Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, maybe everyone, and welcome forward Thinking. The podcast
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says, I'll stop the world
Speaker 1: and not with you. I'm John and strictly I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: foc Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. Today we are launching
Speaker 1: what is hopefully going to become a series of podcasts
Speaker 1: within the Forward Thinking podcast. I think Full of Hope
Speaker 1: is fine because we're the ones who decide so well,
Speaker 1: odds are good. We'll just see if it keeps happening, right,
Speaker 1: that's fair. But here's the basic concept. It's you don't
Speaker 1: see that in sci fi because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of times when we're sitting around having conversations about things
Speaker 1: that seem to us very likely to happen in the future,
Speaker 1: but the majority of science fiction depictions of the future
Speaker 1: don't realize these events. And you guys sort of touched
Speaker 1: on this with the anti gravity or the artificial gravity
Speaker 1: episode rather or the idea that you know in the
Speaker 1: future the sci fi you always see people walking around
Speaker 1: on spacecraft, but really, wouldn't you see a lot of
Speaker 1: people floating around most of the time We talked about
Speaker 1: this a lot on the show. Actually, I mean usually
Speaker 1: are our entrance into any given topic is science fiction,
Speaker 1: because that's where most of us experienced the future. Yeah yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I I often experienced the future, but by
Speaker 1: the time I can talk about it, it's over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you use the example of artificial gravity, there
Speaker 1: at least there are some technologies we can talk about
Speaker 1: where we'd say, okay, there's some things we have in
Speaker 1: mind that could probably solve the artificial gravity problem just
Speaker 1: by simulating it with centripetal force or something like that.
Speaker 1: But there are other things that we think are are
Speaker 1: pretty sure bets for the future, and you rarely see
Speaker 1: them in sci fi, or at least the majority of
Speaker 1: the time you've don't. And the one we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about today is the consistency of modern speech and lying,
Speaker 1: which so I want to start y'all out with a quote. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is a quote I grabbed from the internet
Speaker 1: by Jean Luke Picard one Captain Jean luc Picard, second
Speaker 1: best Captain of the Enterprise ever. Time to start a fight? Alright, already,
Speaker 1: Pike was the purpose obviously, so the captain of the
Speaker 1: enterprise in the next generation. Once said this, the prime
Speaker 1: directive is not just a set of rules. It is
Speaker 1: a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven
Speaker 1: again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less
Speaker 1: developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference, maybe
Speaker 1: the results are invariably disastrous. What's wrong with that? Well,
Speaker 1: on one hand, he's advocating the prime directive, which I
Speaker 1: think is debatable. Well, fine, but that's a different that's
Speaker 1: a whole other nerd fight. But taking it completely aside,
Speaker 1: the uh, the opinion of the prime directive as advocated
Speaker 1: in Star Trek. You notice how he sounds pretty much
Speaker 1: like how we talk today, except you know, more English. Right, Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so he has his own literary style, his own style,
Speaker 1: but he's three years in the future and he's speaking
Speaker 1: like we speak. That's true. That's true. He's using the
Speaker 1: same same terminology that we use. He's using the same
Speaker 1: sentence structure, the same syntax, everything along those lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see, that's highly intelligible to us. It sounds exactly
Speaker 1: like someone like Picard would talk today. Sure, you picked
Speaker 1: one of the Star Trek episodes that was highly intelligible.
Speaker 1: I kind appointed you to a few that aren't. But
Speaker 1: there there are some things that go even farther into
Speaker 1: the future, where you know, they've depicted far future civilizations
Speaker 1: that basically just speak twentieth century English. Or the example
Speaker 1: I polled was Planet of the Apes, very you know,
Speaker 1: classic science fiction film. I'm talking about the Charlton Heston one. Obviously,
Speaker 1: so in the the movie the year that the astronaut
Speaker 1: travels to he's in he's in suspended animation, is traveling
Speaker 1: near the speed of light for I think a year
Speaker 1: and a half and lands on a um what he
Speaker 1: believes it to be an alien planet in what is
Speaker 1: the year three thousand nine eight, but it's actually spoiler
Speaker 1: alert Earth. And you have this whole's cast system of
Speaker 1: apes that have evolved over time. And the guerrillas are
Speaker 1: like the military police, and the orangutans are the politicians,
Speaker 1: chimpanzees with the scientists, and they all speak English. Uh,
Speaker 1: they speak English that they the astronaut can understand even
Speaker 1: if it's not English. Let's assume for a moment that
Speaker 1: it's whatever other language it happens to be, but it
Speaker 1: has been translated for us. The audience so we can
Speaker 1: understand it. The fact is, the astronaut can still understand
Speaker 1: what the apes are saying. The language itself has not
Speaker 1: changed in his journey. So even if you give it
Speaker 1: the opportunity of saying, oh, well, it's just so that
Speaker 1: you can understand the story, the characters within it can
Speaker 1: understand each other. So the divine spark exists only in
Speaker 1: Simian brain. Yeah, so, so what what you get there?
