Imagine having to reach a word count for an essay in a polysynthetic language

@evanmurray5920

4 жыл бұрын

MegaMGstudios Please write a 30 word essay.

@pafnutiytheartist

4 жыл бұрын

You would either have a lower word count target or use different criteria altogether. In Russia for example it's common to use number of pages or sentences instead.

@wierdcreations

4 жыл бұрын

​@@pafnutiytheartist Yep here In India for us it is One page or maximum 2.

@rajarshibarman334

4 жыл бұрын

@@wierdcreations nope it is not entirely, we usually have word count rather than page required essays

@wierdcreations

4 жыл бұрын

@@rajarshibarman334 maybe It's a regional thing but as far as my friends and family go all of them have page requirements,in english it's word limited.

My favorite Finnish word: Juoksentelisinkohan. Meaning: I wonder if I should run around aimlessly.

@Crick1952

9 жыл бұрын

That made me laugh so hard you don't even know!

@MazeFrame

9 жыл бұрын

BTheHeretic In a sense of "Let me run arround aimlessly" or more like "I can do what I want, so I run arround aimlessly"? Just interested

@Pouk3D

9 жыл бұрын

BTheHeretic Beautiful.

@BTheHeretic

9 жыл бұрын

MatzeGamer More in the sense "I'm a bit bored. I wonder if I should run around aimlessly to amuse myself." It's like casually wondering if it's worth the effort to run around aimlessly. It could also imply that running around aimlessly might not be the smartest thing to do in the current situation. Juoksentelisinkohan alasti jalkapallostadionilla. I wonder if I should run around aimlessly naked on a football stadium. Ehm, actually, there's also a word for "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly while naked": Viuhahtelisinkohan ... I didn't even think of that earlier :D

@MazeFrame

9 жыл бұрын

BTheHeretic That looks like the Scrabble-Winner of 2015 for me. Now I just need to find out, how to pronounce that. :)

Hungarian: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. It means something along the lines of "because of your actions that made it so you cannot become not a saint". There's also a similar word about not becoming a cabbage.

@sjskong

4 жыл бұрын

wait whats the other word?

@belatoth4494

4 жыл бұрын

@@sjskong elkelkáposztásítottalanítottátok

@Krisztian1941

4 жыл бұрын

just for clarification, these aren't used in everyday conversation, people came up with them for the joke of having very long words but it shows how biased the scale in the video is - Hungarian is agglutinative and yet it has words like these

@gabor6259

4 жыл бұрын

Just for clarification the word about becoming a cabbage is grammatically incorrect.

@do-khyi

3 жыл бұрын

@Tyrel Hansen Elkelkáposztásíthatatlanságoskodásaitokért is the word if you were wondering

Ironic that the isolated languages are lumped together

@MatthewMcVeagh

3 жыл бұрын

Not isolated, isolating.

@Tentin.Quarantino

3 жыл бұрын

@@MatthewMcVeagh I stand corrected. Guessing I had a brain fart or didn’t notice autocorrect change it

@MontyVierra

2 жыл бұрын

Great pun, whichever version of isolat- you use.

In Swedish, for instance, one of the most common grammatical mistakes is called "särskrivning", or literally translated as "taken apart writing". It means that you have separated one word into multiple words, which usually change the meaning completely. Let me give you an example: "En mörkhårig person" "A dark haired person" *"En mörk hårig person" "A dark hairy person" *Since two adjectives are used, they should actually be separated by a comma. Another example: "Herrcykel upphittad!" "Men's bike found!" "Herr cykel upphittad!" "Mr bike found!"

@niklasgransjen684

8 жыл бұрын

Same problem in Norway!

@o.steinman3855

7 жыл бұрын

I loled at Mr bike

@saltyman7888

7 жыл бұрын

why dont you use tone as vocal brackets?

@michaelbowring3094

7 жыл бұрын

If "skriv" is swedish for "write" then the vikings must have brought it to Ireland, in irish it's "scriobh" pronounced Skreeve

@SweedRaver

7 жыл бұрын

It's actually a Latin loan word into Proto-Germanic, and most likely originated already in Proto-Indo-European. According to Wiktionary: Proto-Indo-European "*skreybʰ" > Latin "scrībō" > Proto-Germanic "*skrībaną" > Old Norse "skrifa" > Old Swedish "skriva" According to Wiktionary, it was also borrowed from Latin into Old Irish "scríbaid". Edit: The conclusion is that the Romans are to blame for this one.

0:48 There is a spectrum, and it stretches from analytic to full Finnish

@viracocha6093

5 жыл бұрын

*Laughs in Inuktitut*

@miyuden4118

4 жыл бұрын

Ever saw German words? Investitionsverwaltungsentwicklungsgesellschaft

@jage1559

4 жыл бұрын

@@miyuden4118 What does that mean?

@miyuden4118

4 жыл бұрын

@@jage1559 That means, Investment management development company.

@jage1559

4 жыл бұрын

@@miyuden4118 So not really a full sentence, huh. Viuhahtelisinkohan is a Finnish word that means "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly while naked." and it can be used as a full sentence.

sorry I can't participate, I'm on an agglutinative language-free diet

@Kihidokid

6 жыл бұрын

3lapsed this deserves more likes

@robcol5049

4 жыл бұрын

Does that mean you cannot eat Uralic languages? Or does it not count if you're hungary?

@System-ru5yt

4 жыл бұрын

*out*

@PC_Simo

3 жыл бұрын

@3lapsed Great one 👍🏻! I’ve always thought agglutinative sounded like gluten. By the way, have there been any 3lapses?

@PC_Simo

3 жыл бұрын

@Rob Col Great pun! Predictable, but great. 😆👍🏻

Ή οι ιοί ή οι υιοί. I love that Greek phrase because it's pronounced "ee ee ee-ee ee ee ee-ee". It means "Either the viruses or the sons".

@neilisbored2177

6 жыл бұрын

translation: sons install viruses on computers

@karlpoppins

6 жыл бұрын

Well, I could argue it is actually pronounced "eeh o-ee ee-o-ee, eeh o-ee oo-ee-o-ee"... ... well, in ancient Greek, at least.

