Pirahã Phonology

The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive: archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Lan...
The video and Dan Everett's translation: daneverettbooks.com/translati...
O'Neill, 2014. www.jbe-platform.com/content/...
Van Berkum et al., 2005. psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-0...
An explanation of phonemes and phones: • A Beginner's Guide to ...
A previous video that goes over the universal grammar debate: • How did Language Start...
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This channel's Patreon:

[@marianenasheva5378]

Everett also mentions that they use this humming in the situations where we would whisper. They don't whisper because the tones would disappear, and so much information would be lost in their language. And we don't commonly communicate through humming for analogous reasons. Pirahã language really gives a fresh perspective on the diversity of human speech :)

[@marianenasheva5378]

​@Hernando Malinche Yes, I also thought about it. I don't know much about these languages, but my guess is that the balance between the functional load of the tones and phonemes can be different in Pirahã and Thai. If the language has only 11 phonemes, tones should carry a big deal of information. So Thai speakers can lose some information when whispering, but probably a smaller share of it than Pirahã, and thus it can be easier understood from the context. Maybe functionality is not the only explanation: it's just what Everett's book says :) Cultural reasons are also possible.

[@dyld921]

@@marianenasheva5378 That's probably it. I speak Vietnamese and tones don't have a high functional load (but are still phonemic). A situation like in 12:53 is very rare, so we can still guess the meaning from context (such as when typing Vietnamese without the tone marks).

[@sleepybraincells]

@Hernando Malinche maybe because those have a higher functioning load on consonants and vowels than piraha. Similarly, I'm guessing it hard to understand thai or Chinese if it was hummed or whistled

[@harryalderson6175]

there is tonal communication in english. at the very least the "I dunno" can be broken down into just tones with the idea still communicated.

[@madiis18account]

@@harryalderson6175 True! You can totally hum "I don't know" and people will understand you

[@justin.booth.]

The whistling thing reminds me of how we sometimes say "I don't know" as a pattern of hums in English, and how we have yes and no as the unspellable "mh hm" and "mm mm"

[@turnpikelad]

My favorite phrase that can be understood in English as a hum pattern is "Are you going to eat that?"

[@sarahlilliancullen]

Oh yeah! Also how 'I'm thinking' is just 'hmm' and 'what?' is 'hm?'

[@nat6429]

Yes! Absolutely

[@seriekekomo]

Sure, yet it probably makes more sense for tonal languages

[@bigfoxgamingbro7526]

Mhmm

[@Agent-nj6wn]

The humming thing exists in Cantonese as well. With enough context we can understand each other on a good level. The tones play a huge part. Very useful when you are drinking or eating something and still have to answer your annoying cousin's dumb questions

[@Muzikman127]

Absolutely love this comment

[@renerpho]

In case you wonder about how the Piraha call themselves (and their language): The people are called "hiaitsiihi", the language is "xapaitíiso".

[@niezajetanazwakonta]

So where did the name Piraha come from?

[@renerpho]

@@niezajetanazwakonta It's what their neighbours call them (an exonym, like "Germany" vs. "Deutschland"). The word is from a Tupi language. As far as I know the meaning/etymology of the name is unknown.

[@renerpho]

On the other hand, the endonyms have well understood meanings: "Hiaitsiihi" (the name of the people) means "the inhabitants of one of the many layers that make up the cosmos", while "xapaitíiso" (the name of the language) means "that which comes out of the head".

[@modalmixture]

In Brazil, words and names that have the stress on the final vowel are often Tupí in origin. Abacaxí, açaí, jacarandá, Pirahã…

[@augustobarbosab.773]

@@renerpho Unlike in other European colonies, originally Brazilian settlers and explorers (descendants of the first Portuguese settlers) spoke a creole of Tupi (heavily influenced by Portuguese grammar) called Língua Geral. Ironically, the rest remnants of tribes Tupi/Língua Geral speakers don't have it as their original native language, it was imposed on them in the past. Also because of the Tupi-speaking explorers, indigenous tribes were generally named by the Tupian perspective. The generic name for other non-tupi tribes is "tapuia" meaning "barbarian". Pirahã must have something to with the tribe's living or traces. "Pirá" means "fish" in Tupi.

[@ArturoStojanoff]

In Korean, the /m/ and /n/ phonemes can be realized as [b] and [d] respectively at the beginning of utterances too.

[@SonicHandsK99]

Can you give me an example? I'm a native Korean speaker and can't think of any off the top of my head.

[@makkonen0]

K/G as well. Threw me for a loop

[@hengsikai2862]

@@SonicHandsK99 here's an explanation of the phenomenon on KZbin: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJnJaoGNgK2dp6c

[@yousam830412]

@@SonicHandsK99 마셔요 When I firstly heard this word I thought it started with [b] It's something like [mb] when pronouncing. So for foreigners it sounds closer to b but for Korean it's still m.