Speaker 1: Is this crazy idea that these characters are able to
Speaker 1: communicate despite hundreds of years of separation between them. So
Speaker 1: here's did you grab a doctor? I had to here
Speaker 1: he goes. You are right. I have always known about
Speaker 1: man from the evidence. I believe his wisdom must walk
Speaker 1: hand in hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule
Speaker 1: his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives
Speaker 1: battle to everything around him, even himself. Touche Doctor's as
Speaker 1: sounds like a particularly eloquent twentieth century English Charlton Heston
Speaker 1: flies with dirty. Uh. Do we have anything even farther
Speaker 1: ahead than oh? Sure? Yeah? If you want to look
Speaker 1: at the time Machine by H. G. Wells, Do you
Speaker 1: want to talk about super into the future. So, the
Speaker 1: protagonist of the time machine travels to the year eight
Speaker 1: hundred two thousand seven d one. That's crazy, now, flag
Speaker 1: I read that book. I thought that in the book
Speaker 1: they did speak a different line they do in the book,
Speaker 1: in the original in the film from the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: right in the book version. The eloy, which are the
Speaker 1: the sort of docile um cattle, spoil her alert in
Speaker 1: the time machine. But they are they are descended from humans.
Speaker 1: Are are great great grandchildren. Ain't too bright? Right, right, Well,
Speaker 1: half of them aren't. The other half of the Morlocks,
Speaker 1: who are all the ones who do all the work,
Speaker 1: and they have been using the eloy as cattle. Essentially
Speaker 1: they eat the eloy. So the Morlocks are the bad
Speaker 1: guys and the Elois are the good guys more or less.
Speaker 1: Kind of Actually, there's a lot of socialist commentary in
Speaker 1: that book. But anyway, so H. G. Wells in his story,
Speaker 1: the Eloi spoke their own language that was unintelligible to
Speaker 1: the protagonist. But in the film, again you have the
Speaker 1: eloy and the protagonists being able to speak to one
Speaker 1: another fluently. So, but you're talking about eight hundred thousand
Speaker 1: years of the future and people are still speaking um.
Speaker 1: Well Es era English. Now, the reason why we're finding
Speaker 1: this so amusing is because all you have to do
Speaker 1: is look backward, look back over time and see the
Speaker 1: historical evolution of English and see how it has changed
Speaker 1: dramatically just in the last thousand years or so, let
Speaker 1: alone eight hundred thousand years into the future. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So we plotted a little journey, a little literary journey
Speaker 1: for you through quotations. Through quotations, so we've started with
Speaker 1: opening lines from literary works uh A hundred, two hundred,
Speaker 1: four hundred years ago. The main thing to keep in mind,
Speaker 1: which we hinted at earlier, is that each of these
Speaker 1: is a different writer with their own literary style. So
Speaker 1: even two writers today aren't going to sound exactly alike.
Speaker 1: But even with that in mind, you're going to really
Speaker 1: notice the differences in a minute here, sure, Okay. So
Speaker 1: the first work that we have was published. It's called
Speaker 1: Unlucky thirteen. It's by James Patterson and Maxine petro Um,
Speaker 1: and we we chose it because it is the at
Speaker 1: the top of the New York Times bestseller list this
Speaker 1: week combined digital and printing one thee list. So so,
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't choose it because it's your favorite book. No,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's a popular work within the culture,
Speaker 1: and so we thought that it would be a good one.
Speaker 1: So so I'm going to quote the first two paragraphs
Speaker 1: their short So I chose too. It was an ugly Monday,
Speaker 1: just afternoon. There had been no sign of sun so far,
Speaker 1: just a thick fog that had put the blocks to
Speaker 1: traffic around the Golden Gate. I was behind the wheel
Speaker 1: of the squad car, and Inspector rich Conklin, my partner
Speaker 1: of many years, was in the seat beside me when
Speaker 1: Claire called my cell phone. Claire Washburn is my closest
Speaker 1: friend and also San Francisco's chief medical examiner. The call
Speaker 1: was strictly business. Alright, alright, so that's that's obviously modern English. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh nothing, I've got no qualms about it. Obviously he
Speaker 1: was published this year, so clearly we would have a
Speaker 1: very similar style. Well, what's next. I pulled a quote
Speaker 1: from exactly one hundred years ago, not to this day,
Speaker 1: but to the year nine fourteen, from the short story
Speaker 1: Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker, which actually do this in
Speaker 1: an English accent. Was No, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be an Irish accent? Well, I guess technically
Speaker 1: I could deny yoursh accent. That would be just fine.
Speaker 1: Why don't you read it, Jonathan. This is from the
Speaker 1: short story Dracula's Guest. I think it was originally a
Speaker 1: chapter of Dracula that was removed. Right, well, I'll do this.
Speaker 1: I'll do this in English, because most of the characters
Speaker 1: and in Dracula were actually English, with the exception of
Speaker 1: the title. The character from the title, I hope you
Speaker 1: can pronounce all these words. When we started for our drive,
Speaker 1: the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air
Speaker 1: was full of joyousness of early summer. Just as we
Speaker 1: were about to depart here, Dell Brook, the major de
Speaker 1: hotel of the Quatras where I was staying, came down
Speaker 1: bareheaded to the carriage, and, after wishing me a pleasant drive,
Speaker 1: said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the
Speaker 1: handle of the carriage door, Remember you were back by nightfall.