@gamergodyt4167

4 жыл бұрын

As a Greek, *_i approve_*

@Leo-zt4no

4 жыл бұрын

Reminds me of a sentence we have in Icelandic. Á á á á á á Á. It means "A sheep owns a sheep by the river in Á." The last, capital Á is the name of a place in Iceland

@areti2003

4 жыл бұрын

@@karlpoppins no youre wrong, both in modern n ancient greek its pronounced as ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee bc when u combine the letters ο+ι u create a binocular thats pronounced as -e- so u basically have the letter ι(e) n the binocular οι(e) = ιοί (ee)

In Finnish we have this word "lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas" and it means "jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student". We even have a word for "I wonder if even with his/her quality of not having been made unsystematized" which is "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän".

@turun_ambartanen

8 жыл бұрын

+SilliS Remix lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas = Strahltriebwerkunteroffiziershilfsmechanikerstudent :) german is great too, you could stick words together as long as you want (pretty soon it gets pointless tho)

@Mattsgeekyscience

8 жыл бұрын

+Turun Ambartanen Oh, yeah, I also love Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung.

@SirSammyI

6 жыл бұрын

SilliS Remix a

@blaster1185

6 жыл бұрын

why

@patemathic

6 жыл бұрын

You forgot kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisenneskenteluttelemattomammuuksissansakaankopahan That doesn't even mean anything but it's a nice word

his pronunciation of hablo killed me

@bluetannery1527

8 жыл бұрын

He apologized for it, haha

@nicholaskeough9787

7 жыл бұрын

HAABLOW

@TheCastillerian

7 жыл бұрын

It's definitely weird how he said it: /ˈhæbɫəʊ̯/ instead of /ˈäβlo̞/.

@MilanTheAngel

7 жыл бұрын

he pronounced it as /hɑbloʊ/ but it's /ablo/

@4U571N5

6 жыл бұрын

Same

Spanish native speaker here. I never realized how complex Spanish was until I started to learn English. The word "hablo" that Scott mentioned is a good example. You can imply the time, the person and other things with just one word. Like these: - Hablo: I talk - Hablas: You talk - Habla: He/She talks - Hablan: They talk - Hablamos: We talk - Hablé: I talked - Hablaste: You talked - Habló: He/She talked - Hablaron: They talked - Hablamos: We talked - Hablaré: I will talk - Hablarás: You will talk - Hablará: He/She will talk - Hablarán: They will talk - Hablaremos: We will talk

@manuelnavarro5267

8 жыл бұрын

También: Hablaría Hablarías Hablarían Hablaríamos Hablarían

@franchufranchu119

4 жыл бұрын

"permítamelo", "entrégueselo", Those are my favourite Spanish wordd

@MrFerreyal

4 жыл бұрын

I Love the past perfect name in spanish (Pretérito pluscuamperfecto del modo indicativo)

@narayana8249

3 жыл бұрын

It seems complex, but the truth is that it’s only that each verb is quite complex on its own, but all that really does is attach complexity that would be elsewhere in the sentence onto one word. In Spanish, you might say “Qué harías si todos tus amigos se desaparecieron” whereas in English you would say “what would you do...”. The same amount of complexity exists, but it’s just being relocated. Chinese doesnt change words at all, but likewise you can communicate the same thing, albeit slightly differently: “你的朋友都消失的話，你就怎麼辦？” (lit your friends all disappear (marker of possible situation), what would you do then?” (I don’t have lots of confidence in either of my translations, correct me if they’re wrong)

@tictacmaniac7415

3 жыл бұрын

@@narayana8249 The Spanish seems well translated, but I think you have to change the "desaparecieron" to "desaparecierAn" :) [subjunctive]

"Inconceivable" was redefined in Princess Bride: it now means what you don't think it means.

@Pilum1000

3 жыл бұрын

:>>

@pinkajou656

3 жыл бұрын

YES BEST COMMENT

@jvgreendarmok

3 жыл бұрын

This is referred to in the footnote at 0:34.

@sydssolanumsamsys

3 жыл бұрын

i wa sthinking of making a joke similar to this

Okay that thing about children is *bloody fascinating* because kids in general don't work well with *anything* being separated out, and the world is generally very interconnected for them. Internal from external, ideas from reality, senses from one another, emotional personality states etc etc etc.

English: I have warned you to not do the thing that you have just done, and thus I will not be taking any responsibilities for your actions. Indonesian: Kan.

@StormzAway

3 жыл бұрын

Pfft- We took the shortcut~

@thebestnarcissist5464

3 жыл бұрын

But consider the sarcastic - if only someone could’ve seen this happening - if only someone warned you - who could’ve seen this coming - what a surprise - *raise eyebrows aggressively*

@JadeJuno

3 жыл бұрын

@@thebestnarcissist5464 the " *Raises eyebrow aggressively* " one killed me-

@aprettybigeifyouaskme173

2 жыл бұрын

+ tuh Tuhkan Perfection

@quinnfarris

2 жыл бұрын

i think thay could be shortened to "told you!"

*"muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine"* means *"As though you are from those whom we may not be able to easily make into a maker of unsuccessful ones"* in turkish. Word has 70 letters

@MoonGlow22

6 ай бұрын

Muvaffak-iyet-siz-leş-tir-ici-leş-tir-iver-e-me-y-ecek-ler-imiz-den-miş-siniz-cesin-ize Here is breakdown, it was harder than I thought

Creating long and exact words is something we Germans are pretty good at. my favorite example is the english word tank. The official German translation would be "Panzerkraftfahrzeug" or armoured engine powered vehicle" Of cause noone says it and we just say "Panzer" for short, but well. The long version pretty much describes itself even if you have no idea what a Tank is.

@Smittel

9 жыл бұрын

Das ist was anderes. Zusammengesetzte Nomen gehören glaub ich nicht dazu was er meinte. Mehr so sachen wie un-fass-bar.

@Juli414

9 жыл бұрын

Rumi on Huh. I just learned something. I took German in high school and college, and never heard the origin of that particular word. I thought "Panzer" meant "panther", and that it was one of the classes or models of tanks. Or maybe someone had gotten really fanciful and thought a tank looked like a panther. Thanks for the lesson!

