, because a large section of West Papua does not want to be Indonesian.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.And then…so we're Papua New Guinea at 877, Indonesia at 690.Nigeria at 478.
• linkBen Ainslie - What's next?Nigeria.Wow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Australia.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Comes in at spot number four.Australia actually has a lot of different languages.India…
• linkBen Ainslie - What's our official number?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Two hundred and some?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - 383.This is me counting in Glottolog.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right, 383.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And number five is India at 351.Then we get Mexico at 295, and China at 271, Brazil which we had excluded, at 257, United States of America 242, Cameroon 196, and then the Philippines at 172.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, Philippines!That would have been eleven tasty, tasty points.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ten, but yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, okay.Fine.I would have argued for the extra point because you excluded Brazil, but that's fine.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - All right, so.Well fought, everyone, that was the last question.Sorry I didn't build it up enough beforehand.But Henry, do you want to tell us who won?
• linkHenry Wu - Yeah, I can give the whole standings.In third place, we have Team Inquit with thirteen points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well played, well playedAPPLAUSE
• linkBen Ainslie - Well fought, well fought, well fought.
• linkHenry Wu - In second place we have Old White Man Tears, with fifteen points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Awww.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm happy with that.I'm happy with that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.I'll take it.Considering how badly we borked it on the last one, I'll take it.
• linkHenry Wu - And much like Schliemann carrying off Priam's treasure, we have the Schliemann Stans in the lead, with nineteen points.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh.Handily beaten, brava, brava.APPLAUSE
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I should say, yeah, that we expected you to have more points by now, so we didn't think these two questions were going to be as important as they were!But, you know.
• linkAlly - Ouch.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, yeah.No worries.I won't take that one personally at all.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It happens when you create quizzes, and you're like:Obviously, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I would just like to thank all of you for being here to to play this with us, and to talk about language.It's something that we all get into, something we all kind of dig.So thank you for taking your time.And we're really, really happy to play this with you.We're happy to have you on this episode.And we hope that you do really well in your studies, and you are all super successful.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, this is definitely a group of students that we need to worry about academically for sure.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Ben means worry, as in the positive sense.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no, yeah, I was being HELL sarcastic.I'm sure all of the people who are in their free time learning Welsh on Duolingo will probably do fine in their HSC.Just call that a…shall we say an intuition on my part.
• linkAMY - Thank you very much for having us.It was a lot of fun.We all really enjoyed it.I'm speaking for our team.I'm sure the other team really enjoyed it.But thank you very much.
• linkHARRY - Thank you so much, guys.Like this, this was like a really fun experience.Like, I think all of us, we were really nervous when we joined, because we weren't sure how, like, it was going to be.But congratulations to the winners.It's like…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, how salty does that sound?
• linkHARRY - We were leading by so much, and then you guys just, like, spun up this nine pointer that just completely threw us out!It's so sad.But no, it's fine.It's fine.Thanks, guys.We really did have a lot of fun.Thank you so much for preparing this and making this such a wonderful experience for us.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Hedvig and Henry, thank you for taking the time and putting this together.
• linkBen Ainslie - To the quiz masters, I doff the hattiest of hats in the doffiest of ways.You guys did an amazing job.
• linkHenry Wu - Thank you, I'm glad that everyone enjoyed it.
• linkHenry Wu - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Words of the Week.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - GASPS
• linkBen Ainslie - Meh, meh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is one of them OOMF?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Aw.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm salty as fuck, I just want to put that right out there.I do not like life.I do not like the competition we just did.I don't like children.I don't like anything.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I thought that was great.I had a great time getting trounced.
• linkBen Ainslie - It was bad.All those people were dumb.I don't like them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you like me more or less.You like me less?
• linkBen Ainslie - Substantially less.Why is that even a question?Obviously less.Like way less.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm looking at you with a grudging respect.
• linkBen Ainslie - That was…yeah, actually, I think yes.Mmm.So do I.It's hard.It's hard to do a quiz and I very, very begrudgingly need to like, through gritted teeth be like:Oh, well done, Hedvig.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah I liked it.And Ben, Ben what a team!What a team.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.We lost real good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - With aplomb!
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, wow, we're great at not winning, good job us.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You came second place!