Speaker 1: The sky looks bright, but there is a shiver in
Speaker 1: the north wind, and it says there may be a
Speaker 1: sudden storm. But I'm sure you will not be late here,
Speaker 1: he smiled, and added, well you know what night it is, which,
Speaker 1: of course everybody knows is Walpurchase knocked. Well, obviously night
Speaker 1: all the banners that were up in town. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so already this is pretty similar, sure, but I mean
Speaker 1: there are a few cultural markers. Like in that first
Speaker 1: passage we were talking about cell phones. There was there
Speaker 1: was the golden gate bridge popped up. It was very clipped.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit more, um, a little bit
Speaker 1: more elaborate in its structure. Yeah, you can also, I
Speaker 1: mean one easy marker is the technological differences. They mentioned
Speaker 1: carriages and coachman and stuff. At The cultural difference that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting was it says bareheaded, like that's
Speaker 1: a thing worth observing. Specifically, a dude wasn't wearing a hat, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that that would be weird back then but
Speaker 1: normal now. And there's just this, even though it sounds
Speaker 1: pretty similar to modern English, there's a little bit less
Speaker 1: than modern cadence to the pros. It's actually a little
Speaker 1: closer to Sean Lupaccard spoke more like you know, nineteenth
Speaker 1: maybe late eighteenth century character, but with terminology that was
Speaker 1: obviously updated. The sentence structure was much more formal than
Speaker 1: you would find a normal speech. Okay today, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want to go back a hundred years before that, to
Speaker 1: eighteen fourteen, where I pulled the beginning paragraph part of
Speaker 1: the beginning paragraph of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Now
Speaker 1: keep in mind again this is Austin's particular literary style.
Speaker 1: But we're definitely going to start getting into some strange
Speaker 1: lands here. Oh, I'll do this one is Jane Austen.
Speaker 1: Um is pretty cool and I'm a lady. About thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas
Speaker 1: Spectrum of Mansfield Park in the County of Northampton, and
Speaker 1: to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady,
Speaker 1: with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house
Speaker 1: and large income. All Huntingdon's exclaimed on the greatness of
Speaker 1: the match, and her uncle the lawyer himself, allowed her
Speaker 1: to be at least three thousand pounds short of any
Speaker 1: equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be
Speaker 1: benefited by her elevation, and such of their acquaintance as thought,
Speaker 1: Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria,
Speaker 1: did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage.
Speaker 1: What there's fancy talk. It is fancy talk, but it's
Speaker 1: also I mean people, I don't know. Something was happening
Speaker 1: differently back then. Sentences were happening in a different way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well yes, and and syntax and structure and just uh,
Speaker 1: just the culture itself changes over time. That's really what
Speaker 1: we're getting at here. But you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: we've gone back far enough. Ye did not scruple to
Speaker 1: predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. Well, that seems
Speaker 1: pretty normal to me. We gotta go further back, Joe,
Speaker 1: we gotta go further back. You're gonna are you gonna
Speaker 1: make me read? So? The next one I grabbed was
Speaker 1: from six fourteen, that's four hundred years ago this year.
Speaker 1: This is Ben Johnson's comedic play Bartholomew Fair. I did
Speaker 1: a play here because I I couldn't find the full
Speaker 1: text of a good prose work. Well didn't really exist
Speaker 1: as such at that point, well okay, but certainly not
Speaker 1: prominent in the way right. They weren't popularized the way
Speaker 1: that plays were at the time plays were more likely
Speaker 1: where you're going to get a lot of pros. Right.
Speaker 1: So this is Johnson's Bartholomew Fair, which if a y
Speaker 1: are e, yeah, it certainly is. It opens with the
Speaker 1: character called the stage keeper kind of giving this meta dialogue,
Speaker 1: like talking about the play that's about to happen. So
Speaker 1: here we get gentlemen have a little patience. They are
Speaker 1: in upon coming instantly he that should begin the play,
Speaker 1: master little wit. The proctor has a stitch new fallen
Speaker 1: in his black silk stucking twill be drawn up area
Speaker 1: you can tell twenty He plays one of the arches
Speaker 1: that dwells about the hospital, and he has a very
Speaker 1: pretty part. But for the whole play, will you have
Speaker 1: the truth? On on it? On on it? I am
Speaker 1: looking less to the poet here me or his man
Speaker 1: master broom behind the rs. It is like to be
Speaker 1: a very conceited scurvy one in plain English English. That's
Speaker 1: why I picked that part, which this to me sounds
Speaker 1: like a bizarre mix of modern English and nonsense. It does,
Speaker 1: it does. And then of course we wanted to go
Speaker 1: back further, and Joe and Lauren wanted to challenge me
Speaker 1: with a little Middle English, Right, so by the time
Speaker 1: you get to like the thirteen hundreds, you are fully
Speaker 1: into Middle English, which is basically a different language. I
Speaker 1: mean it's the predecessor to English. Yeah, and without scholarly
Speaker 1: knowledge of how to like I Joe or I could
Speaker 1: not read this aloud, but Jonathan specific it turns out education. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my degree was in medieval and Renaissance English literature.
Speaker 1: So please do forgive me if I do stumble at all.
Speaker 1: It has been about twenty years since I've done this.
Speaker 1: This is the beginning of Jeffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales,
Speaker 1: the prologue one that appeared with a short s the
Speaker 1: draftsro march had passata, rota and bad ditch vain sweetly cool,
Speaker 1: which vetu and ginrich is the floor when zaforas eat
Speaker 1: with a sweeter breath inspired. Hath actually should be in
Speaker 1: spirit hath in every holt, and heath the tinder cropas
Speaker 1: on the younger zona. Hath in the rams have the
Speaker 1: coasta rouna and smaller fool is marking Melodia that's sleeping
Speaker 1: on the with open ear, so pricketh him not pure
Speaker 1: in here karage is don long and Folke to go
Speaker 1: on on pilgrimages, and Palmeres vought the second strongest rounders
Speaker 1: to fair in the hallways, cool thin Saundri Landa's especially
Speaker 1: from every sharers Inda of Engleland. The Candoberry they weaned
Speaker 1: the holy blissful mata that them hath hope and one
Speaker 1: that they were sick. And yeah, so so I did
Speaker 1: one day. It should have been thy th h e
Speaker 1: y was pronounced thy, not they. So I realized that
Speaker 1: after I said, well, we'll give it to you this time,
Speaker 1: I got it right the second time. So that is
Speaker 1: not easy to do. And and a lot of the
Speaker 1: words are spelled in a way that's similar to modern English,
Speaker 1: but they are pronounced in a very different and we'll
Speaker 1: get into the reason for that and just a little bit.
