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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 1: and today I want to start with a question. This

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Speaker 1: is gonna be one of those questions where you gaze

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Speaker 1: deep into your own belly, and if you ask it

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Speaker 1: out loud, you might annoy certain people around you. But

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Speaker 1: I promise you it's actually interesting once you give it

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Speaker 1: serious thought. And the question is is you take a

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Speaker 1: look at your hand and you think, why the heck

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Speaker 1: is this call to hand? Think about the sounds you

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Speaker 1: make with your mouth when you say the word hand,

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Speaker 1: or the marks you make on a page when you

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Speaker 1: spell the word, or even or in say like American

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Speaker 1: Sign language or another sign language, the gestures you would

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Speaker 1: make to signal the concept of a hand. Somehow, those

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Speaker 1: sounds you make with your mouth, or the marks you

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Speaker 1: make on the page, or the gestures cause other people's

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Speaker 1: brains to call up the concept of one of these

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Speaker 1: five legged meat spiders that's attached to the end of

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Speaker 1: our wrists. And in fact, I often think about this,

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Speaker 1: that one of the really creepy and astonishing things that

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Speaker 1: we usually just forget to notice about ourselves and our

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Speaker 1: bodies and our brains. And the power of language is

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Speaker 1: that in most cases, you are completely powerless to resist

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Speaker 1: the conjuring power of a word. You ever think about this, like,

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Speaker 1: unless you have some kind of unusual neurological condition, If

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Speaker 1: you understand the language I'm speaking, and I say a

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Speaker 1: giant crocodile crawling up the side of the Eiffel Tower

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Speaker 1: with a bouquet of roses in its mouth, you will

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Speaker 1: have no choice but to envision or at least understand

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Speaker 1: the concept of what I just said. Words have so

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Speaker 1: much power over your brain that most people, most of

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Speaker 1: the time can't even turn off their understanding of them

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Speaker 1: if they want to. We live in a world where like,

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Speaker 1: particular patterns of mouth, sounds, and marks on a page

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Speaker 1: are literally a way of controlling the contents of somebody

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Speaker 1: else's mind. Yeah, which were which? When you think of

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Speaker 1: it that way, it makes total sense that some people

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Speaker 1: are like, hey, I would prefer you not use a

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Speaker 1: bunch of vulgar language around me, you know, um would,

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Speaker 1: which I have always found it sometimes weird, And say

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Speaker 1: an office environment where uh, you know, certain individuals will

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Speaker 1: feel like, you know, they need to use a lot

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Speaker 1: of vulgarity when they're talking. But you're really in many

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Speaker 1: times taking like particularly vulgar images, and you were forcing

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Speaker 1: them into everybody's mind around you, and it's perfectly reasonable

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Speaker 1: to say no, thank you. Yeah. I'm of two minds

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Speaker 1: about this. I mean, on one hand, I I do

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Speaker 1: definitely have a strong sort of innate anti censorship streak.

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Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, I recognize that, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: anybody who says, like, what's the big deal is just words?

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Speaker 1: That is really underselling the power of words. Words are

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Speaker 1: like one of the most powerful things in the universe. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But to think about like just the casual way that

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Speaker 1: that that you can summon uh imagery with the word uh.

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Speaker 1: You brought up hand And I was thinking, all right,

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Speaker 1: what does some other kind of tape Like I basically

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Speaker 1: tried to understand the idea by breaking the idea, Like,

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Speaker 1: what's another important concept or notable concept to me involving

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Speaker 1: hand or something? You know? And uh, I thought, Okay,

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Speaker 1: but we have the movie Dark City where you have

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Speaker 1: the character of Mr. Hand that's Richard O'Brien. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: plays one of the strangers but but now that I

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Speaker 1: think about it, like, that's a great example of how

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Speaker 1: you can just call this character Mr. Hand and in

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Speaker 1: thinking about him looking at him, you also end up

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Speaker 1: contemplating what a hand is and what a hand does

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Speaker 1: in the form of the hand, and kind of melding

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Speaker 1: it with the idea of a shadowy individual. Absolutely, and

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Speaker 1: this is why, you know, metaphors and poetry and everything

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Speaker 1: are so powerful. It's like you when you use one

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Speaker 1: word to describe a thing that it doesn't isn't directly

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Speaker 1: assigned for you. You cause all this kind of like

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Speaker 1: cross linking within the brain that is often very evocative

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Speaker 1: and exciting. Yeah, Like if you say, introduced a character

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Speaker 1: in a work and his name was Dr Chainsaw, Right

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Speaker 1: that way that that brings there is a number of

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Speaker 1: conflicts arise, and I can't help it. Then try and

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Speaker 1: imagine who Dr Chainsaw is. That's funny. But what you say,

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Speaker 1: I think is more thoughtful and profound than than you

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Speaker 1: might realize at first glance. Well, we'll think about this

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Speaker 1: more as we go. Okay, So a lot of times

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Speaker 1: when we ask this question, like why do we call

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Speaker 1: a hand a hand? Why is that the sound we

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Speaker 1: make with our mouths, or the you know, H, A

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Speaker 1: and D, the marks on a page. Where does that

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Speaker 1: word come from? We're usually asking a historical question that

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Speaker 1: can have a relatively straightforward answer. Right. This is the

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Speaker 1: domain of etymologies, and we do this all the time

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Speaker 1: on the show. Right. We talk about some concept or

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Speaker 1: some character from myth and legend, and we break down

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Speaker 1: what their name means, where it comes from, right, and you.

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Speaker 1: You can do this with most words, like you can

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Speaker 1: trace it back through older versions of languages. One example

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Speaker 1: we've mentioned on the show before that I really enjoy

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Speaker 1: is how obsolete scientific hypotheses that are we know aren't

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Speaker 1: true anymore, or sometimes still included in our language. The

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Speaker 1: words we use for things. Take the English word malaria.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this is a word for a

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Speaker 1: certain disease is caused by a protozoan parasite. But malaria

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Speaker 1: comes from the Italian words mal and area, meaning bad air.

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Speaker 1: So the name we use for this disease incorporates miasthma theory,

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Speaker 1: which proposed that diseases were caused by exposure to foul

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Speaker 1: smelling vapors that emanated from the Earth, or from planets,

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Speaker 1: or from things like rotting carrion. Did we do an

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Speaker 1: episode of miasma theory? Oh, yeah, we did. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was earlier. I think maybe it was last year. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And we talked in the episode about how the word malaria,

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Speaker 1: so it reflects miasma theory, this incorrect understanding of where

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Speaker 1: diseases come from from before germ theory took hold. And

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Speaker 1: the fact that even the French physician Charles Louis Alfonse

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Speaker 1: lover On, who discovered the fact that malaria was caused

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Speaker 1: by a parasitic organism in the blood, he hated the

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Speaker 1: word malaria. He didn't like that because he considered it unscientific.

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Speaker 1: So instead he recommended the term uh palladisma, which essentially

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Speaker 1: means like marsh or swamp fever or swamp disease, and

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Speaker 1: this is still the French word for the disease. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: many words can be tracked back through the history of

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Speaker 1: evolving languages like this, and in fact pretty much all

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Speaker 1: words can. But you can only follow this trail so

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Speaker 1: far because if you go back far enough, you run

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Speaker 1: out of ways to track words as straightforward cases of

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Speaker 1: evolving species or adoption from other languages, like at some

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Speaker 1: point words had to be created for things and concepts

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Speaker 1: that had no explicit word before and no analogies to

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Speaker 1: draw from, so that once you get back to like

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Speaker 1: the initial case, you have to wonder, how did this happen?

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Speaker 1: How is a word born? And does a word inherently

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Speaker 1: mean anything? Why did the speakers of the earliest words

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Speaker 1: pick one set of mouth sounds for hand and a

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Speaker 1: different set of mouth sounds for tree and a different

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Speaker 1: set of mouth sounds for mother. What do these sounds

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Speaker 1: mean anything? And if they do mean anything, what do

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Speaker 1: they mean interesting? So, I mean we're kind of dealing

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Speaker 1: with some of the same properties that we've discussed on

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Speaker 1: the show, and that we were regarding, say the evolution

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Speaker 1: of Chinese characters, where they in their very primitive origins

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Speaker 1: they were essentially tiny pictures of what you were talking about,

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Speaker 1: uh And then as they evolved they become more eleguent

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Speaker 1: in design, more abstract, uh not, and then sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: abstract and meaning as well. But but certainly they no

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Speaker 1: longer look exactly like the thing, like the word for,

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Speaker 1: you know, for a person is no longer looks like

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Speaker 1: a tiny person that sort of thing. So we might

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Speaker 1: be we're particially talking about the same thing with words themselves,

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Speaker 1: Like how if you trace it back far enough, do

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Speaker 1: you have simply a word is a sound for a thing.

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Speaker 1: It's not even a word yet, it's just the sound

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Speaker 1: for the thing. And then how did we get that sound?

