Never apologize for this kind of linguistic meta talk; you do this better than anyone.

@simonroper9218

8 ай бұрын

Thank you kind sir!

A phrase I think of a lot which fits nicely into your description of reification is "The map is not the territory". People often think of the world in terms of the map, but the map is only an abstraction built in analogy to the real world.

Videos of Simon are always a double treat. First I get to enjoy the video, and then all the really interesting comments.

Some of what you're grappling with here treads into Philosophy of Language ("How do I know that your use of a word refers to objects the same way as my use of it?"). If you haven't already, I would suggest reading "Word and Object" by Willard van Orman Quine. If you can get through it, Ludwig Wittgenstein grapples with issues similar to this in parts of "Philosophical Investigations" as well. (I find Wittgenstein to be incomprehensible at times, but to be fair he is trying to use language to describe what languages can't do.)

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

8 ай бұрын

Honestly, that color is more like greenish-yellow, and, the reason why in English one says ‘i am 25 instead’ of ‘i have 25 years’ is, because in English one says how old / young one is, not how many years one has, so ‘i am 25’ is basically ‘i am 25 years old’ etc, whereas in Spanish one doesn’t say ‘yo soy 25 años viejo’ because it would sound wrong in Spanish, so one just says ‘tengo 25 años’ etc, which sounds right in Spanish, but in English it’s the exact opposite because ‘i am 25 years old / young’ sounds more natural than ‘i have 25 years’ because certain phrases sound differently in different languages, and each language was constructed in such a way that everything would sound right in that particular language, and things such as word endings and letter combinations play an important røłē in that - if verbs in English had strong endings, for example, then one would not need the dùmmy verb to do in English, because if one asked ‘Drankst ye the coffee?’ it would sound right without the verb to do because it has the strong ending -st, but because Modern English was made into a very neutral and over-simplified language without the strong endings, one needs the verb to do to make it sound right, so one would ask ‘Did ye drink the coffee?’ because Drank ye the coffee?’ does not sound right!

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

8 ай бұрын

By the way, I must admit that I wish Modern English still had the different verb endings for each pronoun, for example, the verb to go should be conjugated like this - I go / ye gost / he goes / we gam / yens gat / they ga... But I realize it would be like a different language, but it could still be used in poetry with the different endings... Modern English has been made into a very neutral language, so the verbs for the plurals would have to have the stems changed for them to sound right and to go well with the plural endings...

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

8 ай бұрын

Luckily, Old Norse and Icelandic have the different verb endings, and I think Old English also has different verb endings, and Old Norse is one of the prettiest languages I’ve ever seen, it has real gorgeous words like erfiði / yfir / haf / vindr / dyn / skegg / dróttinn / veit / drengr / fjall / hǫnd / fisksins / lengr / hvassir / rauðr / hvarr / grænn / hvat / líkligr / hǫss / afi / frændi / heitir / veð / hráka / þó / kvern / mælti / hét / setja / hinn / kveða / sinn / leið / brott / knerri / við / dýr / með / heyra / eða etc, and the word endings (like nir and inn and sins etc) and the letter combinations are so pretty, just like the word endings and letter combinations in English and Dutch and Norwegian - I can’t stop learning new pretty words in Old Norse and Icelandic (and the other pretty languages) and they are really áddìctive to look at and read and hear in lyrics etc, I’ve been listening to Skáld songs in Old Norse and Icelandic since I found the first song in Old Norse (Troll Kalla Mik) and I’ve memorized most of those lyrics!

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

8 ай бұрын

Dutch words are also just too pretty not to know, and 83 of the prettiest words in Dutch are - ver, vlinder, verloren, feest, adem, vaste, veel, verdween, heel, het, heen, voorbij, vandaan, verven, domein, verwaald, drijfzand, lief, leegte, liefde, heerst, einde, zonder, weet, avond, vult, gekomen, centrum, moment, pad, loop, overheerst, vallen, twijfel, vinden, kelde, wald, ter, geweest, vrees, grenzen, verleg, rein, van, stellen, wilde, steeds, verstreken, evenbeeld, bleef, steile, vrede, stem, wens, net, tijd, stille, verwenst, zalig, ochtend, zilverreiger, weer, overwint, heerlijk, zin, hart, beweert, vanaf, kwijt, wolken, mes, verliezen, dwaling, verlaten, rede, trek, tuinhek, brand, verdien, blikje, vertellen, verder, vertrek...

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

8 ай бұрын

Some of the prettiest Welsh words are derwen / nest / afon / talar / adeilad / helygen / afal / hyd / lolfa / enaid / bedwen / neithiwr / ynys / nos / sydd / noswaith / ers / mynd / rhosyn / eistedd / gwych / tân / fawr / telyn or delyn / ynddyn / llaw or dwylo / doeth / fewn or mewn / gwar / bys / ffynnon / swrn / tew / blin / mynydd / braich etc, and Welsh reminds of Dutch because they have a similar intonation / vibe and they both have the soft CH (H-like K-controlled) sound and many of the words have similar types of letter combinations - Welsh is a category 1 language, and Breton / Cornish are also category 1 languages, just like Dutch and English and Norwegian etc, so they are very easy to learn, and have mostly pretty words, and I am beginner level in Welsh and in the other 5 Celtic languages!