Speaker 1: But if you go even further back, yeah, say you
Speaker 1: go back from the Canterbury Tales to something like Bayo Wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you go to pre Norman invasion England. So the
Speaker 1: Middle English is that was that that French influence that
Speaker 1: came in and mixed with Old English to form Middle English. Right,
Speaker 1: so before the Normans decided to visit England and stay
Speaker 1: awhile the language was Old English, which comes from Old Frisian,
Speaker 1: which is also the root for Old Germans. So if
Speaker 1: you look at Old English and you start looking at words,
Speaker 1: the words and sent structure look a lot more like
Speaker 1: German than they do Modern English. Um. So one of
Speaker 1: the phrases that my favorite phrase from Beowulf is, and
Speaker 1: it's repeated a few times, is fatwas god kinek, which
Speaker 1: means which means he was a good king. So obviously,
Speaker 1: like it's like it's said quite a few times. Um,
Speaker 1: but yes, fatwas god kinek does not sound at all
Speaker 1: like English. But this is all technically English. And we've
Speaker 1: just seen how from say, I don't know, around seven
Speaker 1: hundred a d. All the way up to modern day
Speaker 1: it has changed dramatically, So why would we not assume
Speaker 1: it would continue to do so. Yeah, if Jean Luc
Speaker 1: Picard is born in twenty three oh five, according to
Speaker 1: the Star Trek lore, if he's speaking in the middle
Speaker 1: of the of the undreds, should be like the difference
Speaker 1: between us and somewhere between Jane Austin and Ben Johnson.
Speaker 1: All Right, so here's the question. Now that we know
Speaker 1: that language changes over time, how is it How can
Speaker 1: we predict what language is going to sound like in
Speaker 1: the future. I mean, how does language itself actually change?
Speaker 1: The short answers that nobody knows. Hey, um well, okay,
Speaker 1: it's a really big question, is the thing. And it
Speaker 1: involves genetics and the development of multiple brain structures and
Speaker 1: plasticity of the brain. Also development of speech structures from
Speaker 1: the tongue to the vocal cords, the palette, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, um and then after that the growth
Speaker 1: of systems of vocabulary and grammar. But there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of really cool theories out there, um like like.
Speaker 1: Research out of the University of Reading in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, which was done with statistical tools that are
Speaker 1: usually used in biology, indicated that the languages often evolved
Speaker 1: in sudden spurts rather than steadily over time. And okay,
Speaker 1: note that those sudden spurts can take a hundred years
Speaker 1: or more. But but still, this is this is an
Speaker 1: interesting finding. They they analyzed three of the world's major
Speaker 1: language group, those being bent to Austronesian and Indo European.
Speaker 1: In all three, some third of historical language changes came
Speaker 1: on suddenly when a subculture split off from a larger population. Okay,
Speaker 1: and so that thing you said when they came on
Speaker 1: suddenly though it could take like a hundred years, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they happened immediately. It just means the rate
Speaker 1: of change is not constant, so they can slowly change
Speaker 1: and then quickly change. And even so, I mean, when
Speaker 1: you think about it, I mean, languages is one of
Speaker 1: those things that unites the people, right, Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Without that common language, obviously you can't have any kind
Speaker 1: of communication whatsoever. And when you can communicate with someone,
Speaker 1: you start to psychologically identify with that person. You think
Speaker 1: this person belongs, at least in some part to a
Speaker 1: group that I also belong to. And when you encounter
Speaker 1: someone who cannot communicate with you and they are not
Speaker 1: able to have that kind of meaningful conversation in any way,
Speaker 1: then you start to think, at least on a psychological level,
Speaker 1: this per and does not belong to the group to
Speaker 1: which I belong. So there are a lot of complicated
Speaker 1: issues here that kind of guide a a language forming
Speaker 1: and then evolving over time. Oh sure. And and part
Speaker 1: of it is that when when a group breaks off
Speaker 1: from a larger group, they maybe not intentionally, but but
Speaker 1: certainly in a way purposefully distinguished themselves by certain language markers.
Speaker 1: You can see that in teenagers who are trying to
Speaker 1: be different from their parents are from when when um
Speaker 1: segments of the British came over to America, they began
Speaker 1: speaking differently, right, And then in some areas, some populations
Speaker 1: of the British coming over to America ended up preserving
Speaker 1: their way of speech a lot more faithfully than others.