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Speaker 1: How did you decide that that is the sound for

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Speaker 1: that thing. Yeah, it's a fascinating question, and I want

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Speaker 1: to go ahead and say we're not going to answer

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Speaker 1: this question today. I mean their whole this is a

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Speaker 1: whole field of study about the origins of language, where

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Speaker 1: it came from. You know, we could write whole books

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Speaker 1: on the subject, and I am sure we will revisit

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Speaker 1: this in the future. But we wanted to look at

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Speaker 1: one specific strange class of word today and and some

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Speaker 1: some lighted sheds on what words are and how we

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Speaker 1: how we use language. So a minute ago we asked

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Speaker 1: that idea of like do sounds inherently mean anything in

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Speaker 1: in the a lexigraphic sense? And one of the key

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Speaker 1: ideas of modern linguistic theory is that the answer to

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Speaker 1: that question is no. That the signs we use to

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Speaker 1: refer to concepts, so like the sounds you make with

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Speaker 1: your mouth, or the markings you make on a page

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Speaker 1: when you're indicating a concept like hand or mother or

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Speaker 1: something like that. These signs are arbitrary. They do not

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Speaker 1: have inherent meaning, and they're arbitrarily associated with the concepts

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Speaker 1: they call to mind. So to quote from the Swiss

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Speaker 1: semiotician and linguist Ferdinand de Sajur, who is often cited

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Speaker 1: as like the founder of the modern study of linguistics, quote,

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Speaker 1: the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.

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Speaker 1: Since I mean by sign the whole that results from

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Speaker 1: the associating of the signifier with the signified, I can

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Speaker 1: simply say the linguistic sign is arbitrary. The idea of

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Speaker 1: sister is not linked by any inner relationship to the

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Speaker 1: succession of sounds. Uh. And then he spells out the

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Speaker 1: French for sister sir, which serves as its signifier in French.

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Speaker 1: That it could be represented equally by just any other

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Speaker 1: sequence is proved by differences among languages and by the

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Speaker 1: very existence of different languages. The signified OX has as

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Speaker 1: its signifier Boff on one side of the border is

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Speaker 1: in the French Frox is boff and OX on the other.

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Speaker 1: And so we know, like we know today that to

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Speaker 1: some extent what as here says here must be true, right,

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Speaker 1: at least to some extent, because of course, words are

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Speaker 1: not fixed in sound or in visual notation. Words evolve

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Speaker 1: over time where it's come to mean different things. They

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Speaker 1: come to be pronounced differently, often in multiple stages that

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Speaker 1: we can track through history. Right. I mean a recent

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Speaker 1: example of this on our show, trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: what puppy meant a form of insult in in in

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Speaker 1: ages prior Oh yeah, we're apparently Isaac Newton called this

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Speaker 1: guy he was harassing a puppy. Were like, what the

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Speaker 1: heck does that mean? But apparently it means like a

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Speaker 1: fop Like it's the same word basically means the same thing,

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Speaker 1: except in certain contexts, and then that has changed over time.

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Speaker 1: But those those minor differences we can acknowledge between, say

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Speaker 1: like early modern English and the English of today, can

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Speaker 1: become radical differences over longer periods of time. But might say, well,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, doesn't the widespread literacy of the world

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Speaker 1: and the printing press changed all this. Aren't words fixed

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Speaker 1: once they're in print, obviously, They're not like just read

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Speaker 1: a play of Shakespeare or something else from the early

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Speaker 1: modern period, and compare that to the language of modern English.

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Speaker 1: This is just a few hundred years ago. This is

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Speaker 1: not that long ago. But you'll find tons of words

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Speaker 1: that have changed in meaning, spelling, connotation, or have simply

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Speaker 1: disappeared from everyday use. If you doubt this, I will

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Speaker 1: bet you forty ferkins of post it and barm on it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Or just try and read say the obbit yeah, to

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Speaker 1: to to to a child, and you're gonna run across

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Speaker 1: certain words where it's like, oh, well this just meant

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Speaker 1: uh that you know, now, this is a slur word,

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Speaker 1: but in its original context that Tolkien was using, he's

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Speaker 1: talking about a bundle of sticks. Another writer might be

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Speaker 1: using the word and they're talking about a cigarette or something.

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Speaker 1: So that the words can change sometimes for the worst. Oh,

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Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. In fact, I was just thinking about this.

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Speaker 1: Even happens, you know, with with letters. Have you ever

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Speaker 1: read the early seventeenth century poem The Flee by John Dunn,

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Speaker 1: who it's probably been a long time, you know done.

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Speaker 1: Was a great poet. I mean he wrote great like

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Speaker 1: devotional poetry, but he also wrote like seduction poetry. The

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Speaker 1: flea is just absolutely nasty it's a poem where he's

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Speaker 1: essentially begging for sex by making this questionable recourse to

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Speaker 1: the idea that if a flea bites two different people,

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Speaker 1: they've basically slept together already, and so they might as

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Speaker 1: well not resist any temptation. He says, quote Mark, but

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Speaker 1: this flee and Mark, in this how little that which

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Speaker 1: thou deniest me is it sucked me first and now

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Speaker 1: sucks thee And in this flee our two bloods mingled

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Speaker 1: be Yeah, he's he's really stretching, I think with that one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what a creep. But then it's even funnier if you

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Speaker 1: read it in older printed versions where s is making

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Speaker 1: the s sound don't look like they do today. Back

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Speaker 1: then they looked like a modern lower case F. So

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Speaker 1: so this would have impacted the words suck or sucked. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it would have become a much more by modern standings

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Speaker 1: vulgar term. That this is already I think, a pretty

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Speaker 1: nasty poem. It just gets a slight nastiness upgrade. But then,

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Speaker 1: in the same way that concepts are described by different

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Speaker 1: words across time, obviously they're also described by different words

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Speaker 1: at the same time between different languages. So the Basque

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Speaker 1: word for hand is escua, and the Melee word for

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Speaker 1: hand is tongue gun and so forth. So obviously the

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Speaker 1: concept of hand is in no way intrinsically linked to

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Speaker 1: the English H sound or the D consonant or anything

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Speaker 1: like that. This does seem to be truly arbitrary, and

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Speaker 1: part of that is that the hand does not make

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Speaker 1: a sound. You know. Well it can of course, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't inherently make a sound. And that's a good

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Speaker 1: thing to point out, because while I think it's it's

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Speaker 1: pretty much inarguable that that sazure is correct in many

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Speaker 1: cases that, like most word in most languages, don't have

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Speaker 1: any inherent link between the sound you make with your

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Speaker 1: mouth and what the word means. There were some words

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Speaker 1: that inarguably do How about the word cockadoodle do? Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a great one. Uh. This is always a

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Speaker 1: fun exercise anytime you travel somewhere where they speak a

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Speaker 1: different language, or even if they speak just a variant

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Speaker 1: of your own language, asked them what sound a rooster makes,

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Speaker 1: and the uh, it's always going to be some variation

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Speaker 1: of the same sound, but at times with surprising variety,

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Speaker 1: and exactly how that sound is realized in language. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love this, like it looking at different languages words

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Speaker 1: for like what a dog does, Like the dog doesn't

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Speaker 1: bark in every language, but in pretty much every language.

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Speaker 1: Whatever word they've got for what a dog sound is,

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Speaker 1: you can hear it. You're like, oh, yeah, that that's

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Speaker 1: what a dog sounds like. Yeah. David Saderis has a

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Speaker 1: fun bit where he talks about this, and I believe

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Speaker 1: it was a Christmas essay called six Day Black Men

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Speaker 1: about it mainly dealing with variations in the Santa Claus tradition,

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Speaker 1: the title referring to certain European traditions in which Santa

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Speaker 1: is attended by by personal slaves with black skin. But

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Speaker 1: he also talks a little bit about, you know, variations

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Speaker 1: in how people say what the rooster says. Man, it

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Speaker 1: is shocking how disturbing some of those Santa traditions are.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it gets dark, but it is. It's the holidays,

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Speaker 1: you know. I guess it's supposed to be dark and weird.

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Speaker 1: But I got another word for you, one of my favorites. PLoP. Oh, PLoP,

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Speaker 1: that's a good one. It's the sound that a drop

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Speaker 1: makes when it hits another body. Of water. So if

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Speaker 1: you drop falls into a bucket, it plumps. So I

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Speaker 1: was thinking it's also the sound of a cat throwing

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Speaker 1: up on the hardwoods. That's probably the context I encounter

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Speaker 1: more often. Like you hear that PLoP, you know you're

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Speaker 1: cleaning up something, Well, you'd think it would be like

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Speaker 1: a splat, but no, it is a very polite sounding

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Speaker 1: kind of PLoP, which belies how gross it's going to be.

