25 - Transcription

782 turns

• linkHedvig Skirgård - As often happens with a lot of research papers we cover, actually, I have to like do a fair bit of digging to see how many languages there are!I'm not kidding you.I feel like every time we have something I, like, have to go, like, dig really deep in supplementary.
• linkBen Ainslie - You gotta, like, Ctrl-F.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I…!Darling…!
• linkMAYA KLEIN - Let's see you try, *Ben*!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, fair enough.
• linkBen Ainslie - THEME MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this episode of Because Language, a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.I'm Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team!He's got more great takes then Stanley Kubrick.It's Ben Ainslie.
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like that one was a little bit underbaked this week.I feel like perhaps this one didn't…
• linkDaniel Midgley - What?!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?!
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I didn't like that one.
• linkMAYA - It was a masterpiece.Come on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I worked that, come on!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I liked that.I thought that was very funny.You, Ben, you have a good…a lot of great takes and Stanley Kubrick does as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - All I will say is you've slid past the keeper with me.Like, the saving grace on that one is I love a good zero point perspective shot, and Kubrick is all over that bad boy like a rash.So I'll allow it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also it takes him 111 tries to get it right.So no.She needs no introduction.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Especially not the kind that I give, because mine's been terrible lately, but I keep trying anyway.But how do you do it?How do you encapsulate all that's good about this wonderful person?How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand??It's Hedvig Skirgård.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that a reference to a meme I'm not understanding?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Name that musical!
• linkBen Ainslie - How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Come on!SINGINGHow do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think I vaguely know this.
• linkBen Ainslie - It sounds very Sound of Music-y.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is!Good.Okay, Rodgers and Hammerstein.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I am not a moonbeam.I'm not a moonbeam today.It's a gray day here and we're still on month three of lockdown.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I'm sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I…no, no, it's not, I'm just…I appreciate that Daniel always hypes me up and makes me feel like I'm very special and cool and stuff, but I'm not.Especially not right now.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, all I can say to Maya and Hedvig is, as two sort of people who are very much still under the sway of terrible coronavirus stuff, at least Daniel and I are now getting thoroughly fucked by global warming stuff for the next couple of days.
• linkMAYA - I live in Tucson, Arizona.It's…the long six-month summer starts next week.So yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, hey, we have a special guest co-host!It's Maya Klein.
• linkMAYA - It's me!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Of Voicing Words.Hi, Maya, how's it going?
• linkMAYA - Hi, thanks for having me on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maya does all the transcripts for the show, which means that she's had to listen to all of us word by word very carefully.And I think this qualifies for hazardous battle pay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, man, I'm so sorry.I am so sorry.
• linkMAYA - Now I'll have to transcribe my own voice, which everyone knows is the worst.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTERThat's right!And consider your words carefully, because you're going to be putting them all down in the transcript for this episode.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm lowkey, like, a little bit afraid of this episode, because I feel like we're going to find out things about ourselves that are, we're gonna…we're going to be like hyper conscious.And I hope by the next time we record, I'll have forgotten everything Maya is going to tell us about what we sound like.
• linkBen Ainslie - No no, we'll take a rigorous self inventory and then allow that insecurity to fuel even greater performance in the shows ahead.
• linkMAYA - It could go the other way too.You could just find yourself tripping over your words after this and be like:wait, uhhh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, if anything, this will give you an appreciation for just how much editing I do to remove the cross talk.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh true!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, now you're getting the full horror, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's true.Because, as our listeners might not know, Daniel takes our sound files once we finish a recording, and then does some editing so we don't talk over each other.And maybe some things that we didn't mean to say, right, goes away and some sniffles maybe.Things like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think the best way to imagine it, right?would be if you think about like a giant pot of soup on the stove ready to be served.Daniel takes that pot and then returns it to all of its constituent ingredients arranged neatly on the countertop.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And then Maya comes along and labels them.
• linkMAYA - I can always count on Ben to just have, like, an example from…I don't know where the fuck you take it from.Do you know what I mean?But it's always brilliant.Just like…where?How?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Are you enjoying the show?Just before we get into it?Is this…
• linkBen Ainslie - That is a bold opening question, Daniel, you madman!
• linkMAYA - Yes, I very much enjoy the show!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh good.
• linkMAYA - I, yeah, I, you know, left the world of linguistics, you know, because I dropped out of grad school, like, I guess a year ago by now.And so it's nice every week to have a little dose of linguistics, and remind myself of this world.And also, can I just say, you know, I follow a lot of linguists on Twitter, right?You know, as one does.And there's always this, like, drama, you know.And you know how, like— I hate this about Twitter —people will reference something that's happened, but they won't actually fucking explain it.Right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Subtweets!
• linkMAYA - Yeah, you're like:What?You know, what is going on?But then you all come on every week, and then you explain what happened.So I'm like:Oh okay, now I can be like, cool, you know, because I know what's going on.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do you know?Here's my next metaphor:We're that kid in the coming of age story, who tags along with the new kid in the school and just like explains how all the cliques drama is like playing out in the lunchroom?
• linkMAYA - Yes.Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The audience surrogate.That's us!
• linkBen Ainslie - DJ Exposition.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The unpopular kid.Well, thank you, Maya for being here.We're going to talk a lot about the process of transcription.We've never done a transcription show.We haven't talked about it hardly at all.We've scarcely done translation.We do translation every once in a while, but transcription.I think the two are close.
• linkBen Ainslie - Since we've got so much to cover.Shall we do the news?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's do, but first:This is a patron episode.So thank you, dear patrons for being a patron.We've got a special live show coming up, and you're invited.It's part of LingFest 21.It's our It's All Semantics!live show.I am collecting great debates in semantics that we are going to have to solve, with the help of our live audience.So all patrons regardless of level will be invited and you will help us sort some of this shit out.So follow us everywhere so that you can get the updates on that.It's on May 1, check the Patreon to get the timezones in your area.
• linkBen Ainslie - Check the thing, the thing will tell you the other thing.You'll be fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Check the thing.That's it, thank you.Okay, good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But come along, because you'll get a once in a lifetime chance to be the final arbiter and judge of these semantic questions and what we decide at this event will be law for her eternity.So be there.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is decided.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah
• linkDaniel Midgley - Very good.Let's start off close to WA, which is where Ben and I live.In schools in Western Australia, as in many places, students have to take a language.They have to get through some years of different languages.And what are the most popular languages, do you reckon, in high schools?
• linkBen Ainslie - I can tell you that with, I would say a relatively good amount of confidence, in WA.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Italian, Mandarin?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, so Italian, Mandarin French, obviously, because its legacy prestige status would be up there.There'd be a fair bit of Indonesian, though that might have fallen away now I think from like, just sort of like regional sort of relevancy.And then the stuff that you would expect to be in pretty big numbers is actually surprisingly absent.So like, there's very little Vietnamese, despite us having a massive, massive Vietnamese migratory population.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's weird.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, super weird.My school is like a third Vietnamese, and Vietnamese is not a language taught at my school, which just like blows my mind.Yo, is there…?I feel like I'm missing something here.Again, other sort of Southeast Asian and South Asian languages that you would expect to be very prevalent are not, so you won't get a lot of like Hindi or Urdu or anything like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not even Persian, you know.
• linkMAYA - Can I just say that coming from the, you know, American education system, that even the languages that you did list as being taught, that's quite impressive.When US schools, of course, you know, you'd get your French, Spanish.And, you know, if it's like a hip school or like a school for, you know, rich people, maybe they would teach Mandarin, but other than that, not much.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's good.I'm glad we're doing a little bit better.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, there's a new language on the horizon that's being trialed in WA schools.
• linkBen Ainslie - Come on.I've got my fingers crossed.I don't know this story at all.So I've got my fingers crossed, and I'm hoping it's the one I want it to be.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go ahead, say it, say it.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no, you say yours.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You'll still be right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, say sit, say it, say it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, is it Noongar?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is Noongar
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay
• linkALL CLAPPING
• linkBen Ainslie - So stoked about this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So the details come from an ABC Perth story with Nadia Mitsopoulos.The details come from Kevin O'Keefe, the principal advisor of Aboriginal education, teaching, and learning.They are trialing a year-three program, a full year, and then hopefully they're going to expand it.There are about 150 people who have been trained by the department to teach Aboriginal languages in WA public schools.They are giving a special emphasis to community engagement, treating the Aboriginal people themselves as the cultural owners of the work.And— I didn't know this —the education department is teaching guess how many Aboriginal languages across Western Australia?
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, okay, this is a fun game.I'm gonna guess, at least…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Six
• linkBen Ainslie - Six is probably actually a pretty good guess.I'm gonna go a little bit higher.I'm gonna go eight or nine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Those are good guesses.Maya, you want to give it a shot?
• linkMAYA - Goddamn, I would be impressed with just one.So I guess my guess is no good here.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - And it's gonna be the local language wherever you happen to be at.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah yeah yeah, obviously.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A rather mind boggling 22.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoaaa.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - How?!What?!
• linkMAYA - Amazing, amazing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - According to this ABC story, the education department is teaching 22 Aboriginal languages in school around the state.
• linkBen Ainslie - Now, it should be, like so for our listeners who know literally nothing about the geography of the state of Western Australia— which I really wouldn't blame them. It's, it's very irrelevant from a geopolitical standpoint —we are like, twice the size of Germany?Maybe three times the size of Germany.But we have approximately 2 million people living across that landmass.And the, like, vast majority of them, like the 90 something percent of them live here where we live in, in the southwest in Perth and the region around it.So like, back before white people invaded all of Australia, there was just like, hundreds of different First Nations people, just like, spread all across what we now call Western Australia.So like, yeah, it's a really big number that they're teaching in schools.It's just like, my brain goes:Good.Right?Like, like, let's not, let's not give cookies for things that really we probably should have been doing all along.So this is really good.This is good.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Can I ask one question?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'll tell you if I know it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Are they teaching them as heritage education for children, students who are part of the communities, or are they also teaching it to non-members?
• linkDaniel Midgley - My understanding is that if you're a kid in that school, you're getting that language.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay.Cool?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.No, like the clarification point there, would be that there are a pretty substantial number of remote schools for whom the two things are the same thing.Right?Which, which isn't a bad thing at all.Like, that's a great thing.But I totally get your point, which is that like, for instance, Noongar being taught in primary schools here in Perth where, like, that, that's the traditional owners of the area where Perth is, that would be to whichever kid is in the classroom, right?Of which you have to imagine Noongars would make up less than 1% across the entire metropolitan region.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is true.
