White english wont andcant sit still, like literally. Language, constantly. Did you know the word clue derives from crew, the middle english word . In this area a ball of bread like these is through the labyrinth. It does not make sense. Other words have changed this way, taking on new meaning or new shades of meaning. In the age of means and texting, lol, nsw, dfw etc. , language continues to shift but as John Mcwhorter explains, that shouldnt scare us. Tonight he explains how the english language is evolving before our eyes and argues why we should embrace this change, not fight it. John mcwhorter is associate professor of english and comparative literature at columbia university. Hes the author of more than 15 books including the language book and the power of table. Hes currently writing his 20th book. Please give a warm welcome to John Mcwhorter. [applause] thanks everybody. I want to talk to you not too long about a new way of hearing language and i think its important because i think linguists have failed to explain the realities of how language change works and what language really is. Were all impatient to understand why everybody speaks it differently than we do but really theres a lot in common in languages and natural history. The way biologists have taught us to see flora and fauna. You never know it from the way language is taught in the school system. Youd never know it from even taking one or two linguistics classes that certain things are really hit on the head. I want to give you a new way of looking at language that will feel good. All this makes us easier to walk down the street feeling better about what you hear and feeling better about your own speech. And what it comes down to is this the fact that language is inherently changeable. Language changes. Its not that it might change, it always will change, it must change. If you ask somebody whether they think language should change, i dont think anybody would say no but you tend to think that what language change is his first of all, that you need new words for new things, i think anybody would accept that. You assume that a lot of those words will come from Foreign Languages and that process is exciting. And we know that slang changes so language changes. Language change is much more profound than that. So lets see if this works. There we go. Though heres what we know and heres what you dont learn. We will always need new words for new things, thats true but what we are not taught is that language changes as inevitably as cloud patterns change. The analogy is looking up at a sky and seeing the clouds today and how you would feel if you looked up tomorrow and saw the clouds in the same place, know what nobody would expect that. Its the same thing with language change. Language change at the change the way cloud patterns change. The clouds are changed by winds, languages changed because every generation slightly misinterprets what the last generation says. As never not happened and it always will. Or words will coming from Foreign Languages. Thats true but if you took a group of people and for some reason put them in a cave and somehow they could live in the cave with food and everything they needed but they were in the cave and there was no cultural change, theres no contact with anybody else and that group of people somehow managed to reproduce and live in the cave for 2000 years, when those people came out of the cave they would be speaking a whole new language. Not because anything new was invented, not because they had met anybody else and it wouldnt be just the slang. They wouldnt understand the people who had gone into the cave. Thats because its inherent that language changes, thats what language changes. Or you know that slang and idioms will change but its hard to see that the dictionary, the dictionary is a wonderful thing but the dictionary page is like a polaroid snapshot and thats really all it is. It can be a beautiful polaroid snapshot but if you have a polaroid of somebody at 40 and 10 years later you encounter that person and you show them a picture of themselves 40, you dont think that the way they were 40 is somehow the way they really are and that any change that happened since then is somehow wrong or peculiar. People change. Languages are the same way. Language changes in five ways, thats not true but for words on the move i have fashioned it to five easy to remember ways. One of them is something that tonight im going to call creeping implication. Words change like creeping implication what i mean by that is that at any point in time , a word has different residences surrounding it. Theres the dictionary definition and then there are other things that word makes you think of. As time goes by, what everybody thinks of the word as meaning moves into including those residences. After a while, the words meaning has changed and after a long while, the words meaning is unrecognizable. That is something that happens almost every word in any language. The words that dont dont change like and or in, the words for things like father and brother, those are the exception. Thats a boring collection of 100 or 200 words. Most words are always moving along. For example, philly first meant glasses. Audition first meant your earring, it meant nothing about being up on stage. Lewd first meant and the italics is messed up there, unlearned. You can imagine how unlearned mike moore into the meaning of sexually improper but originally lewd meant unlearned. You have to knew that if you read chaucer. Mary first met meant short, it gradually became to mean jolly because short is often pleasant. It happens bit by bit. Nice first meant all food. Local was the word for bread. Llworks which we now associate with health food stores, that was the word for vegetable. Apple first meant fruit. So for example lets say you are pleasant and we imagine what that word meansif you are blessed , then theres reason to think that you are innocent so a word that first means blessed mike many generations later mean that you are innocent. So innocent is probably harmless, it follows and that was a residence that was surrounding the word and next thing you knew a word that originally meant less meant harmless, thats far enough. If something is harmless its probably sweet and so the word came to mean week. This is happening century by century. If you are weak, one way you might be week is mental. Yomight not be a sickly week but you might be slow so after a while that word that meant blessed meant thin. If you are dim, one of the ways it might manifest is that you are kind of goofy and gradually that meaning thrown in such that blessed meant goofy. Originally the word meant happy and so word that started out meaning happy the game blessed which became harmless which became week which became slow whichbecame goofy. All that was a single word and this is the thing , thats normal. Thats what words do. Almost every word in your mouth is doing that. We cant feel it within our lifetime but thats how language change works. This has implications. Its not just that silly is interesting or anywhere that you are using has that kind of history. It gives you a sense of why shakespeare can be difficult to hear in real time if you havent read it first. Its a controversial topic and many people say that shakespeare is just a matter of poetry or that it has to be performed really well or that its better when the person has a british accent but i think all of us know that if all those things are in place, shakespeare, if you havent read it. Its one thing to read it but in real time, if somebody were doing king lear right here and you had read it, you get tired after about 20 minutes and somebody tells you you are not poetic. Its not only the poetry. Its that word meanings change and shakespeare was a long time ago so a lot of words that we hear sound like english because they are but the words dont mean what they need to us because much time has gone by for example entered, he defended himself, wife or when my dimensions are well compact, compact is on itself but you let that go. My mind is generous and my face is true as honest madams issue. My mind is generous. Why generous . People are making fun of him and hes objecting that hes free with his goods. Its not impossible but its odd. Its a little stumble as you are listening to to that. Hes not going to stop and explain and you cant act your way through. Then my mind is generous. We dont usually talk about a generous brain. Its a lot so that happens. If that happens about three times a page, there goes the piece. Jenna generous when shakespearewrote it meant noble. He talks about how he is as noble as anyone else. If you are noble , noble involved being magnanimous with your full. As a result after a while generous came to mean magnanimous and he needs a new word for noble and it was actually noble. So thats why shakespeare is hard. At this point i know how angry some peopleget the idea that shakespeare might be, get ready for it, changed. Theres a growing movement especially over the past 20 years to translate shakespeare but to adjust shakespeare, especially where the words are such that we can no longer understand what he meant when hearing it live and have it ready. For example, besides, miss duncan has borne his faculties so meek, faculties, what does it mean . You dont have time. Duncan has worn his faculties so meek that its clear that his great office is clear what . Im not clear, im sitting in a chair. Nobody would say my john, you are looking clear but its a play and you keep going. Pleaded like angels trumpet tone begins the season, youre happy now because thats poetic but angels, trumpet tone sounds the damnation of his taking off. Where are we going . Hes taking all this line, whats it mean . He keeps going. Thats hard. You can read the footnotes but lets face it, we are busy. After a while, especially you have kids you dont have time to read it so you are watching it live but suppose you change that to the things that means. So besides, miss duncan have borne authority so meek he can stand his faculties. Authority has borne his authority so meek had that not been clear in his great office but we cant tell what that means so pure in his great office, the idea being that he keeps his hands clean that his virtue will plead like angels, trumpet tone begins to beat damnation. Not the taking off of his knocking off, thats what it meant. It had kind of a slangy favor so its knocking off. So the issue is that word meanings change. Whats this mean . Theres no such thing as a community of speakers using a word wrong. We hear it that way. We think lately, people are using such and such to mean this but its supposed to mean that. But we understand its inherent to a word for his meaning to change. We understand a word isnt something that is. Its something going on. Thats the way language has always been. It means that if a representative, a number of people are using a word in a certain meaning, then the meeting has changed as would inevitably have been the case. Its not odd. Its just that thats evidence of the reality of language in your own life. If a person can use a word anyway they want, then doesnt it interfere with clarity . But the answer is this. Its people, not a person that uses a word in a new way. So meeting change is communal. No transition has ever occurred without various people having their own way, having trouble understanding one another. That would be a problem in america and thats because its a communal matter. Word meanings change. Creeping implication being that you can think of yourself as speaking something that is everchanging and it becomes a sports to wonder where the word meanings are going to go. There are various choices as to how its going to happen but to wait for the word meanings to stay in the same place is unfortunate cause they are always going to keep changing so you always hear the disillusionment taking place when really its just language in its own sense thats the first thing. Second thing, the spaces of language. And these are types of words and expressions that you never talk about in school, you never talk about this is grammar but its actually a crucial part of what language is. Linguists call it pragmatic which is an unfortunate jargon term. Because we think of pragmatic as being about 18 Different Things so im not going to say maddock ever again. Were going to call it faces of english and ive got this cute little acronym here called sexuality, acknowledgment, expectation and even. The first levels of these things spell face so thats what we are going to call it. What do i mean by that . We have sexuality markers in our language where we have ways that we can use we can barely say what they mean so really. I got tired of the way you read it. I cant take it anymore. Its been raining for so long im tired, really. Now formally we think that it means real tension but we dontpronounce it that way. Its really. If youre a child and you cant read yet you have to learn that this word should be spelled r i ll y as really and what we use really for is to indicate in an ongoing way when we talk that we are sincere in conversation and we are not doing it in a tidy sort of way such that we do it once at the beginning of something called the paragraph and never do it again. Its something we constantly do, almost the way somebody might be preening themselves and doing adjuster over and over. Donald trumps relief and is one of those gestures so why did he say that . Its because he wants to indicate his factual holiday and he has chosen that particular formula. Now factual alley explains the literacy problem. There are many people who are upset that thoroughly is being misused because its supposed to mean by the letter exactly so people seem to me music using it in figurative constructions. People say im literally dying of thirst. And thats just wrong because it means that you are using something to mean its opposite. So theres actual and then figuratively. That really gets a peoples nose but it doesnt have to, believe me. This is why. Literally starts out meaning by the letter. Now, thats what it meant at a certain point. Everybody who thought of it as meaning only that is now very day. And they died not knowing something that you guys and women can although which is that literally was never going to stay meaning by the letter. No word ever stays still. The only question is what was going to come to mean . The one thing words tend to do when they have a meeting of intensifying is they become less intense. Put bets on it that a word that went meant by the letter was going to start meaning Something Like really. Thats the way it was going to we can, you know that was going to happen. But once it means really, people are going to use it to intensify their expression, thats what we do when we speak. Next thing you know as you might say i was dying of thirst and not mean it, you can say i was literally dying of thirst. You knew that wasgoing to happen. Often its said , as my foot tangles in this wire that this use of literally is new. And i can imagine how it must feel that way. There are many reasons why it would feel new. I dont know. Its fortunate to be introduced to such a party of fine women at this arrival. It is literally the seed among the lilies, 1769 and this is somebody who is writing in a much more formal era so its not soon but wyatt irritates people is because this word that means the opposite and people think well, that cant be. Ive seen a teacher where somebody complained about literally on their chest and to say the word literally means figuratively i stand against it. But you can run fast but then you can be fast asleep. You can sit fast, be stuck fast. It means rapid and the opposite of rapid, does that ever bother you . If you are aware of it now, isnt it kind of neat . There are a lot of words like that. Somebody can pull away, both chair to the ground and the world keeps turning. If you see a watermelon, chances are you do not purchase some seeds and put them into the watermelon before you eat it. You are taking the seeds out. But then if you are exceeding a plot of land it would be counterproductive to take the seeds out of the ground, you are putting them in. Has that ever confuse you . Thats three examples and there are seven of them up there. There are about 75 of what are called confidence in this language. Contrary number 56 is literally. To the extent that we have probably not known what a person meant, if a person sent i is literally freezing to death what they are telling you is why they didnt die so you are confused, it just means weve got another contranym. Acknowledgment. An awful lot of language is a matter of looking into the person you are speaking to his mind and acknowledging their state of mind. Nobody puts it that way but thats an awful lot ofwhat we mean. Such as totally, the way people below a certain age used totally. It doesnt mean in total fashion. So if someone says we are totally going to get tickets to the taylor swift concert, they dont mean were going to get tickets for a taylor swift concert in a complete way. Thats not what it means. Were totally going to get tickets for the taylor swift concert means it doesnt really mean something it doesnt, it means we both know there are reasons why some people would suggest we should get those tickets so that maybe shes considered a little bit xyz or we are busy students or Something Like that but we are going to get a ticket area if somebody says hes totally going to call you, its not hes going to call you in his completeness, its hes going to call you even though some people have reason to believe hes not. Thats actually what everybody is saying totally walking down your street everyday needs. Its an acknowledgment of standing conditions of which all are aware and you dont get taught these things but thats what it means so there are lots of markers and this is a modern language, this is all language. Some chaucer, emily says in the night that i am, that meant no. Yet my company is a maid and i love some things and others. Shes saying today we hear you know is kind of a tent but chaucer is putting in a very long time ago. So actuality an acknowledgment, then counter expectations is a major aspect of how you actually communicate. It doesnt fit in to our sense of what an adjective or a past tense is but is very much grammar so the reason i did if i may is because the things that you think of this obeying, as some sort of degradation of language which are sophisticated. For example, you might think that you up and an adjective is just to be vulgar. Thats a big. [bleep] pot and you think why didnt the persons a big pot . Its because they meant something specific. Imagine a person looking out the window and they see a squirrel and they say hey, i see a gray asked squirrel. That doesnt just mean i see a great squirrel and im kind of a person, it has a more specific meaning, it means hey, that squirrel is gray rather than the black squirrel that i sent so in some cases i forget which one, squirrels are black. You would only say i saw a gray asked squirrel became for somewhere where the squirrels are a different color so what you mean is squirrel is gray, its a gray asked squirrel. We went through this long. [bleep] opera, it means it was longer than you would expect anything to be, it was probably minor for example and thats what it means. Listen to the way people use that asked because they