[@amyoosh]

sometimes 네 is pronounced similarly (but not quite) as “de” or maybe “nde” from what i heard when i was studying korean

[@cellion5848]

Yes, I like that last bit. People always complain “you’re not pronouncing it correctly”. When all you’re doing is just converting it to English phonemes. Like how people complain about the word “croissant” or saying “anime”

[@citrusblast4372]

Yea Its just adopting words, if people were really picky about how english speakers pronounce words people would realize how much of the words we use arent originally from our language, so much came from stuff like greek and french. Even japanese butcher words they take

[@jakewhittaker1145]

For someone who isn't an expert in linguistics, you've certainly done a lot to pique people's interest in the field! Such a brilliant channel! The relation between /b/ and /m/ really caught my attention. I have recently started learning Welsh, having moved to Bangor (North Wales), and I was instantly reminded of how "Bangor" becomes "Mangor" after the preposition 'yn' (which itself becomes "ym"). So Bangor is referred to as Bangor, but in a sentence like "I live in Bangor" (Dw i'n byw ym Mangor), there is that shift (mutation, as described in Welsh grammar) from /b/ to /m/. Thanks for yet more interesting content!! 🙌🏻

[@Pauliepoika]

I speak both Finnish and Welsh (I know…), and the mutation system is very similar to the Finnish consonant gradation system. It’s natural linguistics, I think.

[@LeeWright337W]

Wow, I could not have imagined how interesting this is. Simply fascinating.

[@willcollings5681]

That's interesting about the b and m combination. In Gaelic, we "soften" vowels in a lot of different circumstances, and b and m almost always soften to the same sound -- namely a 'v' or a 'w' sound depending on context!

[@user-un7gp4bl2l]

In Old Irish, used to be [v] (actually it was originally made with the lips) and used to be the same but nasalised, [ṽ], which I think is a really cool consonant I haven't come across anywhere else. Later on just lost its nasal quality and merged with .

[@kitchensinkmuses4947]

lots of Spanish accents do too (only in one direction, from v/b to m), but only in some words

[@meiriongwril9696]

Consonants surely, not vowels?

[@jakenadalachgile1836]

@@user-un7gp4bl2l the nasal quality is preserved in some dialects by nasalising surrounding vowels, and some dialects kept the nasalised consonant into the 20th century (Rathlin at least)

[@user-un7gp4bl2l]

@@jakenadalachgile1836 That's very nice! Thanks for the info!

[@swagmund_freud6669]

I got so excited when I saw this video in my feed. Piraha is easily one of my favourite languages I've ever come across, it's so alien at first, but once you look into it it makes a lot of sense and is very intuitive and fits the people and their lives so well.

[@ohbabycat]

presenting ideas about distant languages in a compelling way . speaking on a subject with humility and authority in tandem. communicating with sincerity and charm. sharing information with a tone of kindness and respect. these things you have a mastery of.

[@Beruthiel45]

If nothing else - being too thick to follow every detail and nuance - Simon makes one think about one's own idiolect and learn something never brought to mind before.

[@andy_in_colorado7060]

I am a "network engineer" by trade--having studied with true engineers, I am hesitant to call what I do "engineering"--but I am utterly fascinated by this field of study. I will most likely never progress beyond "hobbyist", but I am grateful for people like Simon & others who can bring it to life like this. And yes, it becomes fascinating to start examining your own dialect and seeing how you yourself are swept up in dialectical changes. I grew up in Indiana and speak with a VERY American Midwest accent, but I remember the old teachers calling George Washington "George Worshington" instead and acting mildly embarrassed that they were "speaking wrong".

[@TreeCamper]

Wow. I've been catching up on Simon for a few months now and I'm so stoked to see a new vid.

[@johnnysecular]

one of the things i find most fascinating about pronunciation is how often, in order to produce the sound of two similar consonants, we in fact change the sound of the preceding or subsequent vowel. and even for people who don’t write, they understand the difference as being between different consonants, even though from a strictly phonetic point of view, it’s only the vowel changing. just one of many illustrations of how language is sooo nuanced and subtle.

[@tristanholderness4223]

Everett doesn't actually claim that there is *no* recursion in Pirahã, but rather that there is a grammtical (rather than pragmatic) maximum on the depth of recursion (iirc 3 layers, 2 recursions)

[@ArturoStojanoff]

The thing about tone and length being important is actually seen also in the whistle versions of languages, like the whistle language in La Gomera.