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Speaker 1: But yeah. So these are known as onomatopeia in English,

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Speaker 1: the words that make a sound that's close to the

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Speaker 1: sound of the concept being named. Uh so, like the

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Speaker 1: noun naming a rooster's called the cockadoodle do obviously is

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Speaker 1: meant to sound like the call itself. Same thing with plot,

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Speaker 1: it's meant to sound like with the concept you're talking about.

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Speaker 1: And you know, automotopia for some reason or just great

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Speaker 1: fun to say. Usually I love like glug, that's a

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Speaker 1: glug glug hiss, that's an automotopia. Quack oink, squeak toot

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Speaker 1: toot is a fun one, yeah, kind of yeah, burp

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Speaker 1: is perhaps one as well. What do you think about Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that could be an automotopia. Yeah, now I

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Speaker 1: think some of these could probably be false on amotopia,

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Speaker 1: where uh, I don't know, I sure, but if you

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Speaker 1: like looked up the etymology, you could find that they're

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Speaker 1: derived from some other word in history that doesn't actually sounds.

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Speaker 1: It's just a coincidence. But a lot of them clearly

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Speaker 1: are on Amotopia, like they're the word comes from the sound.

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Speaker 1: The thing makes I wonder about the How about the

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Speaker 1: sounds that are the words that flash on the screen

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Speaker 1: when Batman punches somebody? Yeah, you know, are those uh

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Speaker 1: what we talk about? Is that a case of automatopeia? Biffe, biff, biff, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: How about plink plunk, ploop, PLoP, slash, splash, Yeah, those

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Speaker 1: are those? Are those all seem pretty solid? I noticed

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Speaker 1: how a lot of English on a moatopia. Maybe this

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Speaker 1: is just because they're the words I could think of,

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Speaker 1: but it seems to me like a lot of them

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Speaker 1: are sounds for sounds that animals make, or words for

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Speaker 1: what water does or what happens in water. Another one

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Speaker 1: great one is twinkle. Wait a minute, did you catch

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Speaker 1: me there? It's a trick? I think, did you notice

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Speaker 1: that twinkle? And when I very first said it did

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Speaker 1: you think, yeah, that's a good one too. I probably

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Speaker 1: would have thought that that's a good on a mootopeia.

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Speaker 1: Pale stars twinkle in the night sky. What do you

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Speaker 1: hear when you envision that sentence. I hear a twinkling. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I picture stars twinkling, almost in a cinematic sense,

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Speaker 1: like twinkling more than they actually appear to twinkle in

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Speaker 1: the night sky. But there's a little almost on a

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Speaker 1: bell sound that goes with the word, don't you think, uh?

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Speaker 1: Like I think about when William Wordsworth rights continuous as

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Speaker 1: the stars that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way.

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Speaker 1: Of course he's he's talking about flowers. He's talking about daffodils,

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Speaker 1: and he's comparing them to stars by the way they

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Speaker 1: move back and forth in the breeze. He says, ten

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Speaker 1: thousand I saw at a glance tossing their heads in

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Speaker 1: sprightly dance. Here's another one you might have heard before,

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Speaker 1: Twinkle twinkle, little star that you have. That's another another

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Speaker 1: famous version, which, by the way, here's a mind blower

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Speaker 1: for at least some listeners out there. I didn't, you know,

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Speaker 1: I didn't realize until the last couple of years that

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Speaker 1: it's the same song as the ABC song with just

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Speaker 1: different lyrics. Try that out for size. I gotta pick

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Speaker 1: my jaw up off the ground. I don't think I've

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Speaker 1: ever heard of that. I never know one ever made.

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Speaker 1: I never made that connection before. But then I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you yeah, that's exactly the same song. Did you

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Speaker 1: know that London Bridge is Falling Down is the same

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Speaker 1: tune as that classic old English full crime, Happy, Happy Halloween,

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Speaker 1: Halloween Halloween silver Shamrock. Yes, there there is that. You know.

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Speaker 1: One that's a less conventional use of twinkle that I

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Speaker 1: really like is in Walt Whitman. He's got a poem

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Speaker 1: about a shuttering locomotive. I think it's called Like to

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Speaker 1: a Locomotive in Winter, where he says thy knitted frame,

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Speaker 1: thy springs in valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels.

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Speaker 1: But the weirdness is twinkle feels like an automotopia to me,

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Speaker 1: it feels exactly like PLoP or or ploop or quack.

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Speaker 1: But it's not an ont amotopeia. I mean, we know that,

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Speaker 1: like the stars don't make a sound, but part of

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Speaker 1: me rebels. Of course, twinkles an automotopea. It really feels

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Speaker 1: like one twinkle twinkle is the sound that stars make

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Speaker 1: when their brightness fluctuates. And of course that isn't true,

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Speaker 1: but I I just know it's true, even though it's

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Speaker 1: not that stars don't make a sound, and yet that's

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Speaker 1: the sound they make. And I believe the sense of

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Speaker 1: the false on amotopeia of twinkle is even sort of

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Speaker 1: suggested in the way the word is used in some

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Speaker 1: rhymed poetry, like writers seem to sense a deeper parallel

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Speaker 1: between twinkle and a true on amotopia word, like in

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Speaker 1: ed garlan pose poem The Bells. Oh that's a great one.

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Speaker 1: Do you want to read it? Oh? Sure? Here the

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Speaker 1: sledges with the bells, silver bells, what a world of merriment.

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Speaker 1: Their melody fore tells how they twinkle, tinkle, tinkle in

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Speaker 1: the icy air of night, while the stars that oversprinkle

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Speaker 1: all the heavens seemed to twinkle with a crystalline delight.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, tinkle is like the anomotopia of the bells.

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Speaker 1: But then the stars also twinkle, as if that's like

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Speaker 1: the same thing. Fun fact. Folk singer phil oaks Uh

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Speaker 1: it was one of probably many people to set pose

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Speaker 1: poem to music. Oh, I don't think I've heard the

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Speaker 1: fun little folk song. What a world of merriment their

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Speaker 1: melody foretells, you know, it's a fun little tune. Cool

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Speaker 1: to look that up. But anyway, I like the idea

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Speaker 1: here that if a word is, like we were talking

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Speaker 1: about earlier, like a form of mind control, it's a

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Speaker 1: way of just with without a person's consent, controlling the

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Speaker 1: contents of their brain. Twinkle is a form of mind

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Speaker 1: control that drives us to believe. In a contradiction, the

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Speaker 1: word is like an automatopeic simulacrum. It's an attempt to

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Speaker 1: copy a thing that does not exist, the sound of

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Speaker 1: a bright light varying in intensity. And I just wonder

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Speaker 1: why do we feel this so deeply? I mean, maybe

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Speaker 1: everybody else doesn't feel it as strongly as I do,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like this is probably a common sensation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of any that that resonate particularly

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Speaker 1: strongly with me. I guess sometimes there's a very strong

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Speaker 1: word for like various facial expressions, you know, And we

401
00:21:38,840 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 1: feel facial expressions very strongly because they are, you know,

402
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,960
Speaker 1: non verbal forms of communication. Like, for instance, I don't

403
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Speaker 1: know that this may not hold up when we start

404
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Speaker 1: tearing it apart here, But for someone to gawk at something, yeah,

405
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Speaker 1: it's not like the face makes a sound the sound gawk.

406
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Speaker 1: But if you were to make that argument for me,

407
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Speaker 1: you know, like that this is a sound like it.

408
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Speaker 1: It almost feels like a sound sound in the mind

409
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Speaker 1: if you're seeing somebody that is visibly gawking at something. Yes,

410
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Speaker 1: it's a word that doesn't just have a lexical definition

411
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Speaker 1: that you understand, but it has it has like a

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Speaker 1: sensory force. It delivers a sensory feeling by saying the word. Now,

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Speaker 1: I'm just this is just coming off the top of

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Speaker 1: my head. So I'm sure later if I when I

415
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Speaker 1: look up gawk, I can you know you'll be able

416
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Speaker 1: to tease a part the history of the word and

417
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Speaker 1: where it comes from and what it's a linguistic origins

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Speaker 1: are well. As we said earlier, I mean, it's possible

419
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Speaker 1: for there to be like false on amunopeas where something

420
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Speaker 1: you would think is just copying the sound of something,

421
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Speaker 1: but actually you can show where it derives from other

422
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Speaker 1: words in a language that maybe don't even originally sound

423
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Speaker 1: so much like the thing. But anyway, So one answer

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Speaker 1: as to why we feel these kind of connections between

425
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:51,280
Speaker 1: like the feeling or sound of a word and a

426
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:54,359
Speaker 1: concept that is not actually a sound or does not

427
00:22:54,560 --> 00:22:57,879
Speaker 1: sound like the concept um one. One answer would simply

428
00:22:57,920 --> 00:23:00,719
Speaker 1: be that we're culturally conditioned to feel the strange kind

429
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:03,840
Speaker 1: of synesthesia with the meaning of a word, simply because

430
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:06,120
Speaker 1: we know what the word means, We've learned it, we've

431
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:08,880
Speaker 1: learned to think of it this way, and it's just conditioning, right.