• linkDaniel Midgley - That wasn't bad.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's exactly what losers say to be a good thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - First loser!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Remember, there were kiddies who came third, Ben!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I suppose that's true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I suppose so.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, let's move on to Words of the Week.I'm going to ask you, why was this one in the news?The word is:DISPARAGE.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that doesn't seem very like…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Disparage.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's like a pretty common, not…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's a feeling verb, like you disparage
• linkBen Ainslie - DISPARAGE means, like, talk shit.Basically, it's academically accepted language that means talk shit.Basically, like if you want to say someone is talking shit in an academic essay, you say "they have disparaged".
• linkDaniel Midgley - So why is it in the news?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have a guess.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, go ahead.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it to do with number one, the unmentionable man?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Individual-1?
• linkBen Ainslie - He Who Shall Not be Named.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the U.S.military?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, we are, of course, talking about impeached US president and Kremlin asset, Donald Trump, who this week described Americans who died in the war as "losers" and "suckers".This was a piece by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, "The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic."
• linkBen Ainslie - So this is like, this isn't a hot mic thing?This is just like a whole bunch of increasingly dissatisfied internal employees, basically just starting to "disparage" Donald Trump to the press?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Correct.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Apparently, even Fox News reported on it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I mean, they're in a real bind there, aren't they?Because they're like…if you're Fox News, you're really looking at both those parties and being like:mummy and daddy are fighting!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I was reading some, I was listening to some Marxist commentary of this, because apparently he also said things like:why would they, why did they choose to go into the military?They died for…what's in it for them?
• linkDaniel Midgley - What's in it for them?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And also, he had said somewhere that the higher up the military would just like to continue having wars to feed the military industrial complex.And like, all my Marxist commentary I was looking for was like:he's trolling us so bad.He is the commander in chief.And this is the critique that WE usually give them.But he's saying it?And they were terribly confused and delighted, and weirded out.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, this is his playbook, right?Like, it's literally, it is an ongoing neverending…Like his only move in a fight is the handful of sand to the eyes.Right?Like it's all of his stuff.Every time.Every time is just like:I don't know….WHAM.Like it's just…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Bizarre.
• linkDaniel Midgley - He just can't help but say the quiet part out loud.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah.So but, like this is the heart, heartbreaking thing is it works.It absolutely works.It has been working for him this whole time, right?There's a whole bunch of Marxist people that Hedvig reads who are like:the hell is this guy doing?Like just everyone is sitting there being like:the hell?
• linkDaniel Midgley - He's making our points!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're like agreeing with him!And they're like, why are we…?Yeah.Not comfortable agreeing with him.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's just…Oh, my God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The word DISPARAGE comes from French in the 1300s.It was old French "desparagier", which meant to marry somebody who was below your rank, and therefore to bring yourself into disrepute.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there you go.I guess it kind of…it kind of almost sounds like dis-marriage, doesn't it?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's actually dis-peer, because you're marrying somebody who's not a peer.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the PAR part.But by the 1730s, the word has changed so that it meant:to belittle someone or criticize them unjustly.
• linkBen Ainslie - Does it mean the other person in that situation, like pro-paraged?
• linkDaniel Midgley - They super-paraged.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, they uber paraged
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Up-paraged.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Up-paraged.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hyper-paraged
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh I like that!Hyper-paraged.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Depending on which century you're in.By the way, guess the next word.He made a number of disparaging…
• linkBen Ainslie - Comments.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Comments.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good, one more.There's a better one.You can pick number two.
• linkBen Ainslie - Accusations?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.Disparaging…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Claims.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh gosh.This is harder than I thought it was going to be.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Disparaging statements.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm surprised that nobody came up with "remarks".
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I think that's a very American thing, to be honest.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't see "remarks" used very much in Australian media.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, interesting."Disparaging remarks" in the Google Ngram corpus is number one, and comments is number two.Let's go on to our next word.This one was suggested by Hannah Gibson on Twitter, our good friend Hannah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - She was just in an episode with us a little while ago:Decolonising Linguistics:Grammar.