@emmey8865

9 жыл бұрын

Pspaughtamus There is a german Tank called the "panther" but else those words are as connected as me and france.

@Smittel

9 жыл бұрын

Rumi on punchlines are being fired. Pspaughtamus​ german tanks often have animal names like the panther and the tiger... I am however still waiting for a submarine named Squid and a plane named Pigeon

@emmey8865

9 жыл бұрын

Retro we had German tanks called "maus" or mouse in English that were huge. Also there was a plan for a war machine called "ratte" or rat that could only travel via train tracks. so yeah

I would love to hear you talking about compound words, like in most Germanic languages. (I think all, except for English :D) Example: In German you have wood (Holz) and it is really solid and hard (hart). The wood is shaped in the form of plates (Platten). But you also need to clean them sometimes with a special cleaner (Spezialreiniger). So you go to the according store (Geschäft), where you can just buy this cleaner and nothing else. Where do you go to? To the: Hartholzplattenspezialreingergeschäft And trust me, everyone will undertsand what you are saying. ;)

@djcfrompt

6 жыл бұрын

DownFlex Does Hartholz designate that the wood is very hard, or that it is a hardwood?

@aerobolt256

6 жыл бұрын

I mean Hardwoodplatesspecialcleanerstore is semi-understandable in English

@MoritzGunz

5 жыл бұрын

Rather that the wood is very hard. Hardwood is something different in german.

@dirtyyy7668

4 жыл бұрын

English also does that, it only doesn't write those words as one - it's just a manner of orthography.

@SirAzi01

4 жыл бұрын

What about Fussbodenschleifmaschienenverleih, or for that matter, Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz?

Ah, yes, the language morphology spectrum: -Isolating -Agglutinative -Fusional -Polysynthetic -Ithkuil

@angelodc1652

3 жыл бұрын

LMNOP! Why are you in almost every language video I find?!

@elemenopi9239

3 жыл бұрын

@@angelodc1652 hi anjeez

@wyntyrr

3 жыл бұрын

@@elemenopi9239 /qʰûl-lyai’svukšei’arpîptó’ks “Being hard to believe, after allegedly trying to repeatedly inspire fear using a suspicious group of ragtag-looking clowns, despite resistance.”

"Spårvagnsaktiebolagsskensmutsskjutarefackföreningspersonalbeklädnadsmagasinsförrådsförvaltarens" (94 letters) is a word that can be used (even if someone just wrote something it is still a world). Because swedish grammar is like it is, it make it possible to write infinite length of words. It's hilarious. This one means: "[belonging to] The manager of the depot for the supply of uniforms to the personnel of the track cleaners' union of the tramway company".

@ikschrijflangenamen

7 жыл бұрын

Translating that word to Dutch, you get railbedrijfstramrailschoonmakersvakbondsledenuniformsaanvoerdepotmanager, just lacking the "belonging to" part.

@Guztav1337

4 жыл бұрын

Swedish doesn't really allow infinite words if you want to keep a meaning of it intact. But yes we can make long words that you can't cut in pieces and keep the meaning intact. A very simple example is that "rökfritt" and "rök fritt" are like opposites.

@ExperimentIV

4 жыл бұрын

shrdlu or herrtoalett/herr toalett

@cheeseburgermonkey7104

Жыл бұрын

*laughs in great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent*

@rizkyadiyanto7922

7 ай бұрын

would it be any different if i write the english translation without space?

Unconventional means of torture: Tom’s pronunciation of “hablo”

@Pilum1000

3 жыл бұрын

"Tom’s" - ha ha, and this "Tom’s" is a relic of Grammar Case by Old English - the possessive case, or Genitive Case... "all sorts of things can be coded"

latin being a fusional language is i think one of the reasons as to why people tend to think it’s so difficult, you have to memorize so many verb endings

@martavdz4972

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely. But unlike English, it´s much more specific so you don´t have to memorize five meanings with every word. Every language has its pros and cons 🙂

@gible2330

Жыл бұрын

@@martavdz4972 no its not, it isnt uncommon for a word to have 10 or more meanings especially if its a verb

@reidleblanc3140

Жыл бұрын

@@martavdz4972 what are you on about? Latin is FAR less specific than English. like disgustingly, annoyingly, inconveniently, impossibly less specific. like native Latin speakers talked about having trouble writing in Latin because it wasn't specific enough.

@reidleblanc3140

Жыл бұрын

wait til you see Polish or ancient Greek

estonian: sünnipäevanädalalõpupeopärastlõunaväsimus meaning, "the tiredness one feels on the afternoon of the weekend birthday party”

@Emleo.

3 жыл бұрын

I really felt that one

@danthiel8623

2 жыл бұрын

Same

@roobusmcscroobus

2 жыл бұрын

sünnipäevanädalalõpupeopärastlõunaväsimus-core is now my aesthetic

Just a friendly reminder, H is mute in Spanish. :)

@GuyAPerson

9 жыл бұрын

Seani Wu Correct. And "a" makes an "ah" sound, so hablo sounds like "ah blow" with the "ah" syllable stressed.

@LawffleCopter

9 жыл бұрын

***** Although a native Spanish speaker still puts a VERY small amount of H sound in words like hablo.

@AndrewHokanson

9 жыл бұрын

LawffleCopter true

@Ikus13

9 жыл бұрын

***** Actually it's more like "AH-bloh", not "AH-blow"

@lucasleturia6886

9 жыл бұрын

LawffleCopter nope, we put a kind of aspiration sound of every word starting with a vowel, the H has nothing to do with it

You should have given examples for the other ones as well. Would have loved to see a polysynthetic word-sentence and how it's broken down (like you did with inconceivable).

90% of comments: THaT's nOt HoW yoU pRonoUnCe HABLO

@joahnnaibarra2282

3 жыл бұрын

It physically hurts to hear it pronounced like that, so forgive us.

@peepeetrain8755

3 жыл бұрын

nah it's just people who speak a polysynthetic language either showing off a ridiculously long word or gatekeeping long words.