432
00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:12,159
Speaker 1: But the answer also might not be that simple, And

433
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:13,880
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should take a break and then

434
00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:19,280
Speaker 1: come back and look at some words in other languages. Alright,

435
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:22,760
Speaker 1: we're back. So I was inspired to talk about this

436
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: today in in this episode by an article that I

437
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: read an Eon magazine by a writer named David Robson.

438
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:31,520
Speaker 1: And in this article, Robson begins this article with a

439
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 1: list of Japanese words and then asks non Japanese speaking

440
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:38,440
Speaker 1: readers to guess what they mean. And given a couple

441
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 1: of like antonymic options, you know a word and its opposite.

442
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:46,400
Speaker 1: So if you do not speak Japanese, consider the following

443
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: word nuru nuru. Okay, I'm sorry if I'm not saying

444
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 1: that exactly right, But it's something like that. Nuru nuru

445
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 1: Does that word mean dry or slimy? Um? It sounds

446
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:02,439
Speaker 1: slimy to Yeah, It sounds slimy to me too, and

447
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 1: in fact, that is what it means. Here's another Japanese word, waku. Waku?

448
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:12,639
Speaker 1: Does that mean excited or bored? That sounds excited to me?

449
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: It sounds excited to me too. Here's another one, pika.

450
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 1: Pika Does that mean dull or sparkly? That sounds sparkly.

451
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:24,159
Speaker 1: It also sounds sparkly to me, and we're We're correct

452
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: in all three cases. Those are the real meanings. And if,

453
00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: like us, you do not speak Japanese and yet you

454
00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 1: can correctly guess the meanings of those words, you're not alone.

455
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: According to a sixteen study by in the psychology journal

456
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:42,879
Speaker 1: Collabora by Lockwood, at all, almost three quarters of Dutch

457
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 1: participants were able to correctly identify the meanings of these

458
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: words without knowing them. But how is it possible if

459
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: you don't speak a language to know what words in

460
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 1: a language mean When they're not words for things with sounds,

461
00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:58,479
Speaker 1: they're not on amount of pea. It's not like moo

462
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 1: or something. Right, these are cases where it's coming down

463
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: more too. I mean the obvious point being the case

464
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:09,880
Speaker 1: sounds right, those sharp ks which sound and it's hard

465
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: to even put that in words. Why but they sound pointy. Yeah, yeah,

466
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: they sound pointy. They sound sparkly bright somehow. Uh, And

467
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 1: that this is not just our opinion. Well, we'll come

468
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,479
Speaker 1: back in cite some evidence about this in a minute.

469
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 1: But anyway, Robson cites these as examples of words that

470
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: are known as idiophones, and these are words that are

471
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: the way I would try to describe it, though this

472
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: is a concept that can be kind of hard to

473
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: define as well discuss as we go on. But their

474
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: words that are kind of like on a mootopia, but

475
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 1: there's no original sound that they're copying. Instead, they're described

476
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: by by Lockwood and co authors as quote sound symbolic words,

477
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: and I think this is a common way of describing

478
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 1: them in the in the scientific literature. And what that

479
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 1: means is that by the sound of the word, they

480
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: tend to strong evoke a sensation like a site or

481
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: a tactile feeling. And you don't need to know the

482
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: language or know the word already to understand what that

483
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: feeling is supposed to be, or at least get close

484
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 1: to what that feeling is supposed to be. You've never

485
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 1: heard the word nuru nuru before, but it definitely sounds

486
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: more slimy to you than it sounds like dry or

487
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:26,199
Speaker 1: something else. And they're There are different kinds of ideophones

488
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 1: in different languages. Some languages are much richer in them

489
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,359
Speaker 1: than other languages are. But like Japanese is an example

490
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: of a language, there's a good number of ideophones and uh.

491
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: Willem Lockwood, one of the authors of that paper I

492
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: cited a second a second ago in a blog post,

493
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 1: writes that these these words create a very vivid image

494
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:50,640
Speaker 1: or this this strong feeling that normal lexical words just

495
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: don't quote. When a Japanese person hears the word kira

496
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: kira meaning sparkly, it is like they can actually see

497
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 1: the thing that is spark Really. How sound symbolism works, however,

498
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: is not quite clear, and there have not yet been

499
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 1: many neuroscience studies on it, but the research so far

500
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:13,120
Speaker 1: suggests that hearing sound symbolic words might involve other forms

501
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: of sensory perception in a similar way to how people

502
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:21,640
Speaker 1: with synesthesia associate colors with letters. Interesting, but you can

503
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:23,960
Speaker 1: probably already tell just from us talking so far, that

504
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:27,479
Speaker 1: this idea of the sound symbolic word is kind of

505
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: difficult to pin down exactly. It's gonna involve like related

506
00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:35,919
Speaker 1: concepts across different languages, because different languages have different qualities

507
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 1: that can be used to evoke these things. You know,

508
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 1: this or this reminds me of of you know, I've

509
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: read before about how you know, k sounds either hard

510
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,440
Speaker 1: case or soft cash or even um, even like the

511
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: sound of of cheese. How these are inherently funny sounds,

512
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 1: you know. But but then again, you know, we're thinking

513
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: of like like sparkly excitement, Like those are also kind

514
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 1: of the signifiers of of things that are funny, right, Uh,

515
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: They're not dull, they're exciting, They're evocative in some form

516
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:10,439
Speaker 1: or another. Yeah, but it's really hard to really tease

517
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:13,680
Speaker 1: out exactly why. Well, to be very clear, we don't

518
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,919
Speaker 1: want to suggest that all words are idiophonic, because I

519
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:20,920
Speaker 1: think it's totally clear that probably most words in most

520
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:24,400
Speaker 1: languages are actually arbitrary signs and the sound has nothing

521
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:26,199
Speaker 1: to do with what they mean. And a word like

522
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:29,160
Speaker 1: clown is potentially funny because the concept of the clown

523
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: is funny. She's itself is inherently funny. I mean, if

524
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: you had no word for what this was, it's still

525
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: like this soft, smushy thing that has a distinctive odor

526
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 1: to it, but it is also delicious. We screeze, we squeeze,

527
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:44,719
Speaker 1: goat utters and we get the stuff out of it,

528
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: and then we'd like boil that and separated. It's basically

529
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 1: a practical joke of the gods as it is, so

530
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: you know, we can't help but laugh. But clearly, while

531
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 1: one of the interesting features of these ideas of idiophonic

532
00:28:56,240 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: words is that they are somewhat detectable across language. Different

533
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: is like you don't necessarily have to speak the language

534
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: to understand what some of them mean. There are ways

535
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: that languages are going to kind of change the way

536
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 1: they're used, right, Like you can think of like tonal

537
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 1: languages versus non tonal languages. Yeah, I was, I was

538
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: looking around at some of the papers that because the

539
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 1: thing is, when you start looking at papers on idiophones,

540
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 1: a number of them are you know, they're they're they're

541
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: focusing on one particular language or a couple of different languages,

542
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: and so I was looking around it some that that

543
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 1: looked at at ideophonic words and say Mandarin. Not that

544
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 1: I speak Mandarin, but I've at least read about it

545
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 1: enough that I have like some you know, base understanding

546
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: of of of what it is linguistically, and uh, I

547
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: did run across um. So it's says from chen Zi

548
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: Ming's uh idiophonic words in Mandarin and um. The author

549
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: points that there's perhaps some difficulty in settling on a

550
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:58,560
Speaker 1: unified ideophone definition that works across all languages quote or

551
00:29:58,600 --> 00:30:02,640
Speaker 1: even within a language. Uh, they wrote, quote ideophones are

552
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: much likely to be proposed as different categories under different names,

553
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: in different in terms of different criteria within a certain language.

554
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: Uh So there is this kind of elusive nature to

555
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 1: to really like pinning it down, you know, well, certainly

556
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: to create any kind of like unified definition of ideophone.

557
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: That's one of the senses I'm getting from this paper.

558
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: And other said I looked at I think the closest

559
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: I can find is that the uh, the the sign

560
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: of the word itself, either the sound or the markings

561
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 1: on a page or whatever generates a sensation other than

562
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: a sonic one. Okay, Yeah, so that it could be

563
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 1: like a tactile feeling or the belief that you're seeing something,

564
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: or like just an association with feelings or images, or

565
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,479
Speaker 1: or maybe even like smells or tastes or something. And

566
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: I think especially if that can be detected by people

567
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 1: who have never encountered the word before in use and

568
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: don't know what it means in context. I got another

569
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: exercise for us to protect us here to to figure

570
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: this out. So, Robert, I've attached a couple of images here.