do all the time tomorrow and you will know its never just profanity, its always to counter expectations. There are less pungent ways of expressing that but i wanted to understand the point about language as we know it. Even lol, much has been spillover when it originally meant being used constantly in texting in particular and that shows the rail into speech to make sense but its essentially known in texting. You can find any number of accounts of lol say that it doesnt mean anything and thats because its one of these safe words, so you can see this actual Test Exchange so if i like you, im pretty sure everyone else figures that out before you and what does this mean, im assuming you did lol and i guess i shouldnt assume, why sprinkling that in there . That charges so it wont cancel for a while, lol. It seems so unsystematic. You know what that is . About how much we laugh when we talk to each other. Theres an awful lot of really empty laughter that one does. If you dont giggle a little bit making little jokes while you are talking to people, people you only know so well, your process is unfriendly. Its an unspoken part of being a normal human being to struggle a little bit and smiled a little bit when you are interacting with people. Lol is how texting has created that exact same meaning, that laughter serves to make it clear that everything is okay, were always indicating a really mean thing, always looking into other peoples brains, we are always engaging the counter expectations and we are always keeping things lol does that and so its a space marker just like our involuntary laughter is when we talk so all of this will assume it is you can imagine, there is a long list of acknowledgment, counter expectations and evening markers and they are part of the language as using past tense or pluralize in a noun. On standard dialogue, very often you will hear standard english and then they also use a different kind of speech among one another. Yes, im thinking black americans because we are in america. Why do they do that . Why do they have to be different . Why does yes, president obama use that when he talks to the naacp. Ive known many wellintentioned people who heard the president as fake in that. They think if he can talk one way, why would he talked to others . Thats because nonstandard dialect going into it is another kind of even and its something thats probably every second person in the world does to some extent by switching to a different language in situations or if not that then a different dialect. Its very much part of language so once again you have a way of hearing language in a more confident way so it can be one thing to listen to all these literally and you knows and actually said lols and think what is all this trash . Why dont people sound like Edward Gibbon but they never have and all these safe markers have implications of their own. So those are big two and then there are three others aspects of how language changes. Now, theres a word for this that linguists use, its called grammatical ideation. It sounds like a disease so thats the last time i will use that disease turned but theres a chapter about it in words on the move. Well call it where did the little bits come from. For example, 10 can. You can do it. Can came from no, thats what first met, so you can do this , you can identify, that originally came from a verb to know as did kenny and cutting and truth. All those words started out as meaning to know, words always change. Meant could be, thats normal. One of the oddest little words, its like youve got something in your mouth and suddenly its kind of odd, this wet muscle but you are kind of stuck with it, ought is that way, look at that word. Get how its spelled, think about how to say it. Where did ought to come from . It was the word for code. You can hear it used that way in shakespeare, ought meant owed, the owed something to somebody and you ought them, next thing you know, you want to do something, we, the proverbial we was life which meant body so what happens is that what we think of as ordinary words become pieces of grammar that just basically managed to traffic between words so richard the third, let them go. April rogers in 1930 in writing a song, lets go. Already hes thinking that he was saying lets go, he knew if he wrote it but when we say lets go we are saying ptz, lets go. Theres a whole new grammatical item which they call performative but its a way of summoning lets go, if a linguist came out and listen to us speaking casually and never looked at the page, they would hear as a pretext, so you often hear it said, thats what i would save my daughter, i would never say let us go and i say lets go but really come on, heres your vice tracker, thats it. Where does the prefix come from, from two words, lets go. Its perfectly ordinary. Its happening all the time. Or walk. Imagine if you made up a language and youve come up with a word for ambulating and then you want to put it in the tab and you think it would be corny to just say yesterday, especially if you meant an hour ago. How are you going to put it in the past . You certainly wouldnt think of adding some little bit of stuff to the end of the word. You might if you already took a language but if you can put yourself in the mind of somebody that starts naming things out of the blue, how do you put it in the past you would make a suffix. Suffixes happen by accident. Walk started as walk did and keep saying that over and over and pretty soon you are saying wont so did got started as an actual word and then did becomes a suffix, all of our prefixes and suffixes started as old words, the language changes not only in terms of words coming to me new things that some words traveling to other words and they stop being words at all. Its fascinating. So if english were allowed to just move on with nobody having any judgment, there would be new grammar that we can practically hear happening so for example, young people using the quoted at all. Shes all, im going to go to the store and hes all, i want you to buy these links, we hear that and we think thats the youth butchering the language. But if the youth were allowed to keep going the way youth is when they made old english in the middle language into modern english, then im all, said again and again might become im all and you are all would be, you all and hes all would become the all, english would have a brandnew irregular bird. It would be this new verb this way of saying and we would be a language where we could laugh at other people for not knowing how to do our irregular verbs. It would be all of this matching or dont. But it cant happen because everybody keeps saying that im all and you all is bad. That sort of thing happens all the time, its beautiful. Then theres nouns. Nouns are always changing and linguists never share with the general public. Thats how sounds work because teaching it, you are always afraid people are going to be bored so we in words on the move i sought somebody needs to have a chapter about sound that doesnt get lippy and somehow keeps the reader moving on. Ive worked so hard on that chapter. Im told that it almost succeeds, some of the reviews already say the chapter about sound, the idea is to get across that sounds im not a ei ou. That has no meaning except that it has anything to give the small people and you are teaching them how to read. That is not anything like how our vowels work and certainly not where they are in the mouth. For example, look at that there and that column that you have on the left, thats the front of a headcut in half. You can see in the breaking bad what happened to fring in the head, hes looking in the other direction on the show. He, those are all set up front. It doesnt feel like if you say this day that but look at the column in the back and say thought and notice that its all further out. All of this is a nonso the back of the neck is on the right in the front of the face is in the front. Thats where all the battles are. It sounds like those words, not the barbaric way they are spelled but if you know where all those sounds sick and thats what that short charges meant to show, then ways that people pronounce them start to make sense that otherwise feels like why do they keep saying it like that . For example in california theres something thats been happening for about 25 years. Somebody says this but the truth is if you listen to them you would think they were saying that. So somebody is saying a little of this but you think of it, people under 30 who grew up in la they might say a little bit, a little bit. Theyre saying a little bit and use hear them seeing a little bit because we can read but its a little bit. In the same way, that person if they say that they are saying something a lot more like back so we made a bet. It sounds like im imitating a young girl but im producing those kinds of files. So a bit of a bet would be a bat on the back. Part of imitating that person due to those vowels and even if i dont do that like a foul, its a little bit of a bat. Thats what that person says every second one of my students at columbia has those battles. You can write about it and you can hear it and think why did they do that if you look at the chart, you can see that finals are always moving around. They are like bees in a hive. So in any language, its not whether the vowels are going to movies where they are going to move, they never sit still so part of the language change, the vowels are always moving so bits falling into that and because that is being moved out, it goes to that. Perfectly normal. The sound all is leasing out of this space of increasing numbers of americans, it makes it harder to teach the International Phonetic alphabet every