For me, default is a monarch butterfly

@ernestcline2868

8 ай бұрын

Sulphur for the win!

Growing up in Canada, thinking of all the butterflies, I remember there was a butterfly garden at the Zoo in my city. I tried to think and the first butterfly I could think of was the Monarch, to me that was the "main" butterfly. But there are others, like the very-light green one (I think it's technically a moth species), and the white butterflies that you see around here. Technically again, there are the most common butterflies which I call carpetbrown moths.

@EvincarOfAutumn

8 ай бұрын

Same. To me the monarch is the most butterfly of butterflies. I grew up in New England, but I think it’s a safe bet for much of North America, considering their range over the course of the year covers most of the US and the most populated areas of Canada. As for “the very-light green one”, I guess you’re thinking of a luna moth.

@helenamcginty4920

8 ай бұрын

I grew up in coastal Lancashire and the red admiral was the one I looked for. Tortoiseshells were common and cabbage white hated. Dad used to pick the caterpillars off our cabbages by hand. I could only do that if I wore kitchen gloves. 😮

2:17 My default butterfly is a monarch butterfly.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

Mine is the ordinary cabbage white that inhabited the summers of my youth.

@josephyearwood1179

8 ай бұрын

Simon Roper MKULTRA-ed or somesuchlike from when he was a mere youngling?

@iykury

3 ай бұрын

i'm not sure i have a specific species in mind when i think of a butterfly, but monarchs are probably one of the more prototypical ones to me as well, maybe just because they're probably the only one i know by name :P

@Great_Olaf5

3 ай бұрын

@@iykury Where I live, it's common to buy these little monarch butterfly nurseries. They come with eggs and nutrients already in them, and you just unfold it, sweet it somewhere, and let them go after a few weeks. Well, I don't know if it's common, but I got one once as a kid.

Your videos are always really insightful and thoughtful. There were several moments in this video when I thought, "that's a really great point that I had never thought of before." However, I knew exactly what you meant when you mentioned the peacock butterfly as being your "default" butterfly. Just to throw it out there, I'm from the US and my "default" butterfly is the monarch butterfly, but that's probably the case for a lot of North American people haha

@cathipalmer8217

8 ай бұрын

Me

This imediately put me in mind of the book by Guy Deutchner "Through the Language Glass - WHy the world looks different in other languages".

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

Not _that_ different that a person cannot be native-level fluent in several languages without going mad. On the Navajo reservation, practically everybody is a native speaker of both English and Navajo. The world as seen through (the semantic and syntactical structures of) English and Navajo could not be more different!

My favourite word in Portuguese (my second language, although I'm starting to lose it) is the word for butterfly: "borboleta" I'm also learning (with difficulty) Thai, which has many charming words, including the word for butterfly: ผีเสื้อ - P̄hīs̄eụ̄̂x - which seems to mean something like "dressed ghost", or "ghost in a shirt".

@helenamcginty4920

8 ай бұрын

I love the Spanish 'mariposa'.

As another SSBE speaker, I feel like there's a very clear distinction between "I mean", "I feel like", and "to be fair" in my speech The first and last are less transparent, but "I mean" tends to introduce an emphatic point (often by citing an extreme example), whilst "to be fair" tends to introduce a mitigation or caveat "I feel like" on the other hand introduces a supposition, and indicates that it's not necessarily well thought-through

@that44rdv4rk

8 ай бұрын

As a northeastern US 'Merican speaker, this sounds about right to me.

simon's sister: *exists* simon: it's free perceptual semantic data

I've always been so fascinated by the difference between "definition and meaning". you can define a "dog" but the fuzzy image/feeling that came to mind, would be slightly different for every individual. Imo this is a huge cause of conflict in the world.

@iwvaksindustries

8 ай бұрын

i think that last part rings really true

if we get right into it, communication is highly cooperative and you can say things that are grammatically totally out of bounds or use words that don't make sense and still be understood because of context clues. in written language, however, we very often lose so much context that we must be precise to make up for it. I've heard interpretation described as following an absurdity principal. You have to really go far out of your way to make something absurd totally unambiguous or you will generally be interpreted as saying the thing that isn't absurd, which is how ambiguities in grammar or homophones don't impact clarity in speech. When learning a language you sometimes have to remind yourself of this as you tediously apply grammar rules from your textbook to real speech and come to absurd interpretations, because our understanding of foreign language is woefully more rigid than our understanding and tolerance for looseness in our native language. It's why some people espose not learning grammar from a book at all, but simply guessing what would make sense. And in a way, as you improve, you end up doing this anyway because it is the only way to understand imprecise, real world speech.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

in writing we lose context, and also the immediate nonverbal clues that tell us to rephrase, slow down, speed up etc. BTW, it is espouse not espose

i think the meandering nature of this one makes it my favourite simon roper video to date

never stop doing these kind of videos! can't describe how important they've been for me! thank you!