571
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: You may have seen this experiment before, you may already

572
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: know where we're going with this, But um describe these

573
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: two images briefly. Okay. One is like a sharp pointed

574
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: kind of sharooken shape, and the other is, uh something

575
00:31:23,960 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a splat, like a cartoon splat,

576
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: like a cartoon paintball shape, also kind of reminiscent of,

577
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: you know, a bizarre clover. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that's

578
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: a very good way of putting. An image on the

579
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 1: left is like kind of like a pointy star. Image

580
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 1: on the right sort of like a splatty cloud. Now,

581
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: let's say I give these two images names. I'm not

582
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: going to tell you which is which, But one is

583
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 1: named Molly and one is named Kate. Which is which. Well,

584
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: if we're going to go back to some of these

585
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: ideas we've been dealing with, Kate has that k sound,

586
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: it's gonna be sharper, it's going to be point here,

587
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: and Molly has that kind of I mean, I'm maybe overthinking.

588
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: That's kind of the problem with this, right you started

589
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 1: thinking about it too much. You're not dealing with the

590
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: direct um. We're not coming at this clean. We've already

591
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 1: been talking about the what sounds feel like. But I

592
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: feel like pretty instinctively we would say that Kate is

593
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: the one with the sharp angles and Molly is the

594
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: one with the rounded cloud edge, And a large portion

595
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 1: of people would actually agree that this is the answer

596
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 1: and it works not just for those names. That's just

597
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: one type of example, but uh, this, this experiment has

598
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: been done giving them names like Kiki and Buba. Oh yes,

599
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: the Kiki Buba and uh Takete and Maluma. And in

600
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: research that this has been multiple experiments over the past

601
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: century or so by like Wolfgang Cohler vs. Rama Schandren

602
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 1: and others. Cola definitely sharpened pointing well, it's both kind

603
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: of right because the K is sharpened pointy, but the

604
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: owl that sounds like round to me, So like, why

605
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 1: this inherent? And this apparently works in not all cases,

606
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: but in most cases that it's been tried across language differences.

607
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,479
Speaker 1: So apparently sharp angles sound like T N K, and

608
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 1: round clouds sound like M and L and round vowels

609
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 1: like oh. And this isn't the only example. For some reason,

610
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: it just seems that across different cultures and different languages

611
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: were pretty consistent, not always consistent, but pretty consistent in

612
00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:29,560
Speaker 1: associating certain types of human mouth sounds with particular non

613
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: auditory sensations like sites and geometric angles and feelings and

614
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 1: so uh. To read a quote from Robson here from

615
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: his article, he's talking about a strain of linguistics that's

616
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 1: now taking idiophones more seriously as a subject. Quote. Language

617
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: is embodied a process that involves subtle feedback for both

618
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: listener and speaker between the sound of a word, the

619
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: vocal apparatus, and our own experience of human physicality. Taken together,

620
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: this dynamic helps to create a connection between certain sounds

621
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: and their attendant meanings. These associations appear to be universal

622
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: across all human societies. Interesting, So it sounded like when

623
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,239
Speaker 1: we when we when we we're trying to comprehend some

624
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: of these, uh, these sound words, like we're potentially connecting

625
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: in like like the pre language verbal communication skills of

626
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 1: our species. Yeah, it's quite possible, and we should come

627
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:30,800
Speaker 1: back to that at the end of the episode. Um,

628
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: but yeah, there appears to be some kind of primordial

629
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: association that somewhat transcends culture, that associates certain mouth sounds

630
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: with certain types of sites or feelings. And so we

631
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:45,120
Speaker 1: know one example now is that like t s and

632
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: k's look like sharp angles, and and like bees, and

633
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:52,359
Speaker 1: m's and l's feel like round, rounded edges. Here some more,

634
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:55,720
Speaker 1: he Robson cites the research of a guy named Diedrich

635
00:34:56,120 --> 00:35:00,359
Speaker 1: Westerman who found that across different languages in Western Africa,

636
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:05,480
Speaker 1: the e sound like in cheese or peak or twinkle,

637
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: was often associated with concepts that were light, fine, or bright,

638
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 1: while the back vowels in the mouth like walk or fast,

639
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 1: were associated with concepts of slowness, heaviness, and darkness. And

640
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: so at the same time, there were associations with consonants, right,

641
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 1: not just the vowels consonants like B and G, like

642
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: but and go were associated with heaviness and softness, while

643
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:37,120
Speaker 1: voiceless consonants like P and K, put and cut were

644
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 1: associated with harder surfaces and lighter weight. And just contemplating

645
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: these again, we're not coming at this clean. We're you know,

646
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,760
Speaker 1: having these observations already color our thinking. But I totally

647
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:51,520
Speaker 1: feel like this rings true with my feeling of sound sensations,

648
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:54,320
Speaker 1: at least as an English speaker. Like if we imagine

649
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 1: two totally new, made up words for animals in a

650
00:35:57,360 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: made up country. So we're we're going to an island

651
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: that's never been dis ever before, and we're seeing some

652
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 1: fauna there, uh one piece. One piece of fauna is

653
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 1: a tiny yellow crab that runs quickly across the sand.

654
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:13,719
Speaker 1: And the other animal is a large, blubbery semi aquatic

655
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: mammal that looks kind of like a hippopotamus. And the

656
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: two names for these creatures are Peaky Kiki and Gubba Gubba.

657
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 1: Which one is which? Well, Gubba Gubba definitely has to

658
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: be that hippo creature for sure, exactly but why because

659
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:34,400
Speaker 1: it just sounds like a like if yeah, it's it's

660
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: it's just that's that's the sound. Like to reverse those

661
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 1: names would be a cause for comedy itself, wouldn't it right?

662
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 1: I think it would. Yeah, Like if the if the

663
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:47,320
Speaker 1: hippo was Peaky Kiki and the and the crab was

664
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:50,239
Speaker 1: Gubba Gubba, that would be funny. That would almost seem like, well,

665
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: that's absurd, why would you call them that? Well, but

666
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: the thing is once if you if you establish them

667
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: as such. I I don't know, I might on some

668
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:00,600
Speaker 1: level find it funny because those are funny word anyway,

669
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 1: shake it and then the idea of a crab having

670
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: a name is also inherently funny. But I would I

671
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: would probably just buy it, Like I would begin to

672
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: associate the name, like the sound of the name with

673
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 1: perhaps the personality of the creature. Like suddenly I go

674
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: beyond thinking like Gubba Gubba is just like this blubberry animal,

675
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 1: but maybe like Gubba Gubba sums up the personality of

676
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: this cartoon crab that we're introducing, you know, like it

677
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:32,000
Speaker 1: it's it's it's easy to again over to overthink and overshoot,

678
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: just the sort of initial reaction that should be taking

679
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: place when we hear the sound. Yeah, Now to bring

680
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: it back to tonal languages like like Mandarin Chinese of

681
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 1: course as a tonal language. Robson writes that Westerman also

682
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: discovered sound symbolic connotations with the tones used in tonal languages,

683
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: so so it applies somewhat there too. For example, even

684
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 1: though English doesn't really employ tonality the signal meaning, in

685
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:57,960
Speaker 1: the languages that do that Westerman was studying, you found

686
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: a general trend that quote words were representing slowness, dryness,

687
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: and heaviness tended to have lower tones, and the meanwhile,

688
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: things depicting quote speed, agility, and brightness were formed by

689
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 1: higher tones. I don't know if you have a general

690
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 1: sense of that in in your experience trying to speak Chinese,

691
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:18,399
Speaker 1: But I can't say that I've progressed enough to where

692
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 1: I can really break that down now. Yeah, trying to

693
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:22,759
Speaker 1: think of some good examples offhand. I'm sure they'll come

694
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: to me after the podcast, though. So The question, of course,

695
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 1: is what explains these really common and apparently often not always,

696
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: but pretty often cross linguistic associations. And one idea is

697
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 1: that there is some sort of mental feedback that's created

698
00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: by the sensation in the body from making a sound. Right, So,

699
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,279
Speaker 1: like with kiki and buba, one idea would be, well,

700
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: when you say buba, you say oh, and the mouth

701
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 1: there makes a round shape, and maybe we intuitively associate

702
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,880
Speaker 1: the rounding of our lips with round soft edges in

703
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:02,319
Speaker 1: an image as possible. Right. Yeah. Another example here would

704
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:05,839
Speaker 1: be um matching sensations in the body in the case

705
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 1: of things we do with our noses that usually involve

706
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:15,400
Speaker 1: nasal sounds. So U think about like snort, sniff, sneeze, snout, snore.