Speaker 1: So you will often hear interesting stories about how there
Speaker 1: are pockets of populations in Appalachia, for example, that have
Speaker 1: speech patterns that are more akin to the Elizabethan patterns
Speaker 1: of speech way back when, which to me is fast
Speaker 1: the idea that the proper English we are used to
Speaker 1: hearing from television and movies is not really indicative of
Speaker 1: what you would have heard in Shakespeare's time to hear
Speaker 1: that it might be better for you to take a
Speaker 1: trip to the to the mountains, the Ridge mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even if it's not such a such a large
Speaker 1: scale populational kind of thing, I mean, okay, So so
Speaker 1: the exact role of all of these components of speech
Speaker 1: are definitely in debate among among linguists and biologists and
Speaker 1: psychologists and anthropologists and lots of other fields of study.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's obvious to even the casual observer
Speaker 1: that that vocab and grammar do change over time and
Speaker 1: and are prompted by by cultural events. Even if they're
Speaker 1: not this kind of break off event, it could be
Speaker 1: a change in technology, wherein new words come into the
Speaker 1: vocabulary and um, you know, new new sentence structures happen
Speaker 1: because internet. Um, because internet is a good way of
Speaker 1: putting that or or or just just locational and just
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And um so, I mean, the generalized
Speaker 1: theory is is that the you know, any current generation
Speaker 1: of speakers will internalize the language that they were taught
Speaker 1: and perhaps differently than the previous generation expects them to,
Speaker 1: and also adopt new words, new structures, new sounds, and
Speaker 1: then transmit them, perhaps shoddily, to the next generation. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting in English, the way we generally see acceptance
Speaker 1: on a larger scale is when we have certain institutions
Speaker 1: acknowledge words as being actual words. Oh yeah, you always
Speaker 1: see these news stories they you know, websters add so
Speaker 1: and so to the dictionary. Although that's Oxford, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's really more pr ploy than than the physical indicator
Speaker 1: that the language is Yeah, exactly, remove you remove that
Speaker 1: pr ploy by a couple of generations, and it's now
Speaker 1: become part of the unofficial documented record. Now, yet it
Speaker 1: does still matter. I'm just get snark. But there are
Speaker 1: countries like their countries like France that actively try to
Speaker 1: protect the native language and try and keep new uh
Speaker 1: anglicanized words out of it. They don't want. So there's
Speaker 1: no less fell they don't. They don't, they're not really
Speaker 1: they're not really pleased with LA C D for example,
Speaker 1: or C say day, I should say well, and and
Speaker 1: in some languages, like in Japanese for example, there's a
Speaker 1: whole separate alphabet for foreign loan words and in which
Speaker 1: you you preserve the the original language by by voisting
Speaker 1: off these new words onto a different alphabet. That makes
Speaker 1: it intrinsically other. Right, So that's interesting. I want to
Speaker 1: talk an even more basic level though, about how language changes,
Speaker 1: because it's not just these macro changes where overall vocabulary change.
Speaker 1: So we we we do get new words, yeah, and
Speaker 1: old words go out of style, and there's a sort
Speaker 1: of way of changing the cadence of sentences, certain ways
Speaker 1: of phrasing things go in and out of style, but
Speaker 1: at the micro level, even the pronunciation of the different
Speaker 1: phonemes in a language, different units of sound can change
Speaker 1: over time. So the one example I want to refer
Speaker 1: to again is in English because we're English speakers here.
Speaker 1: It was called the Great vowel Shift. And this happened
Speaker 1: over the middle of the past millennium, so over many
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, but it centered around probably like sixte centuries.
Speaker 1: And this is the process by which long vowels in
Speaker 1: English actually changed their sound. They used to sound more
Speaker 1: like they sound in a Latin pronunciation. So for example,
Speaker 1: the letter E would sound like an a sound. So
Speaker 1: I guess if you wanted to get on Middle English
Speaker 1: Twitter and compose a tweet about a sheet, you would
Speaker 1: actually compose a tweet about a shade often and another example,
Speaker 1: because yeah, that's that's exactly the other one. So Twitter
Speaker 1: would be tweet because the letter I used to be
Speaker 1: pronounced more like E. So the word mice that we
Speaker 1: say mice, now that's spelled the same way in Middle English,
Speaker 1: that be mes. Well, and when I did the prologue
Speaker 1: one that April April would became April because you have
Speaker 1: that I that becomes the e sound. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: amazing that this transformation happened, and that linguists still are
Speaker 1: kind of wondering what exactly prompted that shift, because you know,
Speaker 1: you thought that a lot of the changes in the
Speaker 1: English pronunciation happened due to the various invasions that occurred,
Speaker 1: but that all happened, that was all, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much over and done without by the end of the
Speaker 1: twelfth century, beginning of thirteenth century. So yeah, I would
Speaker 1: guess that that was printing press related, as a lot
Speaker 1: of changes in language were from the four hundredsberg you scamp. Well,
Speaker 1: before we get to the printing press, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that, in fact, pronunciation can still
Speaker 1: change today. Yeah, and has been observed to do so.