I used to have existential crises as a kid when I realized that I couldn’t be sure what I saw as red looked the same as other people’s red. I’m mostly over that now. I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say about this video, but it’s just putting to words a lot of stuff I’ve always thought about in more abstract thoughts and it’s really nice to hear it all out like that.

My first thought, when you led off with butterflies, was that you were going to talk about other associations the word has, such as the "butterfly effect" and "butterfly knives". For example, back in 1999, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C., used the word "niggardly" to describe a budget. The word was used correctly according to its denotation, but a huge controversy errupted due to the peculiar decision to use this now uncommon word and what the connotations of that choice were. Sometimes the most important meaning of a word comes not from how it affects what is read in the lines, but how it affects what is read between the lines.

I thought that video was pretty straightforward - I think my line of distinction for what is meandering is different from yours, Simon 😂 And I really enjoyed it too. Your output is absolutely my favorite content on KZread.

@helenamcginty4920

8 ай бұрын

Agreed. You want meandering try the book that just popped into my mind. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian. Or At Swim Two Birds'. Wonderful meandering stuff.

I use "'ve" the way you highlighted in blue still but i think that comes from the fact that i was taught to speak mostly from my 90 year old Irish great grandmother. In elementary school they said i had a speech impediment and made me go to special classes but as i get older I've realized that most of that was just stuff I'd picked up from her.

@johnradclyffehall

8 ай бұрын

Treating hiberno-english as a speech impediment 😭 That’s incredible lol

@cathipalmer8217

8 ай бұрын

I'm sure it would have horrified older generations that we feel compelled to stick that perfectly nonessential "got" after that " 've"!😊

Without knowing you, or even living in the same region, I immediately interpreted, "I mean, he usually goes" to be something you're sure of, and "I feel like he usually goes" to be something that seems that way to you but may not necessarily be the truth of it.

Awesome video, you always come up with great topics regarding linguistics

Lovely video. I like the example with your sister and her drawing. And as always, I love the scenery and birds. ❤

Yes. As the Swedish Chef once said: “Hinga Dinga Durgen”

That was a nice ramble. Thank you.

D'you know, I'd never noticed that - that, even when my mental picture of something feels photographic, I can't focus in on the detail! How have I never noticed that? For context, I have 67 years.😊 Otoh, I'm well-aware of the "main butterfly" phenomenon; I can (if I pay attention) notice myself categorising things as paradigm + exceptions. For me, the paradigm of "butterfly" is a particular image of a cabbage white against dark green foliage, and then you add the "buts" about colour, size, habitat and so on. It's probably an efficient, and hardware-implemented, way of encoding very diverse information. And I can see how this is going to lead to reification (and its twin, essentialism).

Of a particular person? Yes, that is trivially possible. Their existence is finite, hence the totality of their utterances, which is finite as well, and trivially constitutes a description (of sorts). Open questions are: (1) Can the same corpus of utterances be produced by a system that takes (far) fewer bits to characterise than are needed to encode the corpus? (2) If so, what is the _smallest_ such system? (3) Do we insist on a system that produces all-and-only the utterances in the corpus, or do we allow it to be capable of producing utterances that this person _could_ or _might_ have said? (4) Do we insist on including or excluding utterances that are ungrammatical - as judged by that person themselves? Re (4): I do not mean a matter of that person growing much older, more language-conscious, and very critical of a younger self. I mean the surprisingly common phenomenon of being recorded and in the ensuing minutes, upon hearing it, stating something like "I said that in a weird way as I changed grammatical construction halfway through my sentence." (BTW it is _normal_ for native speakers to start a sentence without knowing precisely how it will end.)

Very good video. I think Language Jones recently gave a brief mention to something like this in his video on the Wug test, so I’m glad to hear more about this.

Always love the videos

Loved this video! Just the right amount of meandering but a great intro to arbitrary nature of meaning and idiolects

I never thought of it this way. Thx for doing this and sharing. 👍👍👍👍👍

I am aware that there are items that I might sometimes think of as yellow and sometimes think of as green so I don't think there are boundary lines between concepts - we impose the classifications as part of the way we communicate and reason and we can shift them slightly depending on the point we are trying to make or who we are trying to communicate with. I am interested in computer formalisation of mathematics and the issues of when are two things the same (ie equal/equivalent/isomorphic) becomes very difficult. You can see this expressed in Kevin Buzzard's (@xenaproject) comments about canonical isomorphism or in Vladimir Voevodsky's 'Axiom of Univalence' in Homotopy Type Theory. I think I have come to the conclusion is that we have a mechanism in our use of language akin to the way the focus on a camera impacts depth of field - we vary our use of categories in language according to whether we are trying to make fine distinctions or to give an overview.