[@davidewing4831]

Having learned Mandarin as a second language, I would argue that a mild interchangeability of non-tonal phonemes enabled by tonality occurs in that language as well. Many speakers will not pronounce non-tonal phonemes in a way that is clear to me, but other native Mandarin speakers have no trouble understanding them because the tones are still distinct. Likewise, I might sometimes repeat a word back to someone for clarification, and they will repeat it back to me unclarified because they pronounce they tones distinctly enough but not the non-tonal phonemes. This process may repeat a few times, somewhat to the annoyance of the native speaker. :p

[@Marshalllow]

Yesterday I finished reading “Dont sleep. There are snakes” by Daniel Everett and today you release a video about Piraha language. What a coincidence!

[@Marshalllow]

@Aurora Peace they prefer sleeping a few hours a day and they work shifts to guard their village

[@Bacopa68]

I'm betting the Piraha have an actual understanding of the progress of time and can do basic math that others think they cannot do. They are not stupid. Thank you for not presenting them as having a degenerate language. They gotta understand flow of time because of pregnancy, birth, and death. They have to understand kinship and work, and have to have language to talk about it. I do not believe there are any "primitive" languages. Plus these folks use piranha jaws to do their haircuts.

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

I mean, there are """primitive""" languages in the sense that older societies had less things to talk about - that's likely the only reason why it's possible to rely so much on tone in Piraha. I've seen this with many rural dialects in Europe, the number of lemmas is less than one tenth of that of the modern post-industrial standard language. That's counting all the now defunct words from ancient professions.

[@weonanegesiscipelibba2973]

@@bacicinvatteneaca yeah they're only "primitive" in comparison since other societies had other or more things to talk about. Actual historical Latin had no word for "phone" but it was a "complete" language in that it could describe the environment it evolved in. Same goes for (the) Pirahã.

[@Mercure250]

I think I've seen somewhere that they are indeed able to do basic math; the absence of words for numbers only makes it more difficult to remember the exact number of something later on. For instance, if you show them a group of three sticks and a group of four sticks, they know four sticks is more than three sticks. But if you put a certain number of sticks before them, then you let them go back to their activities, and make them come back later, and ask them to show how many sticks there were, they are likely to get the exact number wrong. I've actually read a book that says humans have difficulty assessing numbers at first glance above a certain threshold without counting (i.e. using number words). Above 4 or 5, we usually need to make groups to assess the number without counting. Try to assess how many o's there are at first glance and without counting or making groups : o o o o. Should be easy enough, but if you try : o o o o o o o, it's gonna be much more difficult, if not impossible. If you make groups, it should work better : ooo o ooo. But then again, there are limits to how much grouping things can help you assess a number at first glance. Above a certain number, you have to count using number words. In the same book, they also explained some languages do have numbers, but not higher than 4 or 5. In fact, some languages only have a word for "one" and a word for "two", and then combine them to go up to 4. 5 can be added since it's the number of fingers in a hand, and from what I remember, there are languages where the word for "5" is the same as "hand".

[@Supahdenning]

@@Mercure250 Indo-European is one such case, with the word five being related to finger and fist.

[@Supahdenning]

@Aurora Peace ​ Any animal can live on its own and not "need" anything further yet if you attempt to deny that other species are primitive, you are denying reality. We do not have to make excuses for the Piraha. You can believe that being a monkey is a happier existence, but it is an objectively lower one. The Piraha are completely at the mercy of civilised peoples; they could've been destroyed at a governor's whim and lost to time, and that is their inferiority. Ability to survive environmental pressures is the only thing that matters in the end, and a less sophisticated nation lacks it.

[@utinam4041]

Fascinating! Thank you, Simon. A life time ago I read social anthropology, which at that time was more or less only concerned with far-away indigenous peoples. While the anthropologists often displayed a knowledge of their study group's language, they almost never discussed it and what it might say about the group's way of representing the world and their interpersonal relationships . More, please!

[@herrfister1477]

What was the thing you read about social anthropology? Like a book or something?

[@owenwilliams4759]

[b], [m] and [v] are interchangeable in lots of languages, particularly Celtic languages where initial conosnants of words change for grammatical reasons. I'm from the Isle of Man, and "barroose" is the word for bus. Barroose - A bus My varroose - my bus Nyn marroose - our bus

[@jackg993]

Regarding male/female pronunciation differences, I read an article a while back discussing a tendency for men to voice the final S consonant in "centuries", where women tend more towards an unvoiced S. I can't find the article, unfortunately.

[@FuelFire]

Simon is the only person who can get me into watching 21 minutes of Parahã phonology

[@achernarpolis8842]

Mind blown…. Learned a bunch about language in general just from this, let alone Piraha. Thanks!

[@Galenus1234]

On recursion... If I were to talk to a foreigner who obviously to me has only a limited knowledge in my language which he hadn't learnt from a comprehensive textbook but by doing field-research, I'd try at all costs to avoid recursions and needlessly long sentences, which are even hard to follow through for native speakers and use short statements to convey my information.

