5 Of The Weirdest Languages In The World | Random Thursday

From sounds that literally damage your vocal cords to a language that's entirely whistled, these are 5 of the strangest, quirkiest languages in the world.
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The Piraha Language - Brazil
This one is controversial because the theory is the language doesn't have recursion. Recursion is a linguistic property where you can add phrases into phrases, also called Nesting.
This is controversial because Noam Chomsky popularized the idea that recursions are a part of what he called “universal grammar” that you find in all languages.
And then Dr. Dan Everett studied the Piraha people of the Amazon rain forest in the 1970, first as a missionary and later just to research their language.
And in a paper in 2005, he claimed that the Piraha people do not use recursion, flying in the face of linguistic doctrine and shaking the very foundations of our knowledge to the ground, making international news.
www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/boo...
• A Language without Num...
Aymara Language - Andes, South America
The Aymara language isn’t a small, tucked away language in some
The reason it’s on this list is due to a little quirk that seems to be unique to the Aymara, which is the way they refer to the past and the future.
Why would they do that? The answer is a simple flip in perception, by saying that events from the past are known, meaning we can see them, they’re in front of us. Whereas the future is unknown, we can’t see it… So it’s behind us.
• WIKITONGUES: Martha sp...
!Xóõ: Botswana
It’s no secret that there are languages in sub-Saharan Africa that use click sounds along with other consonant sounds, there are several of these but this one is the quintessential one.
It features 5 different click sounds and 17 accompanying ones. Also 4 vowel sounds with four varying tones.
This language is not just difficult to learn, it’s physically straining on a non-speaker because some of these clicks are next to impossible to do without a serious amount of training.
www.economist.com/node/15108609
• Video
Guugu Yimithirr: Aboriginal Language, Australia
Guugu Yimithirr is an ancient language, spoken by the aboriginal people of Australia for thousands of years, specifically the Guugu Yimithirr people of Far North Queensland, in fact it was actually the first aboriginal language ever written down by James Cook in 1770 and is where the word Kangaroo comes from.
All their directions used cardinal directions. Cardinal directions being North, South, East, West, and the directions in between. They didn’t have words for left, right, front or back.
What this means is that every speaker must always know what geographic direction they are facing at all times. It’s like the language has layered the geographic directions into the fabric of their culture. You literally can’t convey information without it.
www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/mag...
• A school lesson in Abo...
Silbo Gomero: Spain
La Gomera is an island, specifically the smallest of the Spanish Canary Islands just northwest of Africa. And on that tiny island is a language that’s not spoken anywhere else called Silbo Gomero, and it holds the top spot on this list for one simple reason. It’s spoken with whistles.
• Whistling Language of ...
It’s literally like a whistled version of Spanish featuring two whistled vowels and four consonants.

[@paulpavich4174]

I wonder if aboriginals ever roll their eyes and say "no, your OTHER west"

[@redsky5495]

underrated comment

[@EricDec]

hahaha good one!

[@ronschlorff7089]

No, they say: "your military west, troop!"

[@TourmalineDragonfly]

I am directionally dyslexic and when tested, my brain says Right is in front of me and Left is on both sides.. made learning to drive interesting but I ask friends to just point and I am a very good driver.. :D

[@Attabasca]

BRILLIANT!!

[@rayperkins6006]

When I was a lad, every Dad in the street has their own distinctive whistle they would use to summon their kids at meal times.

[@laurieb3703]

Yep 🤣🤣🤣 you could hear my dad's through the whole valley lol

[@avrahamrosenberg2905]

@@srjwari lol

[@rickelleman6613]

My dad was the only one in our neighborhood. I didn't continue what was apparently a family tradition because, oddly, I can't whistle.

[@ThoseWhoHeedTheCall]

Oh thats cool. My dad used a belt to summon me.

[@highqualityduck8580]

Mine said a specific phrase "Get your ass back here "

[@ReasonsToSmilee]

Hello! Linguistics graduate here! My favourite is the Oksapmin communities in Papua New Guinea - they have a counting system up to 27 that uses body part names instead of traditional number words. This means that they start counting on their fingers on one hand, and keep going counting designated spots on their forearm, shoulder and head, before going over to the other side of the body in reverse, down to the fingers again, which works out at 27. So if you wanted to say that you had 12 of something, you'd say the Oskapmin word for your first ear, but if you wanted to say you had 20 of something, you'd say the word for your second elbow :) Amazing! Apparently it's dying out nowadays as a cash economy takes over. (Source: Saxe & Esmonde, 2004.)

[@ulalaFrugilega]

Thanks! That is interesting. All those differences in number-systems fascinate me. Because I once heard a physicist claim that maths is the language of the universe. We didn't invent it, we discovered it, he said. My brother in law, a mathematician, says that's nonsense, but the idea tickles me ever since.

[@jam-trousers]

That’s amazing. Another linguistics graduate here, there are too many quirks to name a favourite haha I do think the approach to dealing with time is always fascinating, because every language seems to take a different approach. Which is weird when you consider that all languages are totally dependent on time (the film Arrival looks at this) Bon dí

[@jam-trousers]

I also like the fact that, although on the whole spoken Chinese languages are mutually unintelligible, they have cleverly managed to find a writing system that allows them all to communicate as if they all spoke the same language. Rather like mathematics. I think that’s amazing.

[@ulalaFrugilega]

@@jam-trousers Indeed it is!!! Sounds a bit like I imagined sign language to be - understandable all over the world - but have since heard I was mistaken in that.

[@jam-trousers]

@@ulalaFrugilega you are correct. There are a lot of different sign languages, but if you think about it, it’s not too surprising. There’s no inherent reason why they should be mutually intelligible, unless there’s some sort of societal reason for that, ie. a need or opportunity to communicate between different groups. But yeah, signing is amazing and interesting too.

[@ZiZla999]

In the Caucasus Mountains there is a language called Archi. It has 26 vowels, 82 consonants and 1.5 million possible verb conjugations

[@ptd0123]

I won't try to learn that one

[@thehybrid4608]

I believe, it's extinct now.

[@jv-lk7bc]

@@thehybrid4608 can't imagine why.

[@TRenai3]

@@thehybrid4608 It seems it is highly endangered, but not extinct. This video talks about it and has recorded language kzbin.info/www/bejne/hJ6UgIigYpiLY8k

[@AndreaColombo-fx1wh]

There's abkhaz, with 2 vowels and 50+ consonants...

[@adamsweakaf]

me: * whistles the tune of a song * guy who speaks silbo gomero: * horrified face *

[@isweartofuckinggod]

Fun Fact: the Popeye theme, when whistled backwards, recounts a piece of ancient and gruesome traditional folklore from Silba Gomero legend.

[@jussayinmipeece1069]

slaps you up side the head and said "you do THAT to your mother"?

[@cammyseitz3062]

DREAMCRASH is this true?

[@akeel_1701]

Reminds of that guy from Guardian Of The Galaxy - Yondo(?) who uses whistles to control that arrow he firest at his enemies...

[@Davlenar]

I wonder if R2D2 ever said anything offensive in their language. Lol

[@desertratnt-7849]

I’m from central Australia and grew up alongside aboriginal people. Few things noted in local Arentre and Walpri language is they don’t have a word for fast or slow (that I know of ). Another thing is song lines. Songs Lines are ancient songs past down through generations that guide people on tracks/routes across the country to water holes and hunting grounds mainly. But there is one song line that goes from Alice Springs all the way to Byron Bay in NSW. Which is literally half way across the continent.

[@ArcherWarhound]

Wow! That's cool.

[@tumbleddry2887]

Very cool

[@UteChewb]

I always thought of songlines as being not just like a map but also a passport through the tribes on the way. It has to be one of the greatest inventions ever made. I've always wondered, how did they ever come up with it?

[@Kenji1685]

Cool, interesting.

[@MrZoomah]

I love a few cultural things that occur in translation from Wongartha (Western Australian Goldfields language) to English. Daughter, Mother, Grandmother are the same.. But when you get to Great-Grandmother it goes back to Daughter. The reason being is that embedded in their language is caring for family. Mother and grandmother will care for the daughter... But that young kid calls the great grandmother 'daughter' because it's her responsibility to care for her. When you walk through town you won't ever see a 90 year old man or woman by themselves. They always have a gaggle of kids with them helping them. Nardu is one of my favourite words too. It has 2 whole pages of meanings depending on the context and tone. Sorry, sympathy, LoL, embarrassment, cute, and quite often "HAHAHA.. You fell over and cut your leg and are now crying... omg I can't stop laughing at your pain but I feel sorry for you and want to comfort you at the same time."