• linkMAYA - And are these just classroom languages?Or are there any plans for immersion programs or anything like that?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh my god, be still my beating heart, how good would that be?
• linkDaniel Midgley - So the best would be like a dual-education program where you're getting chemistry in Noongar.I'm reasonably certain that it is not that.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, we're not there yet, I think we can say pretty comfortably.
• linkMAYA - First steps.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yet, I hope, is the is the key modifier there.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We'll see if this program expands.I think it's also worth remembering that many Noongar people use the Noongar language to express their Aboriginal identity.It's like a thing.This is, you know, part of who I am.But we've also talked to other Aboriginal people, for example, Glenys Collard who say:Well, I don't really use Noongar to do that, I do that through Aboriginal English.And so this is a complicated thing.It also involves issues of language ownership and community engagement.But I think Noongar has a lot of fans, a lot of Noongar people are really ready for this to be open sourced, to be taught to non Noongar people.And so I think this is very encouraging.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is just the best news.Wow.I'm really worried though, that you've started with like the real pick me up and from here, we are just tumbling downhill.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And now a story about babies!
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay, yes, we're good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's an International Research Consortium called the Multi Baby Lab.Wait, what are they?Oh, no, I said it wrong.Are they called Multi Baby Lab?No…
• linkBen Ainslie - I really hope they're called Multi Baby Lab, because that sounds awesome.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think they are…No!They're called the Many Babies Consortium.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The Many Babies Consortium.
• linkBen Ainslie - This sounds like a thing from Boss Babies.
• linkMAYA - So many babies.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So many babies.The Loads of Babies Consortium.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The next news comes to us from the journal of Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.This is a paper about babies and infant-directed speech from the Many Babies Consortium, which is an International Research Consortium where they're trying to understand how babies work and learn languages all over the world.
• linkBen Ainslie - Can I just…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I love the name and it's weird.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I just, can we all just picture for a moment how great it would be to be able to be what I presume is a tremendously educated researcher, who has done heaps of work, being at some sort of conference and being like:Hi, I'm Sarah Douglas from the Many Babies Consortium.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It trips me up a bit as well, because they call it the Multi Lab Many Babies One Project.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Many babies one.
• linkMAYA - It's like they were so busy with research that they were like:we can't be bothered to, like, find a really good name.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Titles are hard.
• linkMAYA - So we're just gonna throw…Yeah, it's hard
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Titles are hard.
• linkBen Ainslie - Are we all being idiots, does it spell out something when it's acronymed that's like, super obvious?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I don't think so.I think, well, I don't know.But anyway, they are doing experiments on babies, and if they like or don't like infant-directed speech.Now, what do you guys know about infant-directed speech?
• linkBen Ainslie - This is what we call baby talk, right?MIMICS BABY TALKBA ba ba BA BA ba.
• linkMAYA - There's a lot of like intonation….You know, sort of very steep intonation changes.So yeah, you get these, you know, NaaaaNAAAAAnaaaNAAnaa.You know, it's kind of like I would say, is it baby talk and or dog talk?Not really cat talk, I don't think you would talk to a cat like that as much?You know, I think the cat would you know, eat you if you did, so.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, absolutely.Every time I've seen a person speak to a cat, it's like, very respectfully with like, the appropriate amount of fear.
• linkMAYA - Like respectfully pleading, like please.
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHINGYeah.Noun-heavy, lots of nouns.Lots of repetition.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's, that's probably true as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - The only thing I know about it, is it makes people look really stupid.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hmmm.Yeah, I think it does.I'm trying to think if it makes if it makes the person doing it look stupid.Or if it makes the person you're talking to…like, if I were to address you, Ben, like I would address a baby, wouldn't you feel stupid?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, not at all.I will definitely be looking at you being like:this person is unwell.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You might think that you don't do it.But you do.Even people who don't have kids
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I know.I know.What I've got in my head is like the really exaggerated, almost for comedic effect, like:Oh you BOO ba ba ba BA BOO.And that I think.
• linkDaniel Midgley - People don't do that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Really?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, not really not when they talk to kids, they'll tend to strip down the complexity.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, hang on kids or babies?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Younger than three?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, a lot of simplified syntax, similar to what you see maybe in Pidgin languages that develop, things like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So two of the features of baby or infant-directed speech that the researchers point out as particularly sort of significant, is slower speech rate and more variable pitch.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkBen Ainslie - That makes sense.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So those were, I think, I think all of you, none of you said slower.I think.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We didn't say slower.But exAGGeraTED INtonATion!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And exaggerated intonation.So what they did in this study is they looked at babies from seven different countries, and I was just realising that I didn't have written up for myself how many languages.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So what did they find out?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They found out that babies like baby-directed speech.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They will look and be more engaged with, when they get played audio stimuli, that is with this type of baby characteristics than if they don't.Even babies with no exposure to English preferred English baby talk to English grownup talk.
• linkBen Ainslie - Interesting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And it even held when babies were bilingual.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm just thinking to myself, if I was in like a roomful of not a large number of adults, and they were all speaking, like, standard language, and then one of them were speaking baby language, I would myself direct my attention to that person.That's a fairly intuitive finding, I think!
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think it's interesting that babies like baby talk, child-directed speech, because like some people say:Oh, don't use child-directed speech, it hurts their language development.No, no, it helps their language development, if anything.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's a big pish posh moment.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Exactly.It's hard to, like if you're listening to a language you don't know, like a baby is.And then you hear things like repetition of words, or you hear things like DOGGY and HORSEY, and MOMMY and DADDY and theisound on the end, that's giving you important cues as to what kind of word that is, gives you something to grab onto.So, you know, we've seen that baby talk helps babies to acquire language and so I like how they like it, and they prefer it.That's cool.
• linkMAYA - I agree.And I know that there is that sort of ideology maybe that baby talk is in some way inferior, in some way hurts development, but I also kind of, like, have this you know, caution, like cynicism about me, where I'm thinking:You know, some people might take a study like this as proof that, you know, you have to speak to your child a certain amount of time per day, you know, like those kinds of, you know, now we know incorrect kind of studies about, you know, the amount of words that babies, you know, get and stuff.And things like that.And so that's why I kind of like had a pause when I read this study, especially because you know, there are some cultures where there's a lot less child-directed speech, because there's a lot less sort of direct interaction between a parent and a child that's acceptable, especially among, like, mixed company.And I think, you know, some people might think, like:oh, there needs to be an intervention there.And in fact, when I was googling this, to try to find an example of a culture where child-directed speech is, like, not as big of a thing as it is in other cultures that we may be familiar with, the first result that I got was a study about an intervention done in Senegal, where they tried to get people, and specifically mothers, right?to increase their child directed speech.So it was kind of like, implication, no, they have to do it like us.So that's a cynicism in me, I'll always find it somewhere.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, I appreciate it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, that's good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that's a really good point.Thank you, Maya.Yeah, I've spent some time in Samoa, and in Samoa, you don't really talk to children until they're sort of conscious and sentient and able to say intelligent things.But people, I've heard people frame similarly there that, like, this is a bad thing.But also the childminding is also a lot of times done by other children who are older.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So they're getting input.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, so they're getting input.And interestingly— I don't know, I really want to, I really want someone to try this —but like maybe the way a six year old speaks, six year olds tend to have, you know, higher pitched, they probably have simpler syntax, they probably repeat nouns a lot, right?They probably…their talk is probably like adult infant directed speech to anyone around them.
• linkMAYA - That's so interesting, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I have a six year old, and I can 100% confirm everything you've just said.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So if the smaller children are being minded by children, say age six to twelve, then maybe they're actually getting quite similar input.It's just they're not getting it from adults.And again, I think we've talked about this on the show before, but like, children develop differently, individually within the same culture and between cultures, they can develop somewhat differently, but generally everyone, by age three or four, forms sentences and is able to interact with the world around them.And if that happens, it doesn't need to happen at exactly the same stages of development for everyone.
• linkMAYA - Well said.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.And the word gap nonsense is nonsense, and is often used— dare I say weaponised? —against lower income people blaming their parents for not talking to kids, which is not true.When in fact, what we really need to do is ensure economic security for those communities.Good!Thank you.Appreciate that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Next story.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This one's about Google Scholar.There's some work from Cristòfol Rovira, Lluís Codina, and Carles Lopezosa from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, out of Barcelona.We've covered some work out of that institution before, they do good work.This is published in the journal Future Internet.And they took a look at papers that were in Google Scholar, and these were non-English papers.They examined 45,000 scholarly documents, both in English and not, just to see what was happening to the non-English papers.Were they getting promoted equally?Was the secret sauce in Google helping those papers float to the top?Or were they getting buried?Any guesses?
• linkBen Ainslie - I mean, it's got to be buried.I don't do much, like, higher order, PhD level, Hedvig-Skirgård-like research, but…is not English, kind of like the unofficial academic language now?Is that wrong of me to assume that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it's not wrong of you to assume that.The only things that could possibly hold out against it is German and French, and to maybe a certain degree Spanish.There are some places in France that I know of where you can't write a PhD thesis in English unless you fulfill certain criteria.
• linkBen Ainslie - #ThatsSoFrench
• linkMAYA - So French.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which, like, a lot of French academics don't like, because they recognise that most of their fields use English as the academic language.So yes, there's currently a debate going on that I'm hoping we could maybe discuss in further depth at some point about— which we sort of talked about a bit last episode actually —which is, if we should become more accepting in academic writing of non-native-speaker English.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, learner-English.
• linkBen Ainslie - Heck yeah!Bring it on!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because we're, we're more than you guys, and we make some, quote unquote, mistakes, and we do things a bit differently, and like lucky, maybe that's fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - A bit quirky.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, so here's the result.They found— this is the money quote —a huge chunk of the papers they looked at have, quote "more than 1000 citations and appear in Google Scholar"— these are the non-English ones —"in the same positions as documents in English with only dozens of citations.Therefore, it can be argued that Google Scholar discriminates, non-English language documents in searches with multilingual results.Yep, it looks like Google Scholar is burying non-English results.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it because they don't…they can't index whatever metadata the way they expect, or something like that?
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, could be.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That would be a good explanation.
• linkMAYA - But they could if they just had, you know, multilingual metadata-ing capacity, which they could, you know…they could do that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it shouldn't be that hard!
• linkDaniel Midgley - If only they had.
• linkBen Ainslie - If anyone's got the technology to, like, make that happen, it would have to be Google, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah yeah yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.That's exactly it.I mean, in an ideal world, Google would, instead of making non-English papers less accessible, they could harness the power of its translation engines and float those to the top, particularly if they've got a lot of citations connecting to them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, one of the really bizarre ironies here is like, the thing that single handedly cemented Google as the King of Search all the way back in the '90s was the PageRank algorithm that Page and Brin came up with, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Here it is!