[@kitchensinkmuses4947]

I teach languages and you're totally right. Even a sentence that bings "the fact that....." is very difficult for most of my students to understand

[@coconutty030]

Everett worked there for MANY years though. If he was only there for a while I’d argue that as well but considering the time he spent there and his relationship with the Pirahã people I don’t think that’s the case.

[@pimpozza]

Wow! I wasn't expecting to find this vid so interesting.. but I was glued to it! Thank you, Simon 👍

[@Morgan-tn9yw]

It’s really interesting to me that Pirahã considers /b/ and /m/, and /g/ and /n/ to be versions of the same sound because I’ve noticed something similar in Japanese. With regards to the former, certain speakers will turn /samɯi/ into /sabɯi/ or /sabiɕiː/ into /samiɕiː/. Depending on the dialect /g/ is often turned into something approximating/ŋ/. For example, /kaɡi/ turning into /kaŋi/ or /kaŋɡi/. Not only that, but also Japanese does a similar thing to Pirahã with regards to /s/. In the サ行 (“sa” column of the Hiragana chart) the base sounds are /sa/, /ɕi/, /sɯ/, /se/, and /so/. /ɕa/, /ɕɯ/, and /ɕo/ are possible via the addition of some other kana, but aren’t part of the base set. /si/ and /ɕe/ are both “impossible”

[@petermsiegel573]

Old Japanese indeed had phonemes /*ᵐb *ⁿd *ⁿz *ᵑɡ/ (prenasalized b, d, z, g). In some cases in Modern Japanese, the "variations" are really ossified (i.e. may be from different dialects, but are distinct words now, even with the same meaning), as in sabishii, samishii for "lonely". In the case of today's common (and rather productive) variation, [g] versus [ŋ], the latter became a prestige pronunciation from the Edo dialect, and varies from speaker to speaker and region to region. I learned to ALWAYS say ŋa for /ga/, but perhaps that was because my teachers were older or prescriptive. (One source says samishii is "newer," having been around "only" since the Middle Ages, so perhaps dialectal).

[@Morgan-tn9yw]

@@petermsiegel573 I’ve talked to three native Japanese speakers at length about the use of /g/ vs /ŋ/ and I just find their takes so interesting. All three speakers are from Aomori. The first person I asked is an older woman (60s), and according to her the use of /ŋ/ is 標準語 (standard). She said she’s not a picky sort of person, so it doesn’t bother her when people say /g/, but she seems to associate it with younger speakers. Later I asked my boss (late 30s) who grew up on the west side speaking the infamous Tsugaru dialect (think Scots, but for Japanese - it’s a very unique dialect), and according to him /ŋ/ is preferred in his dialect. He said he’s never really sure what counts as 標準語 since his native dialect is so far removed from it. Finally I asked my Japanese tutor (30’s), and she was convinced that /g/ was the normal, most common pronunciation, and that /ŋ/ definitely sounded dialectical. She seemed hesitant to say it was related to a speaker’s age though, thinking it had more to do with regional norms, how one’s family talked, or even that it might be “random variation”. I’ll definitely be asking more people about this, but that’s what I’ve gathered so far

[@sarahpassell226]

Love this and your listeners' observations. Your explanations of the language features could not be more lucid, Simon.

[@megdrummond-wilson824]

Love your work. You're so good at explaining these concepts!

[@MasterLapin]

This video is so cool. I loved the explanation about tone and syllable weight carrying some of the 'functional load' that I guess is only carried by consonants and vowels in languages that we are more accustomed to.

[@kenmoore137]

I would guess that word and sentence stress carry a fairly heavy functional load in English.

[@networkech7492]

The point you made about men and women speaking differently is interesting. It's something I've noticed in Canada, I think due to the rise of the internet there's been an "Americanisation" of our speech in rural canada, I think the men are more confident speaking the way they do, but women less so and seem to drop sounds that sound canadian/different. It's almost like Canadian accents have become associated with men. The stereotypical vowel sounds and use of the word Eh are sticking with men, and not with women. surely I'm not the only person to notice this?

[@compulsiverambler1352]

It has been observed in the UK that more women than men adopt recent accent changes. Linguists are especially keen to interview elderly men, for this reason, when trying to record accents that are dying out, before they disappear. There are some sex differences in language acquisition even in early childhood, so there might be a biological tendency for women to internalise new sounds more readily.

[@smittoria]

Apparently women tend to be slightly more responsible for the propgation of new/fashionable ways of speaking, while men are generally more conservative.

[@Supahdenning]

I definitely notice the same thing with German dialects here, with men being much more likely to retain dialectal features while women will be closer to the standard language.

[@Udontkno7]

I'm transgender, I was assigned female a birth, and I've been on testosterone for a year. I've noticed that my South Eastern American accent (from Northern Florida) has gotten thicker the more my voice deepens and the more I pass as a man. I think this is me picking up the way men talk around me in order for me to pass subconsciously. Or maybe testosterone changes how I hear things and say things? (Doubt it.)