@JadeJuno

3 жыл бұрын

@@joahnnaibarra2282 welcome to Hearing English people butcher Spanish. You get used to it (I wouldn't have noticed it if not for the comments-)

@JadeJuno

3 жыл бұрын

@@commanderleo as a spanish speaking person I couldn't agree more.

1:59 "take hHæbLou in spanish"

@philiptren2792

6 ай бұрын

Quite the butchering for someone that probably knows IPA

@Kelly_C

6 ай бұрын

@@philiptren2792 definitely knows ipa, and made linguistics videos for ten years!

In German you can add infinite morphines so you can have words that are hundreds of letters long.

@nicholaskeough9787

7 жыл бұрын

K

@popalupa4844

7 жыл бұрын

Luuk Achterhof But they still don't equate to whole sentences, correct? In which case it would still be compounding, rather that polysynthetic.

@Artechiza

7 жыл бұрын

Luuk Achterhof I love that :3

@cecasiahaan6801

7 жыл бұрын

*morphemes

@chaosof99

7 жыл бұрын

In theory yes, in practice not really. The most complicated it gets are words like "Weltmeisterschaftsendspielstadion" or "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän" and those are rare exceptions, and rather trivial to break apart since they are mostly just nouns smashed together. I don't think I've ever seen a word in german that is actually a hundred letters long.

Tom, I just want to say that as a glossophile, I *love* these videos. I've begun sharing them with my family and friends and some of them are FINALLY starting to get why I get all starry-eyed when waxing poetic about languages and the beauty of the way they change and grow over time.

With my substantial hearing loss (40 to 60 dB at higher frequencies), before I got hearing aids I often struggled to understand speech in English and went off the rails into confusion- to the amusement of the people I spoke with. The redundancy of polysynthetic languages probably makes it easier for partially deaf people to fill in the gaps and communicate clearly despite their handicap.

One of my favourite things about studying German was the crazy long words you can make!

@shoujahatsumetsu

8 жыл бұрын

+WanderingRandomer Compound words is very common in most of the Germannic languages - you can do the same with any Scandinavian language too, for instance.

@Mattsgeekyscience

8 жыл бұрын

+WanderingRandomer English is one of the very few Germanic Languages that doesn't allow an infinite word build. In most of the Germanic Languages, you can build a word as long as you want from other words. My Personal Favorite: Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft.

@muffintree2087

8 жыл бұрын

+Mattsgeekyscience But even germans have problems understanding that words (proof: me )

@Mattsgeekyscience

8 жыл бұрын

Weil das Wort ist sehr lang. It is hilariously long. I'm just gonna pick out the intelligible words in it, Donau, we know as the Danube River, Dampfschiff for Steamboat, fahrts from fahren, to travel/ship, elektrizitäten for electricities, haupt, the prefix for main, betriebswerk being like plant/factory, bauunter as contractors, beamten, as in officials, and gesellschaft for company.

What if I suffer from agglutinative intolerance?

@tsgillespiejr

9 жыл бұрын

JustOneAsbesto Then I'm afraid a nice meal of Sauerkraut at the köftecisi is simply out of the question :(

@sagiksp4979

8 жыл бұрын

I googled that, and the only results are this comment and a website that reuploaded this video w all the comments.

@jonahs92

8 жыл бұрын

+‫שגיא קרמן‬‎ הי! את גרה בישראל?

@sagiksp4979

8 жыл бұрын

Jonah Safern yea

@T1Squid

8 жыл бұрын

+JustOneAsbesto Impossible, how were you able to spell intolerance correctly? Impostor!

Inuktit: ᖃᖓᑕᓲᒃᑯᕕᒻᒨᕆᐊᖃᓛᖅᑐᖓ (qangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga) - “I'll have to go to the airport”

@gamermapper

2 жыл бұрын

I think there's were the "Eskimo words for snow" myth came from? They didn't understand the concept of agglitunative languages, which is what the Eskimo-Aleut family is, and Inuktitut is a member of that language family

Tom, learn a second language already :( I wanna hear you spitting arabic love poetry.

@katiegunzz8525

4 жыл бұрын

Learning Arabic was one of the hardest languages I ever chose to learn. Beautifully structured linguistically, but when you learn it you essentially have to learn 2 languages, as there is formal Arabic and then dialectical Arabic (I chose Egyptian). Most so instead of having to learn one word you would have to learn two as they were different in formal and dialect. You only spoke in dialect. You NEVER speak formal Arabic, even if you’re talking to a high authority like the president. Formal Arabic is only ever spoken on the news. So you speak dialect and read and write in formal. it was impossible for me to keep straight which word was the formal one and which word was the dialectal one. So I ended up with a weird mish mash of half Formal half dialectical Arabic and I sounded and wrote like a crazy person.

@mohanadbakain282

4 жыл бұрын

I'm a naitive Arab and believe me english is much better than Arabic. It is ten times easier to get the same idea through to people in english than it is in Arabic. English is a lot more descriptive and way more specific than arabic.

@RAFMnBgaming

4 жыл бұрын

@@katiegunzz8525 Ok so I'm not necessarily interested in ever learning to speak Arabic, slightly more so than polish but only because polish really scares me, but damn do I want to hear the story behind how that happened.

@Epicbird-hb5eg

4 жыл бұрын

Disturbed Donut one word: bebsi

@Nylspider

3 жыл бұрын

@@disturbeddonut2151 I have tried to learn Arabic and I do go to Saudi Arabia almost every year but I do find that in Saudi Arabia almost everyone knows English as a second language I do really wanna learn Arabic tho. Any ideas on how I could start

German...wo want to do a infinity Long german word :D I mean its like you can just throw more and more nouns on the word and its getting bigger an bigger lie Buch Buchladen Buchladenverwaltung Buchladenverwaltungsregel Buchladenverwaltungsregelhaus Buchladenverwaltungsregelhausbaustelle Buchladenverwaltungsregelhausbaustellenarbeiter And you can even more words row and the end and take sometime a "s" or "en" too... Funfact: EVERY VERB is german has 221 forms!!!