• linkBen Ainslie - Which was specifically based on the hierarchy of citations, like you have just sort of quoted in the study.And yet, when they've come like full circle, right, like they've rounded the Horn of Africa, they've gone all the way around the world, they're back to like doing academic journal-type search indexing, and they're not using PageRank anymore!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, wow, hmmm…
• linkMAYA - Or they are.They specifically are, because one could argue, given what you just said, Ben, that they're specifically putting into the algorithm to prefer English results over non-English results.And that's why we're getting this, right?Like, it's not necessarily something that they're not putting in, but it's something that they actually did deliberately put in.Also, can I please make a Suez Canal joke?Because you said the Horn of Africa?
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it's a little late.But…
• linkMAYA - I mean, like, there's no…no, it's never too late.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm ready.
• linkMAYA - The Suez Canal was blocked, so they went around the Horn of AfricaLAUGHING…it wasn't even a good joke, I just…
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no, that was, that was good.And mostly, I love a good shame joke, where you like, you bring it in, and you're just like, that joke was okay,BATMAN VOICEbut here's how it could have been better.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This was…I was just gonna say Google does these sort of philanthropic projects somewhat where they, for example, have projects to try and increase corpora in small languages.I know some people who are working on that for Google, and these are nice, sort of, I think Google sees them as maybe like charitable, nice projects that I'm also like, Maya maybe like, I am a bit more of the cynical persuasion.So when I see them doing nice things like that, I imagine that it has something to do with tax rebate, or just looking good, rather than maybe a genuine interest because, for example, things like this.So this news piece that Daniel found is written in Spanish as far as I can tell, correct?
• linkMAYA - Catalan.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, hang on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Catalan?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Catalan.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, even better!My apologies everyone, it's written in Catalan.And like Catalan, Spanish, French, there's a lot of, these academic papers aren't in, I'm sorry.Noongar is not a very, very big language.They're not in Noongar.They're not small language.They're in quite big languages.Google Translate does these languages just fine.Not like doing this properly is, it's just…it is within their reach.And they're not doing it.And I don't really understand why, when they try to seem nice in this place in other regards.I also have a personal vendetta regarding this, because we got a Google Nest.And my user profile is set up as bilingual, Swedish-English, and I can't add things to our shopping list.Because Google Keep isn't available in Swedish, so I have to ask my dear husband:Ste, can you add pickles to the list?And then he tells Google to add pickles.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that, that's gotta burn.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It drives me bonkers.It just drives me fully bonkers.And it's so easy for them to do.I don't…arghh.
• linkBen Ainslie - What I love as well is that, like, Ste has…a relatively thick Northern accent!
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - It's like your accent is actually more decipherable than his
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No no no, it understands me speaking English.I can tell it "Spotify, play next song." All good.It's just that because I'm Swedish-English bilingual, the Keep app doesn't know how to…blublublublu.Anyway, I've talked to Google about it, they just…I end up with some nice customer representative who says, "Oh, I'm so sorry, that must be so hard for you.I'll tell it to someone."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - SNORT
• linkBen Ainslie - File directly in the bin.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, exactly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, this, this failure to, to index results on a par with English results…it contributes to a pretty bad situation in which researchers who speak other languages have to take some of their valuable time, that would have contributed to their research, and they have to use that to learn not just English, but a very particular high-register form of English.And that is something that Anglophone researchers don't have to take so long to do.So it's not fair.
• linkMAYA - So I actually just did a little test.Looking, I searched first in English for "rhotics in Hebrew", just to see different articles, because I did my undergrad in Israel.And so I know a bit of the literature, so I know what to look for.And out of 10 pages, none of them were in Hebrew, even though there are quite a few very famous, very influential studies.And then I looked in Hebrew for "rhotics and Hebrew phonology", because it's otherwise it would give me you know, more like grammar-type articles.Anyway, um, and yeah, it's definitely giving me Hebrew results already on the first page.But I think also the, the reason why when I first googled it in English, I think that automatically my settings are to search for English results only.And then when I google it in Hebrew, it gives me on the top of the page "Tip:search for English results only." And it's like:Bro, I googled it in Hebrew, why do you think I want English results?Like, you're wrong.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm using a whole other script here, dude.
• linkMAYA - Right, like I did— what is it? Alt-shift? —I changed my keyboard.That's a lot, okay.That's commitment.Now I'm gonna have to change it back.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, while we're on the translation beat, this got some attention in the Hindi speaking world.It appears that if you type in "unworried", and you try to translate that into Hindi, you get avivaahit, which actually means "unmarried"".And I guess the reason why this caught my attention— caught a lot of people's attention —it makes the same mistake in Kannada, and in Marathi, and also Urdu.And I just thought that I would throw that in, because our listeners are varied in age.And so I thought I would capture a bit of that boomer humor sort of vibe.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm actually wondering if there is a, like, a slightly sort of more contemporary feminist angle to it now as well, in the sense that like, in India, with its sort of like burgeoning middle class, maybe there is like a, like, a non-trivial portion of the female population who are like:Pshh, husband, No, thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I hope you're right.
• linkMAYA - If it was just Hindi, I would say I wonder if it's like, maybe the words come from a similar, maybe the etymology is similar.Something like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That was my thought too.
• linkMAYA - Word.But if it's other languages, too, so I dunno.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was also going to blame that there might have been a particular book, or movie subtitles or Wikipedia that they were using where these words were co-occurring in a certain way.They might have used…because Google partially runs on parallel texts, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So if they used a particular book where that translator had for reasons to that, to do with that book had translated these two words in that way, maybe it makes sense.Maybe there's some sort of story or narrative in which this translation makes sense.We know that translation doesn't need to be like one-to-one, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dear listeners, if you have any experience with these languages, we would welcome your input.Tell us what insight you have.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm deeply deeply hoping and praying for some hilarious thing where it's like in a single text, a particular author or a particular translator was basically having like a bit of an inside joke, in terms of sort of translating this deliberately not quite completely accurately.I think that would be really fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are here with our transcriptionist Maya Klein of Voicing Words.Maya, thanks for hanging out with us.
• linkMAYA - Thank you for having me.And thanks for agreeing to meet so late.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's okay.I don't have a life.I got…I got nothing on.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I love this time, this is great for me here in Europe!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Thanks for meeting us so early.It's early for you.The only person this is good for is Hedvig.Hey, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yup yup yup, this is, we're starting this recording at 4pm, European time, I am fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We'll get you back with a wrap around at 3am.Anyway.Well, we put the call out to our Discord friends.So let's just get started here.I was wondering, what is the process of transcribing an episode of a podcast like ours?Like— and this comes from Kevinmike —"I'm curious, does she start with a machine transcription and clean it?Or does she just go word by word?" So what goes on?Take us in.
• linkMAYA - Yes, that's a really good question.So I start with the easiest part.And that's I download the sound file and I put it through my automatic transcripter called otter.ai.I used to use Sonix.ai, but otter.ai is cheaper and it's the same quality, which is, in my opinion, not that great.But you know, you work with what you have.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When you say not that great, what does that mean?Does that mean?Like one word out of every 20 is wrong, or every 10, or…?
• linkMAYA - So here's the thing, if you were using otter.ai to transcribe just you talking, just one person, it would actually be very, very good.The most things that it gets wrong actually is like punctuation, which is, you know, easy enough to change.And then, you know, putting paragraph breaks and things like that.But when you get to multiple people, and you know, the crosstalk, and it just…it just doesn't do so great.So yeah, it has a lot of words that are wrong.And then of course, like the whole punctuation:Sometimes it thinks that you're starting a sentence in the middle of your actual sentence and things like that.So it's really interesting.And I'll talk more about that, and maybe why some of these mistakes occur.But yeah, then I dump that into a Google Doc, and then the hard work starts,LAUGHTERwhere I listen to the episode and I just fix everything.And I, of course, put in who's talking because, you know, otter.ai does have the capability to mark different speakers, but it just doesn't do it well.And you can tell that it does it more so aligned with maybe conversational conventions or things like that, and less so about like the actual voice quality, which boggles my mind.
• linkBen Ainslie - I was gonna say, 'cause surely, on this show, in particular, an AI would have a relatively easy job of telling the three of us apart.We sound pretty different.
• linkMAYA - Yeah.And so the fact that it doesn't do that is like evidence that…
• linkBen Ainslie - That's not what's going on.
• linkMAYA - …that's not what's going on.And if it is what's going on, you know, because usually, when you have automatic transcription, or automatic sort of anything, AI anything, right, there's different weights that are given to different variables.And that's what gives you the probability, you know that, for example, this sound is this thing.So I do think that somewhere in there is the variable of, you know, sound…voice quality to assign speakers, but I think for some odd reason, that's weighted very low, and sort of turn-taking conventions and pauses and things like that are weighted highly.So that's odd.So yeah, I do not go word by word.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So what you're saying is that the three of us, voice-wise, sound quite different, but we all sort of talk maybe at a similar speed.We all, like, interrupt each other, maybe similarly.So if it's taking those things, our words, our repetitions, our pacing, and our like crosstalk and interruptions as keys for who's speaking, it can't really tell us apart.
• linkMAYA - Exactly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's not very informative.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.That's funny.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, exactly.Like when I'm talking, you know, like a few sentences in a row of course, it'll know it's me.And then, you know, if I'm interrupted, it'll go on to the next person.But let's say I'm talking and someone says:Yeah, or like, oh, or wow, in the middle.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkMAYA - It won't even though it like obviously knows, that's a different voiceMAYA AND HEDVIG CHUCKLEIt just won't say that it is.So it's like, whatever, you know?Okay, cool.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like, I don't know about the two of you, but I would dearly love to see some just some choice chunks of, like, uncleaned output.With just like, say me talking, but then clearly the text sort of suggesting that I am really just being my own personal hype man.Like, I'll just be talking and then just kind of say:Wow, great point, Ben.Yeah, I know!
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, yes.I want to see that too.
• linkMAYA - Of course you would like that, Ben.I can provide some examples.I'm working on episode 24 next week, so by the time this comes up in the show notes, I can put down some examples.
• linkBen Ainslie - That'd be so good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, that would be so cool, yeah yeah yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What kind of mistakes have you noticed that it's making?And do you have any idea why?
• linkMAYA - Mhm.So one mistake that it makes very, very consistently is BEN.Anytime you say BEN, you're actually saying THEN, except when you're saying THEN and then you're saying, BEN.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What?!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ohh.