year. So for example on im 51, i was born in philadelphia, for me caught and cox i caught a fish are different. Increasing numbers of americans and its becoming practically, its become a majority, you have taught and taught as the same sound so you sleep on a cot and then yesterday you caught a fish, thats probably true of many people in this room. Thats been happening for a while. Theres no reason, certainly not cultural and its because vowels move and you can see how this would work. Caught and then cox, cot slipping down into this thing that cot is in so next thing you know youve caughta fish. This change gets more entrenched every year. I used to tell students who had what linguists call caught caught merger, if youre having trouble hearing all and you want to write your ipa of mainstream americanenglish , then what do you say when a kitten crawls of your leg and it goes meow . You can do that and anybody would say off, there was the all area thats a point that happens this fall, i told the class if you are having trouble hearing on, what kitten fine of your leg and send me out, half of the class would say off but they dont on anymore. Why . Guess what. Because thats the sort of thing that happens all the time. Each vowel has different places it might move, you never know exactly where its going to happen but its kind of like a chessboard with certain moves that would never happen and in any language the vowels are always turning around in that fashion. Even spelling makes more sense. I made a fist. You think how made his spell. M ad e. Why would it be spelled that way . It should be Something Like an ed like any normal european language. How is this spell that way . Its spelled that way because thats the way it originally sounded. It started out back and bought and it went up to base and so it started out as an off sound and moved to a until that became made. Spelling makes more sense if you understand sound change. These things are so deliciously arbitrary. I cannot stand those small hounds up in new england. I hate to say that but i know people find it very quaint. They go to the berkshires, those towns where everything is brown and quaint. I have never understood it. The only way i can get anything out of those tiny places is to go to the bookstore and you go in the back and you find interesting things. The last time i was in one of those little towns and i saw this wonderful guide to speaking american english from the mid1880s and it was absolutely bizarre what this ernest man said were the proper ways to pronounce them in 1887. These are Edith Whartons people. We are not talking about chaucer. Were talking about if you read house of murder, this is the way these people spoke. Age of innocence, they didnt talk like Michelle Pfeiffer and daniel daylewis, they talk like this. These were the sorts of things being said here on this ground, granted they didnt live that far from here so i made up this paragraph is based on this persons idea of how you are supposed to say things in proper company. What might then say for salinity by sampling a juicy nectar or by about tony seed, people are serious about that, balcony was considered class and taking another trauma, that would be better than making do with a canine despicable, dishonest person so not canine, that was very lonely. Canine and then they started off saying that, you are despicable. Canine, despicable is on a person speaking to the use, certain things must take precedence over others. Try being a nomad sort. These were the good pronunciations and you know, that just changed. Another one is buffet. Buffet was considered private. So things are always changing. They are changing again in a cuter way than that. Something called fascist, nobody has ever called fascist so to me i wanted to have that name and im trying to spread it around, its called vacuous because you dont want to hear what is called in the linguistics journal but look at the verb likerevell , outlaw. If you revell, you are not a rebel. You are a rebel. If you outlaw something, you are outlaw, if you record something, you make a record. If you speak english, you know this subconsciously. You just do it without thinking. What it means is that when something becomes a thing then the accent ships backwards. And it creates all sorts of things you dont think about. So for example, nowadays the old movies and old tv shows are so available you can hear how funny people sounded because thats just didnt happen in the past. Any cancer, a quarter of this room will need to know he was a very popular vaudevillian and musical theater and sometime movie star in the first half of the 20th century. He had a status, became all kind of like a less creepy kiwi herman and he was about as popular, big deal. He had movies and some people who are inclined to think theyve seen all of them many times and hear him say funny things. So at one point at the end of one of his movies in 1932 he said i learned from my boy scout. A boy scout, why is not it not a boy scout . Only since 1910 so he said these are not the ranger scouts, these are the boy scouts. Its become an established concept to say boy scouts, by the time that was bullied at which time cancer was much older and in another movie talks about being a dog so its a hot dog because those were newer. The boulevard is a movie more people have seen that anything any any cancer did and in a voiceover early on, the 1950s, holding talks of his character going to a supermarket and you are thinking know, supermarket, why didnt they do a retake of the supermarket. But market would be an ordinary term, the big eared ones were called the supermarket. Supermarket only happen because of the bachelor. There is one episode of the Dick Van Dyke show, 1964. A woman comes on whos about the age of the century and shes talking about well, i was doing a crossword puzzle and my husband says, i thought what is a crossword puzzle, its a crossword puzzle, the New York Times crossword puzzle but they only happen in the 20s when she was a young woman, she would have learned as do that thing in the paper that crossword puzzle, old diehard and there you go for this is something you can find online, its not allthese things in black and white , so remote. Mary tyler moore is a mother and in an episode of 1972, theyre having something that they all call chinese food. There are going well, i dont feel like cooking, lets have some chinese food. And its not one of them because then they will fit down, lets have some chinese food and you think, what is chinese food . Then you think to yourself wait, its 72. Chinese food is not default yet. We call it tiny food today it would still become a novelty because of the ship, we have shifted there and certainly Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper say chinese food. Now back then it was new. So we get into the final change. This is called compound languages. I never liked that term so i came up with a different one. It starts out with something really boring. I remember fighting this on one of the dumbest things ive ever heard which is that the way that some words are created, the two words come together and ending one word. Some people find that interesting in itself. Theres a blackboard and a blackboard is some plant that you paint black. So its a blackboard and that something very specific with chalk, its not even black usually anymore and where blackboard came from was black and board came together. And it became a blackboard. Who cares . Except theres the back shift so think about it. Youre going to have to get a blackboard as opposed to put it up on the blackboard. Same thing. A bird might be blue, some australian whatever. Then its called a bluebird and you have the back shift. But still, thats not something one would want to share outside of ones home. What gets interesting is that theres the dumb ones like those, blackboard and huber but really words come from this that you dont even know. For example, imagine yourself with no writing, you cant read and you hear about things like cupboard and breakfast. You dont think of a covered as a couple board. I dont know what a cop board is. I dont really know what cupboard is but i remember hearing words when i was younger because you pronounce it cupboard, cup and board are gone. Breakfast, we know its about breaking a fast but you didnt really know that until you are about 10. You had to read it. Its really just a word preference. You can see it in the spelling. But then there are other ones where its not even in the spelling. You should go out into the world daisy, remember Downton Abbey . Where does that name come from . Why is the flower daisy . Because its a days i can. They say days i over and over and you are bored. Daisy, daisy. I sheriff is a shyer read. You are the revolver shire. Say that over and over and you are the sheriff. Those two words came together just like blackboard came to blackboard and so blackboard in the future might be Something Like black and that it will be interesting. Daisy and sherif are that way. Notice how the original one had come b and i thought that was unpleasant, change to sherif and we forgot to change it here. Pussy originally housewife. Say that over and over again and unfortunately it comes out as that. Then you have ones where you would never know, barn, repeated barn is the first word ever invented, barns are so unitary and large, no, it was borrowing barn. And the monument was a place, a sweet arm with a dormitory. I guess arm was a hotel, a barley arm was where you put your barley. Fair arm, baron, barn. Barnett started out as two words. World started out as two words and its so weird and complicated im not going to explain but there was no agent close into european