What a calming background this is!

7:28 I always tell my students and my friends learning languages that they should strive to make as many confident mistakes as possible, that way they can learn the nuances of what is “okay” or “correct” in another language.

@RoanCritter

8 ай бұрын

That's a nice way of looking at it.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

A learner needs some sort of unambiguous feedback.

i think you should check out the game chants of sennaar. it's a puzzle/mystery game about linguistic and cultural interaction between peoples, i think you'd really enjoy it. plus i would literally kill a man to hear an in depth take from you on what the themes regarding cultural exchange and language acquisition

@philroberts7238

8 ай бұрын

Let's hope the opportunity never arises then!

An interesting thing about the meaning of words and how and when they are used, is that we tend to accept the concensus of the group we think we belong to the best we can, then we perceive anyone deviating from that concensus as strange, foreign. It's no wonder many think that language lies at the core of human grouping, be it ethnic, national or social.

i picture two curved double white wings somewhat yellowed either sun glisened or muddled towatd the yellow kind probably because of "butter", then just the black dot attaching the wings, no head since it usually cant be seen from far

I think "a man after my own heart" is an example of an unusual usage of "after" in modern English.

@drdca8263

8 ай бұрын

I think it is kinda an example of a general pattern of “after” as “seeking/pursuing”. Or I guess maybe you were referring to said general pattern, rather than only referring to phrases of being after another’s heart. In that case this reply would be kind of useless, so let me attempt somewhat of a joke: It is quite a different thing, for someone to be after your heart, and for someone to be after *you*! Hm. I’ll need to workshop that joke a bit. Maybe tell a story where, initially, someone X seemingly can see no wrong in anything another person Y, does, and in everything seeks Y’s approval and/or seeks to emulate Y, until one day, Y does something which terribly offends X, and ends up fleeing with X quickly pursuing Y, intending some kind of retribution. And then a third party comments that yesterday, X was after Y’s heart, but now X is after Y. For some reason, I am reminded of the “Hagar the Horrible” newspaper comics. Feels like some form of this joke (but improved) might fit there.

@haukzi

8 ай бұрын

It's the same "after" as in "he takes it after his father". (his patterns follow his father's patterns).

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

or when a work of art has been largely inspired by some other famous work, we also say "after" in such cases@@haukzi

@johnradclyffehall

8 ай бұрын

In Ireland ‘asking after someone’ is still a common phrase in use.

@finbear

8 ай бұрын

@@johnradclyffehall Ooo, good one. Here in the U.S., the older generation still does that, but not so much younger people.

my shower thoughts be like. i just love your videos. on the topic of reification and inverse application of logic: i'm very much into mycology, and sometimes you find a specimen of a mushroom that everything (maybe even DNA analysie) points to a well-defined species, but then one feature that all text books say has to always be present just.. isn't. the explanation among mycologists is: the mushroom probably hasn't read the book. seems to apply to a lot of things in the world tbh. also shout-out to that jackdaw. they a gudd birb.

Lev Vygotsky constructivism each of us constructs his/her own 'knowledge'. I am particularly aware of this as I learn languages.

8:00 It's interesting that you frame this as abbreviating "have" in more contexts. I've always parsed the examples as a variety that omits the "got" in those cases. So rather than seeing "I've enough money for an apple" as an abbreviation of some imaginary base sentence: "I have enough money for an apple", I've always thought of it as the omission of "got" from the alternative imaginary base sentence: "I've got enough money for an apple". Not that my parsing of it necessarily matches the speakers' notions of it of course! I wonder if people with differing tendencies of using: "I've enough money for an apple" versus: "I've got enough money for an apple" also show any corresponding differences in their usage of: "I have enough money for an apple" versus: "I have got enough money for an apple" in sentences formed with the unabbreviated "have"?

As someone with photographic memory, the fact that people can't fully conceptualize objects visually will always floor me.

Thank you for the video. You should write a book.

I love rambling videos... but I HATE moths and butterflies. Lepidopterophobia sufferer here! Moths are worse because they come indoors but certain butterflies are particularly scary to me, for some reason Red Admirals always gave me the creeps a lot more than others. And any one with "eyes" on (eg peacock). But don't worry,- I got through it with a combination of cringing and looking away and found it to be a very interesting video :)

One interesting thing that happened when I went to England for the first time was that I learned that what I thought of as a “train” was a lot different than people on Europe. Growing up in the Midwest USA I was only familiar with cargo trains that look like this 🚂 Even the passenger trains I had experience with looked like that in my mind. There was a train museum in my town growing up and there were 1920s passenger trains that looked like that. Even the dinky little train that transported people around zoos and amusement parks looked like that. What people called a train in England was 100 percent a tram in my mind. I knew people in Europe rode trains but I was so surprised cause I fully expected to get aboard a choo choo train lmao

My immediate idea of a butterfly is a drawing of a butterfly...