707
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 1: You can't say the end without the nose. Yeah, okay, sorry,

708
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: I keep I keep running Mandarin words I do know

709
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 1: through my head, trying to figure out like where they

710
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: would fall. Like bow comes to mind, you know, uh,

711
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: certainly has like a round soft consistency to it. What

712
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 1: does it mean though, it's you know, it's like the

713
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 1: food the bow, Oh, like a bun Yeah, okay um,

714
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:41,839
Speaker 1: And then you know other words like like like bob

715
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: depending on how you hit it, totally like that that

716
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: can mean father, which doesn't quite really fall into what

717
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. And I'm trying, I'm sort of

718
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:57,240
Speaker 1: hurting my brain trying to think of some good, sharp

719
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:01,399
Speaker 1: sounding words that aren't names. Uh, But at any rate,

720
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: Like again, I'm sure all this will will come to

721
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,760
Speaker 1: me after we're done recording. It's interesting how we start

722
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:09,759
Speaker 1: once we are asked to observe this. You start looking

723
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 1: forward in all the words, even though we know that

724
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 1: most words are not idiophones, but we still, like I

725
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: start seeing correlations there in all kinds of words where

726
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: it might just be you know, it met me losing

727
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,359
Speaker 1: my mind here, but like, uh, I start thinking about like, oh,

728
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: what about all the the the words that start with

729
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: g r, you know, you know, just like growl, grunt, grown,

730
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:35,759
Speaker 1: Like what is that that growl? Grunt, grown, grumble? They

731
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: all start with gr which sort of like almost evokes

732
00:40:38,760 --> 00:40:41,759
Speaker 1: this kind of natural sense of something being like a

733
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 1: problem or a burden, and the needed words like great.

734
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: How does that work? Yeah? So, I mean, clearly, I

735
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: think maybe the mind is going to places where but

736
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,279
Speaker 1: where it's not quite fruitful. But anyway, it's hard to

737
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:56,760
Speaker 1: really to take a word and think about it without

738
00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: the context of its meaning and and how that meaning

739
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: kind of you know, dilutes through culture. But anyway, I

740
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:06,720
Speaker 1: guess we should we should get back to the possible

741
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: explanations for why this. Another one that Robson mentioned in

742
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: this article is just the idea that when some types

743
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:17,280
Speaker 1: of ideophones occur there is a kind of cross contamination

744
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: between sensations in brain regions. That this could be literal

745
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: just like cross linking or kind of bleed over in

746
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:26,359
Speaker 1: the brain, right, a type of synesthesia, And of course

747
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 1: synaesthesia is quote a neurological condition in which stimulation of

748
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: one sensory or cognitive pathway, for example, hearing, leads to automatic,

749
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway such

750
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: as vision. And that's a definition from psychology today. But

751
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,319
Speaker 1: synesthesia is an interesting concept in itself, like how come

752
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 1: people associate certain like letters with colors, or like feelings

753
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: with with sounds or something that's interesting because it's without

754
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 1: having experience synaesthie issha it is. What's taking place in

755
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: the mind is um it does feel like that kind

756
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 1: of direct connection, you know. Um. The the difficulty in

757
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 1: describing it kind of seems to match up there well

758
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: for me, almost saying saying twinkle is like some of

759
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:22,879
Speaker 1: the closest I get to sinis thesia, because that's it's

760
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: the sound of star makes again. And the star doesn't

761
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:27,239
Speaker 1: make a sound, but I can sort of hear it,

762
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: and it's the word twinkle. It's like saying, why is

763
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: this note purple? That sort of thing? All right, well,

764
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break and

765
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: then we're gonna come back. We're gonna talk about this

766
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: concept a little bit more. Alright, we're back. So I

767
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 1: was looking around for some commentary on idea phones, and

768
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to see, like, well, what's an

769
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:50,719
Speaker 1: example of somebody's sort of poopooing on idio phones to

770
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 1: sort of use in an idea And I ran across

771
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,279
Speaker 1: an article by linguist Paul Newman from Indiana University, and uh,

772
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: and he said the following quote, how far ideophones deviate

773
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 1: from the normal systems will vary from language to language,

774
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 1: in some cases more, in some languages less. But in

775
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: the final analysis, ideophones are part of the structure of

776
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 1: a specific language and have to be viewed in the

777
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 1: context of that language. Okay, So this is kind of

778
00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:19,919
Speaker 1: against the idea of like an overarching class of ideophones

779
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: and more like they're specific to the languages where they occur. Yeah,

780
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: I mean he's not. I don't want to make it

781
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 1: sounding like he's completely poop poing on the idea, but

782
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:31,839
Speaker 1: like basically what he's he's maybe recommending caution and like

783
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:35,240
Speaker 1: over analyzing their importance. I guess you would say. For instance,

784
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:37,840
Speaker 1: he points out that ideophones are extremely important and certain

785
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:41,440
Speaker 1: certain African languages as well as Asian and Native American languages,

786
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:45,160
Speaker 1: but he argues that in focusing on what's different about ideophones,

787
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,280
Speaker 1: he thinks that scholars tend to overlook quote the simple

788
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: notion that to a great extent, idiophones are part and

789
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: parcel of whatever language they belong to. So again he's not,

790
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: you know, saying I don't believe in ideophones, but he's

791
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: may he's questioning maybe to what, you know, what amount

792
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: of emphasis is is appropriate? Uh? And in looking around

793
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: for other tidbits on the topic, I ran across a

794
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: very interesting paper by Gary Lupin and Daniel Casisanto in

795
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 1: Language and Cognition from two thousand fourteen titled Meaningless Words

796
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 1: Promote meaningful categorization. Oh, I think I know where they're

797
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:24,280
Speaker 1: going at this, I like this. Yeah. So the common

798
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: thread here is that we're talking about non arbitrary word

799
00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: to meaning mappings. Okay, so this would be back to

800
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 1: kind of like new and newer, like if people are

801
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 1: detecting an inherent sliminess about the word just the sound

802
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,240
Speaker 1: of the word itself, right, And so they start exploring

803
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: this in the context of just pure nonsense words. And

804
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: so they bring up the nonsense words of one of

805
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,800
Speaker 1: the great nonsensical writers of all time, and at least

806
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 1: in terms of some of his word choices, that being

807
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: Lewis Carroll. Oh yeah, the jabberwock Yes. In fact, they

808
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: quote the Jabberwocke twas Brillig and the slivey toves did

809
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: guy Or and gimbal in the wave. So there's some

810
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:05,359
Speaker 1: great nonsense in there, But to just focus on one

811
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:09,320
Speaker 1: in particular, slithy is not a word and yet quote.

812
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 1: The nonsense words of Jabberwockie are made meaningful by a

813
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:19,839
Speaker 1: combination of phonological queuing and syntactic and uh distributional information.

814
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:23,320
Speaker 1: So slithy is used as an in an adjective frame

815
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:28,239
Speaker 1: and has phonological neighbors lithe and slimy. Okay, So there

816
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:32,760
Speaker 1: are some queues here, right, like the words in the Jabberwockie.

817
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: While they're not English words, it's also not just like

818
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 1: pure sound from out of nowhere, because they often are.

819
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: They sound a lot like other words that we do

820
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 1: know the meanings. Right. So it's kind of this idea

821
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: that like a new word and nonsense word doesn't quite

822
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: work in isolation. And this from actually brings back our

823
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 1: squirrel episode and sort of our uh really are unearthing

824
00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:00,360
Speaker 1: I guess of the term skug we're actually ug was

825
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,360
Speaker 1: a proper name for a squirrel, right. It was what

826
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, Uh, basically believed that the people in England

827
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: called their pet squirrels. Like it's saying a bunch of

828
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 1: scugs would be two squirrels what it would be to

829
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: say like a bunch of rovers referring to dogs. And

830
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,319
Speaker 1: so when I started using it in my household just

831
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 1: as a general term for squirrels, uh, my wife took

832
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: issue with it. It's like that sounds a little like

833
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 1: dirty or something, you know. It sounds like you're you're

834
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 1: you're using profanity against the squirrels. It sounds like an insult.

835
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: Or something, and so in cases like that you have

836
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 1: to realize, well, the word scug does not exist in isolation.

837
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: If it sounds a little bit like this word or

838
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,760
Speaker 1: that word, or even just certain sounds from other words,

839
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: then well it does incorporate ug. As if you're going

840
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 1: like ug, yes, yeah, or I guess part of the

841
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 1: appeal of scug to me is like it also sounds

842
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,759
Speaker 1: like skull and so much as that's tough. Yeah. So

843
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: much of those episodes dealt with how tough and uh

844
00:46:57,000 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: and how and how likely they are to eat the

845
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,239
Speaker 1: intense of another animal skulp that sort of thing. Not

846
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:05,439
Speaker 1: all of them, not all. Anyway, back to this paper,

847
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:09,640
Speaker 1: they conducted a lab experiment using the words food and creelch.

848
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,040
Speaker 1: Crelch is grape juice, it's my favorite brand, And they

849
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:17,560
Speaker 1: apply these words to two distinct alien species um that

850
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: they made up for the experiment, and ascid participants to

851
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 1: come up with real adjectives to describe them. So they're

852
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: basically saying, hey, there's an alien known as the crelch.