[@sitara2783]

It tickles me that Tolkien basically invented Middle Earth to have a place to put the languages he made up.

[@TheBreechie]

I didn’t know this and I appreciate the knowledge. Thanks

[@atomicash2475]

@@TheBreechie he studied languages in university pre war, an example is that Finnish is the base for elvish (also he used Norse poems for a lot of names)

[@alexandria2243]

@@atomicash2475 Finnish is the base for Quena and Welsh is the base for Sindarin--both are his Elvish languages.

[@CollectiveMindFilms]

Indeed, he was a hyperpolyglot :) Oddly enough, the most beautiful Elvish I’ve ever heard was from native Italian speakers. I can’t remember which of the two languages, as I was doing translation work with both at the time. Quenya is regarded as similar to Latin in its use, while Sindarin was spoken by the Grey Elves and regarded as less archaic.

[@TheBreechie]

@@atomicash2475 mind blowing! It was truly amazing to learn he created the languages and a story grew from them!! I honestly thought the languages were created for the stories!!! Ahhhh thank you for the additional information!

[@WFGRex]

I remember listening to an episode of RadioLab that mentioned the aboriginal speech patterns. One of the researchers worked to learn the language and one day, for a moment, he said he had like a GPS in his head. He pictured the terrain of the surrounding area from above, which he knew well by that time, and he knew his position and directional orientation within the space. When he mentioned this to a member of the tribe, they responded with something like, "Yes. We all have that."

[@janececelia7448]

Now I get why their painting are always from a bird's eye view. That makes so much sense now.

[@batubop651]

@@janececelia7448 I remember the first time I looked out the window when flying along the west coast of Australia and it dawning on me it looked exactly like I was flying over a giant piece of aboriginal art work. Certainly makes more sense now!

[@larapalma3744]

There's like 18,000 kinds

[@larapalma3744]

There's like 18,000 different ones

[@larapalma3744]

​@@batubop651 I think u might have crashed lol

[@davidcrandall3643]

In Chinese, the past is above and the future is below, as if we were falling through time.

[@vincentxu8217]

It's my mother language and I didn't even realize that. I think it might have something to with the fact that in ancient China sentences are written vertically instead of horizontally, which leads to the concept of "up" being previous and "down" being next.

[@katiekawaii]

@@vincentxu8217 Ah, that totally makes sense!

[@xyz-pf1yz]

really ?

[@westzed23]

This is so interesting, David and Vincent.

[@r.s.lawler4648]

For myself, this one makes the most sense to me. We are all falling though time.

[@ec8107]

"isn't tech amazing, we have satellites in space that tell us where we are at all times" Aboriginals: we do that shit in our heads.

[@genus577]

The term aboriginal is outdated, it literally means not normal, and your generalizing every single tribe with that statement

[@jahjohnson31]

@@genus577 who cares it’s not damaging anyone us native Americans hate being called natives but at some point we understood one thing....it’s been like this for centuries it’s a part of the culture it’s never gonna change

[@sbeveridge]

@@genus577 Aboriginal come from the Latin expression 'ab origine', meaning 'from the beginning'. It is used to denote the existing population of territories before colonisation.

[@lljw7151]

@@jahjohnson31 just cuz yall rolled over and accepted getting treated like bitches doesnt mean everyone should

[@lljw7151]

@Melody Ackerman and they rolled over and accepted it🤣

[@bridgetsclama]

I can see how using "your west hand" could be superior to saying left or right. Facing another person, they say your west hand and it's also their west hand. It's logical.

[@darylhudson777]

Yeah but depending on which way you're standing it can be your West hand one moment but then it could be your East hand because you turned around and it could get confusing 🤣

[@brooklyna007]

@@darylhudson777 The amazing thing is that elements built into language are learned starting at like 1 years old when the brain is very plastic. And it seems Australian Aboriginals have incredible cardinal direction abilities. They always know which way they are facing even when they just wake up, it is crazy. So "west hand" should never cause confusion since they just know where west is and just use the hand closest to that direction.

[@noelleggett5368]

Without recursion, my mother couldn’t speak. She doesn’t finish sentences, she just keeps adding subordinate clauses on top of each other.

[@damianmares5338]

I know a few people like this. I sometimes fall into this category.

[@tatiana5514]

I am one of those people. There have been a few occasions when I lost my original thought due to the recursions, although it gets much much worse when it comes to writing. I can easily end up with a paragraph-long sentence if I don’t constantly remind myself to break up my thoughts into smaller sentences for the sake of the reader’s sanity which is kind of almost an insult to the readers’ ability to comprehend. 😁

[@mylittleviking4235]

@@tatiana5514 thank you! I thought it was just me that did this, but now I’m happy to find out that I’m not alone!

[@jv-lk7bc]

@@tatiana5514 I'm like that too.

[@jv-lk7bc]

the Germans do it w/one word. they just keep adding prefixes and suffixes...

[@gerardorios3301]

In Mexico we currently speak 68 languages, officially. Not dialects, but actual languages. In my region Mayan is the second most spoken language, after Spanish. Actually our Spanish is mixed with Mayan. But the point is that there is a language where there are no “objects”. Everything is referred to as a person. From the person you could be talking to, to the rock laying by your foot. There is another one where they have 25 different verbs for “carrying”. For example, with one hand, with both of them, in your back, over your head and so on. I can’t remember the actual names, but I think one of them is Serí. I couldn’t find the article where I read it a long time ago, but in a country with so many languages, I’m sure there are countless more interesting fun facts. Greetings

[@josephsummer777]

Cotenhuaye, Gerardo?

[@grapesurgeon5546]

Good to hear that native mexican tongues are alive, I thought it's all Spanosh there.

[@chingizzhylkybayev8575]

@@grapesurgeon5546 there's a country called Paraguay in the south of South America. While the population is overwhelmingly of European descent, native American language called Guarani is actually more widely spoken there than Spanish. Fascinating, isn't it?

[@aaronmalay5497]

I noted of Curaçao that most people speak some English and/or Spanish, the deep locals all speak Papiamento, and everyone speaks Dutch except you.

[@soraya.e5482]

I never heard a Mexican speak anything other than Spanish

[@jancovanderwesthuizen8070]

Is nobody talking about the fact that the guy said "Una botella de vino blanco" when he was actually holding up red wine?

[@L4JP]

Yes, several days before your comment, totalermist said it (also pointing out that it was a decanter, not a bottle) and several others responded to his/her comment. (Currently his/her comment is just two up from yours in the list, although I guess that could change.)

[@jancovanderwesthuizen8070]

@@L4JP I scrolled through the comments looking for one about this before I wrote mine. Also, no comment is above mine because your own comment is always at the very top

[@L4JP]

@@jancovanderwesthuizen8070 Yeah, I suspected the order would change again after I submitted my comment. I wasn't intending to sound critical - it's hard to spot a particular thing in a long string of comments. I just thought I'd let you know that it was there. Ah, I just now figured out how to link to a comment! So here it is, for your entertainment: kzbin.info/www/bejne/narFhYCclL2UZ5I&lc=Ugxf2UH7SidXUNAJio14AaABAg

[@jancovanderwesthuizen8070]

@@L4JP Cool, never knew you could link comments! Thanks

[@JP-yw4wx]

They're also color blind. 😱

[@cocogoat1111]

One cool thing about linguistics is that every language changes how you perceive the world and what you prioritize. Some languages just have no concept of time and just live in the moment and I think some languages obsession with "time" and "future" causes so much stress. Would be interesting to see some research linking depression and happiness to the language a person grew up with.

[@xyz7572]

Not conjugating verbs and adjectives according to time does not mean you have no concept of time. Mandarin Chinese does not differentiate between past, present and future by any sort of conjugation, but we still understand that time passes, we just emphasise other things, and tense (time-conjugation) can be implied by context anyways :)

[@KB-qp7gk]

there are climates on this planet, where you have to plan for the upcoming winter for example, and thus planning and thinking ahead is a major part of human life there. In other places the climate, the weather doesn't really change throughout the year, so there's not much preparation to be thought about.

[@ID-107]

I kinda have different personality in my first language, czech, than in english

[@jeannetteparry5587]

Someone told me Biblical Hebrew (don't know about the modern version) has no proper tenses. Instead, the verb form is more to do with whether an action is complete, or to be completed. Hence it has something called the "Prophetic perfect", where a future event is spoken of as if it's already a done deal. Which makes sense in the concept of eternity.