[@SamAronow]

See, I grew up with the opposite in a very distinct dialect region where _women_ almost always had thicker accents then _men._

[@hbowman108]

I live in the former indigenous territory of another of the world's languages with the fewest phonemes, Cayuga.

[@theodiscusgaming3909]

The guy in the beginning looks so happy, he even looks like he has wrinkles from smiling too much.

[@BluJean6692]

The functional load/humming + whistling options remind me of a cypher or early near eastern syllabaries: where they were composed entirely of compressed or written-out consonants but the reader was expected to know the right word from the context and prior training. Where one would know that "str" meant "star" only because the rest of the sentence precluded it from being "stare" or "stair" or "store"...

[@LukeRanieri]

Fascinating, Simon! Thanks for this fantastic analysis

[@gustavf.6067]

19:27 your said Pirahã perfectly as a Brazilian would. Thank you for yet another brilliant commentary.

[@Sprecherfuchs]

But doesn't Portuguese lack the /h/ sound? I always thought that would have been silent

[@LucasCS87]

@@Sprecherfuchs Several dialects in Brazil pronounce the Portuguese /ʁ/ phoneme as [h]. I don't know where the ortography with "h" comes from, but you can also write it as "pirarrã" in Portuguese (maybe it's even the most common way to write it, but I'm not sure).

[@gustavf.6067]

The H sound of the name does not come from Portuguese. It comes from some indigenous language where that H sound exists in addition to some R sound. Usually it's written with H precisely because it's a sound absent in the Portuguese language.

[@cadburie6764]

I'm not sure if this has been done before but it would be interesting to see a prediction of how English could evolve in the future. Great video!

[@ahaks7269]

You are a great teacher, Simon. Thank you.

[@beebarfthebard]

I am SO glad I found this channel. Happy Valentine's day!

[@amazinglylifelike555]

A bit of a nitpick, but everybody has an Adam's apple, it's just more prominent in males. Great video though :)

[@mariogalante7]

As always, great video Simon!

[@inotmark]

Thank you for posting this and for the resources.

[@shadowgoddess4600]

Very different form of a language, the tones matter more than the consonants, that's why they keep flipping the consonant sounds and it doesn't change the word, plus they can hum and whistle the words.

[@JohnRobsonBeInspired]

I truly appreciate that you explained why you pronounce pirahã the way you do. Being honest, I spent most of the video a bit annoyed by your pronunciation as it seemed uneducated (I don't mean that in an offensive manner). Then at the end, you basically explain why and truthfully, you are completely right in my opinion. We do this with a lot of foreign words, just as Japanese does for loan words. They pronounce to the best of their ability within their natural phonemes.

[@challiday1979]

I really enjoy these videos, they're always very interesting. I may be slightly biased here, but it would be great to see a video about Hiberno-English, or even just the Northern Irish accent or dialect. Whether that is to do with the accent itself vs say English or Scottish, or it's colloquialisms and how it has been shaped by Irish or Scottish influences over the years. I would be happy to provide you with voice clips to help as well, assuming I haven't totally lost my accent after 16 years in Chicago!

[@sorchasam3252]

This so interesting! I've never had an interest or any knowledge of linguistics, but wow this has made me want to know more. Thankyou for this, found it so enjoyable

[@kadenvanciel9335]

There is an analyzation on the multisource Wikipedia article for Piraha that [k] is only an allophone of the [hi] sequence and not an actual phoneme.

[@vemundrye8999]

Damn this channel is absolutely brilliant!!!! I appreciate your work a lot!

[@jayfloramusic]

Thanks for doing this Simon!

[@LordJazzly]

20:35 Augh, fine. One more comment. Australian English does also have this alveolar tap as an allophone of /r/. There are speakers - uncommon but extant - who have that same sound as both an allophone of /d/ _and_ /r/, but in complementary distributions. It's easiest to demonstrate by drawing up word lists that contain both things like 'butter', 'water' and 'wetter', but also indigenous loanwords like 'warra warra', 'murrumbidgee' and 'barramundi'. The double-r in these words can also be realised as an alveolar tap _in English, by convention_ because it represents a sound that doesn't map cleanly onto any consonants in general Australian English. So an Australian English speaker might hear it as a 'd', an 'r', or quite possibly ask you to clarify which sound it was supposed to be. Edit: I also realised, as I was writing this, that 'barracuda' also fits the second set even though it's not an indigenous loanword - so I might be wrong on the source of that, or maybe the pattern has been extended to it by analogy.

[@thomassweeney3855]

Brilliant. Please can we get a video on Hiberno- English/Irish Anglic languages like Yola or Fingallian at some point? :)

[@mathieudehouck9657]

Always nice to see a Simon Roper video. Just a side not, while I am not familiar with Piraha whistling, there are other whistled languages on earth. Silbo Gomero (a whistled spanish) actually maintains a number of consonants, not the whole bunch but a number. That's is just to say, that even in whistle registers, it is still possible to maintains some level of distinction between consonants. Anyway, thank you.