853
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:29,719
Speaker 1: Describe it. Come up with some adjectives to describe what

854
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 1: this creature looks like, or you there, think about the

855
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: foods and so they ended up the describing the creelches

856
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 1: as pointy and narrow. What do you know that's got

857
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: a hard case sound? And then guess what the foods

858
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: were shaped like, Well, there's an oo sounds those rounded

859
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,600
Speaker 1: lips sort of front of the mouth, long vowel, that

860
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 1: makes me think of soft, pillowy. Yeah, yeah, round and plump.

861
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,360
Speaker 1: That's what they said, yeah, they and they say quote.

862
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 1: The results expand the scope of research on sound symbolism

863
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 1: and support a non traditional view of word meaning, according

864
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: to which words do not have meanings by virtue of

865
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: a conventionalized form meaning pairing. Rather, the meaning of a

866
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: word is the effect that the word form has on

867
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:16,200
Speaker 1: the user users mental activity, which I think a nice

868
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,319
Speaker 1: way of summing up some of what we're talking about here,

869
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 1: like what does this word due to your mental activity?

870
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,320
Speaker 1: Like what what additional adjective is, what additional words is?

871
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 1: It's summoning, and what basic characteristics is it's summoning into

872
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:29,920
Speaker 1: your mind? And then you're forced to piece together like

873
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: I can imagine very faintly, like it's not a distinct picture,

874
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:36,960
Speaker 1: but I without even reading any of the adjectives listed

875
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: in the paper, I kind of have an idea of

876
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:40,760
Speaker 1: what the crouch looks like and what the food looks

877
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: like in a broader sense. You know what this makes

878
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 1: me think of? So I like the idea of what

879
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 1: they're suggesting here, that like words can have a sort

880
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: of like generalized mental activity impact even if they have

881
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:56,360
Speaker 1: no lexical definition. Uh, it makes me think about the

882
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: way that I don't know if you remember, especially, I

883
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:00,759
Speaker 1: had this experience all this time when I was a kid,

884
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:07,280
Speaker 1: of finding jokes funny even though I didn't get them. Oh, yeah,

885
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 1: you know about this, Like when you would hear a

886
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: joke that was like an adult joke that had references

887
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 1: to things in it that you didn't understand. So a

888
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: joke is made by making sense of something, but you

889
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:22,240
Speaker 1: don't get the sense, and yet it's funny anyway. Sometimes

890
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:25,279
Speaker 1: it would be really funny even though you didn't get

891
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 1: it at all. Oh. I would get this all the

892
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: time watching Mystery Science Theater thwo thousand as a kid,

893
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: because a lot of they were a lot of pop

894
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:36,319
Speaker 1: pop culture references to shows that I was maybe not

895
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:38,399
Speaker 1: quite old enough to have seen, just because I wasn't

896
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:41,439
Speaker 1: watching television. Uh as a child, you know, I wasn't

897
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:44,239
Speaker 1: watching television when Joe Hodgson was watching television when he

898
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:46,319
Speaker 1: was my age, that sort of thing. So I didn't

899
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: necessarily get the jokes, but I found them hilarious. And

900
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: to this day, there are still a lot of the

901
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: jokes I've I've researched or come up to speed on.

902
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 1: But occasionally I'll be rewatching an old episode of MST

903
00:49:57,800 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: and there'll be a joke where I'm I'm laughing out loud,

904
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: and I still have no idea what the connection is there.

905
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,080
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. That happens sometimes with MST especially,

906
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:09,760
Speaker 1: but it just happens. Sometimes you don't get a joke,

907
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: but it's still involuntarily triggers laughter. It's just funny, and

908
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:17,120
Speaker 1: it's not even always like you could maybe explain it,

909
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:19,399
Speaker 1: like what if it's just like social laughter, like you're

910
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 1: in a group other people are laughing, but it I

911
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:24,000
Speaker 1: don't know. It happens to me when I'm like, oh,

912
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:28,000
Speaker 1: by myself, there's nobody else there, and it's funny. So yeah,

913
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 1: I think language has this power of it has an

914
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: effect on our brains, even when we don't fully understand

915
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:39,200
Speaker 1: the lexical or syntactic significance of it and that's really interesting.

916
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: Or sometimes maybe we can only get vague hints of

917
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: the lexical significance, but it's it's like it's having an

918
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 1: impact anyway. It's the same way that, um, you know,

919
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 1: you can listen to poetry in another language and it

920
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: can be great, like you literally don't understand what they're

921
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 1: talking or you know, I think I can admit this,

922
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:02,280
Speaker 1: especially since I've heard the Columbia linguists John mcward admit

923
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 1: this too, that like most of the time, if I'm like,

924
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: if I'm listening to Shakespeare performed, I'm not catching the

925
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: meaning of everything. I mean, like, I don't know if

926
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: you have this experience too, Like I I sort of

927
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: can basically follow the action, but you know, like half

928
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: the lines go over my head and I'm like, a way,

929
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't follow the sense for sense, meaning

930
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:29,640
Speaker 1: of every statement made by a character in a Shakespeare

931
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 1: play because there's a lot of antiquated language in it

932
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:35,320
Speaker 1: and sometimes like the the rhythm, you know, the diambic

933
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:37,799
Speaker 1: pentameter or whatever, the rhythm and stuff in the in

934
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 1: the writing makes for very sonically beautiful writing that is

935
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 1: creating pleasurable feelings in my brain, but I'm not always

936
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 1: following the literal sense of what is being said. Yeah,

937
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:53,560
Speaker 1: I would always have that experience in college taking Shakespeare classes,

938
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 1: you'd end up, I feel like I would end up

939
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: having like two different readings or two different viewings of

940
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:01,720
Speaker 1: the same play or the same scene. There's the version

941
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 1: that you you take in before you've done a deeper reading,

942
00:52:04,960 --> 00:52:06,480
Speaker 1: and then you get in, you read the text, you

943
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 1: read all the footnotes about what what this word means

944
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:11,800
Speaker 1: or what it's referring to, or what it would have

945
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:14,640
Speaker 1: meant in the context of the time, and then you're

946
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,920
Speaker 1: left with this, you know, ultimately enriched understanding of what

947
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: the play is. But it is a slightly different experience. Yeah,

948
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: that is really interesting. One thing that I think is

949
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:27,360
Speaker 1: really funny that I mentioned that that comment by John mcward,

950
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 1: But I've heard him recommend watching Shakespeare plays in another language,

951
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: like where where somebody's gonna done a good translation into

952
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:39,760
Speaker 1: another language of Shakespeare if you speak that other language,

953
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:42,719
Speaker 1: like if you speak Vietnamese and somebody's done a good

954
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:46,560
Speaker 1: Vietnamese translation of Hamlet, watch that He says that sometimes

955
00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 1: that can be even better than watching Shakespeare in the

956
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:55,319
Speaker 1: original English. How about watching the German language episodes of

957
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:58,719
Speaker 1: Monty Python. Have you ever done that? No? They cut

958
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:01,280
Speaker 1: at least one, maybe more. I don't remember the details

959
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: on it, but they cut at least one German language

960
00:53:04,200 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 1: episode where it wasn't dubbed in German. They performed all

961
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:11,600
Speaker 1: these skits again in German. Is it funny? Um? Glad? Yeah?

962
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:14,400
Speaker 1: I mean, it can't help but be funny given that concept,

963
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:18,960
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's necessarily funny beyond just I mean,

964
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:20,759
Speaker 1: if you speak a little German, you can certainly pick

965
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: up on some of the words, and of course there's

966
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, a lot a lot of

967
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:29,080
Speaker 1: similarity between the German language system and the English language system. Uh.

968
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:31,600
Speaker 1: But ultimately I would say it it always felt just

969
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: kind of like surface level amusing to someone who doesn't

970
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:39,799
Speaker 1: like speak German at all. You know, it is funny though,

971
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 1: is a non French speaker Eddie Iszard's bits in French? Okay?

972
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:46,080
Speaker 1: You ever seen those? No? I haven't. It's a show

973
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:47,919
Speaker 1: for an English speaking audience, but he does a long

974
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:50,440
Speaker 1: stretch of the show just in French, and it's really funny.

975
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:53,080
Speaker 1: But anyway, I wanted to come back at the end

976
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:55,839
Speaker 1: here to just briefly discuss a little bit about like

977
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 1: what we might learn from idiophones. One interesting point that

978
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:04,600
Speaker 1: Robson makes in his Eon article is about language acquisition

979
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:08,680
Speaker 1: in infancy. You know, obviously idiophone type words are useful

980
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:12,320
Speaker 1: to speakers falling ages. Everybody uses them, But he wonders,

981
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:15,400
Speaker 1: you know, could they be especially useful when a baby

982
00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:19,920
Speaker 1: is acquiring language for the first time, Like if certain

983
00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:24,400
Speaker 1: sounds innately for some reason or another signal associations with

984
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: certain images or tactile sensations or types of movement. Could

985
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:33,440
Speaker 1: it be that we instinctually use these associations to help

986
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:38,799
Speaker 1: young children learn language without realizing it. Like think about

987
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:42,280
Speaker 1: the ways that parents tend to say things when talking

988
00:54:42,320 --> 00:54:46,719
Speaker 1: to young children, like teensy weensy instead of small. Well,

989
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 1: I'm going to speak for at least some segment of

990
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:53,400
Speaker 1: the parents out there and say I never used the

991
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:56,279
Speaker 1: word eatsy weensy. Well, a lot of parents do, though.