Speaker 1: So are there major changes in English pronunciation of vowel
Speaker 1: sounds today? We'll actually read a really interesting article in
Speaker 1: Slate about what's called the Northern Cities vowel shift. So
Speaker 1: this is in the United States and it was first
Speaker 1: noticed in the nineteen sixties, and this is a subsequent
Speaker 1: vowelshift coming after the Great Vowelshift, but this is affecting
Speaker 1: the pronunciation of short vowels rather than long vowels. Well,
Speaker 1: you can certainly there are enough preserved recordings that if
Speaker 1: you listen to something and you call it old timey,
Speaker 1: it's partly because of the way people were speaking, in
Speaker 1: the way they're pronouncing pronouncing things. So or even if
Speaker 1: you're watching a movie where a character is is portraying someone,
Speaker 1: I think of the hudsucker proxy all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: anything along those lines, but everyone stops talking like this,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's all in that fast paced and
Speaker 1: it's all it's a different vowel sound than what you're
Speaker 1: used doing. Even if you're in whatever part of the
Speaker 1: country the the film or television or radio program was
Speaker 1: set in, it's it doesn't sound the same way, and
Speaker 1: people will call it, well, that's old tiny And part
Speaker 1: of this because we have had these smaller vowel shifts
Speaker 1: happen over time, right, I mean, they can just be
Speaker 1: part of the normal way that a dialect forms within
Speaker 1: it's a subdialect of a language. So you you have yea,
Speaker 1: and then you have yeah, and then you have yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: And I would I would suspect I don't have any
Speaker 1: research on this, but that that that great Northern vowel
Speaker 1: shift had to do in fact with television. I mean,
Speaker 1: mass media definitely has an effect on how we talk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has an effect, except I don't know which way
Speaker 1: the effect would go. So we if we look into
Speaker 1: the past, we say, okay, we can observe that language
Speaker 1: evolves like this, but they didn't have TV and radio
Speaker 1: and the internet. And now that we have these things,
Speaker 1: I wonder if does that really affect the rate at
Speaker 1: which language changes, And if it does, does it speed
Speaker 1: it up or slow it down? I could see good
Speaker 1: arguments for both. Well, And here's the thing is that,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about even speedy changes in language taking
Speaker 1: course over a century, there's no way for us to
Speaker 1: answer that question without dramatically extending our lifespan so that
Speaker 1: we can actually observe it happen. Right, these are all
Speaker 1: things that are happening generationally, and by the time you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you start wondering about these questions,
Speaker 1: you don't have anyone to ask. Well, but but these days,
Speaker 1: we're going to have much more of a verbal record
Speaker 1: of how people spoke a hundred years from now, and
Speaker 1: and we'll be able to chart a lot more carefully,
Speaker 1: especially through algorithmic investigation how exactly people were speaking at
Speaker 1: different points in time and in different areas. UM. I'd
Speaker 1: argue that that an early form of mass media, the
Speaker 1: aforementioned printing press, uh, certainly had a a very large
Speaker 1: and very quick effect on language relatively. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: it didn't standardize any language instantaneously, but it did condense
Speaker 1: dialects and word you specifically among populations as as literacy
Speaker 1: and up I mean, you know, charitably over the course
Speaker 1: of a couple of centuries, which is again quick as
Speaker 1: standardized spelling right right, well again slowly, but yeah, definitely um.
Speaker 1: And And similarly that the Internet today is bringing written
Speaker 1: works and an authorship, perhaps more importantly, to ever wider audiences.
Speaker 1: And you know, okay, so this will definitely change language.
Speaker 1: As Joe said, it's it's kind of up in the
Speaker 1: air exactly how it's going to do that, right? Does
Speaker 1: it Does it get everybody on the same page and
Speaker 1: keep them there better or does it introduce more new
Speaker 1: usage faster some some researchers are suggesting that it's going
Speaker 1: to cause some languages to die out um, while others
Speaker 1: either develop in their place or grow to dominate there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theory that that English in the
Speaker 1: next hundred years or two is is going to be
Speaker 1: by by far the world's dominant language, although okay, maybe
Speaker 1: not English the way that we understand it today, because
Speaker 1: similar to how like Creole or Yiddish developed out of
Speaker 1: combine cultures and languages, we're currently seeing a huge burst
Speaker 1: of media being presented in what's called Hinglish, which is
Speaker 1: a combination of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English spoken primarily
Speaker 1: in India, but it's important and wind spread enough that
Speaker 1: some British diplomats are learning it. India, as I understand,
Speaker 1: it has quite the population. That does make sense, alright,
Speaker 1: So we started this whole discussion talking about science fiction films,
Speaker 1: television series, radio programs, that sort of thing where the
Speaker 1: characters speak more or less in modern English, and whether
Speaker 1: or not that's for the convenience of the audiences. That's
Speaker 1: a matter of debate because that could come into it.
Speaker 1: But are there do we have any examples of books
Speaker 1: where that's not the case, where we have an evolution
Speaker 1: of language. Well, certainly there are lots of small scale examples,
Speaker 1: but I was trying to think of a book taking
Speaker 1: place in the future where the language that the characters
Speaker 1: speak is radically different. And I did come up with
Speaker 1: one example, which is a clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess.
Speaker 1: So the main characters in this novel are these brutal,
Speaker 1: hyper violent, cruel gangster thugs, and they speak in this
Speaker 1: very stylized, very highly different form of English. Set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're still basically using English syntax, sort of like as
Speaker 1: an English reader you can make sense of it referencing
Speaker 1: a glossary. But they use all kinds of slang. It's
Speaker 1: just rife with slang that we don't use today. Do
Speaker 1: you want to do a line real quick? Al right, sure? Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was me that is Alex, and my three Drews
Speaker 1: as Pete, Georgie and Dim Dim being really dim. We
Speaker 1: were making up our razor ducks what to do with
Speaker 1: the evening. I shouldn't do all this line because there's
Speaker 1: so many words that I would need to bleep out.
Speaker 1: Um I could do that. It was a milk plus mesto,
Speaker 1: and you mail, my brother's forgotten what these mestos arelike
Speaker 1: things changing the story these days and people quick to forget.