Short subject videos are just fine.

In answer to the question posed in the title, I would conjecture that any such description would have to be at least as complex as the language described. In other words, it is unlikely. In mathematics, where the language is purely formal, attempts to do this run into problems, as was amply demonstrated by Gödel.

do you think we could run the experiment you suggested with a language model that refreshes its memory every time you ask it?

10:00 Or you could say the same thing over and over again, but vary your stress patterns and you have the Sanford Meisner acting technique.

Interesting. On a sort of related subject, do you feel that the abbreviation of words, although natural, may work to the detriment of language? I’m not sure if this occurs in Britain, but in Australia many people confuse the abbreviated ‘have’ and ‘of’. For example, many write ‘I should of said that’ instead of ‘I should’ve said that’. Do you think this just comes down to poor education and erroneous language use, or is this actual language change?

@philroberts7238

8 ай бұрын

It's certainly on the increase in both Britain and Australia and my feeling is that eventually it will lead to actual language change - that is to say, "should of" will be regarded as mainstream, even though at present it is still generally regarded, rightly, as a grammatical mistake. On a side note, it will be interesting to see whether "International English", as spoken by hundreds of millions of second language speakers around the world, will also embrace this kind of mistake. It is possible to imagine such usage becoming yet another dialectical quirk of English as she is spoke in the UK and Australia!

I imagine most americans would think of monarchs as the “main” butterfly. It would be interesting to see how that varies by region

@tomatoslice543

5 ай бұрын

In California anis swallow tail was my favorite because my grandmother told me if you stop and put your finger out it will land on you. At 7 when it did land on me I was blown away haha. But monarch is pretty much the main one we all learn about because of endangered status. I'm 33 and still stop to point at the sky when I see a swallow tail, chasing that memory like a butterfly in the wind.

Oddly enough I was in a second hand bookshop today and was reading a Cumbrian dialect booklet in which the word 'blake' was used to mean yellow. 'As blake as butter', was the sentence from memory. I always suspected that there was some linguistic connection between words such as blank, Spanish 'blanco' etc and black, but as a native Cumbrian I'd never heard a similar word used to mean yellow. Has anyone else come across this usage?

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

The English word _black_ actually used to mean white or very bright or the colour of fire. The transference of meaning comes from the step from fire (bright) to what remains of the fire (blackened wood). Since fires are seen by some people as "yellow" (I am one of them) it would not surprise me if the original sense of black has been carried through in this dialect as blake.

@DavidCowie2022

8 ай бұрын

My first thought was a cognate with "bleich," which means pale in modern German.

@davidjames3787

8 ай бұрын

@@DavidCowie2022 Sounds plausible, but the dialect booklet translated 'blake' as yellow.

@davidjames3787

8 ай бұрын

@@DrWhom Interesting. I too see fire as yellow. You might well be correct.

that's very cool because i think monarch butterflies are the default for most people

My personal understanding of the word “reification” includes, not just treating something as more concrete than it is, but also, the act of making a thing more real than it previously was. I guess I think of the former as kind of a metaphorical extension of the latter? Possibly this way i think about that word is due to me misunderstanding though, idk.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

not what it means last time I checked.

@drdca8263

8 ай бұрын

@@DrWhom ok guess I misunderstood then

According to Mom, it was one of my first words. I still find them beautiful and fascinating. Words are also beautiful and fascinating, for all the reasons mentioned. I spend a lot of time making computers do things. Choosing the proper words is time well spent.

Re your 'I mean'...etc. do you use them only in speech or also in writing. From toddlerhood, apparently, I have used actually a lot in speech. (Pronounced acshully). But I dont use it in writing. My most repeated word when writing is 'however'. Sometimes varied witb ' although'. I suspect tutors can tell within a couple of sentences who has written a piece just by their signature words.

I think a lot of this ties in pretty well with the question of what is qualia. Especially in that we cannot really guarantee that when I try to communicate my internal state/experience you're going to interpret it the same way.

@jacobpast5437

8 ай бұрын

Yes, it would be interesting to know if Simon and his sister have different qualia of the color of the jacket or if they have the same qualia and just put the line of distinction between green and yellow in a different place. So let's say if Simon experiences green as what I would call rough and his sister experiences green as what I would call loud (or maybe something completely different, something I couldn't even imagine or dream of) - no wonder if there is a "grey area" in the spectrum of yellow to green where one would call it yellow and the other green. But then again either way it probably comes back to whatever words we heard being used by others for the sensory input we experienced as our very own qualia in our formative stage while growing up.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

if you knew some neuroscience you would understand that that very concept of intersubjective comparison between internal states is hopeless. However, there are many simple things (like it hurts to run into a wall) that are truly intersubjective because we all inhabit the same world. It is these things that impose bounds on intersubjective variation of ideas/ concepts/ etc. To try to capture the essence of the latter by invoking qualia is a hiding to nothing.