@Slim_Pilzi

8 жыл бұрын

Buchladenkasse Buchladenkassenwart

@gideonroos1188

8 жыл бұрын

Afrikaans is quite similar as well. Our general rule for words are, if it's one thing, it's one word. So for example, a dog house, is one physical thing, so the Afrikaans word for it is just one word (hondehok ~ lit. dog cage) The longest one I've ever seen (not accepted in the Afrikaans Woordelys en Spelreëls) can just fill a single tweet at 140 characters: Tweedehandsemotorverkoopsmannevakbondstakingsvergaderingsameroeperstoespraakskrywerspersverklaringuitreikingsmediakonferensie-aankondiginkie Translation, more or less morpheme by morpheme (note that letters in brackets aren't part of the base words/stems that form part of the compound word, but instead are joining letters that don't have any seperate meaning) Tweede = Second handse = hand (in posessive form) motor = motor verkoop(s) = sales manne = men vakbond = trade union staking(s) = strike/protest vergadering = meeting sameroeper(s) = convener toespraak = speech skrywer(s) = writer pers = press verklaring = declaration uitreiking(s) = outreach media = media konferensie = conference aankondeginkie = announcement (in diminutive form) so that word translates to (and here some words may change as context will change the translation of some morphemes to synonyms of the words used above): (little) Second hand motor salesmen trade union strike meeting convener speech writer press conference outreach media conference announcement. Note that I added little in brackets as the english equivalent of the diminutive is to add 'little' beforehand.

@dutchik5107

8 жыл бұрын

+Derelict Friend ahh!!! I have never read Afrikaans, but it's sooo similar to Dutch, I thought there would be more different. but take aankondigingeke. or something. in official Dutch it is aankondiging, buy in Brabants I guess we say the same as the afrikaanse form. we just don't write that because of, you know spelling rules.... and I'm actually from brabandt (just a province in the south, in the middle) so that was what I sometimes just say. we just don't make that long words, but I think it's grammatically still correct.

@dutchik5107

8 жыл бұрын

+Dutchik oh, it was kie, as in smaller, yeah in Dutch that would've been kje. and some words are similar when you say it, but the spelling is just like old Dutch. I hate it that we aren't allowed anymore to write things however we want, as long as it still sounds the same. writer is schrijver in Dutch so still kinda the same...

@dutchik5107

8 жыл бұрын

+Dutchik oh, it was kie, as in smaller, yeah in Dutch that would've been kje. and some words are similar when you say it, but the spelling is just like old Dutch. I hate it that we aren't allowed anymore to write things however we want, as long as it still sounds the same. writer is schrijver in Dutch so still kinda the same...

Japanese is an agglutinative language and one of my favourite words in Japanese because of this is 食べすぎちゃいましたから tabe (to eat) sugi (from sugiru, too much) cha(from chau, to show that something is accidental or regretted) I mashita (polite suffix to show past tense) kara (in this context used to give reason) Because I accidentally/regretfully ate too much, all in one word.

@edwardelric5019

Жыл бұрын

In Turkish this would be: Yanlışlıkla fazla yediğimden.... (3 words) In German it'd be: Weil ich ausversehen zu viel gegessen habe,.... (7 words)

@Hi-cl7fy

Жыл бұрын

technically they are all still seperate words like you seperated them right? Japanese doesnt have any spaces so only "technically" its all lumped together? (Ive been taking Japanese for 2 years and never heard anyone consider these to be just one word)

@RNS_Aurelius

Жыл бұрын

@@Hi-cl7fy i wouldnt consider them seperate words because the morphemes cant be considered words on their own. Ive never really asked if anyone thought of them as singular words before but I suppose most peiple wouldn't

@rewplaypark

Жыл бұрын

@@Hi-cl7fy No, because you have to change the forms of those parts in the particular way to be able to form this sentence with this particular meaning 食べる → 食べ　(required by すぎる) すぎる ＋しまう →すぎてしまう→すぎちゃう (contracted, casual form)→すぎちゃい 　(すぎて required by しまう and ちゃい required by ました) から is the only separated word I guessed.

I'd love to see a video about vowel harmony.

@florailonastahl2609

2 жыл бұрын

omg yes, here comes hungarian ;D

"See Goldman (1973) abridging Morganstern." ...I see what you did there.

In greenlandic one of there longest words are: Nalunaarasuartaatilioqateeraliorfinnialikkersaatiginialikkersaatilillaranatagoorunarsuarooq. It's 94 letters long and translates as something like "Yet another time they attempted to build a giant radiostation, but it was seemingly only on the drawing board." Which is why greenlandic is so difficult for me to learn, even though my fiancé is from Greenland

So In- negates right? Inflamable? Infamous? Ingenious? Your language is buggy. :p

@TeamFlamingStones

9 жыл бұрын

Tilman Baumann He did mention that there are exceptions. Besides, while ingenious and inflammable are examples of that, infamous is not. It does mean that you're famous, only for something bad, as opposed to good. He never specified what the prefix negated :P

@divelikejunk8557

9 жыл бұрын

Tilman Baumann Actually, no rules are being broken. Let me explain. 1. Inflammable Here, in- does not act as a prefix indicating negation. It is not a bound morpheme, it's part of the root: inflame. If you broke it down you'd have: inflammable --> inflame + able Furthermore, the word inflame comes from the Latin word _inflammare_ meaning to excite or set on fire. 2. Infamous This one has to do with the word origin too. It comes from Latin _infami_ meaning disgrace and dishonour. Again in- is actually part of the root and is not a prefix. It does not mean that someone who's infamous is not-famous. Breaking it down we have: infamous --> infam + ous We know what the prefix -ous means. So someone who's infamous is full of disgrace and dishonour. 3. Ingenious Again, we could figure this one out by tracing the origins of the word. We go all the way back to Latin again. The root of the word comes from Latin _ingeni_. The word could mean either (1) character, (2) natural capacity, (3) innate quality, or (4) talent. Now we have two morphemes. ingeni, the root and the suffix -ous meaning that it possesses the quality of "ingeni". Thus: ingenious --> ingeni + ous So therefore someone who is ingenious either possesses a lot of character, has natural capacity, is full of innate qualities, or has a lot of talent. I hope that clears things up. :)

@TeamFlamingStones

9 жыл бұрын

Dive Like Junk You appear to have done me not just one, but several better. I will step aside, knowing that my honour was not spoiled, for you are truly the worthiest opponent of them all.