[@AmarilloMusicAB]

Can you do a video on the South African dialect of English? I think it would be interesting to find out what modern, mainland dialects it most resembles. Also to figure out what evolution it had to go through to become noticeably different.

[@camthesaxman3387]

In Japanese the s sound also becomes sh before an i vowel, and in some dialects, the g sound can be weakened to a nasal n sound just like Pirahã.

[@user-pk9qo1gd6r]

Piraha-Japonic family confirmed ???!

[@FireEverLiving]

The speaker-gender distinction reminds me of Japanese, which has words that are strongly or weakly masculine or feminine. This is not gendered case as in many languages, but conveys femininity/politeness or masculinity/aggressiveness on the part of the speaker. You can use words of a gender opposite your own, especially the weakly-gendered words, and this conveys some meaning. I wonder if Pirahã men ever use the feminine phonology to convey some meaning in the same way Japanese men often use weakly-feminine words, or if it is just a sort of mild dialect brought about by the separation between genders.

[@marcrubin8844]

Could this also apply to Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic because in Hebrew to ask a man How are you, the speaker would say Ma shlomkha? Conversely if the speaker asks a woman, the speaker would say Ma shlomekh?

[@pawel198812]

@@marcrubin8844 In Hebrew, it's a question of grammar. Personal pronouns have a grammatical gender distinction in the 3rd as well as the 2nd person singular. Therefore, shlomxa vs shlomex breaks down into: shlom (noun in construct state) +xa(2ndS.m.), or +(e)x(2ndS.f.) Please correct me if I'm wrong

[@bowiethedog6285]

@@marcrubin8844 that's just plain old grammatical gender. Not any different to 3rd singular pronouns in English being gendered (he/she).

[@EntikaiCG]

Valley girl accent in English.

[@Nilguiri]

Fascinating. Thanks, Simon.

[@squidlamb6858]

Great video! That point you made about syllable weight and tone having a high functional load is very interesting, such that the consonants themselves don't even matter as much as we'd usually think. Makes me wonder what other supersegmental features could theoretically have a higher functional load. And makes me realise worldbuilders aren't creative enough with this stuff

[@kshitijvids]

this is brilliant! i wish someone made this for every major if not every single language.

[@annaclarafenyo8185]

Everett is completely right about recursion, it's in general missing from pre-literate languages isolated from Europe, not just Piraha. It is also awkward in ancient texts other than Homer, recursion developed slowly in the historical period, it isn't ancient. This was understood already in the 1970s when studying Native Australian and Native American languages.

[@sleepybraincells]

is there a website or video where I can learn more about this?

[@bezbezzebbyson788]

Not really recursion isn't a rare or a recent feature in most of the world's languages

[@stephanieparker1250]

I watched a special about the pirahas and Dr. Everett awhile back, amazing peoples!

[@Rabb88]

Hi Simon, I was wondering if you could create playlists to separate your videos into different groups so they’re more easily accessible?

[@rickastleysrevenge3258]

@Aurora Peace thats what he wrote.

[@Clarkem1]

Thank you again for spreading information and knowledge.

[@jordankobalt520]

I fucking love this channel. God bless you Simon.

[@matthewperry5310]

Very interesting. I encourage to do more videos like this, even if outside your standard fare.

[@andypaulsibakoff9816]

It would be interesting to hear more about the other allophone of /g/, which is a lateral double-flap not found in any other languages - if someone has an audio sample of the phoneme, please hit me with a link. Otherwise absolutely amazing video, probably the best about Pirahã I've encountered on YT, thanks!

[@ryujibluesea]

Thank you for sharing!

[@dayalasingh5853]

11:57 another thing I've learned from a sociolinguistics course I took is that sound changes often occur for women about a generation before men.

[@17utk]

@dayalasingh5853 could u explain why this is the case?

[@dayalasingh5853]

@@17utk I don't actually know the answer, I'm very curious too though.

[@percivalyracanth1528]

Great vid! The whistle- and humspeeches make me wish English had sth like that, tho you do see often how folk will 'hum' 'I don't know' or sometimes 'maybe' as their pitches and weights are pretty well-known As for Everett, my Linguistics Director told me how at a conference how sketchy Everett had been towards skepticism and practical questions about his syntactic findings, and how he would mostly talk about his experiences and his book instead of the linguistics. My Director suggested to him that the seeming lack of recursion in Piraha could be from a storytelling style rather than a syntactical lack, but he brushed her off and mumbled sth indistinct before going back to his book. Hmmm... 🤔

[@dixgun]

Maybe humming tones are as universal as smiling and laughter. The whistling reminds me of clips on KZbin I’ve watched about the Sylbo language.