[@nienkepalm739]

Watching this as a linguistics major and we've literally used 4 of these as examples to explain how language can influence perspective. Super interesting stuff.

[@janececelia7448]

Perspective in their artwork as well. As in Aboriginal paintings always being from a bird's eye POV.

[@Baerock]

When he said "no recursion" i felt really stupid...

[@yasminabekhti9952]

Really stupid ...me too ! Because I don't remember coming through this concept during my linguistic studies ...😓

[@sigmaoctantis1892]

I'm a programmer so I know what recursion means. What stood out to me was he said recursive phrases and used recursive clauses as an example.

[@TheAzynder]

I felt stupid after googling it after he said it, then after reading up realizing he is probably about to explain it and then he explained it, so yeah.

[@jussayinmipeece1069]

i grabbed for my phone and opened google and thought shit why is this the first time in 57 years i am hearing this word

[@garthfarkley]

@@TheAzynder I still do.

[@fortunefed8719]

The weirdest language I ever heard was spoken by a farmer in West Virginia

[@DriesduPreez]

Clearly you haven't been around much

[@lifeinru]

COUNTRY ROADS

[@ravens4200]

TAKE ME HOME

[@tawnya0627]

I have relatives in West Virginia. I have never been fully aware of what they are saying! I also have relatives in the hills of Ohio who, I'm quite sure, gave up on the English language decades ago! LOL

[@timothylaquerre3377]

I BELOOOOONG

[@suzbone]

The Piraha describe color via comparison, not just light or dark. They say something is the color of the river/kind of leaf/rainy sky/specific animal fur/etc. So they don't have a word for blue, but they can communicate it by describing an object of similar color. As hunter-gatherers color is reallllly important to them. Numbers are pretty much irrelevant to them though, so they never developed words for numbers. They're a *fascinating* people.

[@suzbone]

Oh yeah, and the Piraha whistle and hum their language too... since Piraha has limited sounds *and* is tonal, it lends itself very well to being whistled or hummed.

[@chrisrus1965]

Yeah nah it totally uses recursion though so that much is wrong.

[@brooklyna007]

Interesting bit about relative color. That makes sense. But I disagree about numbers not mattering to hunter-gatherers,. If you are going out on a large hunt and some people are tasked to make sure each person has a spear while the hunters prepare other things, then it would be nice to know how many hunters there are rather than having to list each one whenever that is communicated. I think it would be smarter to give them a problem like the above that we would solve with numbers and see how they solve it. That might point us to some relative number system that they also have.

[@larrydirtybird]

I lived in China for six years and studied Mandarin Chinese. What I loved most about it, was how their words describe what the noun is. For example, the word for movie literally means electric shadow. The word for telephone literally means electric speech. Computer is electric brain. Escalator is electric stairs. They do this not just for devices that use electricity. They do it for animals. For example, owl literally is cat head eagle. Hippopotamus is river cow. Kangaroo is pocket mouse. Panda is bear cat. Caterpillar is towel insect. Cities. Beijing means north capital. It’s the capital and it’s in the North. Nanjing means south capital. It’s the former capital and it is south of Beijing. Shanghai means on sea. It is on the sea, right next to it. Elementary school is little learn. University is big learn. They also do it with more abstract things. “Be careful” is little heart. Center is middle heart. I could go on and on and on...

[@ALittleBitAboutALotChannel]

CAT HEAD EAGLE

[@utubekullanicisi]

​@@pomelo9518 Sounds like a reasonable theory, as things like this happen in languages in many other ways as well. One of those ways is when your country hasn't already invented movie theaters or movies, you just call them the words that people who brought you those technologies call them, for example "film" and "sinema" in Turkish. A kangaroo is called (or spelled, rather, I can't teach you what they're called through KZbin comments) "kanguru", because Turkey doesn't naturally have kangaroos. The word for the animal "caracal" (a type of cat) is an opposite of this, the scientific name for the cat is Caracal Caracal and it's derived from the 'native' Turkish word "karakulak", which means "black ear".

[@darylhudson777]

Xi Jin Ping means ugly face 🤣

[@thewildfolk6849]

You missed my favorite “wall tiger”…. Gecko

[@janececelia7448]

Apparently, Chairman Mao wanted the people of China to start using Roman letters instead of all the clumsy time-consuming characters they still use today. Similar to Japanese, though they use Kanji, Hiragana, katakana and nowadays Ramanji, which is Roman letters. I can't imagine what a task it would be to learn to write and read Mandarin. What do their keyboards look like? Honestly, what do they look like? I rudely interrupted a co-worker once when she was reading a book and asked her about the symbols on the page. By random I pointed out one that meant 'woman'. She explained it in such a way that had me thinking OMG, all the women in China must be repressed. It went something like 'a woman wearing an apron cooking by the fireside'. It wasn't that exactly, but you get my drift. So, what if the woman in the novel was a CEO of a big company, that'd sound weird. Maybe they've learnt to automatically make the modification. Not that female CEOs don't cook by the fireside wearing an apron.

[@amckeown]

Today's episode is brought to you by the letters B, P, Fuh, and the numbers many and few.

[@firekrave1]

Adam McKeown Lololol gold

[@danielacosta7717]

Will laugh very hard when I read that

[@realitycheck3363]

I spat my coffee south when I saw that two.

[@jkjaniszewski]

@@realitycheck3363 ahahhaha

[@shanerooney7288]

The numbers ** are my favorite.

[@patriceroseplummer1124]

With the last language, the term "whistleblower" takes on a whole new meaning,

[@aarondoty2210]

R2-D2

[@ronschlorff7089]

@@aarondoty2210 right, and if you want a "linguist", I think C3PO is your "man"!! :D

[@ians4536]

Aaron Doty that was my first thought

[@agatatyc3743]

Aaron Doty u ur

[@agatatyc3743]

Aaron Doty tyyruty

[@noob19087]

One weird feature of the Finnish language is that when you want to greet someone in the morning you say "hyvää huomenta", which means "good tomorrow". If you were to say "hyvää aamua" (literally "good morning") it would sound really weird and specific, like that you only want the person to have a good morning but don't care how the rest of their day will be. Interestingly that only applies to the morning, all other time specific greetings are the same as in English.

[@dannahbanana11235]

My dad seems to always know which direction is which, it's so weird. I always revert to egocentric directions, even when looking at a map lol.

[@ismirdochegal4804]

North is allways north (except at the poles, but we ignore that for a second). So when you have to go north, just go north. Easy.

[@jomidiam]

My mom says that her father would give compass based driving directions and get a bit annoyed when she'd ask him to translate into left and right turns..

[@markmandel6738]

@@ismirdochegal4804 ha ha

[@lilhoss2627]

English isnt it's own language, its 3 languages stacked on top of eachother, wearing a trenchcoat

[@iceg6621]

Lainy Madsen and a hat.. and shades..

[@SuperGyre]

Only three?

[@stephenolan5539]

@@iceg6621 And sticky fingers

[@iceg6621]

Stephen Olan true

[@iceg6621]

Stephen Olan and a van

[@jw4277]

I recently learned that last language and I keep getting death threats from birds

[@Alexandra-qc9te]

I love this😂

[@Alexandra-qc9te]

@replicanna Very intriguing.. now I'm curious if the whistles between them would be different or similar like spoken languages 🤔

[@Alexandra-qc9te]

@replicanna I would love to see research done regarding comparisons 🤓

[@tuomokulomaa6995]

A local t-shirt "I speak Finnish. What's your superpower?"

[@Invading-Specious]

Smoking a joint in a Dutch prison? While the guard is standing next to me?

[@emptytoiletpaperroll9112]

I speak two languages with hundreds of suffixes, prefixes, circumfixes, infixes

[@nosferatuwu]

@@emptytoiletpaperroll9112 You can't just say that and not name the languages

[@emptytoiletpaperroll9112]

@@nosferatuwu Tagalog and Tausug

[@nosferatuwu]

@@emptytoiletpaperroll9112 Thank you, down the research rabbit hole i go

[@PBeringer]

That's so awesome this video included Guugu Yimidhirr! Australian indigenous languages (some 350+ of them) are incredible. Sadly, many are, or are becoming, extinct, but there are scores of groups and individuals in Australia devoted to their preservation.

