Week 15: Story Laboratory, TED-Ed Videos: Language

"How Languages Evolve"

Linguistics is such a complicated study, but I find it very interesting because of how analogous it is to science and scientific research. When the video showed the family tree of dialects, I was immediately reminded of the tree of life in biology. Every organism can be traced back to one common ancestor, and the same can be applied to linguistics. However, while we do know organisms have one common ancestor, we cannot say for sure that languages do, which makes it all the more complicated yet fascinating. Even though this video barely scratched the surface of linguistics, seeing the evolution of dialects and languages just makes me want to learn more, to dive deeper. I took a class last spring called World Music where we learned about the common ancestor of most modern languages: Indo-European. For context I think we were relating that to how the music and languages of the Roma people throughout Eurasia had very little variation despite the different subgroups being geographically and culturally distinct. But during that lecture, my professor pulled up a map that showed how how different languages evolved as different groups of people branched out and migrated from one singular area outward over a period of like 10,000 years. It was amazing! I could go on and on about different points in the video, but the comparison between science and language was the most interesting part for me to notice.

"Where Do New Words Come From?"

This video started of strong with stating how over 1,000 new words are added to the dictionary every year. I had no idea! That honestly seems unfathomable; I find it so hard to believe even though deep down I am sure it's true. But then as the video continued and I considered that, I thought about slang words that become popularized or how there are so many words used in the English language that are not English at all (though when you really think about it, few to no words in this language are fundamentally English, but that is an different animal that is diverges a little too much from this topic). English truly is a chimera of a language since the English language directly borrows many words from other dialects instead of changing them slightly or creating a translation. Additionally, my mind immediately went to (and the video proceeded to discuss) words from other languages that do not have a direct translation into English. Examples like hygge and the one I had just read about yesterday called Manihlapinatapai sprang to mind. I like words like these because you really can't explain their meaning; unless you grew up speaking or have mastered a certain dialect, you truly cannot understand what words like those, and many others, actually mean.

Indo-European language tree: Wikimedia Commons

Lastly, as a side note I really enjoy watching the illustrations and moving images TED-Ed creates for these videos. They are so impressive and really engaging. Plus, though it is subtle they help me get a better grasp of what the narrators are discussing. I am a visual learner, so even though these image are not direct depictions of what the narrators are explaining, I still absorb the information better by relating it back to what I am watching.

Bibliography: 

"How Languages Evolve - Alex Gendler" by TED-Ed. Youtube.

"Where Do New Words Come From? - Marcel Danesi" by TED-Ed. Youtube.

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