• linkMAYA - Now, when I first came across this, it was — Let's see, I actually have notes for this.Who said it first?UmmmMUTTERS TO HERSELFWhen it was interesting…
• linkBen Ainslie - I love this.
• linkMAYA - Okay.So at first, it was Daniel saying BEN, and it was transcribing it to THEN.So I had, you know, a hypothesis for that, but then I realise it was just doing it for everyone, including Ben himself.So, you know, it is what it is.And there's a few reasons for this.One is that Bband THð, are actually quite similar sounds in that, you know, they're both voiced, they have, you know, similar places of articulation.Bbyou use both of your lips to make, THðyou use your tongue in between your teeth to make, right?But perceptually they're quite similar.And so in American English, right?So in English in general, you have Bb, and then you have Pp.And I know you've spoken on the show before that Bbis what we call a voiced consonant.Right?So the vocal cords make this, like, vibration and Ppis unvoiced.Okay, so but in American English, what happens is that we aspirate Ppʰso much, the unvoiced part, and I have a pop filter on my microphone, so that might not come through, that when we pronounce Bb, the voiced version is actually unvoiced.There's actually no voicing at all in that consonant.But wherein other forms of English it is voiced and other languages, it definitely is voiced.So for example, Hebrew also has Ppand Bbdistinction, and thebis voiced and thepis unvoiced, but also non aspirated.So I thought, okay, maybe because Daniel, you know, speaks American English, and so the Bbis somehow unvoiced.And it's somehow that turns into TH[ð?It doesn't really make that much sense.But I thought, maybe that's why.But another factor is also just how likely is it that you're saying THEN or that you're saying BEN, right?And THEN is such a common word, its frequency is so high, that the transcriptor is like:Okay, well, if there's any ambiguity, I'm just going to go with THEN, because it's more high frequency.So that's sort of my guess.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, I'm just gonna play the numbers.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, exactly.And that's exactly what it does.Right?It has again, as I said, all these kinds of weights, okay, this is what I hear, this is the likelihood that it's this sound, but then it also takes into account how likely is it given the frequency of this word in the English language that it is actually this word?So that's a huge one.I had a really, really funny one from Episode 23 that I just finished transcribing.Oh my god.So y'all were talking about…shit, there was a portmanteau, but I don't remember what it was at the moment.And Kate— Layman's Linguist —she said something about:Yeah, I love portmanteaus, and the automatic transcription said:I love apartment toes.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh!That's nice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They're cute.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, it's just funny.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm just picturing what apartment toes are.Is that like letterboxes?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's like a Baba Yaga situation.Right?
• linkMAYA - Yeah.Something like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, like a big cottage with feet.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, yeah.And so there's a lot of funny things.I think it's interesting, because in terms of like dialect differences, like, so for example, you know, Ben speaking Australian English and Daniel speaking American English, I think that it would do better at recognising those different dialect differences, because I think it does have input, it does have a corpus to work through to know those dialect differences.If it was only one of you speaking, right?So if it was only Ben, or if it was only Daniel, I think it would have a better idea.And that's why when there's one person talking for a very long time, like I'm obviously doing right now, I'm talking a lot, it does a much better job as it goes on.But one or two sentences, it kind of does a bit of a worse job.
• linkBen Ainslie - I see what's going on here, Maya.You're just, you're just long talking to make your job down the line easier.I've got you.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - It's so funny, too.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think we could use this information to be more helpful, don't you think, Then?
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Whatever, whatever.
• linkMAYA - No, but watch it say Ben now.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So is there any capability of having a software that you can train?Can you train it and be like:no, no, these guys I know, I know, they're crazy, but they do say BEN a lot more than they say THEN.
• linkMAYA - So I think that, if so otter.ai and most of these transcription software does have the opportunity to edit the text within the software itself.And I'm assuming that then what it does is it trains the software, because if it doesn't do that, then that's stupid.I'm just assuming that that's what it does.Otherwise.I mean, you know.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's just a very bad clunky Word editor.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, exactly.But I don't do that because it is a very clunky Word editor.So I like to work with what's comfortable for me kind of, you know?But maybe one day I will.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I was just interested.I know…so in phonetics, and social linguistics, people like to compare vowels in different languages.And they're all these different software people like to use to try and avoid having to go in and minutely pull out the little tiny bit of sound that is a certain person's vowels.So there are a lot of different softwares to try and do that.And they are differently good at different languages, and you can train them on different languages.But that's not for actually making something that is in the end, sort of human readable.What you're making, Maya, is meant to be, you know, people are supposed to read it from up and down.It's not just like, half a millisecond of one sound that you get in a certain, like, ELAN file or something.It's a different kind of product.Yeah.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, exactly.And I've done that kind of work before.So in my graduate work, I worked with a language, Scottish Gaelic, and I did a lot of transcription there.Not of vowels, because fuck vowels.I do not touch vowels.I just, just no.No vowels.
• linkLAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Really?Usually people love vowels.
• linkMAYA - No.Ugh.I mean, they're much easier, yes.And if you're using forced alignment, like what you say Hedvig, it's 10 times easier to find vowels, like forced alignment barely works for consonants, like it's much easier with vowels.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, totally.
• linkMAYA - But I just, I don't like how amorphous they are.I like to know, you know, the start, the end, this is clearly this consonant, you know, whatever.So I've definitely done a lot of that work before.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like Arabic is the language for you.They classically just don't do the whole written vowel thing, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - And Hebrew, can we talk about that?Because you've got Hebrew in your language background.We've tried, rather inadequately, to talk about vowels in Hebrew.By the way, I do have the T shirt that says, Fuck Vowels, but it's without any of the vowels.So it's just FCK VWLS.
• linkMAYA - Oh my god, nice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I wear it around.
• linkMAYA - Of course you do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Tell us about vowels in Hebrew, give us the definitive word here.You do write vowels in Hebrew?
• linkMAYA - Yeah.So Hebrew is a little bit different from Arabic in this regard, and that has to do also with its process of, you know, being sort of like revitalised.So, you know, you sort of discussed this a little bit in Episode 23, about the influence of Yiddish in sort of reawakening, revitalising, whatever, reinventing Hebrew, however you want to say it.So there's three ways that you can handle vowels, right?Because at the end of the day, it is a Semitic language, which means that you have consonants that make up certain roots that give you the sort of basic sort of semantic meaning of the word.And then the vowels sort of determine what the word is, and it gives you you know, is it a noun?Things like that, right?So there's three ways that Hebrew does this.One is you could just write with no vowel indicators whatsoever.Two is you have these dots, which I think is similar to Arabic?And the dots indicate the vowels, right?So for example, when children start to learn to read, they're assisted with these dots.And there's also some like lines and stuff.And so biblical Hebrew as well is also written with these dots and lines.So even if you don't know any biblical Hebrew, if you know how to read it, you can read it perfectly, you just don't know what you're saying, right?
• linkMAYA - And then there's a little kind of intermediary way that you can do it.And that is, there are these consonants in Hebrew that really nowadays are vowels.And they're called weak consonants or Matris Lecon…Oh fuck, I forgot the Latin word for it, but, you know, whatever.We'll call them weak consonants with quote unquotes, and those are the consonants Alef, which used to make the glottal stop, but now is just nothing ora.Hey, which makeshsound but at the end of the word, it just makesa, and then you have Vav, which could make avsound, but also makes awsound, right?Or…so it could also makeooru.And you havejwhich is Yod.So you spoke about Yodjoddropping in Episode 23.I was actually very surprised because he kept saying Yodyaddropping.At first I thought, Daniel, you're saying that weird, but then Hedvig also said it and I thought, you know, no, I'm just saying it weird, because I know that it's Yod.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no, we're just stupid.
• linkMAYA - But like no, no, I think all linguists say Yodyaddropping,
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's how I've heard it, but it's not right.
• linkMAYA - No, no, it is, it is right if that's how you know people use it, but I was confused because I had never heard it in English before.But anyway.So you could make heavy, heavy use of those kind of weak consonants to represent vowels.And in fact, when you look at Yiddish, which I don't know much about Yiddish, but this I do know.So you know, as we said in Episode 23, Yiddish is a Germanic language.But it's written using Hebrew script, right?And the way you can tell the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew written is that Yiddish uses those weak consonants for everything.So there's like, vowels all over the place kind of written.And that's just not how Hebrew looks.It looks weird.And so you know it's not Hebrew, it's Yiddish.So that's basically what's going on there.It does make a little bit more use of vowel writing in the script than I think Arabic does, especially for children and stuff like that, or new learners to Hebrew.But yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Awesome.Thank you for taking us through that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What's the transparency otherwise, in the writing, when it comes to consonants?Is it generally…like, is it decent that one consonant letter is usually pronounced roughly the same way?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, um, it is more or less.Again, it's a little bit less regular than Arabic, I would say.And one of the main reasons for that is just language change, right?So there used to be— and especially in biblical Hebrew, this was a very productive —a change that would happen would be certain consonants, that in the beginning of a word, they would make a stop sound, so like Kkin the beginning of the word, and CHχin the middle of the word.Okay?Or the middle of a syllable, actually beginning or middle of a syllable.And there are still some, you know, letters where that is…or sounds where that does happen.And there are some that aren't, and as Hebrew continues to sort of develop, we're losing that distinction more and more.So of course, the, you know, the Hebrew Academy is, you know, going crazy about this and says only correct Hebrew, you must, you know, whatever, be very vigilant about this.But it's like:bullshit.Sorry, Academy of Hebrew.So that's, that's one where it can be complicated.Or, for example, we have letters that used to stand for different sounds, but now those sound distinctions have been collapsed.So we used to have a distinction betweenχandħ, and only sort of older speakers of maybe Yemenite Jews or Iraqi Jews sort of maybe still have that distinction, but it's very much on the decline.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Interesting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, cool.Thank you for that.That's terrific.Let's just go to the next question.This one's from PharaohKatt.And this is gonna open up to a larger question.PharaohKatt says, How do you deal with things like tone and non word things like, um, or, or weellll, and she says, like:well, and weeell have different feels, but is that really an accurate transcription, if you just use lots of E's to stretch it out?Would you use multiple E's for EH it was long and short?I guess the question here, which is what I want to tie it to:What's the balance here between playing it straight down the line and just getting the words, and changing it up a little bit to get the feel?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, so that's a really good question.And that's something that I sort of struggle with.And I would love, you know, listeners or consumers of the shows' input, especially for this.Because, you know, there's a few different ways that people use the transcription, right?People who are Deaf or hard of hearing need the transcription in order to enjoy the show, and that's the primary way of enjoying it, right?And if I knew that was the way that the majority of people use the transcript, I would say:okay, it's really important to get down those kinds of…those kinds of meanings, those interesting conversational things that are happening when you go weellll, you know, as opposed to well.Right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Confused noise." You know.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, exactly.And other people use it just to kind of search for something that they're looking for, things like that.So when I do transcribe, number one is when there's repetitions or false starts, I tend to take out a lot of that, unless I find that there's some sort of meaning behind it.So for example, if Ben is starting a sentence, and he goes:"You know what?You know what?I really think that this is blah, blah, blah," right?Maybe that false start isn't very useful.I'll just take it out.But if he says, "You know what?!You know what?!You're the worst," or something like that.LAUGHTERRight?Like, okay, this has some meaning now.You know what I mean?Maybe I'll keep that in, right?