@jacobpast5437

8 ай бұрын

@@DrWhom Have either one of us claimed otherwise? I can't really speak for the OP, but my first paragraph expresses my personal peculiar interest (in something which, you are right, I will never know) and my second paragraph says the same as you - I assume - in layman's terms. The experience of certain wavelengths of light hitting the sensory cells in my retina has been connected to the word "green" which people have used to describe their experience of that same phenomenon ("we all inhabit the same world" - though some philosophers might question even that) and this "imposes bounds on the intersubjective variation" of what this word means. Somewhat elastic bounds, as can be seen in the case of Simon and his sister.

@ernestchadwell9069

8 ай бұрын

​@@DrWhomhow is "running into a wall hurts" intersubjective? You are merely inferring from / projecting your own experience of pain. You cannot know what anyone else is wxperienci for sure, there are no exceptions.

Yes, language use is in constant flux and development, certainly on the individual level. A dialect however is the language of a group, which makes it an abstraction as you say. Group members will use the dialect with some differences. And meaning of words is a matter of what they agree on that a word can mean in a certain context. Of course this is also true of languages, like english. The bigger the group, the greater the abstraction. All the more this is true of historical languages, even if we have written sources, such as the ancient dialect of Wessex around the time of Alfred the Great.

Can't we all just set our differences aside and agree that the jacket's chartreuse? 😄

@alexandrashvydun8726

8 ай бұрын

oddly enough my mental version of chartreuse is darker and greener than that

I hallways had an automatic cut off reaction in regards to swearing in front of my parents. 😂 Also why does swearing shock. Maybe you can do a video about that. Thanks for the video, so interesting as usual and I don't think it was meandering.

To me even the assumption that utterances have meanings in themselves is on a rather shaky ground. Indeed common sense tells us that they do, but once you start thinking about it it's not so obvious. The word meaning in this video is used to refer to two distinct things: 1) the private mental state that is evoked by a word or a sentence in a person, and 2) the public entity that a word or a sentence is supposed to communicate. 1) is directly subject to Wittgenstein's private language argument. This isn't to say it doesn't hold but there are serious hurdles to clear if you were to argue meaning in this sense exists. 2) is a bit easier to argue for the existence of, but I wonder if this is what Simon has in mind because I suspect he (or you) might be inspired by a previous interview (iirc, maybe it was one of his monologue style videos) where they talked about how we started using language first as a private thinking tool instead of a socially shared communication tool. But anyway, we all know how there can be many different interpretations for just one sentence or utterance and we often rely on basic reasoning to rule out less probable options, so we still need some good justification for 2). Also I'm a bit confused as to the way the concept of determinism is used here. It seems to me a language act is a result of factors outside the language act itself, and it's not like language acts have free will or are fundamentally probabilistic (if this were the case the motive for an utterance would only correlate with the actual utterance and imperfectly at that (r

11:49 That's very true and annoys me to no end.

omg who filmed that crow? he is adorable

In academic editing, foreigners writing in English often get the prepositions wrong. It's interesting how subtle these distinctions are. Are these even rules, or are they just habits of speech?

Have you heared of philosophy of Language? I think that Gottlob Frege and especially Ludwig Wittgenstein have works and thoughts that deal with these questions. I would like to explain the thoughts here but firstly I dont understand them well enough and secondly it would be too much for a comment, sry.

Would this imply that no 2 people speak exactly the same language?

I like making up neologisms when needed, but they are typically based on my existing vocabulary.

Why are there so many different words for butterfly, even among closely related languages?

I always found it fascinating that we tend to use the expression “it’s me!”, for example on the phone or behind a door, whereas Spanish people say “I’m me”. (Soy yo) I idiotically used to try to explain that you are ALWAYS you, but the person behind the door might not be. But now I realise that “it’s me” to someone brought up in Spain sounds just as illogical and odd as the other way round does to me - why would you use the third person singular to describe yourself? they might ask.

@philroberts7238

8 ай бұрын

Once upon a time, you would be told in no uncertain terms that the "correct" usage would be "It is I/he/she" and so forth. Similarly, "those are they" rather than "it's them" when discovering, say, a lost pair of spectacles. It was all to do with the verb "to be" taking the nominative case on both sides, which was something teachers of Latin were very keen on pointing out to those of us who were more interested in expressing ourselves in idiomatic English.

didnt understands anything but it made me feel smarter

@grahamh.4230

8 ай бұрын

Lol

My main butterfly is the Monarch

Those "after" usages are still alive and kicking in modern Icelandic. We "ask after someone", "search after something", "imitate after someone", "leave someone after" (ditch someone), "take after it" (to notice it) and lots more. At some point one has to wonder what is "in the preposition" as opposed to the verbs themselves.