• linkBen Ainslie - Lovely, lovely episode.Everyone should go and listen to it.Stop, stop, stop.Right now, just just stop, and just go back to that one and just listen to the whole thing and then come back.I'll wait.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, we know not everyone not listens to the end of...I speak good English today.We know that people don't listen to the end of all episodes, right?So stop now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They do.They always listen.They listen to the very end.
• linkBen Ainslie - So Hannah says?
• linkDaniel Midgley - She says, "I want to nominate MOONSHOT as a word for your week".Moonshot?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Moonshot?
• linkBen Ainslie - This is my, like, this is vaguely similar…I think this is like a cousin to "Hail Mary".
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Very much.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like you…you shoot really, really, really big.You really just, you go you swing for the bleachers, kind of thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - She links us to a story in The Guardian."What is Number 10's"– That's 10 Downing Street –"What is Number Ten's moonshot covid testing plan and is it feasible?" The idea is they want to mass-test a lot of people all the time using tests that give results very quickly.But why do we call it a moonshot?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because we say shoot for the moon and then…why do we say shoot for the moon?
• linkBen Ainslie - Um, because….Yeah, but I think it's got like a deeper meaning to that.It's like an explicitly JFK related thing, isn't it?So, like, basically JFK promised to get to the moon and one hundred percent did not have the technological capacity or resources to actually pull that off at that point.He was literally just like:putting his mark on the board.Let's see if we can get there!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like it though.It's how I try and do things sometimes when I'm like:I think this is within my capabilities, but I'm not entirely sure.But I'm going to say to someone else that I'm going to do it and then I'm going to, I'm a smart cookie.I could figure out how to do it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Surprisingly, people have been writing about going to the moon, having a moonshot ever since 1949.
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Interesting.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wait!I wonder if I could go all the way back to that movie.What's that super famous early cinema movie with the the shoot the moon in the eye?Yeah, the Lumière Brothers or something like that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Both Ben and I are pointing at our faces.Yeah, Lumière Brothers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Possibly.But it even goes back earlier than that because.Well, I found a number of references to moonshots.One was from baseball.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Oh yeah.We say that in tennis as well.Like, like a moon hit is when you just go pewwwww
• linkDaniel Midgley - To the moon?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You play tennis?
• linkBen Ainslie - I do.Not, not…I really feel like if this makes it into the edit, we have to add the bit right now where I say:not well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no, you play it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah.Like badly and not competitively.But yes, definitely.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can see even the shorts and socks for some reason.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh I don't wear the collared shirt.I, me and my friends very accurately refer to ourselves as the punks of the tennis world, like the people out there, like getting changed out on the court while all of these like very sensible looking people in, like, pressed tennis creams and like doing well and…nah.Anyway.Not important!Moving on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - In baseball, the term moonshot comes from a baseball player, Wally Moon.
• linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - No!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Seriously!Oh, you should see this.He's got he was a player for the St.Louis Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers.And he…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Had a big wide face?
• linkDaniel Midgley - You should see the guy on Wikipedia, he had a big old…no, he had a unibrow like you wouldn't believe.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I love that's not relevant to the story, but it was such a big unibrow that it had to make it in.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was huge.But whenever he would hit a home run, the newspapers would reference them as "moon shots".And this was as early as 1959.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oooh!
• linkBen Ainslie - Wow!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, then I kept going and I found more references to moonshots, meaning "a long shot in a horse race".That was from 1936.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then there's even more references to shooting the moon in card games.Anybody play hearts?
• linkBen Ainslie - Nope.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What is hearts?
• linkBen Ainslie - Is hearts like, what do you call it, bridge?But like, a little bit simpler?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's like bridge that you capture tricks, but it's the opposite.You try to not capture tricks.So if you capture a heart, that's one point, and that's one point penalty.And if you catch queen of spades, that's a 13 point penalty.
• linkBen Ainslie - So you're looking for the lowest score rather than the highest?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, no, no.You're still looking for the highest score.It's just that hearts are penalties and queen of spades is penalties.But if you can gather up all the hearts and the queen of spades, everybody else gets a twenty six point penalty and you get no penalty at all.