words, werewolf or Something Like that. It was two words, where and it came to mean that here we are. So word sex can happen, create an awful lot of words and words come together and they undergo the back shift and after a while they blend together so that you never knew that they were ever to. So this brings us to the end and its not only literally that we could learn. Its my and the way people use it, these days its so easy to read as trash and looking at for life and well, its not systematic and somethings wrong with people today. For some reason today. It happens today. The idea is difficult. What we are talking about is people using it like this. This was in this disguise of about 15 i heard a couple years ago on the subway and i scratched down what he says. He thought we were going to have the room to ourselves and it turned out the family had booked it already. We are standing there with my grandkids and they are all over the place. They all ran out of the train and i thought what a strange little sequence of events and i tried to think of why it was grammar and first of all the whole situation he was talking about didnt make sense, it had something to do with a bar mitzvah and i thought what a Beautiful Life because he was a very confident kid. He was not meditational, didnt have his head down, didnt have had posture, he was an album mail and yet we are liking every two seconds and thats because he really analyze the way people use life, you can find factual alley, acknowledgment and expectation, this guy was making it clear he really meant what he was saying. He was making it clear that you might expect that there would be grandparents where that experiment was going to take place but there were so what he means is again another kind of really or this is like the only way to make it work. Thats better than saying this is the only way to make it work. Like has a certain grace, a certain politeness to it. Kind of like lets take our pill now someone says that they are not going to take it. It makes it gentler to pretend you to are going to take that pill. This is like, the only way to make it work. So like has done many Different Things. Its actually quite beautiful. It was a romantic word, pronounced leak and then it bounced. So its hidden meaning like the shakespeare word, it became a place marker. It became grammar. Life became lee, not saying she was like, bob loblaw. The exchange and sound, leak became like and it became used in other words so unlike. All those things that like did and yet we listen to life and we dont like it. I think he deserves better. Theres a book about language change, i forget which one,just published. And the end, the author says maybe some further flowers pressed dry in the books, those with an affectionate ceiling toward the inflatable doll in court. Really though, most of us seek life, language lives. So my message is simply that language could never not change and the things that you hear and think of as desecrations are exactly how old english became middle english and middle english became modern english. One of the oddest things in the world to wrap your head around is that there is no other way for languages to change, if you dont think it was wrong that latin became french then you cant hate the way people are using literally or that somebody says a bat or bat or that people are using light in brandnew ways because thats the only way that a language becomes Something Different. If it was okay in the past, then just in a logical sense its hard to defend the idea that change shouldnt happen now. We worry we are not going to be able to communicate but bed that problem has never occurred in the history of any language that any linguist or anthropologist has ever encountered, we will always be able to communicate and so you can think of the language change as just a parade. When you hear new stuff, you think wow, thats an interesting thing to happen to it given that something was going to happen to it, you start wondering what is going to be next when certain people started saying i literally cant even about five years ago, i remember saying thats cool. I like that. I wish i could say it without sounding fake whereas other people were writing pieces about it it sounded so literate and dull. More fun to love that your language will always change. Polaroid snapshots, the word is not something that is, a word is something going on. Another way is that words are always on the move, thats the name of the book. And i wrote it and as a spectator sport of how and why language changes. Thank you very much. [applause] we have time for some questions. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible] when i read shakespeare, i dont think this. The language has the ball in different ways and if you are in a very remote area, will the language give all, will the language evolved less rapidly, how does that work . Its interesting you mention shakespeare and other languages but thats another argument. Because shakespeare is translated into relatively modern first, other languages very often european get shakespeare in a way that we dont. I saw mcbeth two years ago with Patrick Stewart and there were russians behind me who were happily quoting it in russian including their children. They got it in a way that we get tony kushner whereas i must admit even i would stand there thinking thats hard and i have it ready in a few years and it wasnt because im not poetic although im not, its because the language has changed. Language change is ordinarily much faster than we are used too so the language, very few languages are. Only a few languages are written in a real way. Like witches are written marching along and people dont think of it as frozen on the page, its much less resistant to the spoken language changing, even if theres some ceremony or Something Like that but the idea that its this way and not that way and im going to beat somebody on the head for saying that way less so some languages have been documented to be thrown upside down structurally within a century. Print creates an illusion and i say that as somebody who lives in print. I love it viscerally but language on the page as an optical perceiving linguistic reality because you think that it thats sitting still must be the way it is when really language has always been mostly focused so language, english changes more slowly these days that normally would. Shakespeare, the languages on those ends are so different that they barely deserve the same name. Shakespeare here, i had to make the point that the changes are subtle but they are more pernicious than we might think. We have to make a point because obviously shakespeare was using the language we are using so our brains are one way, the way i put it in the book and the wonderful thing in many ways that it also makes you cranky about language change and its kind of a disease. I abide the common use now the word. Did you safest. Yes i did. When i grew up i was on one of those thousands words that was not you at all, its a course boulder word and you would have been abolished for using that at all. If you lament the change in that kind of word becoming popularized but i think now people by and large do not know these things as able garrity and obviously nothing can be done about it but does it bother you and if you refer to your daughter, if your daughter started that word, would you corrector . That was a rich question. Our taboos evolved. So use to be that the big tattoo was about religion and so to say oh my god was wrong, there are still some people consider that to be unpardonable, taking the word the same thing, but status, most people are out of the verb. And especially starting in the 1800s, who was such a description and so you did not talk about history and that has certainly changed very much in the media. In terms of ordinary conversation and i would say, ive 51 beginning to not even pretend that im young, youngish and im also fundamentally a snarky person. I will agree with you, i dont think i like how people are in casual settings, jumping up and saying im going to go sleep. Theres nothing wrong with it. It doesnt fit my sensibilities. When i was in college a person was less likely to say it. You knew what they were doing but im going to go key and describe it, i must admit to me its much too much to talk about that, however nobody is going to stop and that marks me as somebody who cant adjust so to speak but we do have taboos. There are certain things that are not said, think about the words im not going to say is were saying here, those are really taboo words. I have made the argument and i am going to say these, dan, hell, and s are no longer profanity, they are just bolder and i do put my money where my mouth is in that my soontobe fiveyearold, because frankly im not so starchy i dont curse a lot, my fiveyearold has says that and it makes sense in 2016, the word for that, for her shes already picked up that it refers to a child, its but otherwise she doesnt know the word. So actually, a couple months ago we were outside and there was something a dog had done and of course all these people around us and she with her big Shirley Temple smile, she said daddy, watch out for the ship. Everybody heard and a part of me started to say you dont say that in public. Then i really checked myself and i thought by the time shes 11 shes going to be saying it to herfriends all the time and thats only six or seven years from now. So golly, that was very funny and that is a very real word but try to only use it around me. For a while. Because there are some people such as in your school who have and i told her, i said a lot of parents at your school have a certain idea which frankly does it make sense that