[@artistjoh]

The Aboriginal language sounds amazingly poetic. It is very beautiful to listen to.

[@melissahoneybee8493]

“In Australia there are more than 250 Indigenous languages including 800 dialects. Each language is specific to a particular place and people. In some areas like Arnhem Land, many different languages are spoken over a small area. In other areas, like the huge Western Desert, dialects of one language are spoken.” Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

[@gemfyre855]

@@melissahoneybee8493 And at the same time they have songs that go across the country, with each tribe singing their own verse.

[@gemfyre855]

Ahaha, see comment below which explains song lines a lot better.

[@sebmyers2836]

As a white Australian I am only learning more about the beauty of the aboriginal culture in my thirties. So much more needs to be done to preserve the stories, language and skills of the original inhabitants of the land that have been mistreated for too long.

[@Jane-oz7pp]

"The Aboriginal language" lmao

[@sitha4441]

Silbo Gomero sounds a lot like what R2D2 uses to communicate

[@CrashM85]

The Clangers!

[@salzstangl]

Maybe these people are birds mimicking humans? oO

[@CaroLMilo-yz7fk]

*Sitha* yesss!!! now I want a Silbo Gomero speaker to go through all star wars oldies for us! There's got to be some accidentally translatable stuff in there wa ha ha

[@IronChefofPoon]

He should have thrown French in there for a laugh. It's unnecessary wordy in written form but when spoken words are run together or dropped completely. Everything is either masculin or feminine and you just have to know what's what (like a chair is feminine). Common phrases are the opposite of what they really mean. For example, "that was the best movie I never saw".

[@NickRoman]

I always thought that was kind of a joke that he Luke could understand what R2D2 was saying, but maybe not. Wookie language on the other hand, no way. There's no way that could be a real language! lol

[@DeirdreSM]

A coworker from Nigeria (who was ethnically Igbo and spoke a small language from that region) said that his native language only had a couple words for color (black and white at least), and other colors were described indirectly. "The color of a leaf, only blacker." "The color of the sky, only whiter." So it's not that they don't have ways of communicating those concepts, they just have no *direct* way of doing so. Also, some languages have traditionally gone "one, two, three, many" in numbers. One of the things that fascinates me is languages that don't have either to be or to have.

[@alannapower21]

One of the strange things about Irish (Gaeilge) is there are no words for Yes or No. You have to answer with the positive/negative form of a verb, eg: "I have/haven't"

[@cucummmber]

Polynesian languages (traditionally) have a similar concept of time as the Aymara language. In the Māori culture/language (indigenous language of New Zealand - my mother tongue) we are FALLING backwards through time, rather than walking forward in to the future. I.e.. 1. Maramataka = Calendar - literally translates to 'dropping (falling) months'. 2. 'I ngā rā o mua' (A long time ago) literally translates 'In the days ahead'.

[@kodamsa]

Fascinating. In old Hebrew you would translate ancient days as “yamei kedem”, literally “the days in front”. But we didn’t keep this perception in the everyday use of the language. For the modern Hebrew speaker the future is ahead, though his tomorrow, “makhar”, is literally behind.

[@alaric_]

Nice. In finnish language there is no future tense, present tense is used instead. There is rare form of saying when you want to emphasize the future tense but it gets used never. As a added bonus: no gender pronouns and insanely long words...

[@sallylauper8222]

I think that varriation in ways time is described directionally is common. In Chinese, past is up and future is down. 下=down 下一天=the next day 下一站=the next bus stop

[@sallylauper8222]

@@kodamsa I imediately thought of Hebrew when he was talking about Aymara. I didn't know that about modern Hebrew though.

[@julieharris4700]

You can't see what is behind your back (future), you can see where you've been (past)

[@HajoBenzin1]

#1: German. You can smash words togehter and have something like "Donaudampfschifffartsgesellschaftskapitänsmützen"

[@sidilicious11]

HajoBenzin1 that's an impressive word, what does it mean?

[@HajoBenzin1]

@@sidilicious11 It means "the hats of the captains of the society of steamboats from the river donau" :D

[@HajoBenzin1]

@Tsinat Gebreselassie no its a word, because its a very special kind of "hat"

[@kellydalstok8900]

Same in Dutch. You can endlessly combine words to make a very specific word, like: hottentottententententoonstellingsterreinbewaker (hottentot exhibition site guard). Combining as many words as possible is a game we used to play in primary school. That very long name of a Welsh town is exactly the same.

[@garethfairclough8715]

Well, not really. With the Welsh place names, it wasn't just a matter of "smooshing words together". Back in the day it was a navigation aid, with names being chosen/constructed to describe something distinctive about the town or the surrounding area. The Welsh town you noted (aka "LlanfairPG", as locals tend to call it, or just "PG") was actually just a tourist thing that someone came up with in the 19th century (iirc). It was an exaggerated example of that trope. One good example of this is "Abertridwr", which literally means "mouth of three waters" (as in "the place where three rivers/streams meet"). Another one is "Llanfairfechan", which translates (roughly) to "Little Mary's church/parish". You could have ones regarding forts or castles (which would start with "Caer") en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_toponymy#Development_of_place-names_in_Wales

[@DeiNauru]

In my language, we also describe the future as behind you and the past being in front of you - same as the Aymara language! I never thought about how strange this was!

[@pietr1036]

Whats your Language ?

[@DeiNauru]

@@pietr1036 Nauruan 🇳🇷

[@mondopinion3777]

In English we say "a wonderful future lies before us" but we also refer to our ancestors as "those who came before us."

[@jeannetteparry5587]

English IS crazy!!!

[@TOBAPNW_]

this is called a contronym! there's a fair few words in english that are their own opposites

[@mondopinion3777]

@@TOBAPNW_ Cool ! Can you tell us some examples ?

[@TOBAPNW_]

@@mondopinion3777 sure! bear in mind all of these are paraphrased from Wikipedia/Wiktionary Clipping is either attaching something, or cutting something Dusting is either removing fine particles from a surface, or adding them (as in, dusting a cake with sugar) Leasing describes both sides of a transaction. If I was the owner of a property, and leasing it out to someone, that person would also be leasing it from me Sanctioning is either approving of something, or penalising for something If something is shelled/seeded/boned it either has the noun present, or has had it removed. In commonwealth dialects of english, to be chuffed is either to be pleased/excited, or annoyed.

[@michaelwampole8588]

No, no. The better riddle is: “How many Lowe’s would Rob Lowe rob if Rob Lowe would rob Lowe’s?”

[@ronschlorff7089]

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood. He'd chuck all the wood that a wood chuck could if a wood chuck could chuck wood. Any questions, ……..Woody? .................Or Chuck?

[@laurasheehy908]

Michael Wampole lol

[@gauchonic4220]

Hehe... yeeeeesssssssss 😂

[@libz-]

how much weed would weed smoke if weed would smoke you?

[@aaronsmith6632]

Rob Lowe would rob a Lowe's per dose of blow Rob Lowe would blow below his nose at Lowe's.

[@jacobstephens4453]

I've always been really fascinated by the idea of language's effect on your brain and behavior. I wonder how different native speakers of various languages might have utterly different thought processes/problem solving/etc, simply by virtue of their language.

[@talltroll7092]

Yes and no. George Orwell touches on the topic in 1984, when describing how Newspeak distorts the meanings of words to make certain concepts difficult to think about because there literally are no words with which to think about them. That only really applies to more abstract ideas though. No matter what language you speak, a rock is a rock is a rock, and there isn't really a way around that (you can have words for different kinds of rock, or different sizes of rock, or smooth vs rough rocks, but all are rooted in the basic "rockness" of rocks). Of course, it's the abstract ideas that aren't rocks that are mostly useful

[@hdebbache2000]

You have to watch arrival if you didn't watch it yet

[@Didgevillage]

@Andrew Brent Why is it still a hypothesis? It's a fact (but it goes against the grain of the New World Order where every sheep is the same old robot)

[@stephenolan5539]

@@talltroll7092 But languages can build in that rocks are dangerous. So every language a rock is a rock but for some a rock can be inherently dangerous.

[@dariuszb.9778]

11:08 That's interesting, because in central Africa (at Congo-Cameroon boundary region, to be more specific) there's a "flute language". The same way as spoken language is translated into whistles, it can be translated into flute sounds. Young boys in their passage rituals, are separated from their families, wear huge "hats" of foliage covering their whole body and live in exile for long months, during which they are not allowed to speak (so you cannot see them or hear them). They use their flutes to rare communication and are fed by strangers from other villages. That "flute language" is learnt and used exclusively for that purpose.