[@santiglot]

"yes" in Pirahã is the same as in Japanese /hai/.... Pirahã-Japanese linguistic family confirmed?

[@jaycee330]

Except "xai" has a glottal stop (x) at the start, Japanese はい does not. And the は sound decended from Old Japanese "ba" or "pa". It's the reason dakuten ば　and maru ぱ　were introduced, to restore these sounds in Japanese.

[@myspleenisbursting4825]

​@@jaycee330 *p > kʷ > k > ʔ Sorry, but the Pirahã-Japonic language family is real.

[@yes_head]

Holy smokes. Can you imagine the headaches early researches had trying to decipher this language? I hope they were all given medals. And boy, do I wish I could just hum a response to my partner some times. ;-)

[@restitvtororbis5330]

If by "early researchers" you mean any that existed before about 2010, you have 2 people 🙃

[@Ateesh6782]

I was SOOO waiting for this!!!! ❤️

[@desanipt]

Well, if the word is indeed Portuguese, H is just always a mute letter in Portuguese (either that or used in digraphs with other consonants). As a Portuguese speaker I would interpret it as a sign to make a small pause (a glotal stop) between the vocal A and the nasal A, or just to break the syllable there, between the 2 vowels. I would still be able to tell right away it's a loanword because no word in Portuguese takes an H between 2 vowels in the middle of a word, except for, maybe, a few onomatopoeic representations like hahaha.

[@LeeWright337W]

It seems that the /h/ phoneme is represented by X

[@TheZenytram]

it is a TUPI word that got into Portuguese.

[@renerpho]

It isn't Portuguese. It's the word used for the tribe (which calls themselves "Hiaitsiihi") by their neighbours, who mostly speak Tupi languages. I'm not sure about its original meaning.

[@TheZenytram]

@@renerpho i dont know what is means, but the PIRA means "fish" like in PIRAnha.

[@petermsiegel573]

Wonderful observations... Re: "breaking speech into distinct words," of course, some languages (e.g. French or Biblical Hebrew) have words that are pronounced quite differently in isolation, or when emphasized, than in context. So the confusion can also occur with literate informants (and less experienced linguists). In Biblical Hebrew (without extant informants), the vowel may change between pausal and non-pausal forms, along with the accented syllable; in French, you have liaison (with "enchainement"): "grand homme" (great man) is pronounced as if if [ɡʁɑ̃ tɔm].

[@fjlkagudpgo4884]

this is peak Simon. we admire the king

[@marcrubin8844]

Fascinating, to honest at first Piraha seemed to me to be quite facile given it's limited consonants and vowels sounds but I was mistaken indeed!

[@kala_asi]

No mention of [ɺ͡ɺ̼]? Its the best

[@kala_asi]

You can listen to Everett pronounce [ɺ͡ɺ̼] in youtu .be/ sYpWp7g7XWU 1:02:05

[@jellybebe2753]

Oh yes, please do a video on male vs female pronunciation and dialect in English. We all know that getting this "wrong" can be social death (eg your "s" being "too feminine" if you're male) so we might as well have some tips. This was a really interesting video, thank you.

[@louiserocks1]

I think there's a slight difference with man/woman speech in the north of England, women usually make an extra 'g' sound in words like singer, (like sing-gah, instead of sing-ah, also rhymes with finger) and swinging, winging, minging, bringing, etc also it seems like they make the words longer. And man say it without the extra g sound

[@oida6599]

´Dear Simon, I am an English teacher from Germany, and I really am a fan of your videos. There is a question I would love to ask you, but I don‘t know how to make contact apart from posting my question here. So I hope you don‘t mind me asking my question here (at least you mentioned the phenomenon in this very video) - How has the phoneme t developed the glottal stop as an allophone when the places of articulation are so different?

[@dronedruid153]

I read Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes a few years ago, great book.

[@darynvoss7883]

The whistling reminded me of English speakers humming "I don't know"

[@viracocha6093]

If you’re gonna do another video on a language with an odd phonemic inventory, I suggest doing it on Ubykh or Archi

[@freebornjohn2687]

I very much enjoyed Daniel Everett's book on the Piraha and their language, its called Don't Sleep There Are Snakes.

[@kalinkapavlova9398]

ACKCHYUALLY this was a very good video. Thanks, Simon.

[@LordOldemort]

Hey buddy. Great video. Any chance we can get one in the etymology of the word Britain?

[@tonymash7877]

Simon. I'm curious on what your thoughts are about Anglish (the version of English without Romance influence). How accurate do you think it is to how English would have developed if not for the Normans and etc.