Speaker 1: But it was a place where you could peet milk
Speaker 1: with something else in it. You could peet it with
Speaker 1: knives in it, or synth masko drim com. Yeah, it's so.
Speaker 1: So you get a mixture of Russian slang because that's
Speaker 1: a big influence. A lot of it comes from Russia.
Speaker 1: If it comes from Russian. Uh. Some of it is
Speaker 1: this sort of what we've had culture or technobabble kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, because like you get the you get the
Speaker 1: scent mesk, this kind of thing where synthetic mescaline is
Speaker 1: essentially what that means. So you get these these terms
Speaker 1: that are all sort of slangish. And of course the
Speaker 1: main characters are teenagers, so they speak very heavily and
Speaker 1: slang um and some of the some of the sentences
Speaker 1: are are absolutely beautiful and poetic. But it requires you
Speaker 1: to look at that glossary like eight times. And so
Speaker 1: I think that this slang vocabulary that Burgess uses in
Speaker 1: this novel is really great for two reasons. Number one,
Speaker 1: it actually does reflect how languages change over time with
Speaker 1: the introduction of new vocabulary and speech patterns. But number two,
Speaker 1: it actually has a role in the novel itself, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, these characters are just awful evil dudes,
Speaker 1: and the words they use help speak to the transformative
Speaker 1: psychological power of language, because it's very easy to see
Speaker 1: how the very words they're saying, the gang members use
Speaker 1: these words to desensitize themselves to violence. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there are other examples as well. I think the interesting
Speaker 1: thing here is uh, like you say, in this case,
Speaker 1: it was a very calculated um decision on the part
Speaker 1: of Burgess to create a language that reflects the personalities
Speaker 1: and psyches of these these main characters. You do have
Speaker 1: other characters in the book who do not speak in
Speaker 1: this kind of slang. They're the adults. But that that
Speaker 1: also gives you that whole other separation as well that
Speaker 1: we were talking about, right, sure, and right, And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of works that, on a very small scale level,
Speaker 1: will give you a couple of new words or usages
Speaker 1: of words here, and they're like like rock from Stranger
Speaker 1: in a Strange Land, or green from the Fifth Element,
Speaker 1: or shiny from Firefly. Um, but but I would it's
Speaker 1: shiny super green, Um, so I it. I would argue
Speaker 1: that that technobabble is a little bit of a separate
Speaker 1: thing because it's it's vocab that's you know specifically about
Speaker 1: technology that doesn't exist, and so it's really more of
Speaker 1: a plot point, um than a linguistic device. Most of
Speaker 1: the time. It can be there in order to give
Speaker 1: a sense of quote unquote legitimacy to the science fiction,
Speaker 1: to make it sound more technically advanced than what we
Speaker 1: currently have, and you have to be somewhat invented to
Speaker 1: do that, because obviously, you know, you can't just have
Speaker 1: all the same technology we have today and and put
Speaker 1: it forward a thousand years and expect people to think
Speaker 1: that that's an amazing science fiction novel. Right. I think
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you that just having the name
Speaker 1: of a piece of technology in there that we don't
Speaker 1: have that technology today, it doesn't really represent a change
Speaker 1: in language, but it can depending on the level to
Speaker 1: which the technobabble is incorporated into the everyday language of
Speaker 1: the characters. So, like I'd say, there's a difference between
Speaker 1: just making a one off reference to a technology that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist and the way, for example, Facebook talk has
Speaker 1: been in incorporated into the very fabric of how we
Speaker 1: discuss our social lives, or even the fact that we
Speaker 1: can look back in the past and what once was
Speaker 1: a version of techno babble has become an actual word now,
Speaker 1: So for example, robot um. It's not not something that
Speaker 1: happens all the time. It's actually very rare when something
Speaker 1: like that happens. But when it does happen, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to see something that was was taken as as an innovative.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a new word, or at least
Speaker 1: a word that's being used in a new way, uh,
Speaker 1: and and ends up being adopted worldwide. That's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting too. Or for some terms like I'm like like fridge,
Speaker 1: which comes from frigid air, which was a brand originally
Speaker 1: and not what the actual object was called, but has
Speaker 1: kind of morphed into that thing. Sure, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I thought it came from refrigerator. I'm I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: I could be totally wrong. Am I totally wrong? I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I suspect you're right, but I was
Speaker 1: just making an asset of you and me. We'll check
Speaker 1: that and if I'm incorrect, you'll never hear this. Some
Speaker 1: sci fi works actually meet us halfway, I'd say, because
Speaker 1: the future characters speaks, they basically speak modern language, but
Speaker 1: the narrator may give some indication that this is just
Speaker 1: for the reader's benefit, and that the characters would actually
Speaker 1: be speaking a much different language. One example I thought
Speaker 1: of was in Isaac Asimov's The Last Question. So there's
Speaker 1: the characters are speaking as it's written modern English. But
Speaker 1: there's just one part where one of the characters in
Speaker 1: this far future setting remembers that they're dealing with a
Speaker 1: computer called a micro VAC, and the character remembers that
Speaker 1: the a C at the end of micro vax stood
Speaker 1: for analog computer in quote ancient English. Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: it refers to the modern English of the reader, the
Speaker 1: English that you're reading the story in as ancient English,
Speaker 1: as if that's something alien to the character. Obviously would
Speaker 1: be problematic to write an entire book out of a
Speaker 1: manufactured language, right and say this is what English eventually
Speaker 1: evolves into, and you need to learn it so you
Speaker 1: can read the story. It's exactly the point I wanted
Speaker 1: to end on, which is that I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: chide sci fi writers for not doing this more because
Speaker 1: I think it totally makes sense why you would write
Speaker 1: stories in in a modern dialect of a modern language,
Speaker 1: whatever language that is, because your readers are speaking that
Speaker 1: Oh sure, and and it takes so much brain space
Speaker 1: or work for the writer and or the reader. I mean,
Speaker 1: you knows. As much as I appreciate the weird brilliance
Speaker 1: of authors who write in that really heavy dialect, I've personally,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I've never made
Speaker 1: it through a novel length work of like Faulkner or
Speaker 1: China Mayville or Irvi and Welsh or even something along
Speaker 1: the lines of a completely um manufactured language something like Tolkien.