• linkBen Ainslie - And that's called a moonshot.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's called shooting the moon.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And that's been from like the 1910s.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do we know, like, I'm feeling like my stupid little statement about it being based on the Lumière Brothers movie might actually be accurate, because why else would be people be thinking…Mind you, early science fiction was doing the rounds then, right?Like Orson Wells and that sort of thing.Not Orson Wells, but like earlier than that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Jules Verne.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, Jules Verne and stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But also, not even like an aircraft to the moon, but just like, I don't know, you're out shooting rabbits.And someone says like:you know, the hardest thing to shoot is like shooting the moon.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, fair, fair, fair.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Yeah.Just a goal that you have.You know, you shoot for it and you take your shot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's the highest thing we know of, because we don't realise the stars are further away.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So moonshot is one of those things that's existed in various iterations for various purposes for a super long time.And I thought that was really interesting.So thanks, Hannah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is super cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Last one.You have to guess what this is about:BROVID.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is this when you get covid from your friend?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Bro!
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm going to go with, it's something to do with what's the male version of a sorority called, again?A fraternity?Is it something to do with frat?Fraternities?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, the "bruh" does not belong to BRO, it belongs to something else that starts with, "bruh".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Bronchitis.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm out.I'm dry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Brexit.
• linkHedvig SkirgårdBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I noticed this in a tweet from Tony Thorne, @tonythorne007, where he says, "Le Monde reports that some commentators are now referring to a 'Brovid' as the combined disastrous combination of a no-future relationship deal Brexit in January, combined with the possible second wave of the covid-19 pandemic."
• linkBen Ainslie - Woof
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Surely it should be Brexvid.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There must be something better.What about Covexit?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, hard pass on that, I'm sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Brexvit?
• linkBen Ainslie - The only problem with Brovid is I think for nearly everyone it's going to conjure up images of like BRO dudes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Bro!And a video of your bros.Well, DISPARAGE, MOONSHOT and BROVID:our Words of the Week.
• linkBen Ainslie - I liked them.This is good.This is a good palate cleanser after the crushing defeat at the hands of children.So that's nice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Some defeats are very satisfying.I'm no longer worried about the youth of today.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I was never worried about the youth of today, and I already knew that they were much smarter than me.It just sucks to go through it yet again.
• linkDaniel Midgley - In so many different ways, Ben.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTERSo many, like.I needed more data!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I too have children who are smarter than I am.Even the little girls.
• linkDaniel Midgley - ENDING THEME
• linkBen Ainslie - If you even remotely like me, this episode has generated all sorts of The Feels and reactions in you.But we would like to hear from you in regards to those feels and the reacts.So please hit us up on the various ways that you can hit us up:Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Instagram and Patreon.We are becauselangpod everywhere.And if you just want to have a phat old chat with probably Daniel, you can email him hello@becauselanguage.com.Having said that, if you really want to have a phat chat with myself or with Hedvig, you just drop what you want.Basically, tell Daniel to forward it to us, and he will.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I check Twitter and Instagram more than the others.
• linkBen Ainslie - And if you would be so kind, if you're thinking to yourself:you know what?Man, I love these guys.They're really, really good.What could I do to support them?One of the things that you could do is drop us a sweet af review on one of the many places that we put the podcast out.That might be Stitcher.That might be…what's the place called…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Podcast Addict.
• linkBen Ainslie - Spotify.That might be Apple Podcasts.That might be Pocket Cast.That might be any of those places and a billion more.And you can also do the very best thing any friend can do, which is give a red hot recommendation to our podcast to your mate.Go nuts!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We also would like to extend our grateful thanks to all of the patrons, all of our patrons on Patreon who make this show possible, and in particular, as we said on top of the show, now that we are going to be giving some compensation to guests, and improving our transcripts, our patron patreons are more important than ever.You can become a patron by going to patreon.com/becauselangpod and there you can sign up.And when you do, you'll also get access to bonus episodes.We would especially like to thank our patrons:Termy, Chris B, Lyssa, The Major, Chris L, Matt, Whitney, Damien, Helen, Bob, Jack, Christelle, Elías, Michael, Larry, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Maj, Nigel, Kate, Jen, Nasrin, Ayesha, and Emma.Thank you to everyone.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our music is written and performed by Drew Krapljanov and he's in Ryan Beno, which is a wonderful band, and Didion’s Bible, which is another wonderful band.Check them out on Bandcamp.Thank you for listening.We'll catch you next time.Because Language.