@TilmanBaumann

9 жыл бұрын

Dive Like Junk thanks guys. I wasn't actually too concerned with the exceptions. Languages are messy after all. But thanks for the great explanation. Perhaps it's less messy than I think. :)

@michelefavarapedarsi1133

9 жыл бұрын

All the languages are buggy because can't be perfect to allow the description of everything, imagination included. So they are inherently ambiguous, buggy. I always have problems to remember where I have to use 'in-' and where I have to use 'un-', and very often get stuck into searching a word that starts with 'a-' (from greek: 'without'; ex: 'amorphous' means 'without a known shape'). Plus, as said in the video, you can't just apply an 'in' or 'un' in front of something; because some of those words don't exist, are archaic or exist only in UK english but not in US english. Buggy. Because of me, not the language itself. But... buggy how? Against a reference. What reference? TV news journalists or vocabulary or both? Who keeps the reference in shape both for kids and media operators? And how i? And how many people spend their days reading the vocabolary? Bugs... plenty of bugs...

In Tamil we have words like "Pogamudiadhavargalukkaaga" which means "for the sake of those who cannot go"

"You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means."

@MatthewMcVeagh

3 жыл бұрын

This is true of Tom with 'synthetic'.

*propreantepenultimate* -- meaning fifth from last penultimate = second to last antepenultimate = third from last preantepenultimate = fourth from last looks like someone just _glued_ together all synonyms to the "pre" suffix 😂

@dydlus

4 жыл бұрын

"Which one do you mean?" "Oh you know, the one before the one before the one before the one..." *3 alphabets later...* "...before the one before the last one! Wait, why are you a skeleton?"

@CarMedicine

4 жыл бұрын

I thought it only went up to antepenultimate.

@MatthewMcVeagh

3 жыл бұрын

I've not heard of propreantepenultimate. I guess that's using the ancient Greek for 'before'. In my own head I invented forepreantepenultimate. I guess we can go with forepropreantepenultimate for "sixth last".

@wyntyrr

3 жыл бұрын

If we wanted to say someone looks like someone who looks like the seventh form the last, you could say the grammatically correct monstrosity “Anteforepropreantepenultimate-looking-like.”

1:38 Fusion is a cheap tactic to make short words longer.

@horseenthusiast1250

7 жыл бұрын

Well, technically not longer. But more complicated. I just wanted to make a joke.

@aingeav497

7 жыл бұрын

It's joke

@Astronomy487

7 жыл бұрын

Steven Universe eyyy

@neilisbored2177

7 жыл бұрын

For some reason the real gems ruby and sapphire have high pleocroism. garnets don't. Great job on the research, guys.

0:33 I love that the footnote is very formally saying "go read _The Princess Bride."_

Umm.... Inuktitut is massively polysynthetic, and in so much as you can even compare languages, Inuktitut would be "more" polysynthetic than at least some Algonquin languages like Passamaquoddy. For example, "do you speak Inuktitut" is ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑑᓲᖑᕖᑦ, or Inuktituusuunguvit? Notice how the morphemes all blend together. Typically, intransitive clauses are pronounced as a single word, and it is so much so that a corpus search of the Inuktitut Hansard (the "minutes" from the Nunavut government), found that some crazy large percent (much >90%) of the words that appeared at all appeared uniquely once. This characterization of Inuktitut is not accurate.

I take issue with your sliding scale, Tom: I learnt that "analytic" was an intermediate category between "isolating" and "synthetic/inflected", with the latter category being subdivisible (?) into "fusional" and "agglutinating", with the "polysynthetic" being an extreme-case subset of agglutination. Then again, perhaps we've been taught slightly differently?

In Cree (an algonquian language) we have “nikînôhtepemiyokinokiyokawasicinânawâw“ “We (exclusive) had wanted to come and have a nice long visit with them”. A whole sentence in one word.

Tom is one smart and very interesting guy.

@NonTwinBrothers

7 жыл бұрын

so smart he can't even pronounce hablo

@Axyo0

6 жыл бұрын

+NonTwinBrothers Beause intelligence is directly proportional with how well you can pronounce foreign languages

Just a note: In 2:06, the 'o' doesn't convey singularity. We know it's singular because it doesn't have an 's' :)

@ViewerEm

5 ай бұрын

i know this is seven years old but the "os" of "hablos" is a different morpheme technically.

Oh dear, my friend. is /'aβ.lo/! Keep up the sweet, sweet linguistics. This and 'Things you might not know' are what I look forward to in my subscriptions.

@Valosken

9 жыл бұрын

***** Tom has a degree in Linguistics, so I'd imagine he can.

@XxJ0nas98xX

9 жыл бұрын

***** To be fair, I'd guess Tom can read IPA, since he's uploading linguistic videos...

@NightmareNavyBlue

9 жыл бұрын

Valosken English Linguistics, but still Everyone should just stop correcting him when he slightly wrongly mispronounces something, it's what becomes of most of these comments.

@Valosken

9 жыл бұрын

NavyBlue I swear he has a degree in Linguistics, not just English Linguistics.

@NightmareNavyBlue

9 жыл бұрын

Valosken Who knows, I'll try find a source but for now, idk

0:56 saved for future reference for when my friends ask why I picked Vietnamese as my third language

Absolutely loving this language typology series, super informative, super interesting and something completely new to me. I don't think there are any others doing videos on this subject matter either.

As for the Spanish silent h, in many cases the h was once sounded (centuries ago) in words like "hablo" and "hijo", which came from Latin "fabula" and "filius" respectively. Eventually the h phoneme was simply lost, hence its silence in modern Spanish.

@unanec

3 жыл бұрын

H represents that the next vowel is blowed

The Old English word for daily in the Lord's Prayer, or Fæder ūre, is 'gedæghƿāmlīcan'. Not as long as some of the other languages, but there are some very cool words like this in Old English.