you are not supposed to say that word until you are 11 or 12. She said why daddy . I said i will explain it in a few years. I didnt tell her not to say it because frankly its not profane. I know many parents would disagree with me but there are words that i would not want her, if she had interrupted with the nword or other word out there than i would have covered hermouth. So we had our profanities, i dont think its about the bodily thing. The vernacular, that. [bleep] me off, thats where youre at now, newscasters and they are using is a word thatangers me, thats frustrating. Its so common. Now, and it just disturbs me. It doesnt mean youre in anymore. Just like that sucks. Yeah you have to allow, im sorry. I come from language of a background more and that for me were trying to connect it to meeting. Theres the most common of the word, but individually even the word is a blur seem like yeah and its when you take into context. We should think about words as distribution of a probable meaning. Words are distributions of the probability of meaning and to the extent that seems like a cotton ball or Something Like a kind of a core and a blur, that thing that moves and so not only is it always larger than we might think what a word means, but it moves along on the grid and thats what words are. A word is nothing as tidy as what the dictionary makes it look like. Looks just think of get, and put in those are easy examples of what it means in the fact that we no longer keep inflight imply and in first separate is becausf of the natures of word in meaning in the approximation that words correspond. I have a question. Langu we will not solve it by changing, but i see in english we translate things a more modern way. My main languages arabic and like traditional training, so i win that karen on icein understand it even though its very very old. Just speaking the words, not fully understanding what they mean, but we dont have that process in arabic where they change the old tax to preserve the meaning, but with new words. How is language like that when we dont have that transitionme preserve like those ancient text for people that still beat a speak the language to understand it connect thats very extensive. If you are an arabic speaker you have the advantage that because you also have to not only read, but speak this language that is preserved, but then what you learn at home as a child is Something Different, you are bilingual and whatever else you speak is a third, so to be an arabic speaking person if youev are egyptian, for example, i dont think you think of yourself as speaking the egyptian language in the arabic language. Its all arabic, but you also speak latin and italian and thats a wonderful thing. Its because of the position of the koran and the idea of the koran not changing and thats great. Frankly, in the typical situation, my feeling and this is my bias. Ge i feel shakespeare should be a justice and its absurd most operate is not sung in english in this country. Some you cannot translate, butth listening to italian for three and half hours is barbaric and needs to be translated. [laughter] in the same way i think they know, only if you are a scholar and really interested in reading, should you have to deal with that. Maybe you give it to people in middle with english, but i think its more effective translated. Some people have said answer to the shakespeare problem is to train the students and shakespearean english. I think we have enough to do and so i believe those things should be preserved, but usually things should be done in the vernacular. Call me martin luther. Thats my feel, no disrespect intended pours the arabic tradition. Given language changes and changes communally. This is for courtesy. Do someone over here because they havent had any questions. Anyway, given language changes and does so communally, how do we teach grammar to those individuals who wanted to speak what they think of as properly . You have to teach what is considered the proper language and so my idea is not that we ignore whats considered the standard. Its just that i would like us to hear people not using the hpe standard as using Something Different rather than deficient, so i remember knowing someone who dumped a guy because he keeps making grammatical errors. No, its that hes a non spam nonstandard speaker. You to know these things, so ton talk about my daughter who will hate watching this online because shes 15, but for example she has to know what the standard is. I would not keep that away from her when talking about keywords. The idea is as someone sayss lesko, you dont hear them as making the mistake as when two plus two equals five. These must be taught. Some people say like too much i. I think it would be fake if i did not say that. There are young people who say like about twice in a sentence and for me that is fine if theya are talking to their friends. I think its wonderful, but if they are trying to soundr authoritative and make a point i have actually gone to the point where i have told some people to pull back on that in public situations because like it or not like is always going toat sound approximate that nothing i write will change that. So, yes, there are standards. I wish they werent. I will definitely say that, but utopianism. Standards must be taught, but we have to stop hating the way everyone sounds. When i was a kid in the 50s in brownsville, and later in the projects i had black friends, puerto rican friends amid whites and jewish, also. The f word never came up. I never heard it, but then when i a few days into basic training when i was 19 suddenly we all had to speak to ourar parents on the payphone. They made as call our parents. Wet here was this . 68. Suddenly, every other word was f my father had to get on the phone because i was talking to my mother and said you have to stop. He told me what i was doing and i had to stop. I recently heard that about 15 years ago that in the civil warr i thought the f word was not used, but it was used as a sexual term im a but im worried if you know when anything was going bad and they were stressed out or angry what were they saying rex what was it i have no idea . You mean what did John Wilkes Booth say . Ay . Or when the union was getting or when one was overwhelming the other one, what would they say . You know, thats an interesting question. [laughter] it shows you what its like when you have a different this comes back to the arabic point, actually, between formal speech and casual speech we think those a the civil war soldiers all talk like shakespeare because anyone could write that way even after eighth grade. Of their letters were great, but they did not talk that way. We dont know exactly how they talk because they could not be recorded. You get little hints, so for example washington was working on on the brooklyn bridge, but on the e bridge in st. Louis and he writes a letter to his wifefe that the men were in erupting in a great many of today. Its means the men did not sound the way he wrote to his wife, but you can only know some much. Slang dictionaries only to you so much. Tarnation, and eternal damnation down to tarnation which then becomes darned. Darn is not a word. It happened as a combination. Im pretty sure they were not hauling often yelling the fi word. It was used anymores pristine sentence. Its hard to know. What did those soldiers say whe someone tapped on their toe or shot to them and they are very quiet. I listened to on early recording , Benjamin Harrison the 23rd president had no features theres nothing about him, no trades, but he did make ahi recording and you can hear him talking, but he never says the f word. So, its hard to say. Because they resolve themselves and contacts, but i think literally does also, sometimes like if my head literally exploded everyone knows that did not happen. So, there you are seem at if i say someone tomorrow i was a talk and had to wait online and they were literally a hundred people in line, they dont know that there may actually have been a hundred people or if it was 23 people or maybe they even think there were more than 100. So, is it wrong to try to hold the line somewhere other than my possible fertility . Just as we can hear now in real time, not coming no going centuries and understand each other. You desire to be understood and known to an extent that maybe i dont. I mean, maybe im aloof or something. If someone says there were literally a hundred people i assume they mean it was a big bunch of people, not just 20, but may have been 52 and then im done, but you really im. Actually respect that and so you are probably just more of a connector than i am and i respect it. There is diversity ins personalities. Literally 100 work yeah, i just dont care, but i understand. The loss of certain beauty in their vocabulary and find it sometimes i have to translate my own sentences when im speaking. Can you say anything about the sat words and where they are going or with am gone, the sat, you know the vocabulary words. S pristine, i could go on,in egregious, a personal favorites. Xp treat a person, especially is to go onto lawn and that was always my favorite. I had a rather unpleasant session with students a few weeks ago where we read a passage of mine from a book i wrote a good long time ago now where i said there were something to teaching students some of those words you might not get in ordinary conversatio because it would make it easier to read advanced text and i had a couple of those students who were deeply offended by the notion that students would be subjected to that especially one who was socioeconomically disadvantaged and i very muchh te understand their point, but i still think its part of being an english