[@matthewtopping2061]

It's absolutely shocking that in the 17 year history of KZbin, not a single person has produced a video on Lardil/Damin, a language and special register native to northern Australia, which includes click consonants and ingressives.

[@markeriross2052]

It's so nice to see someone talking about the Aboriginal people of Australia, they often get left out of these sorts of things. Interesting to learn about so many different languages in your video. Your videos are amazing! Keep it up!

[@marselmusic]

YES! PREACH IT!

[@feralbluee]

wow - i love that conception. i was dumbfounded as to why what was behind is the future, etc. the future is behind because don’t know it and the past in front cause we do. i love that way of looking at it. it makes feel less overwhelmed about what your future is supposed to be. we’re obsessed with our futures in the west. it also is easier to live at what’s happening right now. what a mind changer! i love the stuff you’re interested in. :) ✨

[@russliquid4858]

Imagine rowing a boat… also ancient Hebrew treats past and present the same….A lot of knowledge to be gained from exploring that more.

[@aprillillyrose7272]

yes! and its not just that one language, many many languages have different ways they view time, i belive some view time as upwards so up is future down is past.

[@feralbluee]

@@aprillillyrose7272 huh! fascinating :)

[@feralbluee]

@@russliquid4858 mmm - i had no idea the Hebrews thought that way. must look that up - thanks :) 🌷🌱

[@youtube2snoopy820]

Supposedly yodelling was used in the Swiss alps for communication between steep valleys.

[@interestingyoutubechannel1]

In Hebrew, we have a word for "the first rain" (of the year), and a different word for "the last rain". Also we have the same 3-letter "S-F-R" word for: 'to count', 'number', 'book', 'writer', 'library'... with only slight vowel changes in between, to distinguish each of these. They're connected.

[@russliquid4858]

I was just posting about ancient Hebrew being the same with past and present which also relates to cardinal directions north and south… which are in ancient times what we call west and east….. ie old maps show south sea and North Sea aka the pacific and the Atlantic … west coast east coast….. further study into that might be a huge eye opener and may be shocking since cardinal direction is one of the ways that the holy land is determined… (hint: the real Lebanon with the biggest trees in the world aka cedars of Lebanon with the great sea at its shores is California …. Dead Sea is salt lake …. Etc… don’t take my word for it.. see for yourself… )

[@markmandel6738]

@@russliquid4858 About maps: There's no intrinsic reason for north to be up and south to be down. Early explorers' maps of the lands of the east coast of North America had west at the top. "Why?", you ask. Because the rivers all run into the sea, and water runs downhill, so naturally the rivers should flow Down on a map. I expect that this would be especially meaningful to sailors!

[@jeannetteparry5587]

@@russliquid4858 Thank you for this. Before seeing your post, I mentioned about Hebrew having no proper past or future and that the emphasis is on whether an action is or is going to be completed (as in the "Prophetic Perfect"). Is that correct? Directions are taken facing East, so Benjamin means either "Son of the south" or "Son of the right hand"

[@icarusbinns3156]

I can tell when my roommate is doing complex calculations or getting frustrated (he’s a programmer) when I hear muttered half-Hebrew words from his desk. It’s pretty interesting, actually.

[@McClarinJ]

Well, Tikopeans use the ocean shore as their positional reference. "You have some food on the seaward corner of your mouth."

[@MySerpentine]

Hawaii uses seawards (makai) and mountainwards (mouka) instead of the cardinal directions, because they're a lot easier to spot.

[@TheKalihiMan]

MySerpentine They aren’t really cardinal directions per se, but for general travel purposes in a smaller area (like an island) it’s more relevant and easier to conceptualize spacially in that specific situation. Hawaiian still uses the cardinal directions ʻĀkau (north), Hema (south), Hikina (east), and Komohana (west) for actual navigation purposes. Edit: I forgot to mention that for left and right, Hawaiian actually uses the cardinal directions north and south. The left side would be “ma ka ʻaoʻao hema” and the right would be “ma ka ʻaoʻao ʻākau”.

[@nelsonkaiowa4347]

@@TheKalihiMan I suppose that is like in Portuguese and Spanish they use "up" and "down" a lot when telling directions.

[@seekingsnowflakes]

That's really cool 😄

[@Hagledesperado]

On the Norwegian coast, the four "traditional" directions are up, down (relating to the mountainside), inwards and outwards (relating to the fjord). So if you're on the north side of a fjord that cuts straight from west to east (unlikely, I know), "down and inwards" is towards the southeast.

[@cocopud]

Welsh 😂 I studied there for three years at uni. On my first day I spent ages trying to find what sounded like 'The Cledwin Building'. I got throughly lost as the map didn't have a single building starting with a 'C'. A kindly local explained that in Welsh the 'Cl' sound is made by two 'L's - so it was the Lldwin building I was looking for - the building I had passed about three times that day 😂😂😂

[@Yesica1993]

Oh, man, Welsh makes my eyeballs cross when I see it. Who makes up these rules?

[@Aeronaut1975]

I'm Welsh and my ex-girlfriend (Who was from Kent) always used to say "Welsh isn't a language, it's a throat disease" ha ha!, (Btw. a double "L" DOES NOT make a "cl" sound", "cl" makes a "cl" sound, "Ll" is a unique sound that's impossible to write phonetically, but you can replicate it by smiling broadly, putting the tip of your tongue behind your top, front teeth, and then exhaling sharply so that air rushes out from either side of your tongue).

[@troelspeterroland6998]

This sound can certainly be written phonetically. Any sound can be written phonetically with a phonetic alphabet that is designed to serve this purpose. In the International Phonetic Alphabet the Welsh 'll' sound is written [ɬ].

[@Nilguiri]

"Ll" in Welsh is not the same as "Cl".

[@Nilguiri]

@@Yesica1993 The Celts.

[@zatar123]

Do another one of these, please. I know there are a lot more weird languages out there.

[@Tomoose736]

My wife is Dutch. Her family’s idea of fun is to ask me to say the most difficult Dutch words and then laugh at me. If you are unfamiliar with Dutch, their “g” sounds something like clearing your throat and “sch” sounds like saying shhh while clearing your throat, but only a little bit, if you clear your throat too much they make fun of you. That’s apparently how they identified german spies during ww2.

[@saiprasad1413]

I'm a native Tamil speaker (Southern India, ~80 million speakers). In Tamil, like in Aymara, the future is described like it is behind you ("Pinnadi", meaning behind as well as in the future). Additionally, in most Dravidian languages of India, the word for past is the same as the word for "in front/ ahead of someone" (Munnadi in Tamil, Mundu in Telugu) Come to think of it, the way that this makes sense, at least in my head, is that the past is as apparent and clear as something in front of you. While the future is as unknown/unclear as something behind you.

[@phaedrussmith1949]

That’s very interesting. What is going through your mind when you perceive the past as being in front of you? Is it as explained in the video for the Aymara language and in front of you because it has occurred and you can thus picture it?

[@VanaeCavae]

I am a Tamil and never l realized that until now. Thanks.

[@bluesque9704]

@@VanaeCavae hey you woke up!

[@bluesque9704]

Interesting... do you actually mean that the future is behind you?

[@calamityjean1525]

Oh, Telugu! I've heard of that language! I even know a fun music video in Telugu: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3zRcphpfqdjmbs

[@janejan9728]

The aboriginal one's my favorite. It sounds really crisp and clean, and the direction thing is awesome.

[@ismirdochegal4804]

It is. There are war games out there that use that idea. Two players team up together against the other pairs. One has the gun and moves around but is blind. the other one can see and convey information but do nothing else. They havet eliminate the opponent teams.

[@innervoiceawakening5259]

Egyptian dialect has a somewhat similar way of talking about future events. It states things that still need to be done as "behind" them. So, when you say "Do you have something behind you?" it actually means "Is there something you need to do?"

[@Viixle]

Added note about dolphin communication; I talked for hours about this recently and came to a conclusion that dolphins might not lie, or at least, would be ostracized immediately for doing so. Their communication can be shared but also validated or invalidated. Their survival would predicate a required trust within each pod.

[@JohnGardnerAlhadis]

Good point.

[@mondopinion3777]

Interesting that a culture that doesn't lie is also one that has no possessions.