I love your videos so much! Information-dense, funny, colourful, vulgarised without being dumbed-down... you da man, Tom.

I know this is a super old video, but I feel compelled to say this. This channel was what introduced me to Linguistics and got me interested in it. That was about three years ago, and I am now a freshman in college majoring in it! I was assigned to watch this video for my current homework and found it really nostalgic ☺

Word of the day - Morpheme. Sounds a lot like morphine.

Agglutinative languages are fun, they allow you to create the most ridiculous word/sentences imaginable.

@david_ga8490

3 жыл бұрын

Iseewhatypudidthere

@nomnom7697

3 жыл бұрын

@@david_ga8490 it doesn't work like that :D you don't write a sentence without space between the words, It is just one word by naturally. Suffixes are not words in agglutinative languages.

@david_ga8490

3 жыл бұрын

@@nomnom7697 ikr it was me 8 months ago I don't even understand what I was saying

@aI-si9zm

2 жыл бұрын

Nakakapagpabagabag ba na panatilihin ang pagsusuot ng uniporme sa paaralan?

I really like these videos. It's been such a long time since I've done anything with linguistics that I'd forgotten what analytic and synthetic even meant, so it's nice to be reminded.

In my language, a polysynthetic Algonquin language, we have seven different pronoun subjects based on the suffix of the word. Our language is also based upon a journey of life, so if you know core concepts for verbiage, its really easy to deduce meaning without necessarily having heard it

@SenorTallon

3 жыл бұрын

Do you have any examples you'd like to share? It sounds fascinating.

@user-og2cl5uy1y

2 жыл бұрын

i know you might never see this but i would love to know too! sounds fascinating and i'd love a resource where i could learn more about this if you might know of one if that's okay with you

Love this series. A recurring thought I had going through all the videos in this series was that I wished you'd shown more examples, instead of just mentioning their existence. hoping for more!

@an2939

3 жыл бұрын

I got an example for isolating:i am a worker U can also say i'm a worker but in vietnamese u cant do that u can just say:tôi là công nhân u just cant shorten the "i am"

Now I have a word that explains my ability as a kid to extrapolate the meaning of unfamiliar words from the content of familiar words to the confusion of my peers. I even confidently used the word "malformed" once, having no certain idea that when I looked to the dictionary later I'd find it in plain ink.

Tom, your channel is a fabulous part of KZread. You frequently manage to jam-pack more provocative ideas and interesting content in 4 minutes than you find in many long TED Talks, yet you manage to speak with eloquence and wit. Actually, you're funny as hell when you choose to be. You should really consider doing a Q&A video when you hit 250,000 subscribers.

I'd love that you make more languages videos. You make them so intresting!! I mean, yor "Things you might not know" and "Amazing places" series are quite intresting but I really love the videos about languages .

Huh. I was taught the spectrum slightly differently, with analytic, agglutinative and synthetic as three points, if I remember, going in a sort of circle (it's been a couple of years). But we were talking about how languages shift from one type to another over time, so that probably explains it (wow, I need to study). Also in my head I consider English analytic even if its technically not, just because we talk a lot about the difference between Old and later Englishes - OE being actually properly synthetic, so 'the shift from analytic to synthetic' is useful shorthand there. Tying this back to last week, I kind of think this is why English is so ambiguous - because it has so little inflection and the like, there aren't giant VERB PHRASE HERE signs about the place. But I don't actually know, as I don't speak any other languages and even if I did, I don't know how you would quantify this so you could study the correlation.

@Pilum1000

3 жыл бұрын

" going in a sort of circle" - it's just a hypothesis, the speculation only, this part of that theory.

@Pilum1000

3 жыл бұрын

in general, of course, the Endlish is the analytic and "isolating" language. I.E. are, in general, flexional-synthetic languages. the Old English was the same.

"Hablo" is pronounced "ahb-low"

@andrarias

9 жыл бұрын

Sean Gref That's the way an English speaking person would say it. In fact (and apart from pronouncing the H like a J; the H is not pronounced at all) Tom pronounced it quite well. The O is pronounced more like AW. It should be AH-blaw.

@TomScottGo

9 жыл бұрын

a arias The one time I don't apologise for my terrible non-English pronunciation, and of course I mess it up! Sorry.

@andrarias

9 жыл бұрын

***** lol, there's no need to apologise, but it won't harm to look for the pronunciation of a foreign language word up before publishing it. This is just a petty issue. Fantastic videos nevertheless!

@BenMcKenn

9 жыл бұрын

a arias I'd say the final "o" is more like the sound in "box". Would you agree?

@andrarias

9 жыл бұрын

Ben McKenna Sure! (if you are British), the problem is with Americans that pronounce box almost like bax.

These are the kinds of videos i start watching this channel for. I love these

Thank you Scott I really enjoy learning about words, etymology and where it all comes from. Keep up the good work.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

@JacobFelten

9 жыл бұрын

jesusnthedaisychain *slow clap*

@guilace

9 жыл бұрын

inconceivable

@KnakuanaRka

7 жыл бұрын

jesusnthedaisychain Have you ever heard of hyperbole?

@jesusnthedaisychain

7 жыл бұрын

K1naku5ana3R1ka: Have you ever heard of The Princess Bride?

@KnakuanaRka

7 жыл бұрын

jesusnthedaisychain I've seen it before, but I don't remember that line.

here are some cool long Hungarian words (technically their meanings can be explained, but they are rather just meant as a joke, to poke fun at how long you can make words while still maintaining some sort of meaning): elkelkáposztástalaníthatatlanságoskodásaitokért, and megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért.

I love your linguistics videos. Please keep making them.

The Goldman footnote makes this whole series go from gold to stellar!

InTurkish: Çekoslavakyalılaştıramadıklamızdanmısınız? Meaning: Are you one of those who we couldn’t make/turn into Czechoslovakian?

Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung. Good ol' German.

@TheMrKeksLp

9 жыл бұрын

Nah, thats just a long noun.

