Hi welcome to mental floss video today we're gonna talk about language
everything from Bhutanese to Navi and I'm not kidding about that let's get started.
A polyglot is someone who has mastered multiple languages and one
famous polyglot is Ziad Fazah who allegedly knows over 50 languages he was
born in 1954 in Monrovia, Liberia. According to one source he learned
almost all of those languages while he was a teenager picking up three to four
every three months. He has since written books about language in, get this,
various languages because if ya got it, flaunt it. During the 1990s Fazah's name
appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of languages he
knew. That is no longer the case. Back then he apparently knew somewhere
between 54 and 56 the number lately some sources claim is up to 59.
Just to give you a sense of what that means according to The Economist an
english-speaking adult knows the meaning of about thirty thousand words but to be
fluent in a foreign language someone might know one-tenth of that. That would
give Ziad a vocabulary of like one hundred and seventy seven thousand total
words. That's a lot. If you're getting skeptical your instincts are totally
correct. Many people started to find holes in Fazah's supposed knowledge
over the years. Like the bloggers ardent agnostic noticed that on the back of one
of phases books he listed Dzongkha and Bhutanese as languages he knows but
those are synonyms so his counting one has to there.
But he really got busted on the Chilean show viva el lunes in 1997. People asked him
questions in multiple languages he was supposed to know including Finnish,
Chinese, and Greek. He answered some incorrectly others got answers in the
wrong language. He contends that the TV show tricked him and edited his answers
but no matter what it was a disaster. You might be wondering how many languages
can one person actually speak. Well, it's complicated. There's not really a good
test for this kind of thing except for putting a person on a Chilean talk show.
And there are many historical legends of polyglots that now seem unrealistic. One
of the more modern examples though is Dr. Kenneth Hale who passed away in 2001.
According to his New York Times obituary he'd mastered over 50 languages. What am
i doing with my life?!
Certain grammar and vocabulary rules can just feel impossible to remember so
we're gonna do a quick refresher for you. But it's important to note here that
language is constantly changing especially informal language so a lot
of these are formal rules that sometimes fade away. But we're gonna talk about
that too. All right let's start with who and whom. You should use who when you're
talking about the subject of a sentence like in the question "who did this?" who is
clearly the subject. And whom is the object of a verb or a preposition so
you'd say "for whom do I vote?" or" whom do I vote for?" if you want to end a sentence
with a preposition which by the way I think is fine. Also with quantifiers like
"all of" or "many of" those should come before whom not who. If you want to check
to make sure you're doing this right you should be able to substitute who with he
and whom with him or her. But this is a perfect example of a pretty formal rule
that doesn't always apply like we don't often say "whom" out loud you're more
likely to hear "who" or even "that" but for formal writing you may want to know the
difference if only because it's nice to know the rules when breaking them.
Moving on, lay or lie. Oh I mean, I still can't do lay or lie. Okay, they're both present tense.
You use lay when a *subject* is putting down an object like I the subject lay
down my Suicide Squad blu-ray *object* it just isn't as good on DVD you miss some
of the details of Harley Quinn's makeup. Lie is when the subject is the thing in the
horizontal position like "I just watched Suicide Squad and now I need to lie down
to try to process all of the metaphorical resonances." The past tense
of lay is laid. The past tense of lie unhelpfully is lay. Then there are the
past participles which are respectively laid and lain. Really, it's just cruel.
Okay let's move on to "whether" vs "if". This is another one that doesn't apply
often in casual language but formally you want to use if when you have a
conditional sentence. So that would be something like "Watch Suicide Squad if
you want to see the best movie of 2014." What's that? it came out in 2016?
Years are so long now! You should use whether when you're trying to state that
there are two options like "Kylie didn't know whether Kendall or Kourtney would
call but she knew one of them would call because they always do." There are two
clear possibilities there. Compare that to "Kylie didn't know if Kendall or
Kourtney would call" that sentence leaves three options open.
Kendall will call. Kourtney will call. Or neither will call which seems very
unlikely. Whether is also often used after prepositions, before infinitive
verbs, and to start clauses. The definition of irony has been annoying everyone for
years so let's talk about it. There are a few different types of irony but the one
that probably gives us the most trouble is situational irony. That's when
someone's intended result gets a reversal like a famous example of this
is at the end of The Wizard of Oz after a long journey they all learned that
they had what they were seeking all along like Dorothy was already able to
get home. That is the formal meaning so there are a lot of people who say that
irony is not a coincidence or a paradox and that that Alanis Morissette song is
full of things that aren't ironic which is the only irony in it. But according to
Merriam-Webster people have been using the term imprecisely for almost 100
years at least. So using it to mean coincidence isn't necessarily wrong it's
just a more modern usage. "That" and "which" is a very controversial one but the AP
style guide says to use that for clauses that are essential to the meaning of a
sentence and which if the clause is adding more information but isn't
essential. Here's how I do it. If I think to myself I would like there to be a
comma there I use which and otherwise I use that. An example "Kristen Stewart
received an MTV Movie Award comma which she dropped." The which clause is adding
information but it isn't changing the meaning. Whereas "All of the MTV Movie
Awards that have been dropped are dented" wouldn't be true without the "that have
been dropped" part. But that rule isn't super strict either like I would argue
that you can also say "Kristen Stewart received an MTV Movie Award that she
dropped" if you don't feel like using a comma. I will however defer on this issue
to merriam-webster which claims that for non-restrictive clauses you should
definitely use which but for restrictive ones you can make a stylistic choice and
use either which or that.