[@Mellyouttaphase]

Seven weeks into my linguistics degree and feeling like a rockstar because I know what recursion means. Aw yeah 😎

[@niharbehere1584]

Lol I’m learning everything about linguistics from random videos like this

[@DonMarzzoni]

Yugioh cards taught me that word.

[@rajgill7576]

Good luck with the rest of the weeks man keep up the positivity

[@DoctaOsiris]

@Melody I've always been fascinated by Linguistics, ever since I was really young, like 9 years old or so, I'd buy and lend books and dictionaries on any languages I could find, I was able to read (but not necessarily understand 🤣) Russian, Greek and Hindu before my 10th birthday, yet I still didn't know what recursive was 🤣 All the best on your course 😊👍

[@MajesticSkywhale]

If you want a fun Google Easter egg, search for the word "recursion"

[@tyz9519]

I am aboriginal and 8:55 is strange to me because we have words for left right and front and back. however note that there are hundreds of different languages that are known as "aboriginal" and i know Kaartdijin Noongar not Guugu Yimidhirr so that may be why but still all "aboriginal" languages are very similar so its still strange.

[@janhanchenmichelsen2627]

@wubywuby, interesting. I’m sure I’ve read that a number of aboriginal languages are (at least almost) unrelated, some even classified as isolated - and that this could actually be the case of groups traditionally living close to each other. But I guess linguists do struggle to classify these very ancient languages.

[@crayzeape2230]

I looked into it a little. It's much more complex than just compass directions, it can also be applied locally down to just the observable area, providing references for facing, beside, and behind. There is a good paper on the subject here: pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/Publications/ETHOSw.Diags.pdf

[@_basho_7089]

@wubywuby My mates just taught me the bad words in their lingo lol

[@yodaco]

Hi. I had heard that some aboriginal languages don't use numbers. Much like one of the languages mentioned here. They just say like few or many. The reference I heard was that if asked how many children they have they would just name all the children out.

[@yodaco]

Also. Europe. Big land mass. Lots of languages. Australia...big land mass....lots of languages. Makes sense to me

[@sophiepedigree7139]

Japanese also has the "in front = the past" and "behind = the future" thing. The word "mae" translates to both "spatially in front" and "in the past", while the same character is used as the root for words meaning "spatially behind" and "in the future". Arguably English does it too sometimes. The word "before" is usually used to talk about the past, but it can also mean "in front", as in "before your eyes".

[@erinthesystem9608]

Eye-opening! Language doesn't merely describe the world; it shapes our perceptions, guiding how we think. Thank you for the insightful (and fascinating!) contribution to the KZbin forum; it really left me wishing I could have attended school longer.

[@KravMagoo]

I worked for a masonry company in Kansas, and my boss used to make pretty much all spatial references with cardinal directions. Inside...outside...didn't matter. He'd talk about the west door on the north wall. We did jobs all over Topeka, and I had to constantly remain aware of compass directions to be able to understand his directions on job sites, or even how to get from one place to another across town. If he gave me directions on how to drive somewhere, he wouldn't say, "Turn left on Maple Street." He'd say, "Turn south on Maple Street." He'd say, "Go out to the garage and look on the bottom shelf on the east wall and bring me the drill." I'm pretty good at directions and can visualize places with internal maps better than most, but it still took me awhile to get up to speed with his way of communicating.

[@brazenbunnies]

I observed the same the no in Kansas. Must be due to the landscape.

[@mondopinion3777]

@@brazenbunnies The land is quite flat, and before it was settled by homesteaders the government surveyed it and plotted it like a vast checkerboard, with roadways every square mile, due north/south and due east/west. Growing up there sets your mind into that pattern.

[@HisNameIsTim]

Australian Aboriginal languages are incredible. There’s some analyses that suggest they don’t even use words in the conventional sense. Some have almost completely free word order meaning syntax can’t really explain them at all. And instead have incredibly complex morphology. Add to that the intergenerational checking mechanisms they use to preserve oral histories unchanged for thousands of years and how the languages support that. It’s incredible. And there’s so much diversity. But colonisation wipes out so many of them and still is. But they’re some of the most remarkable languages in the world and function quite radically differently from almost any other language groups in the world. Cardinal directions barely scratches the surface. I’m Australian and currently studying linguistics. And I’ve barely touched on enough to even start to understand them yet. They’re actually changing our understanding of how language works. And most of them completely blow all of Chomsky’s theories out of the water.

[@hunterG60k]

And some of them include sign language as well, I saw somewhere. Everything about Australian Aboriginals is fascinating, they had been isolated for so long as a population. Love learning about them.

[@yodaco]

@@hunterG60k it's a shame. They did just fine for thousands of years and then white people showed up. Set up shop and the decline of many individual cultures began. Good old white people. We're just great aren't we.

[@michaelfink64]

Interesting, Tim. Word order doesn’t really matter in Latin either. The word endings convey all of the grammatical information.

[@HisNameIsTim]

michaelfink64 Imagine Latin with an even more robust morphology and even less syntax.

[@ciCCapROSTi]

In Hungarian, word order matters, it alters the emphasis. But it's more or less free in the sense that most order is correct.

[@LegendShadowsZz]

Y’know, last week I woke up and this guy’s videos were playing and I’ve just..been hooked on this stuff

[@novakian]

My anthropology professor spoke !Kung and It was the most entrancing language to listen to. The clicks and lisps are just so perfectly placed. Beautiful.

[@aliciamartinez8716]

Euskera is also a pretty interesting and mysterious language in Spain. It's one of the few isolated languages which share no roots with others. It's also very old, older than any form of Spanish

[@Mara-ub3tq]

In the Americas, there are actually a lot of (little known) isolates

[@scintillam_dei]

I plan to learn Euskara because it is the language of my Iberian ancestors which a population of Celts adopted, which explains why they look indistinguishable from other Celts and Germanics, yet have a non-Celtic language. Notice the phonetics of Basque are the same as Spanish, pretty much. That goes to show that the vulgar Latin was influenced by the native Euskara.

[@scintillam_dei]

@@Mara-ub3tq And in the Asias, there are many languages. In Europes are many ropes, and in Africas are many black people.

[@Mara-ub3tq]

@@scintillam_dei I also want to learn it. Not my ancestors (sadly) but it's said to be the oldest or one of the oldest European languages... and apart from that I just like it. GORA

[@Mara-ub3tq]

@@scintillam_dei ??? but yes there are also isolates in Africa (Hadza, Sandawe, Bangime) and in Asia (Burushaski, Nivkh, Nihali, possible some languages of the "Siangic" and "Kho Bwa" groups; Korean is sometimes described as an isolate)

[@YiannisPho]

The "whistling language" practiced in one of the Canary Islands is something invented separately in the island of Euboea (or Evia) in Greece, but for the same reason (communication across mountain tops.)

[@joeday397]

Sylbo

[@abrahamponce1502]

They also use it in mexico

[@thebishop1095]

@@abrahamponce1502 The Mazateca have a whistiling language.

[@EEsmalls]

I've just discovered your channel like 2 hours ago, and I'm so excited for the endless bingeing I'm about to do lol

[@maartenblaauboer865]

Not sure if this is technically called a language, but some areas in West-Africa used 'talking drums' to communicate over vast distances. As the spoken languages are tonal (pitch carries meaning), these can be translated into music, using special rules for clarity. The message "Come back home" might be translated by the drummers as: "Make your feet come back the way they went, make your legs come back the way they went, plant your feet and your legs below, in the village which belongs to us". (From Wikipedia, 'Talking drums')

[@megalyssa]

I’d love more shows on languages, dialects, or even specific words.

[@admina.r.9727]

Check out langfocus

[@jeanettewaverly2590]

I've always wanted to see a Navajo/Welsh dictionary.

[@KingNik1994]

yeah, those two aren't related in any way

[@jay36963]

Cymru am byth

[@jeanettewaverly2590]

@@jay36963 Hozho nasha!

[@KingNik1994]

@@jay36963 Cymraeg am byth!

[@DiviAether]

Navajo is something very hard to pronounce properly just from visual cues, it has a lot of click like sounds that don’t translate well to paper

[@chanchanchan7031]

A note on the Silbo Gomero language, I learned once about something similar in Turkey, a whistled form of Turkish for communicating across ling distances on mountains. It’s pretty cool!

[@stopthink9000]

We made up a new "language" when I was in high school at my part time job. Similar in concept to pig latin but with different structure and patterns. It was pretty easy to crack but unintelligible if you spoke even moderately fast.