@alsifjlasieflooo

9 жыл бұрын

***** Spezialwindschutzscheibensteingschlagschutzgitterhalterungsschlüssel ;)

@TheMrKeksLp

9 жыл бұрын

Lady vor Edocsil Also just a long noun.

@TheMrKeksLp

9 жыл бұрын

Lady vor Edocsil unzerbrechlich. "un" + "brech" ("brechen") + "lich". That is what he was talking about.

@randomuser778

9 жыл бұрын

itzJanuary Is a noun not a word?

Your linguistics videos are solid gold, man.

In turkish, we have "muvaffakiyetsizleştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine" meaning of "as if you'd be of those we may not lightly make unaccomplished" Or even words like "çekoslovakyalılaştırabilemediklerimizden *misiniz?" it means "are you those that we couldn't make be/force to be from czechoslovakia?" * misiniz? is a preposition for making a sentence to a quesiton sentence or "are you? / did you? / will you?" so its part of the word but it should be written separately.

Inconceivable!

@theretard666

6 жыл бұрын

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

@pinkajou656

3 жыл бұрын

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Inconceivable... cue princess bride reference!

In Turkish, we have this: Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine It means: As though you happen to have been from among those whom we will not be able to easily/quickly make a maker of unsuccessful ones

While Chinese is somewhat like you described, there are complexities. Some words take their meaning as a group of words, so telephone is "electricity talking". In Japanese (which uses the Chinese Han characters, along with the phonetic Hiragana and Katakana) the "no" Hiragana is used to signify possession (so "Hikaru no Go" means "Hikaru's Go"); this is also used for boy "man no child" and girl "woman no child". Additionally, Chinese characters can be combined into a single character to create a concept. Thus, a mountain on top of a mountain signifies outside, three trees form a forest, and virtue is "a strong action of limiting or containing the plentifulness of the ego (heart)". Here, some words/characters take on their ideographic form (representing an idea) over their pictographic form (representing something as a styalized drawing).

@helenwhs

Жыл бұрын

Eh, I think it is more like "electric conversation".

Human communication doesn't fit in neat little boxes - except for youtube videos

@thomaster8870

9 жыл бұрын

Thomas L KZread videos are a mostly one-sided relationship and if there is a misunderstanding, it will not be cleared up... at least not in "conversation" and oftentimes not by the person who made the video. Also +1 for Thomas with Th.

@KnakuanaRka

7 жыл бұрын

Thomas L Hardy har har.

French is the only european language spokenly turning polysynthetic, which is cool

@369tayaholic5

Жыл бұрын

i saw the article too

@pessoaanormal4732

Жыл бұрын

I think that french is becoming a tonal language and English too.

Always a pleasure to learn from you!

Here with a little late entrance, the longest word in Bulgarian is "непротивоконституционствувателствувайте" or "neprotivokonstitutsionstvuvatelstvuvayte" if written in Latin script. It means "don't act against the constitution".

hey Tom, please explain the "ão" sound on portuguese! I've never met a gringo that could say it correctly. Also, what about the "ç"? How did that come to pass? thanks, mate! I love your channel!

@DzzO

9 жыл бұрын

Tim Stahel that was almost it man. I can't explain how it is using words so I recorded myself doing it. Mine feels more opened somehow, check it out. vocaroo.com/i/s1G9qg9Z5WF2

I have one thing to say: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

So glad the linguistics videos are back. On an old Linguistics video, you touched on the question of tenses. Any chance of that one coming round?

I love words and breaking them down to find out their meanings 😍👍🏻

proud of the clusterfuck of langauge Spanish is becames even better with accents "yo hablo sobre este video" = I talk about this video "(él) habló sobre idiomas en este video" = He talked about langauges on this video

@markmayonnaise1163

8 жыл бұрын

+Molothrus Aeneus Uh, I'm pretty sure what appears to be a clusterfuck to you is found in a great deal of romance languages.

@johnnycochicken

8 жыл бұрын

+Sofa King (edited) Well that's true.

@markmayonnaise1163

8 жыл бұрын

Pretty sure their point is that they're proud of how much of a clusterfuck Spanish grammar is, which apparently gets more complicated with accents.

@molotera8789

8 жыл бұрын

I was just mentioning how accent/tittles affect the time of a verb and dunno if any other language use tittles as well, correct me if I'm wrong

@markmayonnaise1163

8 жыл бұрын

Molotera Legarreta Isn't a tittle the dot on the i and j? Did you mean tilde?

You said that the 'o' in Spanish was a morpheme. So 'hablo' is two morphemes. Then does it follow that the word "made" contains two morphemes, "make" and also some kind of perfect tense modifier morpheme?

@columbus8myhw

7 жыл бұрын

I'm not a linguist, but I'd guess so; it's "make+ed", but since it's irregular the two morphemes merge together to become "made".

I love learning about words, something that would astound the English teachers I’ve had in the past. I’m going to have to track down every video you have made about language.

This is quite an interesting video. When explaining Chinese to others I always haven't been too sure how to explain the segmentation of Chinese to them since my audience are generally speakers of languages who see words and I am sometimes not sure whether I should stress on morphemes being words or vocab being words in Chinese, especially when I try to explain names.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

"the cold parts of North America" It does get cold in North America - in winter!

Your new language videos make proud to be fluent in multiple languages. Keep up, Tom!

im learning kalaallisut (greenlandic) and since it is polysynthetic, the hardest part for me (for me, idk about others) is the multiword sentences, as the line between when to split can be vague. some verbs, like {qaq}, are part of a single word, and are added to a word, yet other verbs, like {suli}, are the root and need a seperate word if you want to signify a subject/object

Tom Scott is really, really good at pretending to be an expert about everything. How's it done?

How's this sound, Tom?: "taloissanikinko?" ;)

@MKwildout

9 жыл бұрын

David Andrews how about "atomiydinenergiareaktorigeneraattorilauhduttajaturbiinirsatasvaihe"

@DavidAndrewsPEC

9 жыл бұрын

Kusti2801 Thank you for the brain-melt!

Your videos are pretty ace Tom... Right up my street and I love learning about the stuff you post...

Loving these linguistics vids!