speaker to often be wary of words like those. For example, if we heard about italians cherishing the outer layer of their vocabulary we would think of cores and i dont imagine im not deeply emerged in italian culture, but you dont imagine there being too much pullback in the sense of our language. Th i dont imagine russians saying no, we dont want to know those words and we will just use our kitchen sink word. Its part of the american to have that, call it democratic feeling, maybe individualistic feeling the spca is not necessary, so im on the fence. On one hand you can be very articulate with a small vocabulary, but on the other hand there are some words in the dictionary that are kind of stupid. Ruth is supposedly means mercy, but i get it. Fun words. Yes, there are words. However, we should also learn to hear articulate ones en vogue or speech because people can be so very altered articulate with a small vocabulary. And a lot of it is how you put the words to gather. I just wanted you mentioned like when your daughter used the word you try to explain to her context or appropriate times when she could use the word and you said if you have ever heard her say that letter and word you would cover her mouth and thank you for that because i feel like im in a losing battle on that and you even had some highly educated intellectuals who makef an argument that its a way of disempowering the word and i rejected that. What i want to hear is your argument to push back against the argument that its disempowering or turning into something positive because i think its coarsening of society and really, you know, a very negative thing. I hate to sam not quite with you on that. Particular points. Th if that word is used as a slur then that is our taboo and there you go. If that word is used out there now and its not just a black man. White guys as soon as our backs are turned are using it with each other. If they are using it to mean buddy, one i dont think we can stop it. Number two and are not not trying to be queued in sameness, word meaning changed. There is the slur. Then there is this word buddy because that kind of word in many languages often comes to mean buddy and so in russian the word poor peasant is used in that way and theres a list of examples. Talk about my daughter, sorry dahlia, this is one night. Talk about her, whats coming is first at some point shes going to learn about the slur and that will be easy. Dont say it. If anyone else says it walk away. Then she will ask one day, daddy, how come i hear boys walking down the street and how come they can do it and im not going to tell her they should not do it either because they only mean buddy. Y only you cannot stop its and its subtle. There is a sound change, also. Especially because no offense, but utopianism, you know how people use that word. You go to bush work in your neck stop anyone from using it, so i hear it as different and i feel sorry for the white guys who have brought grown up listening to rap and they think they can use it because they really do mean buddy. I see where theyre coming from, but then they have some people telling them when they do it they are using the word thatthe oconnor used in that must be tough for them, so now they do it when no one can hear, so for example my office as the door is closed i have heard colombian students walking by doing it. They dont know im in there and they would never do it if my door was open, not the slur, but the word for buddy seems like its permanent. Michael eric tyson once told me he uses it, for example and if he uses it i think [inaudible] Interesting Group of people here. I appreciate the conversation and free speaking, so thank you and i back to your question, you know, the triangle thing you have with the words. When we are talking about like the distribution and its suspicious on both sides a much more dimensional man that band that. We find patterns and im curious to hear your thoughts [inaudible] [inaudible] if you were talking to be someone it would be like what you mean like literally a hundred people or like you saide i dont really care. Its in conversation, so its like you know multiple events collide into an accident and then you look back, but then we react and 100 that has happened has already happened. I get your point. Im curious, just like what do you think about kind of the complex systems that is languagt and you said earlier that like you know there will never be a case where someone doesnt understand another person. Its just like we as americans are speaking very different versions, style of english whatever it is. Im going to leave the part about coincidence because thats interesting. That they scifi, but what you are talking about is alarmist. Theres an idealization that we are making statements and being heard and that is so little of what speech is. You say things for reasons and to make people do things and you say things that skirt along the edges of what you actually think and use words like totally in ways that have to do with mutual thought patterns matter rather than anything you are doing all by yourself. Language philosophy teaches us that our conception of language is about sentences that are right or wrong on a piece of paper and is even moreper. Scientifically erroneous than i have even begun to get at. I think linguist its where to start again it would be a field i might not be in because what we are doing when we speak is so much more than putting forth an entity and then a predicate about it. Pr however, when i say that we always understand each other, of course not on the individual level, so for example with trump quite often we listen to him as if he were making statesmen like pronouncements thinking aboutke how they would be heard and their larger implications when really for reasons sociological and psychological and frankly i think psychometric he doesnt mean them outweigh. He says a lot of these things and you could say he is just bs and improvising and being sarcastic and exploring and then listen to him as if this were obama saying something and we are trying to get used to what that means my language. There is a great deal ofam misunderstanding on that level. What i met was language never breaks down to the point that week cant even pretend to know what one another are saying. Might feel like it, but can you explain how children in israel [inaudible] [inaudible] and otto. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] its like a whole with a camel going through the needle and a summary other things. There is nothing on earth then finding out what the hebrew bible actually says in first, you know, there is back and then that messes it up some and then when you get all of the other translation it is in large and leaned to know how distorted our view of these things are, which is why i believe in translation, for example. El now that i have insulted arabs i will insult Orthodox Jews in saying the idea of studying talmud without thinking about exactly what that translation would be in dealing with these things i have always thought no, no, really it should be directly translated into todays vernacular. Theres a great deal of that and i wish the neck alert translation were more common and yet we are just a stuck with what weve got, ancient documents. You cant live by them or if you do translate them to thean language you have and if you discover mistakes, fix them,nd dont just allow them to sit in modern versions, but im not running the world, so thats where we are. To use there is is aa relationship between language and culture . I find i feel the clarity, but for nowadays young people talking and i can only summarize and i cannot really there is no clarity, no beauty. Recently i read [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] person went to correct myself think its actually wonderful to be engaged in the original in the way the people do because at least you do know what it is saying. Thats what i meant to say and in terms of your question, what is your original language, if i may . Your original language. Mandarin . Okay. I think in any language the way its used colloquially and moderately will be quite different from whats done on a page and that is certainly true with Mandarin Chinese and im sure you are family or with the difference between what you can read and what people say. Mandarin is difficult for linguists because you will put a seconds on the board and if there are chinese speakers in class people have a hard time agreeing what is a proper sense because have people have different senses of whats real as opposed to whats on the page, how far you can get away from it, so i think you are reading things in older english and things on a page on mark twain and then you hear whats going on now. Mark twain would have had the same experience. There was the way he wrote and then there was the way people spoke around him and so we today feel like something is different going on because people did not write the way they spoke as much in the past and there was no way to record how people spoke, so he just get little hints of it if you see a silent film of people walking on the street, walking in front of the flatiron building and you can see it and womens dresses are going up and its the point where you can watch clear well preserved film of people 100, 110 years ago now , how did they talk . They did not talk the way to magazines and newspapers depicted english, but we cannot hear them. Then movies get sound, but the sound is bad and everyone is reading from scripts, so they drop in a little slang, but we still dont know how those people sounded. Fitzgerald writes novels where he gets in a bit of it, but still thats gerald is a and we still dont know how those