Nah, everyone knows swallowtail butterflies are the "main" species. That's just a fact. They're the archetype, the default.

Hm. I'd say your example of reification is just an overgeneralisation. I wouldn't worry too much about determinism vs indeterminism either. If things are determined, then things mean what they end up mean, and if things are partially undetermined then the randomness is just randomness - it adds no more meaning than there was before.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

how do you _know_ randomness is just randomness?

@riclacy3796

8 ай бұрын

There appears to be some hard limits in quantum mechanics - that randomness is fundamental. But even if that is debunked tomorrow, I don't think it changes much for us.

I like moths, myself

I think Im one of the only people I know who makes the ‘r’ sound with the back of my to tongue. Doesn’t really change my accent much at all though.

Lev Vygotski

Here's a thing that Brits do that always hurts my brain - "Different to.." Different to? Different TO? How can that be? It's different *FROM.* Because, you know, if two things are different, they're moving away from, not towards, each other.

@cathipalmer8217

8 ай бұрын

P.S. Sorry for turning 666 likes into 667.

Simon, you might be colour blind. Yellow can look green to me and I am colour blind.

@josephyearwood1179

8 ай бұрын

What does the Norwich Shitty football kit lookalike to the colourblind?

@kippen64

8 ай бұрын

@@josephyearwood1179 Had to Google it. Some of it looks like different shades of green and some of it looks like green and yellow. Did this on my phone which probably didn't help. For example, I can't see the colour amber. It looks yellow to me. Struggled with reading resistor values because the colours l saw were different to the colours l was supposed to see. It's something I don't notice in my daily life.

@fuckdefed

8 ай бұрын

I agree. I’m slightly colour blind but I’m better at, and more confident in, describing and recognising some shades of colour than others. I’d bet my house on that fluorescent jacket being yellow. I’m not sure how the winner of such a bet would be determined though - perhaps a scientific device would have to be used to determine the wavelength of the light emitted by the jacket but even that doesn’t account for the fact that it might look different IRL to how it does on the screen on the device I’m viewing this video on.

no, you're wrong and she's right, it's yellow

🤠💜

You're not even touching the difference between "I feel like" and "I think." Yes, I see a difference between the two; it is too often important to distinguish between an intution and a deduction. A great many people, however, lack that kind of precision in the speech -- and in their thinking.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

That is because deductions come to us as intuitions - and then we dress this up with logic, with varying degrees of intellectual integrity. The difference you point out is not so much a difference of precision but of discipline - sloppy thinkers think everything that simply occurs to them must ipso facto be the case.

@christosvoskresye

8 ай бұрын

@@DrWhom At least you recognize that there is a distinction.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but this feels like a very usage-based linguistics video.

Big subject Spanish; Hungarians; and Russians all use more colour words than English speaking people The Spanish have a joy about colour Hungarians like to consider themselves precise I am not a Russian speaker so that comment is second hand. People want validation and tend to be careful speakers of their native tomgue with maturity There is a great divide between men and women in using words descriptively England is entering a dangerous epoch witness the massive increase in dressing in blacks and whites fun colours such as canary yellow are on the wane batten down the hatches.

@octopusexperiment1931

8 ай бұрын

I agree. Although, to me more of the problem seems to be non-colour: pieces of coloured clothing that are so much 'of a normal type' that they fill some of the fashion roles of colour while keeping their cards so close to their chest. The tiny variations in British mens shirts, a bit blue, a bit pinky red etc are one example, and in some places blue jeans are another. They domesticate colour into not signifying anything. I think Goths wearing all black for example is less of a 'batten down the hatches' than this. In one major respect monochrome can often be a little more adventurous: you have to have more deviating and interesting shapes and forms otherwise it actually looks quite weird.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

All competent painters can mix all the hues they need - entirely independently of the colour vocabulary of their native (and or 2nd, 3rd...) languages. This puts paid to all the hullabaloo people make about this.

@frankmitchell3594

8 ай бұрын

I read recently that Japanese traffic lights appear red, amber, blue, because Japanese does not have a word for green as English speakers use it. They have either blue-green or yellow-green and English speakers see the colour as blue.