992
00:54:56,320 --> 00:54:58,239
Speaker 1: I mean, you hear that kind of thing, Yeah, I

993
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:00,640
Speaker 1: mean the whole Yeah, the whole topic of of for

994
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, cute talk is is very

995
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:07,359
Speaker 1: fascinating to me because I mean, I really I would

996
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 1: like to come back and do we've touched on it before,

997
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: talking about um a little bit about about talking cute.

998
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:17,080
Speaker 1: I think we did. It came up a little bit

999
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: in the episode about whining whining. Yes, there's like there's

1000
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:23,200
Speaker 1: sort of like an embedded language between parent and child,

1001
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 1: where like the parent uses like an elevated tone, like

1002
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 1: higher pitch terms and certain kinds of things when talking

1003
00:55:30,360 --> 00:55:32,359
Speaker 1: to a kid, and then the kid does it back

1004
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 1: when wanting attention from the parent. Right, Yeah, but I

1005
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 1: would like to come back and discuss this thing that

1006
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:40,799
Speaker 1: I'm going through now, is experiencing like, uh, my child

1007
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 1: who's in first grade, Well, suddenly he'll need to talk

1008
00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:48,000
Speaker 1: in this cute voice, like he'll be using terms that

1009
00:55:48,040 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: are they're a little cute, see wootsie, you know, but

1010
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:53,799
Speaker 1: but speaking in a way that we never spoke. We

1011
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:55,640
Speaker 1: never spoke to him like that. We never spoke like

1012
00:55:55,680 --> 00:55:57,840
Speaker 1: cartoon characters. We didn't encourage him to speak like a

1013
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 1: cartoon character. And granted, you know, you can pick up

1014
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: all this stuff from your classmates, from TV shows, et cetera.

1015
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:06,359
Speaker 1: There are so many different, uh, you know, ways you're

1016
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 1: getting information at this age. But but uh, I know

1017
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 1: there have been there, there have been papers written on

1018
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 1: like try trying to figure out exactly why uh kids

1019
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: about this age range why they do this, because it

1020
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: seems to be a pretty widespread thing. So that's one

1021
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 1: topic I would I would love to return to, if

1022
00:56:23,239 --> 00:56:25,600
Speaker 1: if only for my own sanity. Well, I mean, I

1023
00:56:25,680 --> 00:56:28,400
Speaker 1: think it's clear that some of these types of terms

1024
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:30,719
Speaker 1: that parents use in this qt C talk are sort

1025
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 1: of sound symbolic, right, their versions of ideophones some one

1026
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 1: way or another. Robson sites research by Mutsumi am I

1027
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 1: at Kio University in Japan and so Taro Kita at

1028
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:45,680
Speaker 1: the University of Warwick and in the UK that UM

1029
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: one and two year olds quote when given a sound

1030
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:51,920
Speaker 1: symbolic word, we're more likely to direct their attention at

1031
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 1: the appropriate object or movement, and also that sound symbolic

1032
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 1: words for things were easier for children of this age

1033
00:56:59,120 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: to remember, lay it or after they had learned. And

1034
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:05,320
Speaker 1: then for a deeper dive, I guess I I'd recommend

1035
00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 1: people go and read this article themselves, but I just

1036
00:57:08,080 --> 00:57:10,040
Speaker 1: wanted to mention he is sort of by talking about

1037
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:12,400
Speaker 1: the question which is just a hypothesis at this point

1038
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:16,640
Speaker 1: of whether sound symbolic types of words could have been

1039
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:19,840
Speaker 1: there at the genesis of human language. About this question,

1040
00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 1: we asked at the beginning, where did the first words

1041
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 1: come from? When there were no words, but you know

1042
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: that it existed before for things to derive from? The

1043
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: question is would words that inherently, for one reason or

1044
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 1: another evoke feelings and evoke sensations just by the sound

1045
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 1: of them? With those kinds of words form a bridge

1046
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: from humans with no language to the mostly arbitrary lexical

1047
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,160
Speaker 1: languages that would come later. So like a very simple

1048
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 1: like survival basis, you could imagine like a like a

1049
00:57:51,520 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: kiky sound is attention, attention, and then a buba sound

1050
00:57:55,800 --> 00:57:59,680
Speaker 1: or whatever is calm down, it's chill, everything's good, like

1051
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:01,680
Speaker 1: bay sically get into some of the theories about like

1052
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:05,560
Speaker 1: the communication of laughter after being a way of of

1053
00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:07,720
Speaker 1: instantly saying, Oh, the thing that I thought was gonna

1054
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: kill us is not. It's not kiki, it's bubba after all. Ha. Yeah.

1055
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean like that the first sounds or

1056
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:17,280
Speaker 1: the first words could have been things that were like

1057
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:22,440
Speaker 1: phonemes that create a certain sensation or sort of evoke

1058
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: a certain kind of image or feeling. And that later

1059
00:58:25,960 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 1: on they have more fixed lexical definitions, and these sounds

1060
00:58:30,640 --> 00:58:33,440
Speaker 1: perhaps are like potentially like some of the first building

1061
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: blocks of of more powerful words and concepts, you know, yeah,

1062
00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:39,360
Speaker 1: like it's it's something that's booba. Booba is like it's

1063
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:43,520
Speaker 1: super comforting and chill, and something that's kiki kikikiki is

1064
00:58:43,560 --> 00:58:46,160
Speaker 1: like three times is rough, or something that's bubba kiki

1065
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:49,000
Speaker 1: is soft at first but has like a hidden bar,

1066
00:58:49,640 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know. Obviously you can extrapolate from

1067
00:58:53,200 --> 00:58:56,560
Speaker 1: there and imagine like language language systems building up based

1068
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 1: on that. But the funny thing is, of course, I mean,

1069
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:02,080
Speaker 1: we have no idea is actually correct about this being

1070
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:05,440
Speaker 1: the origins of of language. But if that were in

1071
00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 1: some way true, the funny thing is we don't like

1072
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:10,919
Speaker 1: run out of uses for these types of words as

1073
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 1: we get lexical languages. These words just continue to be

1074
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: as useful as they ever were, were more and more

1075
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:19,080
Speaker 1: useful all the time. I just thought of a great

1076
00:59:19,080 --> 00:59:25,480
Speaker 1: one in English. It I I there's no ikey sound

1077
00:59:25,720 --> 00:59:28,920
Speaker 1: that ikey is mimicking, and yet ikey is like a

1078
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:34,000
Speaker 1: deeply evocative word that conjures a feeling. Yeah, yeah, And

1079
00:59:34,040 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 1: then is the word moist. You know, that's a common

1080
00:59:37,200 --> 00:59:40,560
Speaker 1: common topic of discussion. They're like, why do people have

1081
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 1: a like a visceral reaction to that word. I don't know,

1082
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:47,440
Speaker 1: but we just lost a lot of listeners. Well it's

1083
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:49,880
Speaker 1: just as well because we're at the end of the episode.

1084
00:59:49,880 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 1: We're going to wrap it up there. But again, this

1085
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:53,280
Speaker 1: is something we could come back to in the future.

1086
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:56,360
Speaker 1: There's plenty more to discuss about about the you know,

1087
00:59:56,360 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: the potential origins of language and just how language works. UH.

1088
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:01,640
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

1089
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:03,800
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over

1090
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.

1091
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:08,040
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1092
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Speaker 1: media accounts. That's where you'll find UH the store tab

1093
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Speaker 1: either our logo on it or basic designs that are

1096
01:00:20,680 --> 01:00:23,680
Speaker 1: you know, based on previous episodes we've recorded, such as

1097
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: the episode about the scugs. Likewise, if you want to

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1103
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Speaker 1: while you're at it, go ahead and subscribe to Invention

1104
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,720
Speaker 1: as well. That's our other show that explores the history,

1105
01:00:44,800 --> 01:00:48,600
Speaker 1: the origins, the the impact and the legacy of various

1106
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:51,760
Speaker 1: human inventions. Definitely check it out. If you like this show,

1107
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: we think you'll like that show too, So anyway, thanks

1108
01:00:54,800 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison.

1109
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:00,600
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1110
01:01:00,600 --> 01:01:03,320
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1111
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you

1112
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Speaker 1: can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff

1113
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:21,320
Speaker 1: works dot com for moral thiss and thousands of other topics.

1114
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:30,320
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