[@cadileigh9948]

How could any language not evolve and incorporate it's neighbours ? There are many words attributed to Latin and French that discount the Welsh words that were there when the English were settling into the Britain. Usualy attributed to Romance words in dictionarys despite the peoples being bilingual in all the border counties untill mid 1800s. Your English would have to have landed on a desert isle where no boats ever came to trade. An interesting concept but hard to put into practice like the strange experiments to see if children learn language without ever being taught one .

[@tonymash7877]

@@cadileigh9948 My understanding is that English was much more Germanic sounding before the Norman invasion. What Romance speaking neighbors would have heavily influenced English if not for that? I imagine that English today would sound more like a hybrid of Dutch and Norwegian.

[@cadileigh9948]

@@tonymash7877 Early Welsh is what the Brythonic tribes would speak and that was a close relative to Latin. Germanic tribes would have inherited the 'original' names for places and in many instances continue to use them to this day. If you wanted to trade or speak to your wife you had to speak more than one language. You are right that 'romance' is a term generaly given to languages derived from Latin rather than a language sharing a parent with Latin but I was refering to that branch. When Romans left Ynys Prydain was polyglot with so many words brought in by the legions from the empire eg in South Wales we had Spanish and as they got larger land grants in the empire than in Italy the incentive to stay ,intermarry and speak your own tongue was strong. The idea that we all went west or to Llydaw and then ceased to interact with our Saxon etc neighbours discounts the trade accross the Irish sea with 'viking' peoples. The past was far more mix and match than the victorian historians imagined.

[@jabezcreed]

Simon, serious question for you - do you think these kinds of studies follow the rule of "the observation altering the experiment"? So are the observers forcing the Piraha to emphasize sounds in their language?

[@louesorg]

Simon, could you please consider making a "Silbo Gomero" phonetic video?

[@Martin-sf9fw]

It's quite interesting what you said about differences between men and women in the same language. It made me think of an example I heard from an Australian man who learned swedish. He was often told he spoke like a woman when he was trying to speak swedish, but no one could really point out why that was. He didn't have a high pitched voice at all, so it is probably a subtle difference that is difficult to point out exactly.

[@commenter4898]

The sj sound in Swedish has two realizations and there is a tendency for women to pronounce it as /ʂ/ while men as /ɧ/.

[@Martin-sf9fw]

@@commenter4898 Thank you so much for pointing it out. I had to look both sounds up, and I'm able to hear the distinction, but reproducing the sounds is quite difficult, I'm not sure if I'm able to distinguish them myself when producing them.

[@MURDERPILLOW.]

0:32 one part of me thinks this sentance is abit off, i couldnt tell you why. The other thinks its heartwarming for the same reason. One speaks the truth, the other only lies

[@BluJean6692]

I can't be the only one who burst out laughing at the "actually" part...

[@user-td4do3op2d]

I'm learning Irish and a couple of the ways sounds can mutate are almost identical. Could someone help me explain these? In Irish: "b" can mutate to "m", and "g" can mutate to "n” (both triggered by grammar) 6:08 If "s" comes before "e" or "i" it becomes "sh" 6:46

[@timothylovecock4332]

13:53 Is this like when I have my mouth full of food and am able to hum the words "uh-huh, very nice, thank you"?

[@dorincucos2197]

Regarding the shifting initial consonant, is there any chance it is not actually interpreted as part of the word, but as a random filler? Sort of how we say "an" instead of "a " before words starting with a vowel.

[@MedK001]

I was thinking about complaining of your pronunciation of Pirahã not because of the R, but because of the "ã" that I'm hearing as non-nasal (and without a /n/ in the end).

[@Ilyaswashere]

Can you do a video on the accent during the Salem Witch trials (17th century colonial England)? Much appreciated and love from Boston, USA!

[@microlambert]

Simon has done a 'history of US English' video, and IIRC it only starts in the mid-18th century, as this was when US English started to diverge noticeably from British English. So for US speech in the late 17th century I think you could apply his 'London accent through time' video.

[@LordJazzly]

18:05 Different languages do, however, construct their relative clauses differently. Coptic Egyptian, for instance, expects an explicit re-statement of subject and/or object/experient, where English allows these to be implied if they are the same as the topic of the relative clause itself. There is also a particle used to re-state the subject of the main clause after a relative clause has been closed that is not infrequent either. So instead of 'The dog that bit the man walked down the street', you might end up with something closer to 'The dog that *it* bit the man [subject-marking particle] *the dog* walked down the street'. It's definitely still a relative clause, but it treads quite close to being several independent utterances linked by logic rather than grammar.

[@kyriacosstavrinides893]

Have you ever thought of making a video about the effects of local environment on phonology?

[@lettersquash]

From Dan's translation: ‘...Bahaio (his child) also. Thus Hoaowii (shotgun; name of another of his children). Thus Shit (the name of another of his children) went to live there...' I'm sure we can all relate to that.

[@LydiaMoMydia]

question, In the american and london evolution videos are all the speakers supposed to be talking to their grandchildren?