[@macleadg]

In my culture, teenagers speak only in grunts, exasperated sighs, and eyerolls.

[@pebblepod30]

😂😂

[@macleadg]

Island Mike Thx... lol.

[@ovamie8821]

Mine to but i get a heavy breath from time to time

[@macleadg]

ova Mie 😂

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@pebblepod30 Then there's this culture that only communicates with emoticons. And Memes.

[@AlexLaw_Qld]

Construction workers in Sydney, Australia had a whistle language. I was fortunate enough to hear it in use in the late 1980s.

[@jakobknudsen2122]

There's also a Spanish Island whoose inhabitants have a whistle form of Spanish, if I remember correctly

[@nirutivan9811]

Jakob Knudsen you should watch the video. He talked about this Island.

[@shenanigans3710]

There are also a some used by shepherds in Turkey and Georgia

[@yasminabekhti9952]

@@shenanigans3710 true

[@badgerpa9]

You would probably still hear it if they did not threaten to jail them for doing it.

[@jeffreyjoshuarollin9554]

I discovered your channel this year, and not only do I love this video speaking (or I guess writing) as an amateur linguist, I love your range, too.

[@watcher314159]

1. You forgot to mention Pirahã also has a very weird phonological system, being tied for the smallest phonemic inventory with Rotokas and being one of a few languages with drumming or whistled registers (though even then Pirahã is unusual for having both). 2. Spatial metaphors for the flow of time are actually quite varied and fluid. Even in English the words beFORE and AFTer reverse the future=ahead/past=behind paradigm common to the rest of the language. Mandarin gets even weirder, having a past=above/future=below waterfall-like metaphor in certain constructions. And then there are other languages like Hopi that don't even conceptualize time as a line. 3. ǃXóõ is pretty awesome. It should be clarified that there are 5 basic clicks, each of which has about 17 different versions (depending on dialect), giving over 80 distinct click sounds, not a mere 22 as implied here. Also, the laryngeal nodules probably aren't from the clicks; clicks are after all nonpulmonic consonants that don't really interact with the larynx. Rather, the vowels have extremely harsh strident voicing and epiglottalization contrasts that probably contribute much more to how the language changes speakers' physiology (though there are consonants with glottalization and epiglottalization as well, which certainly doesn't help). 4. Guugu Yimithirr isn't actually unique in its use of cardinal directions. The entire language family it belongs to places much more emphasis on cardinal directions than egocentric directions even in the languages that have egocentric directions, and there are multiple languages that lack egocentric directions entirely. Guugu Yimithirr just happens to be the best documented of these languages, in no small part because of its historical significance as a language of first contact. 5. As I mentioned above with Pirahã, there are numerous languages with whistled or drummed registers, usually used for long distance communication. Several Niger-Congo languages use split gongs to send messages, usually encoded around their tone systems, echoing up to 50 km down the Congo River, for example. Silbo Gomero is merely famous because it's a register of Spanish and we have a massive Eurocentric bias.

[@PeterLiska]

I beg you...please do a video about dolphins !!! What we know about them and what we hypothesise. I am especially fascinated by their brain capacity and either they're self conscious

[@spaceman6463]

Peter Fox They rape a lot and bash each other’s brains out for fun

[@kunneman]

They also suck on puffer fish to get high🤯

[@PeterLiska]

They're awesome 😂

[@desertratnt-7849]

That would be awesome. I heard they are self conscious. The TV show flipper the dolphin knew when he/she was on TV instead of other dolphins. The trainer used to pull a TV down by the pool and watch it with flipper.

[@ArcherWarhound]

Okay, here's something cool about Dolphins that he didn't say: Dolphins (like most other members of the whale family) almost universally travel in family/tribe groups called pods, and each member of the pod has their own name, a unique set of sounds (whistles, squeaks, and or clicks), that the other pod members use to call them.

[@francescoazzoni3445]

Fun fact: I don't speak Aymara but still most of my dreams are behind me

[@PCLHH]

your comment is gold!

[@CaroLMilo-yz7fk]

🤣

[@ronschlorff7089]

Never let them drive!!!

[@-gemberkoekje-5547]

Restore the Inca Empire!

[@ronschlorff7089]

@@-gemberkoekje-5547 Yeah, Machu picchu at its height (pun intended) would have been awesome!!

[@friedmule5403]

0:13 Trees can literally speak to each other with 60 dB sound at about 40-120 kHz, do send each other messages through a "fiber net" that consists of Mushrooms roots and do also send signals via other means. On top of that, can one tree send "food" to another tree who is in need and even ask to borrow from another tree.

[@dougfowler1368]

This is fascinating. As a communication major at the College of Wooster, I had an assignment to create a language in one class. I forget most of it, it was 30 years ago, but one thing I remember was creating prefixes where one would use a different prefix depending on the difficulty of a situation. So for instance if you just found a mouse in your home might say you were setting a trap and there would be a different prefix than if a run-down home was infested with them. A cat chasing a mouse would get a future tense verb with maybe the same prefix as the person setting a trap, but a different suffix because it is an animal doing something and not a person.

[@TheFomads]

Damn it, I was hoping for a 13 minute video on dolphins...

[@anteconfig5391]

lmao. I didn't know dolphins could do that thing he was talking about, but it kinda makes sense that they could. I was kinda hoping to hear more about dolphins too.

[@lilvegan]

Hahaha right! Joe you cant learn me that in one sentence... ELABORATE! that's insane!

[@ArcherWarhound]

Okay, here's something cool about Dolphins that he didn't say: Dolphins (like most other members of the whale family) almost universally travel in family/tribe groups called pods, and each member of the pod has their own name, a unique set of sounds (whistles, squeaks, and or clicks), that the other pod members use to call them.

[@Bland-79]

I'm requesting a video about dolphin language now.

[@archenema6792]

David Brin is a god.

[@MSTrusAgent]

Can the whistling people translate what R2D2 is saying? 😱

[@ricnyc2759]

No. But there's another languague that uses the sounds of farting. They have long and short vowels in that language. Like: POOOO, and Po....

[@rezkalla]

They should have R2D2 start speaking that language!

[@ronschlorff7089]

If they get Netflix,...….if they get Netflix.....

[@Gundesalf]

The reason English requires learning "spelling" is because it lacks a centralized ruling authority. Other languages have such authority, which updates the spelling to match the current pronunciation. Some have a really difficult time as the language evolves differently in different regions. If you look at 300 or 400 year old texts in French, Spanish or German you will see (if your are fluent on any of them) that the languages have morphed substantially. Written English has not changed in a very long time, but the spoken language has, as languages always do.

[@jeremymiller9582]

R-colored vowels are found in less than 1% of world languages, but are present in North American English (the “r” sound in butter and start) and Mandarin (儿 “ér” “son”), two of the most common languages. It’s one reason that the “r” sound is so difficult for learners. Fun fact: it’s hard for English-speakers too; it’s one of the last sounds to be acquired, and is so complex that people produce the sound many different ways (tongue position, etc.).

[@deo-max9229]

"This video is not about dolphins." [I did that on porpoise. 😂]

[@ThisIsAlmondz]

I get your joke

[@badgerpa9]

@@ThisIsAlmondz Give it back.

[@s.vidhyardhsingh3881]

😂🤣👌🏻

[@Globovoyeur]

After having perpetrated this pun, you should be filled with remoras...

[@martijnspruit]

Still a pity though. A video about dolphins could be very interesting.

[@marselmusic]

I'm so happy you talked about the Aboriginal australians... very unspoken of in general

[@arthas640]

Native Americans and mesoamericans get mentioned in media alot but Aborigines never seem to appear in movies, shows, etc. I can only think of a couple of Australian made TV shows with major Aborigine characters

[@nataschiawilisch9958]

@@arthas640 ? They have their own channel

[@copperjaguar]

@@arthas640 I know of a movie called "The Rabbit Proof Fence" (Based on a true story) on Hulu about 3 Australian Aboriginal sisters trying to get back home to their mother and grandmother from colonists who had taken other children as well to force them to learn their ways and traditions. Good movie.

[@arthas640]

@@copperjaguar I'll check it out

[@arthas640]

@@nataschiawilisch9958 I should have specified "as an american, I dont see them mentioned much in media". They likely appear alot in australian politics and media, but I rarely hear about them mentioned much. I see alot of American movies and tv shows that are widely seen internationally that feature native americans, and I even see them appear in internationally produce media. Aborigines meanwhile rarely appear in internationally produced media or in Australian produced media being exported. The main exemption is when someone wants a didgeridoo player in a movie.