@rogerrodgers6550

8 ай бұрын

Spanish people will try for difference each vying for originality English people will try to keep in the assumed limits of a picture hence we have Picasso in the hispanic corner and the PreRaphaelites in the anglosaxon quarter spanish literature is full of descriptions of colour ( eg la vida es sueño) Shakespeare barely mentions it.@@DrWhom

i dont think a person has a language, you need two people its a system of compromises over symbols/words, no one will ever quite get what person means that even changes in the moment by mood they themselves wint recall exactly, so i thing its a different sort of thing then language thatd be better thought of in a different way

@remiel_sz

8 ай бұрын

so conlangs are not languages? a dying language with a single speaker left is not a language? on top of that, language is not ONLY used for communication. people with an internal monologue use language to think, you can use it to express yourself without actually transmitting information

@deadgavin4218

8 ай бұрын

a conlang is a simulation of a language, a single speaker is no longer using a language you can interpret things about the language but you just dont have the interpretation of that languagee, the last soeaker doesnt have to make another speaker understand them, theyre either communicating with that language making compromises for speakers of an entirely different language, or theyre reciting or larping conversation that just doesnt have the other side and will very as much from reality as a conversation at a mirror. if your not talking to someone it just isnt what language describes, you can substitute for words in your head if you cant find the right synonym you can leave the vague idea you want and move on, if you verbalize you mimick yourself talking to other people or an amalgam of that, if you simulate an argument you argue against a particular person or an amalgam you use the language the compromise you would at them or what you would at some hypothetical combination and of course you differ from reality somewhat. so it doesnt have the constraints language have and even then it derives somewhat from mimicing prior use of language so i think its better to thing about languages and dialects as deriving from compromises in communications between groups of people and large averages of those, and to think of this internal use of ideation as something more like recognition and recall of symbols that is important in forming language but actually something different

@remiel_sz

8 ай бұрын

@@deadgavin4218 thats your own definition of language and i dont think its helpful or useful

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

funnily enough, it is possible that _conscious thought_ evolved out of _talking to oneself_ suggesting that language came first, was originally as OP insists a strictly social (interpersonal) phenomenon, and then got internalised. So you are both right.@@remiel_sz

@remiel_sz

8 ай бұрын

@@DrWhom I wasn't arguing that language developed for the purpose of me writing in my diary that no one will ever read, but that that is one of the ways that language is used and serves some kind of purpose. my point was that language is a tool that doesn't necessarily require multiple humans(?) to exist. it's still language even if it's not being used to transmit information from one person/animal/being to another conlangs are languages, not simulations of language. a simulation of language would be a system that looks like language but is not. for that it would need to lack the ability to store and transmit information language is just a way to simplify ideas and thoughts, put them into categories (that, in natural languages at least, were "decided" on by an entire group, not just you), and give them symbols, whether those are visual, auditory, tactile, or whateverothersensesthereare. what you do with the "zip file" you made by calling the thing you remember seeing once a 'butterfly' is not included in my definition of language also i actually don't think conscious thought needs language at all. i have conscious thought i think and i don't have an internal monologue so why would it need language to develop

white, offwhite, whitish, miswhite, miswhitened, dark white, illwhite, overwhite, bright white, deep white? dappledlike white? whitestmost white, deathly white, unwhited, milky white, gloopy white, whitelooking. (Anyway, lest we forget all those helpful Germanic English forefasts and endfasts).

I'm sorry, Simon, but your sister is clearly right about the color of that jacket.

@fghsgh

8 ай бұрын

See, I was taught that this colour is "fluorescent yellow", and "fluorescent green" also exists, but is very different.

@potman4581

8 ай бұрын

@@fghsgh I definitely see Simon's point; there is undeniably a greenish tinge to it. However, to me, it falls decidedly in the category of yellow.

@finbear

8 ай бұрын

When I was coloring as a young child, I asked my mom what the difference was between the "yellow green" crayon and the "green yellow" crayon. She was mystified. Now I know: the first word is the adjective and the second word is the noun. So that jacket would be "green yellow" (or, more helpfully put, "greenish yellow"). It's still yellow, it's just on the greener side of the yellow spectrum.

@potman4581

8 ай бұрын

@@finbear Agreed.

@jacobpast5437

8 ай бұрын

​@@finbearHow would you intonate "yellow green"? Examples: "it's YELLOWgreen" (i. e. emphasis on yellow, everything in one word)? Or "it's yellow GREEN" (with slightly more emphasis on green, possibly more like two seperate words). Or maybe with no difference in emphasis. And if you try these different intonations, does the meaning - i. e. the color referenced - change?

It's messy for sure. I have plenty of small niggles with folks' word usage, even among those with whom I grew up. The distinction between a creek, a brook, and a stream seems to be particularly fuzzy. And don't even get me started on the apparently ongoing vowel shift of "milk" to "melk" (but that's another subject)

@notnullnotvoid

8 ай бұрын

"They don't have any malk, but I can get you some milk" - you, probably

@WGGplant

8 ай бұрын

I think the "milk" to "melk" thing is just a case of the velarized L pulling the vowel down. It probably also happens to words like "tilt" and similar structures.

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

the Dutch say melk. OP is not going to like the next step, which is to change it to mellek@@WGGplant

@DrWhom

8 ай бұрын

a creek is associated with an inlet from a larger body of water a brook can be nearly stagnant, like a small lake a stream, well, streams