Speaker 1: You know, he was really interested in languages things like Welsh, Gaelic,
Speaker 1: as well as Middle English and Old English and Strickland.
Speaker 1: You speak Elvish, don't you? May? I may or may
Speaker 1: not have an Eldish tattoo. Um, I can't say that I.
Speaker 1: Along similar lines, I can't say that I ever read
Speaker 1: any of the Elvish poems. But and it was interesting because,
Speaker 1: you know, according to some accounts of what Tolkien went
Speaker 1: through in including some of his own interviews, the whole
Speaker 1: genesis of Lord of the Rings was really the creation
Speaker 1: of the world, and that would allow these languages he
Speaker 1: had invented to exist. So that's you know, it's obviously
Speaker 1: a different approach. Yeah, well, as nerdy as it is.
Speaker 1: If I'm correct, you will correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I know, But I think Tolkien was not just like
Speaker 1: making up words. He was a linguistic scholar, Like he
Speaker 1: understood deeply how languages are formed, the morphological relationship between
Speaker 1: different words and certain house and taxes are created. So
Speaker 1: he put in the work even so far as to
Speaker 1: have two separate languages for the elves, who do have
Speaker 1: a separation that lasts a very long time in the
Speaker 1: span of yeah they can, they can, they stay around
Speaker 1: forever as those jerks. But yeah, so so even then
Speaker 1: with the two two different I guess you could call
Speaker 1: them races of elves cohabitating Middle Earth. They have different languages,
Speaker 1: which is very similar to what we've been talking about
Speaker 1: with populations splitting off and forming a different dialect or
Speaker 1: a completely new language from the parent language that they
Speaker 1: came from. Right, So, in the end, I just want
Speaker 1: to emphasize I'm not saying that if a writer writes
Speaker 1: in their modern dialect for the far future that's like stupid,
Speaker 1: of just yeah, it's no different than if you were
Speaker 1: going to write something taking place in ancient sum Air
Speaker 1: and you wrote that in whatever language you write in,
Speaker 1: because that's just that's how readers will have So just
Speaker 1: just make sure you put a sense at the beginning saying, uh,
Speaker 1: everyone spoke in a language that's totally not like modern English,
Speaker 1: but it's okay because I put it in modern English
Speaker 1: so you can understand it, and then we're all cool,
Speaker 1: or or incorporate something like a like a Babel fish
Speaker 1: or a Universal Translator or whatever the tardest doe, and
Speaker 1: it just so happens to also work on the audience.
Speaker 1: It's so, what what is Jean Lucard really saying that
Speaker 1: we're only hearing in our modern English? Its beautiful? What's
Speaker 1: what's weird? It's actually it's actually all in French. He's
Speaker 1: just being French. Because he's wearing Universal Translator, it comes
Speaker 1: out English. Yeah, so yeah, that's all right. Well that's
Speaker 1: all I've got in me for this episode. So this
Speaker 1: was interesting because it was more of a of an
Speaker 1: historical look at the English language, but really to kind
Speaker 1: of think, you know, it's it's difficult to project what
Speaker 1: language will be like in the future. What we can
Speaker 1: say is it will likely be very different from the
Speaker 1: way it is now. You know, at least in some form.
Speaker 1: It may be that the syntax is more or less
Speaker 1: the same, but the pronunciation is different. It could be
Speaker 1: that the pronunciation remains more or less the same, but
Speaker 1: we end up having weird syntax. Uh. It's it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to us looking over the past and realizing how
Speaker 1: a live language really is, and that that's something that
Speaker 1: if you're ever working on a science fiction novel and
Speaker 1: you want to address that in a realistic way, you
Speaker 1: gotta get a little creative and figure out, you know, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, no one, no one really right, how
Speaker 1: do you make it readable? But no one really knows,
Speaker 1: so really you can't make a mistake until that time
Speaker 1: finally comes around, and by that time you're probably not
Speaker 1: going to care anymore. Um So, anyway, interesting topic. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you guys picked this as a series, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to exploring other kinds of things that
Speaker 1: that is never really addressed in science fiction. Our next
Speaker 1: idea is we want to do a we want to
Speaker 1: do you don't see that in sci fi about the
Speaker 1: awkwardness of technology. That'll be fun. Yeah, that will be
Speaker 1: a fun one. Yeah, because well we'll save it for
Speaker 1: that episode. I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: spoil anything, so if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of Forward Thinking, even if it's an episode
Speaker 1: in this series or something completely different, let us know.
Speaker 1: You can drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook, or
Speaker 1: Google Plus are handled all threes f W Thinking, or
Speaker 1: you can drop us an email FW thinking at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com and we will talk to you again really soon.
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