[@chemicalcarlos]

Visiting the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, B.C, I was struck at how inscrutable and difficult to pronounce all the indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest tended to be for colonizers.

[@Locomaid]

When I was in South America (one year) with people who spoke Aymara, I was told to imagine that I was walking backwards through life. So you walk backwards into the future...and look into the past. I only managed to learn a tiny bit of the language but the people were absolutely lovely!

[@FlushVision]

I love hearing dialects. I have an English dialect called 'East Owdam'. A mid Pennine 'Yonner' dialect spoken by a very small population living on the Western side of the Saddleworth Moors in what was once the historic West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The dialect is now dying out and is only spoken by a few more mature people and will probably be extinct in the near future. I'm nearly 64 and I know that very few people under my age that speak it. For example, my son doesn't speak it. East Owdam is my natural way of speaking if I come across anyone else that speaks it, but when talking with anyone else that doesn't have this dialect I can switch to 'normal' English albeit with a Yorkshire accent. It will be a sad day when it disappears.

[@geoffpriestley7001]

Ot like north ouram

[@blickluke]

Cen you record you and another speaker having s combination? I csnt find any examples of the dialect or a conversation between 2 with the dialect on youtube, if its dying out that much then you should really make a go of it before it's too late. And even just maybe yourself saying lines and phrases and explaining them a bit

[@Andrey.Balandin]

Better yet, record an audiobook in your dialect and publish it.

[@AnimilesYT]

There is one feature I miss in English which we do have in Dutch. It's the option to add the affix -je (sometimes -tje or -pje). Adding this indicates that something is small. It's also used to make something sound more humble or to make something sound cute. But not using it in some cases might make it sound more important or cooler. "The boy plays on his guitar" could be: - "De jongen speelt op zijn gitaar". This would (without context of who the boy is) be interpreted as someone in the age of 15 to 20. It also depends a bit on the speaker, since older people might call someone a "jongen" when they're between 18 to 30 years old. - "Het jongetje speelt op zijn gitaar". Here a little boy (a child) is playing on his guitar. - "Het jongetje speelt op zijn gitaartje". Here a little kid is playing with a toy guitar or he's playing on a smaller child-sized guitar. It could also be used to make something sound less important: - "Ik heb een probleem" translates to "I have a problem" and it sounds pretty serious. - "Ik heb een probleempje" translates to "I have a little problem" and it doesn't sound really serious. I use this feature a lot in everyday use, and I really miss it when speaking English.

[@CerinAmroth]

We have the same in Latin languages(Portuguese and Spanish, for ex): inho/Zinho and ito/ita. "Coma uma maçã - Coma uma maçãzinha(pt-br)Coma una manzana- Coma una manzanita(Spanish)" (Eat a little apple, as saying delicately to someone to eat an apple or saying to someone to eat a small apple. Usually the first.)

[@damianmares5338]

this is also present in romanian, it is mainly used when talking to children or in every day conversations by annoying people

[@bogwife7942]

this is one of my favourite language things. i have fond memories of my dutch grandma talking about the "vogelsies" nesting in her garden shed

[@JohnGardnerAlhadis]

My ex-girlfriend is Dutch, so I quickly became acquainted with "-je" via words like "schatje" and "liefje". I also learnt _"Haije!"_ which is Limburg dialect for _"see you later!",_ apparently not something that northern Dutchies understand. It amazes me that the Netherlands even has regional dialects in such a tiny country. Then again, I live in Australia, dus... 🤷‍♂️

[@RachMei]

I feel like a lot of younger people do similar things in text messages. Saying "I have a problem" and adding "lol" can make it seem like it has a less harsh tone.

[@beaker_guy]

I remember (vaguely) Maxine Hong Kingston suggesting (in one of her books) that in her parents' native dialect (of something like Cantonese) it was essentially impossible to distinguish the question "Is this story true?" from the question "Is this story beautiful?" Anybody else know anything on that one? (including the possibility that I'm totally misremembering that?)

[@johncollins211]

I wish more cultures couldnt distinguish between truth and beauty. They are definitely connected. Paradise is not a perfect utopia its a place where lies dont exist.

[@victoriaeads6126]

Whistling was also an integral part of sailing in the pre industrial era. I never thought about it before this, but perhaps an EXTREMELY ANCIENT part of sailing. Perhaps that is also part of how this whistling language developed in the Spanish Canary Islands.

[@masoudhosseini9204]

I’m proud of myself for learning English. I know Arabic a little and I can say that it’s very hard. It has lots of rules and too much exceptions. I’m Iranian and I think learning Farsi would be hard, because what we write is different from what we say. But Farsi has beautiful poems especially philosophical and romantic poems.

[@fififofumb1866]

Masoud Hosseini I can read and write Farsi !! Also I would love to visit Iran

[@masoudhosseini9204]

FI fi FoFumb this is awesome. Iran really is beautiful and right now IRR (Iran’s currency) is really cheap.

[@flyingskyward2153]

You may have beautiful poetry in Farsi, but we have "What Does The Fox Say?" in English, so I think we're equal.

[@masoudhosseini9204]

Flying Skyward 😂😂

[@oremooremo5075]

You should try to learn Swahili which borrows some of the arabic words with little exceptions and no weird pronunciations like English

[@Aldrnari]

"Universal amongst most languages..." I guess that's kind of like, "60% of the time, it works all the time."

[@ketchup143]

it was like a guy in my college c++ class talking about a programming technique, "it might work, theoretically, for a long time."

[@marie-elysebertrand5455]

From my experience, this applies to pretty much anything that studies human stuff (aka humanities, psychology, human biology, etc.). Humans are quite chaotic elements of nature.

[@christi104]

Thanks Joe! Just found you today. Enjoyed this video and especially your sense of humor. Now a subscriber 😄

[@frankdickey9470]

Joe your videos are AWESOME all the time. Thanks so much for the knowledge, candor and very-well-done humor. You should have an offer for a TV show on Science Channel, History Channel, etc. You'd be an instant success.

[@totalermist]

What irritates me most of all the languages featured in the video, is the fact that the guy at 10:33 translates how to say "a bottle of *white* wine" while showing a _decanter_ containing _red_ wine. WTF?!?

[@IuliusPsicofactum]

hahaa, I noticed that too! Maybe he used the red wine example and now it was just saying it to exemplify the other case but not having a white wine filled decanted available in his hand? We'll never know.

[@Nilguiri]

I was screaming, "¡Pero es una botella de vino tinto!"

[@StephBer1]

5 Weirdest Languages in The World Welsh: Hold my Pint

[@TwelveFrames]

Welsh, the language of consonant sorrow

[@joeday397]

Cornish

[@TRISTANTHEGAMER]

my name means sorrow in welsh

[@2btpatch]

dal fy mheint - google translate

[@TRISTANTHEGAMER]

@@2btpatch dim cliw

[@hungryformusik]

The Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx) do not have words for "yes" or "no" at all. Instead, an echo response of the main verb used to ask the question is used. (Wikipedia)

[@marly8784]

I’m aboriginal I always find it easy to find North, South etc. When people ask which way is south I can point it out without looking at the sky. I use landmarks and geological features as guides and make a mental note on where they are, like right now I’m facing north east (lying in bed). I live on the southeast coast, right next to the ocean, so the ocean is to my left.

[@marly8784]

@ I live by the sea now but I grew in a valley surrounded by mountains. And still have good orientation. Of course The sun will help but growing up I saw the sun rise from the mountains and set in the mountains.

[@solomonrivers4204]

Apparently there are 2 kinds of people Those who hear a whistle language and think “birds!!” And those that hear it and immediately think “astromech droids”

[@Firecul]

Or those that think of the Clangers

[@tronf9622]

Love you man. This channel is therapy for me. Thanks for what you do.

[@danielb9545]

It stop me from hurting all these people here at work. You really do save lives thanks Joe

[@trondhaugland1208]

Just stumbled across this vid now after seeing one recent vid and I just want to say; you've come a long way(,baby). The sound quality, video and hair have all improved so much. Thank you and merry Christmas. More on topic: My home town of Bergen, Norway, has, unlike the rest of Norwegian speakers, no feminine words. They say it has something to do with Hanseatic influences.

[@jackapgar5824]

Wow is that the astromech language! Never knew R2D2 lived in spain