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm so glad my conviction makes it through.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's really interesting.You have so many choices you have to make, yeah.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, there are choices.And also it's kind of, there's a lot of conventions, right?to convey that kind of meaning that change all the time.Right?So like, for example, using the, what is called?The little wavy thing.It's called a tilda, maybe?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Tilde, yeah.
• linkMAYA - Yeah.So using a little tilda around words can mean you know, like…god I don't even know.Like, I know what it means.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because I do go through and I, you know, just go through and make sure it's how I want it to be, and I add a lot of tildes, but when I add a tilde, it means:I'm doing a bit.
• linkMAYA - I see.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm doing a bit here.I'm commenting as somebody else, maybe a little sarcastically.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, and see, so that's a meaning with tildes that's actually I don't have that meaning.That, I wouldn't know that.For me, tildes are like a kind of…like, let's say I want I'm saying to my friend, I want to get~fancy~tonight and I put the fancy in between tildes.That's how I use it.Like, whatever, you know.Yeah.Right?So then you have this issue of like:okay, whose meaning then gets put into that transcription to convey this kind of meaning?And so it's an interesting thing.Especially Ben, you know, uses a lot of voices.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - And sometimes I…well, sometimes I don't really know why?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I love this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, dear.
• linkMAYA - Or what the voice is trying to convey.So sometimes I write rather cheeky things likePRETENTIOUS VOICEor like,STEWIE VOICEfrom Family Guy or something like that.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - But then I putSTEWIE VOICEfrom Family Guy, but then I thought:Well, I think Ben just sounds like that when he puts on like a pretentious voice.You know what I mean?
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wow, this is this is getting real.
• linkMAYA - Like, I don't think he's trying to play Stewie
• linkDaniel Midgley - Laughter"
• linkBen Ainslie - This is getting really real.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - On that note, Maya, what other roast material do you have?
• linkMAYA - Ooh, roast material.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, please.
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - Okay, like, I would feel bad roasting Hedvig, because like most of it is just like, okay, like you're not a native speaker of English.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, is it my verb agreement?
• linkMAYA - Yeah.No, and it's also hilarious because it's like, not only are you not a native speaker of English, but like, especially for me, what's difficult is that the English that you have— which is very good, by the way, of course, like anybody listening to the show knows that —is Australian English.And I cannot.Like, you know, I already have issue with it.And so it's like, there's something about, you know, obviously, Australian English is non-rhotic.So R's that are not at the beginning of the word are often you know, left out, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - They're just going in the wind.They're nothing.
• linkMAYA - Exactly.But I feel like Hedvig does it even more!So, you know, it's like you're compensating for something, you know?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Really?!
• linkMAYA - And because I don't expect it…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, this is good.Yes, yes.Keep making fun of Hedvig, instead of me.This is great.
• linkMAYA - No, no, no, I just have one more thing, Hedvig, which…this was really funny.But on episode 23, you said the name of a linguist, Balthasar Bickel.But my god, you really mumbled it.And I was just like:Oh crap, I don't know if I'll be able to find this one.You know what I mean?Like, I don't know, but I heard Bickle.And this is why Google Search actually is really good.Protip:you know, if you hear something and you're not sure how to spell it, usually if you write it out in Google how you heard it with a little bit of context— so I googled "bickle linguistics" —it'll find it without a problem whatsoever.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, smart.That's very smart.
• linkMAYA - But yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's so funny though, that you think that I sound Australian, because I get…I ahem, so my…before moving to Australia I think most people thought I sounded American.And compared to my partner who's British, I definitely sound not British, unless I speak to him for a longer amount of time.But I am very glad.I miss Australia greatly.And I'm glad if I sound Australian, if my English is sort of Australian for the rest of my life.I'll be happy and proud.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, it's like you took a part of it with you.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think you missed the key point.Like, you were…you're overcompensating.You're more Australian than I am.
• linkMAYA - Ben, I don't know if that's possible.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, you're pretty Australian.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben's pretty Australian.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh Maya, you say that.Come to Armadale.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, back to Ben Ben Ben.
• linkMAYA - Can we talk about Ben's vocabulary?Like, listen, I thought I had a very big vocabulary, but why do I learn a new word every single episode?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's true.
• linkMAYA - Like, you're making me feel bad about myself, you know what I mean?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh no, oh no.I don't like this.No, turn it back to someone else.
• linkMAYA - No, no.Well, it's actually funny, I was thinking about how I could, you know, try to make things easy for myself.I thought, well, maybe I could, you know, sort of do my own kind of like, you know, AI like algorithm to see, to try to get like the statistics of, like, given the start a sentence, who's most likely to say it, you know?Of course, I don't do any kind of coding so I couldn't do that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh no, this is going to end up so badly for me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, this is so much fun.
• linkMAYA - So with Daniel, it's always like:Okay, on to the next one.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - Okay, moving on!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Traffic directors.
• linkMAYA - Or:Hmm.And with Hedvig, it's like:Wait, what?Wait, what?
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - Hedvig, I relate to so hard as somebody who…you know, so I'm bilingual in English and Hebrew, but then I moved to Israel, you know, for a lot of time and I was like kind of the person who like didn't understand a lot of, like, you know, sayings and things like that.So I was always like constantly being like:Wait, what?And then when I moved back to the States, I had also missed out on a lot of, like, idioms and stuff.So I'm also like:Wait, what?Like, what does that mean?You know, so I relate.And then Ben, of course is like:Can I just?Can I just?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, interesting.
• linkMAYA - Things like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Interjections.Interruptions, actually.Let's…let's not let's.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, you haven't roasted Daniel yet.More than saying he's a traffic director.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah.What do I do?
• linkMAYA - Well you know, you just, I don't know.Gosh, it's like what, now I have to find a bad thing to say so that it you know, to balance it out.
• linkBen Ainslie - How do you roast, like, America's favorite linguist dad?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, what.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, I don't know.You just keep things going along.You're just like, Okay, cool.Like sometimes, like, you could tell it's like, you know, Ben or Hedvig have been saying something and you're just like, like, you can't be bothered.You're just like:Okay, moving on!Like…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I do go quiet.There'll be a long quiet from me, then Hedvig Ben Hedvig Ben Hedvig.And then Daniel says let's move on to our next…!I have noticed that.
• linkBen Ainslie - We are the children, he is the dad.There is no disputing this dynamic.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is why I love ya!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Where were we in?Speaking of moving along?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I've got one.Seeing as we’re just like, really just laying it all on table?Who makes you roll your eyes the most?
• linkMAYA - Um, I don't know if I roll my eyes.A lot of things.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh come now!
• linkMAYA - A lot of the things you say, Ben, I'm just like, I don't understand.Because there's just like a lot of, I suppose….See, this is the thing is like:is it Ben?Or is it Australian?Do you know what I mean?Like, right?
• linkLAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - So like a lot of these phrases like:What the fuck is this phrase?Like, what are you even trying to say?I don't know.So like, sometimes I'll look it up.And like, sometimes I'll find you know what it means and sometimes I won't.Or things like that.But…
• linkDaniel Midgley - What's the funniest bit that you've heard us do?One that just had your rolling?
• linkMAYA - Shit.Oh my god.When Hedvig said, and Hedvig, I was with you, 100%.I didn't find this funny, but then when they commented on it I did find it funny, but the whole Superm'n thing.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Spider, Spiderman.
• linkMAYA - Spiderman, my bad.You know when Hedvig said it, at first I thought I detected this sort of like intonational weirdness to it that I thought was maybe, like, a Swedish thing.I don't know.Like a Spider-m'n you know.But I didn't think of it as anything weirdLAUGHINGbut then the more you talked about it the more I thought it was so funny.And it was like, Oh, god, I can't even, you know, I was laughing so hard.I was laughing especially hard at the…what was it that Ben said, that it's like a like, a vitamin
• linkDaniel Midgley - A vitamin made of spiders.
• linkMAYA - Like a VITamin made of….Spiderm'nLAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Sorry, your'e just taking me back there now.And it really was just, oh, wow.I mean, it should feel good, though to know that you've brought that much joy to so many people.Because if you made and Maya lose it, who you have to imagine as far as like being inoculated against all of our shit, like, no one would have a better guard, surely.And if we still managed to make her really laugh over that one Hedvig, you've got to imagine you're just, everyone who heard that was just like:Good god.
• linkMAYA - Yeah.And that was actually an interesting one to transcribe.Right?Because at first I thought…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh!How do you do that?How do you do that?
• linkMAYA - Yeah.Like at first I thought that you were commenting that she said it like spidermen, like multiple?But then I understood that you meant that it was like a name, sort of, right?So I had to go back and change it.And so what I did was instead of spider man as two words, even though it's usually one?I put it as one word and then.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's usually one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah, actually, I did look this up and it turns out that in the official universe, it's Spider hyphen Man.
• linkMAYA - Oh, perfect.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there you go.
• linkMAYA - So yeah, so then I, but because thankfully in this time, because you were…just the content of it made it kind of obvious what you were commenting on, and so I wasn't too sort of broken up about it.And then especially…Yeah…But it was like:wait, how do I you know, transcribe this, how does it sort of come across, right?And this is always very interesting when it comes to…when you're sort of debating pronunciations of words or things like that, which are always the biggest headache to transcribe, but always the most interesting…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, because you do IPA.You break out the IPA, I love it.
• linkMAYA - Well, sometimes I do IPA and sometimes I don't, right?So IPA being the International Phonetic Alphabet.So, you know, in grad school I was, you know, definitely a phonetician and phonologist, I'm all about the sounds.You know, fuck syntax, definitely fuck semantics.LAUGHTERBy the way, my goal for the start of the episode was Daniel, I know you have like a certain amount of fucks in each episode and my goal was to take them all and not leave any for Ben.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm like Bojack.Once per season.