As thatprevious list showed you language is constantly changing including words so what is the route word needs to take in
order to get into the dictionary? After it's coined people start to use the word
in conversation as well as writing. Usage spreads from there.
Lexicographers are the people paying attention to that proliferation. They're
the ones who write and edit dictionaries so a merriam-webster lexicographer will
notice words in popular websites books journals and even comic strips.
And they're not just looking for new words they're also looking for new spellings
and meanings of older words. Oxford English Dictionary's have over 250
specialists who do similar research. Their reading program of recruited
readers has been around since 1857. My, how has language changed since then.
But things are probably a little easier now lexicographers will typically put words
into a searchable database alongside the context of how it's being used as well
as the source but eventually these huge databases need to get narrowed down into
a dictionary length book. That's when some more specific criteria comes in.
The three criteria that merriam-webster cites are frequent use, widespread use,
and meaningful use. Someone called a definer makes that decision which is
then looked over by more high-ranking teammates but after that the word is in!
Get me a definer! I got some words I can add to the dictionary! Oxford English
used to wait two to three years before putting it in a print dictionary to make
sure a word and its meaning were sustainable. Nowadays words and meanings
can become really important and well-known even quicker than that.
Let's do a quick list of some little-known terms for language related phenomena.
An acrolect is a specific type of dialect. it's the most prestigious version of a
language or the closest you can get to speaking it in the languages standard.
When every letter of an alphabet fits into one sentence or phrase that's a
pangram or hollow alphabetic sentence. Pangram came from Greek words meaning
all and letter. A lipogram is usually a longer phrase and it's one in which the
writer has intentionally left out one or more letters. Ghost words appear in the
dictionary but they haven't actually been used or established. Often this is
because the people writing the dictionary made a mistake at some point
and then it kept getting republished. Crutch words are ones like actually,
basically, and like. They're filler words or phrases that we use for emphasis or to
give ourselves a little break to figure out the rest of the sentence.
Uuuuum, everyone has a favorite. You use a pidgin when you're trying to communicate with
someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. It's usually a simple
amalgamation of two languages. merriam-webster cites an example from
National Geographic "many cats and their human companions seem to develop a
pidgin language in order to communicate better." Morphology is a field of study in
linguistics. It looks at how words are formed primarily focused on things like
inflection and language structure. There's also morphology and biology but
that's different. Another subject in linguistics is phonology which is all
about how speech and sound are organized in language. And contronyms are words
that can mean their exact opposite. Left can mean you're gone or you're the only one remaining.
Now knowing all of the complicated facets of the English
language maybe you want to create your own. That's what James Cameron enlisted
Dr. Paul Frommer to do leading up to the filming of Avatar. Yeah, we're talking
about Na'vi. Hey, listen. I just want you to have a game plan in case Mr. Cameron
approaches you to invent a language for his next film. You're welcome. Dr. Frommer
has a PhD in linguistics and was a professor at University of Southern
California. James Cameron wanted him to design an entire language for the
characters in his fil.m Cameron had already created about 30 words which
Frommer said had kind of a Polynesian vibe. From there Frommer needed to decide
on rules for new sounds and phrases in Na'vi. He came up with 1,000 words in the
four years he worked on the film's language up to 2009. According to Frommer
there are three ways to come up with new vocabulary words. One: make 'em up.
Two: take them from other languages which is uncommon in Na'vi. Or Three: combine parts
already in the language. The Na'vi word for computer is the words for metallic
and brain combined for instance. A couple other distinguishing features of Na'vi:
no voiced stops which means no B, D, or hard G. Also the ejectives K, P, and T
are each followed by an X. To make that sound you have to basically produce a
big breath. And of course because the Na'vi have four fingers per hand their
number system is base-8 rather than base ten like ours. I know it is a surprising
amount of work for a film that used Papyrus as its
subtitle font. As for the future of Na'vi Frommer has said "there's a translation of
Hamlet into Klingon so if Na'vi ever achieved anything close
to that I'd be absolutely delighted." There are people who are translating the
Bible into Na'vi so who knows. Thanks for watching Mental Floss video which is
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