people in great gatsby talked at the time or today we know how everyone talks. Its recorded. So, the past seems cleaner in that way. People have always spoken when they speak casually. Y. As mandarin is spoken outside in the page or television. For me, im trying unsuccessfully because i think i have aged past of this to teach myself mandarin and im finding that one of the difficulties is that there is such a difference between whats on the page and then when i read about how as how people actually talk and i think good word this is practically a different language in the standard one is already no offense a learnable. These things are just the way life goes. I went to congratulate your academics. Im a scientist and have a little difficult time [inaudible] [inaudible] is there any advice you could give . Its unrealistic to say everyone should be trained as a scientist when i understand what i say, but how do you bridge the gap between the language that people need to do to do their job in the communication in society that needs to understand what were talking about . Is of that easier today with internet and social media in that you can blog or you can write things that are written for the general public to understand is that know what you mean . I think in fact everyone has their own science. They have their own understanding about science and there is no factual [inaudible] thats a whole different issue, identifying actual truth in the fact that it so elusive to actually identify what anyone would think of as true if you think through the layers of it, but i think its inevitable that any field will have jargon. I think its not inevitable that in any field impenetrable seconds structure is used, so in certain world we are familiar with inhumanity the way of writing has become accustomed and i dont pick its deliberate, but the way many scholars write is impenetrable to the outside world just because of drift. I think that has changed, before science you need jargon, would say. Linguistics is written in an impenetrable to outsiders. Im talking about diachronic theory in the way this would be put in the flagship journal, its deadly delay loaded with a jargon. After a while you forget howow impenetrable it is and i consider myself to do my job right taking a 10 trying to communicate what i think are the good parts in relatively ordinary language, but that does not work for all scientists. Higher math can simply not be done to her guy have tried with the six and realize theres a point beyond which only physicist can understand and i can only have approximate understanding. [inaudible]d. Ive never actually read that, no. Havent heard of him. Thank you so much for your talk. Our national phonetic alphabet where it comes from. I never heard about that. If you take who would you think. [inaudible] [inaudible] i think three questions is sufficient. [inaudible] [inaudible] donald trump will have no influence on the english. [laughter] social media has not influenced the way we speak in any appreciable way because social media is writing. Social media has affected writing in a kind of writing thats more like speech. Henry higgins the that exist. As wonderful a character as he is i get the feeling im never going to be allowed to play that role for some reason, but he is an interesting character, but no linguist would ever have per scripted views as we call it like that. He wouldnt look down on eliza. He would take and what she said in the International Phonetic alphabet. Henry sweet is the model for that character. He will be taking it down and thinking about how interesting her speeches in terms of its difference from what became pronunciation. I know one linguist who you could say is someone who is a stickler of the standard language rules and things to recoil slightly at the idea of the breaking of those rules. Even he intellectually understands that there is note such thing as broken language and he is a character and has gotten in trouble through sociopolitical audit statementst i only know one person like that and no linguist would be like him. [inaudible] what about it . C mccarty and know it exists. International phonetic out of the is used by all linguists. The ideas to transcribe what sounds are instead of approximation that i use in the vowel chart here, so its one of the basics of linguist trainingf to be able to transcribe things in that outfit that and the languages that are new often comes with the orthographical system and approximated because in many ways its better than any other system you will come up with. Although, to write a language completely phonetically is often awkward for various reasons. What Henry Higgins is depicted as doing his part of the linguist toolkits. It doesnt translate well to the general public because people are used to to their related but different version used in many dictionaries and its ugly. Its aesthetically unpleasant. You get used to seeing our words spelled the way they are for better or worse, mostly worse and so the ip address not translate well. I do not mention it except for it but no inwards on the move, but any language has to use it. Its our alphabet. You obviously studied phonetic sound and do you see the same happy with other languages involving their speech you mentioned hebrew, does that change in pronunciation as time goes by . Hebrew is moving along and its not just the pronunciation, new kinds of grammar. Always because ballots have to move. When people talk about the when difference between the nazi nations, thats all because you would expect different people speaking a language in different places would have their bowels moved in different ways. There is no language it just couldnt because people always l hear things differently. You cant stop it, which means any languages gradually pulling away from its writing system unless the writing system keeps up with it, which it almost never does which is one of the ocular awkward parts of being a modern human beings in which you will learn to write something you dont quite speak and thats unfortunate. Uite s some people deal with it less than others. We and the french and the danes have a major burden. A lot of young people use the word of ask thats an example of nonstandard dialect or do you think that word will ever become standard usage . No. Its another one of those exceptions like light. So a it comes from an old english form axion and there were various words and so in masks used to be a mass. Packs happens to be one as it came. That settled in as the word used by Certain Group of English Speakers who happen because of geography and happenstance to be that it became a standard andse all the sudden acts became lowrent and ask became proper. The reason black people in many southern white people say act is because theres always been people who still say act and a lot of those people were the ones sent across the ocean todin work in hot strained america, so for example if you are going to leave england its probably not going to be the people that talk by don abbey, so a lot of slaves for example learn the line was a long time people saying act. Many black speakers say that just like anyone else, but when you relax you say ask. Unfortunate, balanced except for american English Speakers in particular for black speakers. Its the first thing lack people will mention and that will notpa change especially because asking can be thought of as a regular rather formal activity, so when someone hears act it sticks out because act involves a certain ceremony and then here comes this vernacular form. I wish people did not hear act that way, but i dont it will change, so i would tell people that is one you should not use in a formal contexts, but its a twoway street. I had a white woman asking nicely why does my black boss say act at the office and i say if you are having a good time and you have some sort of casual relationship with the boss whats wrong with insane acts while you are tagged about what happened downstairs yesterday, i but i hope it doesnt say it in board meetings and stuff like that. Asked is unfortunate. People who say like every five seconds are not thinking about it and its a hard habit to break. K. Going is the one thing i say in black english where i say sorry, people arent going to get used to that one. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Thank [applause]. Thank you. This is the tv on cspan2. Television for serious readers and heres her primetime lineup. Tonight at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, they look at how an attorney worked to free his client from death row in texas. At 8 30 p. M. A panel on race in america. At 10 15 p. M. Eastern, edward alden of the council on poor relations discusses americas role in the Global Economy from his book failure to adjust. We wrap up our monday primetime lineup at 11 00 p. M. With John Edgar Wideman who reports on the execution of emmett tills father by the us army in 1945. That all happens tonight on cspan2 book tv. Heres a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. At the end of january book tv is in rancho mosh california for the Fourth Annual rancho mosh writer festival featuring senator barbara boxer, amorous dave barry and pulitzer prizewinning author. Confab saturday, favorite 18, we are live georgia from this man a book festival followed with large live coverage from the ninth annual tucson festival of books. Starting march 22, to 3 the 20 is the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville virginia. For more information about the book fairs and festivals the book tv will cover and to watch previous festival coverage click the book fair tab on her website , book tv. Org. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]