• linkMAYA - Yeah.So what was I saying?Shit.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Can I just say in my defense…?
• linkBen Ainslie - Don't defend this.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - People like, people in Swedish and German, you guys make fun of us for like having really long words.And unfortunately in modern Swedish, many people start to break it up, break up what is one word into two words and people are really upset about it for good reasons.Because it's you guys!You English speakers are putting spaces in the middle of your words all the time.I don't think you should make fun of us for having really long words.You are the ones putting spaces in them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right!
• linkBen Ainslie - How is this in defense of Spiderm'n?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, because you write…Most people, most sane people don't write it hyphen or space, they write as one word, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - But he's a man who is a spider!Like, I don't!
• linkMAYA - Okay, but when you have names that have MAN in it, you all, you reduce it to M'N.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, exactly.
• linkBen Ainslie - But!
• linkMAYA - I 100%, Hedvig, I'm so with you on this.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - There is no conceivable, not a court in the land, ladies, honestly.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But then you should always, if…Ben, if that's your take, then every instance of that word should have only appear with a hyphen and never appear as, like, written as one word, which it does all the time.
• linkMAYA - But also Ben, it's like, it's like you might be correct.But having that experience of only ever hearing…only ever seeing a word in a different language and never hearing it out loud.Let me tell you that'll sober you up real quick, and then you'll understand what we're talking about.Because it's like, you just get so confused!You know, it's like you've never, like, you haven't heard it?Or maybe you have heard it…
• linkBen Ainslie - Hang on, I fully concede that point.And I realise that I'm just throwing good money after bad on this one.But I staunchly refuse to believe that Hedvig had not encountered Spider-man.
• linkMAYA - Yeah that's true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I know it's Spider-man.
• linkMAYA - Spider-m'n!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Made of spiders.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know, what strikes me with the whole transcription thing is that at some point, it starts to look a lot less like transcription, and then a lot more like translation, because you're really working to bring it across.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, definitely.Like, transcription is never— no matter the kind of transcription —it's never a one to one kind of just neutral process.There's always my own biases that go into it.My own interpretation, it's very much an interpretive process, just like translation.And I think for me, what I try to do is I just try to make it as useful as possible.So again, you know, a lot of people say now, you know:oh, you know, just transcribe everything.Like, you know, people use transcription to help them with, like, meeting notes or, like, other things like that.But I find when you look at straight transcriptions, they're never useful, because the way that we speak and the way that we read things is just so different.You know, and listening to…like, listening to someone ramble on.It's fine.You know what I mean?Like, there's no issue with that.But then when you read it, you'll get lost, right?Like, there's always…
• linkBen Ainslie - I can't remember what…like…bad turn down an academic rabbit hole I did all the way back in my undergrad.But I once came across a paper that had tried to sort of, or not tried to, had sort of configured its own way to transcribe conversational turn taking, right?Now full disclosure, I never did anything to do with linguistics.Like, I could not have been further outside my wheelhouse with this paper.But I remember reading through how they tried to sort of like approximate, just like messy, conversational speech, not not oration or anything, but literally just two people sitting in a room having a chat.And I was just like:Ugh!Like, it was it was viscerally revolting, trying to read this stuff.It was so gross.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It must have been Conversational Analysis.
• linkMAYA - Yeah, I was just about to say:Conversational Analysis or Discourse Analysis folks do that a lot.And for academic usages it could be useful, but not when you're trying to just like get the information or, like, be entertained or something like that.And in fact, I've always been a huge proponent on trying to find different ways to have academic articles be multimodal for that reason, right?Like, let's include the effing recording, right?Instead of making our eyes bleed with all these…or in addition to make your eyes bleed with these notations, because the notations are really important.But they also, you know, as much as, you know, conversational analysts— and I think they, they know this, right? —And they're aware of this.It's also an interpretive process, because, for example, you could notate something as an interruption, but in certain certain cultures, like, you know, amongst Jews— and I can say, because I'm Jewish, so it's like, a funny thing. It's not like: oh no, Jews, you know —anyway, amongst Jewish communities, that's a better way of saying it amongst Jewish communities, right.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sounds less MAGA-hat wearing?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, it's not.So that's so funny Ben.You just said MAGA hat.It took me a full second to understand that because I heard mugger hat.But yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, me too!
• linkMAYA - That's great.You did too?Nice.Okay.And I'm sure the transcription will actually say MUGGER.But yeah, so amongst certain Jewish communities, right, that's not an interruption.It's a, like, you're kind of bouncing off of each other.It's, you're reinforcing what the person said, right?And by naming it interruption, right?that word does have a connotation to it.So you know, you have to make all these kinds of decisions.And the way that I sort of approach these transcriptions is I want them to be as useful as possible.So if any, you know, enjoyers of the show have any sort of insights as to how they use the transcriptions, what would be useful to them regarding the transcriptions, please let me know.And I'll include that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's super cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well let me just say, Maya Klein, I am, just on a personal note, I'm so glad that we found you to be able to do this, because I can't imagine that it's all smooth sailing.And I think one thing that I try, you know…it's not like I'm doing the show for an audience of one.But I sometimes just think:I hope Maya's enjoying this.LAUGHTER
• linkMAYA - I do.I do.And I'm also really glad that we sort of found each other and I don't really do a lot of transcriptions for other people.I do mostly like copywriting, like marketing writing kind of stuff, because, you know, that's where good money is at.But I like doing this because it's like, you know, again, it's like, I get my dose of linguistics in and I get to kind of, you know, think through these sort of issues with transcription, and, you know, use my brain in that way.And I really enjoy it.So, thank you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's super cool.
• linkBen Ainslie - When you learn how to do radio, often, one of the tricks that is taught to you is put a little teddy or a toy or something across the table from you and speak to that imaginary creature as if you're trying to connect with, like, a single person.And so Maya can now be the mascot that all three of us keep in our heads as we sort of, like, the ephemeral sort of Socratic, or like the Platonic form of the audience member is now very corporeal.It's really, it's Maya in Tucson just dupa dupa do typing out Ben's stupid fucking words.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like that.That's, that's very nice.And I like that we get a chance to talk to you and I actually have a plant in this office where I usually record which doesn't have a name yet.So I could name it Maya.
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nice.
• linkMAYA - I have a, I'm staring at a fish head across for me.Weirdly enough.
• linkBen Ainslie - "Let's move things on." I just wanted to fuck with the with the transcript.
• linkDaniel Midgley - With the AI!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah!
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are now to our favourite part of the show.It's Words of the Week.Anything new.Anything breaking.Anything that's been on our minds.Maya Klein of Voicing Words, you've brought a word for us.
• linkMAYA - I did, and I'm very proud of this one because I looked at it and I thought you know what?They definitely were going to use this word, so I'm just gonna snap it, you know, before they can.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, nice.Low hanging fruit, love it.
• linkMAYA - Yes.So the word is CONVAXULATIONS.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Convaxulations.
• linkMAYA - Convaxulations.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oohh!
• linkMAYA - So it's a portmanteau of CONGRATULATIONS and VACCINATION.Right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Very good, I like it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So when you get your jab, you get your shot, you can say:I just got my first dose of Pfizer, and people be like:convaxulations!
• linkMAYA - Yes!And I saw this…I should mention that I saw this on Twitter from…
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was Gretchen, wasn't it?
• linkMAYA - Yes.Thank you so much.I was like:you're going to have to edit this out…So yeah.By Gretchen McCulloch of Because Internet…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, that's right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Lingthusiasm, and All Things Linguistics.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Good buddy of ours.Now this reminded me that the VAX in vaccination…anyone?Probably everybody knows this already.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know!I know!I know!
• linkMAYA - I don't.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go ahead.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no, I wanna make them guess first.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.What is the "vax"?Where does it come from?
• linkBen Ainslie - Uh…from vaccinations?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeees…
• linkBen Ainslie - So vaccine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can you take that back?
• linkBen Ainslie - Is it because the original…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Great stalling from Ben here.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no.Excuse me!
• linkMAYA - Gotta work it out.You know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben doesn't stall, he improvs.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that was that was definitely payback for like, why don't you hit Ctrl-F, so fair enough.I deserve that.Is it to do with the fact that early hypodermic needles were in some way related to….
• linkMAYA - VACUOLE!!Sorry.So sorry.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - A cri de coeur.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think…I think…yeah, I think Maya's got the joke on that one.So I'm just going to stop there.
• linkMAYA - I'm so sorry.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's a good one.That's a really good one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Vacuole, that kind of thing?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, I was thinking.I dunno.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkMAYA - Oh, shit.Well, fuck.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's cows.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's cows.
• linkBen Ainslie - Why?Why are cows called VAC?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because in the 1700s, as smallpox was ravaging the world, British physician Edward Jenner noticed that there was one group of people that never seemed to get smallpox…
• linkBen Ainslie - Milkmaids, because they got the thing from the udders on the cows.Yeah yeah yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, cow pox.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's what it's about.
• linkBen Ainslie - But so where does VAC come in?
• linkDaniel Midgley - So Latin vaccunus, this means from cows, from vacca, cow.And in fact, VACA is Spanish for cow today.
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.I knew, I want it noted.All right.I knew I like a good 85 to 90% of that etymology.I just didn't know the root word.
• linkMAYA - I knew none of it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Bringing it to the close.That's the part.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.I was not Glengarry Glen Ross-ing it, no coffee for me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.Thank you, Maya.That was awesome.And that takes us to our next one from Miranda V on Twitter, who says:"I'm behind listening.So I don't know if you've seen this already.But one of my Facebook friends mentioned that she got her second…"— here it is —"Fauci ouchie.Referring to the COVID-19 vax."
• linkMAYA - Why…?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Isn't that cute?So you have to know who Fauci is, of course.It's Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.He's the chief medical adviser to the President.So Fauci ouchie.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's very cute.And I like it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know if this is something anyone else is doing?And maybe Daniel won't like this, but I'm currently trying to cut down on America.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the annoyance with which the fact that I understood what this meant, without this being an elected official in any country I've ever lived in.I'm just…I don't know why, but I'm currently on a bit of like, I've culled my podcast feed to like…I've removed a lot of American stuff, for example.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And yet, here we are.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And yeah…well, I think if this is an Australian show…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that's the thing.It used to be…when we were on the radio as Talk the Talk, it really was an Australian show.And I was really mindful about that, even though there was only so much that you could avoid.Now it's like:what are we?Are we worldwide?I guess if we're worldwide then…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like the idea of still being Australian.I don't know about you guys.But I would like it to, if possible, be Australian.But no, I still think Fauci ouchie is a very fun word.I didn't, I felt bad that I brought this up.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I liked it.And because a listener brought it to us, I thought:well, let's throw it in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.No no no.
• linkMAYA - I mean it's like:finally we get one good thing.You know, it's like, just give it to us, you know, like, finally, like, you know.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is true, that is true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Meredith on Discord gives us our next one."Daniel, have you done CLAPBACK on the podcast?" Oh, no, this is another one."I ran into it for the first time in today's New York Times.I haven't researched it.But my guess is that it's about how speaker Nancy Pelosi's derisive clapping at the former guy." Anyone remember when Trump gave a speech and there's a GIF of Nancy Pelosi very sarcastically clapping, dripping with acid.It was wonderful.
• linkBen Ainslie - I do remember that.But I know for sure that that's not where CLAPBACK comes from.
• linkMAYA - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No it's not.Any guesses?Why would it be clapping?
• linkBen Ainslie - I can trace back to a certain point where I know this comes from, but then I have to assume it goes further back than that.And past that point I can't tell you.This comes from a hip hop song.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it does.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.So this is Ja Rule having a big old swing at Eminem and 50 cent.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nice.Yep.The track is "Clapback" by Ja Rule.
• linkBen Ainslie - But if— I don't want to take anything away from Mr Rule, if he did come up with this term —but I kind of have to imagine this was a word in the AAVE community that he has used in the song, and that's what put it into, like, common white usage.So I'm gonna guess that it is African American Vernacular English from like quite a while ago?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - I did it!Can you take it any further back than that, Daniel?Do you know, like, it's etymology in AAVE
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.So it does come from the Ja Rule song, the word CLAPBACK, but I didn't want to stop there.I wanted to pick it all the way back to clap.So what is the clapping?The CLAP is a gunshot.
• linkMAYA - It's also syphilis, isn't it?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, yes, but that was a little bit different.Again, separate, not related to this usage.So we've been talking about a clap of thunder since the 1300s.Just any loud noise.Clapping our hands comes from around the 1590s.But then starting in the 1990s, we start seeing CLAPPING, like EPMD on the track "Cummin' at Cha":"liggedy let the nines clap 'cause I'm back." So…
• linkBen Ainslie - And not only that, though, but I'm, I'm, I don't know, there's quite a few ums, I'ms that you can leave in the transcript, sorry Maya!
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're including them all.Leave that in.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like, somewhere in like the 19th or 20th century, I have read a phrase that was like "the clap of the gun's roar" and that sort of thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Definitely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also isn't also um, so I don't think you have this in English, but in German and Swedish or in German, I know that for example, do you have a baby klappen is?
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No?Okay
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm really hoping it's like some creepy Rumpelstiltskin thing about babies getting sold, is that what it is?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I just watched The Witch, stop it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sort of.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So a KLAPPEN is like a, ah!I really need gestural language, and this is an audio medium, but it's a…what would you call it?A…?What do you call the thing that a cat comes in through the house?
• linkMAYABen Ainslie - A cat door.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A cat door?
• linkDaniel Midgley - A cat flap.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A flap!Flap.So baby klappen is a baby flap.It's where if you have had a child, and you can't take care of that child for whatever reason, and you want to be anonymous, you can go to a place by a hospital and you can leave a baby.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa, there's like a baby….This thing actually exists?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - As far as I know.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's like a parcel drop for babies.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And they leave it.You leave it for…They don't go and pick up the baby right away.They wait, I think, 30 minutes or something in case the woman changes her mind.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is heavy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Gosh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And that's a klappen.And that's a klappen because it's a it's a flap, it's a hatch.And I always thought that that was connected to the fact that when you clap your hands, you're sort of…I don't know how to say this.But you're sort of swinging your hands on your wrists on a swivel?I don't know.I thought those are related.
• linkMAYA - I can see that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, this is where things get interesting, because CLAP does go back to Old Norse.And there are cognates in the Scandinavian languages.And I'm noticing in Oxford, there is a reference to something that we I think today we would call a cat flap and it's called a CLAP DOOR.How about that?So I think that's definitely possible.But let's get back to the CLAP as a loud sound.We do see a quote from 1651 "a few grains being fired will give as great a clap as a musket." So 1651 is the first reference I can see of a gunshot being a clap.
• linkMAYA - Maybe the KLAPPEN refers to like the sound that the flap makes.And so it's the other way around.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that makes sense.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also Swedish the word KLAPPA is like to pet, like to pet, like what Ben has been describing what he's been doing with his cat.
• linkBen Ainslie - Giving Clio a scritch.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When you pet a cat, you're klappa.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, wow.Okay.Wow.Lots of trails going on here.Hedvig, you've got our last word, I think.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.I've got a word that you may think you know what it means, but I've got two new meanings for it.So the word is…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh shoot, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - BAKE.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I did some baking today.I made coffee cake.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You did some baking today.
• linkBen Ainslie - Or, I've smoked a bunch of weed and I…
• linkDaniel Midgley - You are totally baked.
• linkMAYA - I know, I know the makeup one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.Maya knows one of them.
• linkMAYA - Nice.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Tell us, what's the makeup thing?
• linkMAYA - So makeup.It's a trend in makeup.That's actually I think probably on the decline by now.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, maybe, yeah!
• linkMAYA - I also, I too, I think you've mentioned this once before I too watch a lot of makeup YouTubers.Yeah.So it's like where you use powder to heavily set your foundation in a specific pattern.Yeah, I dunno, that's all.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly.
• linkBen Ainslie - And it's called baking?Why?Do you have to apply heat?
• linkMAYA - Well, no, but you do keep it on for a certain amount of time.So it's like…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkMAYA - You know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - So the powder goes on and stays on.
• linkMAYA - Yeah.And then you, you flick it away after maybe half an hour.Depends on how long you want to bake.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You flick away the excess.Yeah.So today, I don't know, this is probably something that has passed Daniel and Ben by, but today's makeup trends involve a lot of like moisturising, a lot of skincare.So often you put on like a primer, a blurring powder, a concealer, blah blah blah and lots of layers.And then at the very end, you sort of just put lots and lots and lots of translucent powder that looks white, and your entire face looks like it's covered in flour, essentially.And then you stay there for about five or ten minutes maybe while you're doing your eyebrows or your eyes or something.And then you flick away the excess.And what that does is this sort of lets the foundation and the concealer— people call it —bake.It sort of insulates in a certain way.
• linkBen Ainslie - I can kind of get it now.Like, if you're sitting there waiting for it to like set— for a better word —it does feel like a kind of baking doesn't it?Like, you're like okay, it's in the oven now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Tick, tick, tick, DING.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly.And then there are also makeup companies that play on this, so there's like a place called like Beauty Bakery where all of their things are like food theme, etc.So that's one of the meanings.
• linkBen Ainslie - So that was one what's the other one?The other ones not baked, is it?As in, like:I've just smoked a bunch of weed?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it's not.That one's too obvious.The other one is related to the United States of America.
• linkBen Ainslie - Bake, bake, bake, bake.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's been a while, it's been a while.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I'm lost.
• linkMAYA - It hasn't been a while for me.But I'm also lost.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is related to conspiracy theories.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - EVERYONE GROANS
• linkDaniel Midgley - Enough of them,
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, hang on.Is this to do with Qanon and bakeries and pedophile rings and stuff?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But that was a pizza shop?Okay.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.So if you're familiar with the conspiracy theories surrounding Q.Q is supposed to be an anonymous person, who by the way, has essentially been outed as of last week because of the HBO documentary and everything.It's basically a bunch of dudes on 8chan and 4chan.Very interesting history.But basically, baking is the process by which, when Q makes an announcement, does a drop, people refer to the information there as crumbs, and when you decode them and try and read in whatever mumbo-jumbo you wanna to them.That process is called baking.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.Gross.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You bake the crumbs.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh god.That whole world just makes me feel so unclean.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Since we're not going to come back to this ever again, can I just throw in PSYOPS?Like, that's a term that's been used for psychological operations.And it's a mental manipulation, trying to use language or trying to use information to deceive or to trick your enemies.That's a PSYOPS.
• linkBen Ainslie - Gross.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Getting that one in.Thank you.Wow.All right, so CONVAXULATIONS, FAUCI OUCHIE, CLAPBACK, BAKE, and PSYOPS:our Words of the Week.Hey, thank you.For all those words.We've got comments just quickly.Last episode, we had a bit with Dr Gail Clements and Marnie Jo Petray.We had a circus idiom, which was?Hedvig?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Funnier than a barrel of monkeys?
• linkDaniel Midgley - If you…?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, mine.Yes.'If you come to the circus for news, don't be upset when a clown tells it to you.'
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you.So Bill got in touch on Twitter and says "a monkey idiom from Japan:Even monkeys fall from trees." Any guesses as to what this means?
• linkBen Ainslie - I like this.I think it probably means that like even people who are very very good at things are allowed to make mistakes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yesssss!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's a nice…I like that one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's good.Even monkeys fall from trees.Diego on Patreon liked the circus thing, joined in with his own.He says:"Just heard the awesome new show, thought of this circus related phrase:send in the clowns." And it's got a special meaning according to interviews with Stephen Sondheim, because it comes from A Little Night Music, which is a show about the the foolishnesses that we get into, and the song is about:well, you know, we're having a show here, I guess we need some foolish people.I guess we need some clowns.Oh, wait, don't bother, they're here because we are the fools.So that's that's the meaning of that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - TaffyBirb2000 on our Discord channel:"Just listened to the sci fi dictionary episode, and I'd love to know what emotions everyone associates with green, because jealousy/envy is the last thing that comes to mind for me.Maybe it's because I'm from Oregon.But for me, green is peaceful, energetic, calming, inspiring." How about y'all?What do you think?Green.For me?It's fresh freshness.
• linkBen Ainslie - I guess it depends on the green for me.But first and foremost, it's like illness or sickness because, like, I see a lot of kids at school go literally green.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ew.
• linkMAYA - Gross.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, it's a thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, when someone's dead set about to spew, they get like a really aweful greenish tinge.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like a greenish pallor.Like turning pale a little bit.Okay, Hedvig?Maya?
• linkMAYA - New, like you're a noob.Which interestingly enough in Hebrew, specifically in the military context, it's yellow.But I still have that connotation in English for newness.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was gonna say that I think that green has been so co-opted for me by, like, when you go to a supermarket and you see something green, it means that it's vegan, vegetarian, or organic, or that it's trying to pretend to be.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it's greenwashing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Greenwashing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like the bloody Rainforest Alliance, or something like that.So, I think I think that has now become my primary association with green actually.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I got curious why we say that someone is green with envy.And I've read that the ancient Greeks believe that jealousy was accompanied by an overproduction of bile, which turns human skin slightly green.
• linkBen Ainslie - Called it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But also, the Greek word chloros means green, but also it means pale, and they're both used in the book of Revelation."And behold, a pale horse"— that's chloros —but also:"all green grass was burned up," and that was chloros too.So the combination of pale and green might be part of it.But then Shakespeare went with it, referring to the green-eyed monster.So I thought that was an interesting cultural thing that goes all the way back to ancient Greek.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Finally, a young linguist has written us and says, "My name is Talia and I'm a junior at a public high school in Maryland.Often on the podcast, you all talk about how high schools should integrate linguistics into the curriculum more and the complexities of Black English.Today we read 'If Black English isn't the language then tell me what is' by James Baldwin.And I was so excited.I suppose I just wanted to let you guys know because having the knowledge from the podcast really helped me understand the essay on a deeper level.I love podcast so much.It's my favorite way to get my— tildes —~linguistic fix~I can't wait for the next episode.I loved the episode on the sci-fi dictionary." How about that?
• linkMAYA - Wohoo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow, great!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thanks, Talia.
• linkBen Ainslie - She has managed to bypass all of my defenses and my cynicism.And I just had, like, a genuine warmth in the heart moment.Ugh, how dare she?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.And then what happened?What happened next?Are you back?
• linkBen Ainslie - It grew.It grew three times as large.No, but that is that is genuinely…That is like, that is my professional life.That is what I live for.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.I'm convinced that a really important way to get linguistics into high school— because I have worked on a program, you know, a linguistics class that teaches students about linguistics —Instead of trying to wedge more linguistics into an already crowded curriculum taught by good teachers who might not even be linguists, why don't we instead make entertaining linguistic podcasts and that way young people are making time outside of class to find out about these issues and become acquainted with the people in our field?
• linkBen Ainslie - So long as they're not my students, and they don't leave joke reviews with low stars.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, that would be good, please.
• linkBen Ainslie - Friendly, friendly students, please no.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Another possibility is to also just try and get more linguistics into the English class or the other class you have, which is the primary language in your…like, that was actually how I got interested in linguistics first was because my English and my Latin class included linguistics.Not because I had a linguistics class per se.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, Spanish phonology was my inroad, actually.It's like:Wow, this is interesting
• linkMAYA - Criminal Minds was my inroad.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Criminal Minds.Really?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, there's a…if you watch the show, there's one character that's there for a few seasons that was a linguist.And there's one scene where she's teaching a lecturer, spouting things that I know now are kind of bullshit, but seem very interesting about, like, language evolution and things like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, super cool!
• linkMAYA - Yeah, and I had to choose a second major in undergrad.And so I was like:oh, linguistics.But then yeah, obviously, I was hooked.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's funny.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maya Klein, thanks so much for joining us today on the show.How can people find out what you're doing?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, thank you for having me.I really appreciate it.This was tons of fun.Um, I guess you could follow me on Twitter?I don't really tweet much, I just kind of lurk.It's @mayarklein.My middle name is Rachel.And I do, I guess, have a website for, you know, my company and so that's voicingwords.com.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And we're your favorite clients, right?
• linkMAYA - Yeah, exactly.You're my favorite clients.So you know, a little bit of a high thing, you know a little bit of competition there that you have to get over.But yeah, if you have any need for, I don't know, you know, copywriting, marketing.You know, writing things like that, and also transcription.Only if it's something cool though, I don't take a lot of transcription projects so…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's great to have you, thanks so much for doing what you do, couldn't do this without you, you're really help us a lot.So thanks.
• linkDaniel Midgley - END THEME
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Speaking of leaving us one-star reviews on iTunes Apple, if you're one…iTunes Apple?Apple's iTunes store, Apple Store, iTunes, all of those words in one order.I'll start again.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Leave it in!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Speaking of leaving us reviews, you're very welcome to do so if you find us on any of the places where you can leave any reviews, please leave us a review and tell us others what you thought about us.We particularly appreciate if you leave reviews at the iTunes Store, since that's sort of where a lot of people go looking for podcasts and where a lot of podcast stats are sort of aggregated from.If you are one of Ben Ainslie's students and you leave a joke, a one-star review, you can actually edit reviews.So you could go and change that to more than one star.It doesn't have to be five, but I'm just saying.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Think we're gonna have to let that one go.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Might be.That ship has sailed.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway, if you have any questions or comments or just want to say hi to us, you can always get in touch with us.We are @becauselangpod everywhere.And by everywhere.I mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, Patreon, TikTok and Clubhouse.And probably, if you think of another social media platform and tell Daniel about it, he'll probably snatch it up there too.Which reminds us, we're actually not on Vebo.Hmm!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Gotcha.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
• linkMAYA - Wait, can I just interject for a second?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah,
• linkMAYA - Please.Please.What is Macedon?Or Mastodon?I only know of the metal band.I had a very hard time.I always get it wrong.So I'm sure Daniel just goes and fix it every time.But like, you know, I might as well get it right.Never heard of this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's like the mammoth.Yes, that's what it is.
• linkBen Ainslie - Just like the metal band.
• linkMAYA - Like the metal band, Thank you, Ben, that is more helpful than the mammoth.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Any other.Any others?
• linkMAYA - Nope.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, that was it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.Um, you can also send us a good old fashioned email.Please email us in that case at hello@becauselanguage.com.And if all of these things sound too much effort, which honestly, hard agree, you know, you're doing your dishes, you're chopping onion, you're off biking, that's what I do when I listen to podcasts, or like cleaning the toilet or something.You don't want to get up and like go log onto your website and do something.Why don't you tell a friend about us?And right now, you can't really tell friends in the fleshworld about us.But hey, you probably also have Friday drinks with people on Zoom.Why don't you just snap some time of that and tell them about how great we are?That's not gonna be awkward at all.
• linkBen Ainslie - What a great sell.Wow.
• linkMAYA - I can't wait to return to the fleshworld.
• linkMAYA - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!Well, just…if you like us, tell people about us.It will help people find us.And as always, we're very grateful of Dustin of the podcast Sandman Stories, who continues to answer the brave brave brave people on Twitter, who ask in general to the entire Twittersphere, if anyone has any podcast recommendations, which I continue to marvel at people doing!And Dustin from the podcast Sandman Stories writes back and recommends us which is very sweet.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't know how you could possibly get to this part of this episode, and not be aware of the information I'm about to tell you, but our show has transcripts.Having transcripts means that our shows are accessible to people.Basically, all the stuff we've already said, you know, like, like, this whole episode, up until this point, just if you could just replay all of the highlights and key points from this episode in your head right now.And that is the benefits…
• linkMAYA - Which you'll be able to do much easier because there'll be transcripts that you can just kind of skim through and see where the information you need is.Heyo!
• linkBen Ainslie - And it is our Patrons who are able to facilitate this wonderful service through Maya's generosity, because I'm sure she could make a lot more money doing, like, more copy editing, but she takes…takes a bit of a hit.And she does it for us on the cheap, but the only way we would be able to pay for it is through the super generous contributions of our Patrons, some of whom I'm going to read the names of now:Chris B, Chris L, Matt, Whitney, Damien, Joanna, Helen, Bob, Jack, Kitty,EVIL VOICE EFFECTLord Mortis, Lyssa, Elías, Erica, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Maj, James, Nigel, Kate, Jen, Nasrin, River, Nikoli, my sweet Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Andrew, Manú, James, Shane, Eloise, Rodger, Rhian, Jonathan, Colleen, glyph, Ignacio, and Kevin.Thank you to all of you people and all of the other patrons who I haven't mentioned, for allowing Maya to do this great service for us.
• linkMAYA - Thank you!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who is a member of Ryan Beno and of Dideon's Bible.Thanks for listening.We'll catch you next time.Because Language
• linkDaniel Midgley - BOOP
• linkMAYA - Actually Tuesday's my first D&D session ever, I'm very excited.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh my god.Congratulations!
• linkMAYA - Thank you.Thank you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I've played D&D for several years.And the only advice I can give a beginner is:don't worry about the maths.Like, a good DM doesn't care that much if you're correctly leveled up in every minute detail.And also, I just sometimes give my character sheet to someone who's more into the mathy parts of D&D and I just say, "Can you just check that all of my bonuses and all of my expertise is, like, added correctly on all my skills?"
• linkMAYA - Oh, interesting.Okay, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they just like work it out.And I'm like, great, fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our team consists of a bard, a paladin, and an accountant.
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - BOOP
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When people say letters and words and spell them out, like you just did, that's where my, that's where I can truly tell…either I'm just like, sound dyslexic, or English is not my first language because this rarely happens to me in Swedish, but like, I cannot do it.Like, today we were trying to solve a crossword and Ste was like:the first letter so like E-I-N or something.And I was just like:I don't know.I don't know what you just said!
• linkMAYA - I'm the same way, Hedvig.My brain completely melt when someone tries to spell something to me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Same.I have to flip into visual mode.
• linkBen Ainslie - Look, I was about to say to Hedvig:she's not alone.And I don't think it's solely relegated to, like, second language stuff, because the amount of times that a kid in a classroom has been like,KID VOICE"Sir, how do you spell like DEFINITELY?" and I just rattle it off, and they just stare at me and I'm like, you captured 0% of that, didn't you?
• linkDaniel Midgley - You got the D.
• linkMAYA - Your kids call you sir?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, so Maya, here's a fun artifact of Australian culture that I'll just gift to you for the freesies.In literally all Australian schools all teachers are either sir or miss, and that is not like a…that's not like a weird authoritarian thing that we demand of them.It's just like, it's the culture.
• linkMAYA - Mhm.Wow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is.I was volunteering at a uni event where there were lots of high school students and they were like asking for my help, but they were like, "Miss!Miss!" and I was just like, looking behind me, I was like, I don't, I don't understand what's going on.Until I understood they were trying to get my attention.I just wasn't comprehending.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I don't blame you, Maya, for thinking like:Wow, that sounds concerningly kink-oriented because, like, if you are outside of that context, it really, it really is.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?
• linkMAYA - Not really where my mind went, but that's okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Nor mine either!
• linkBen Ainslie - Because, oh man, every time I've told anyone from another country, they're just like:your students call you sir?!Like, like:SEDUCTIVE VOICEYes, sir.No, sir.And I'm just like:yeah.And they're like:that's…but they're children!I'm like…yyyyeah?