Most RUclipsrs when completely inside with a great mic: “I’m so sorry guys the neighbor four doors down is doing some construction so if you hear anything sorry about that” and there’s absolutely no background noise the entire video Simon when he’s on the patio and a guy 30 ft away starts up a circular saw: “Well that’s annoying, anyway,” Edit addendum: I joke but I actually really love the honest straightforward way Simon makes his videos. Like, I’m not here for perfect sound quality; I’m here for the knowledge he has to share
Simon, on a serious note, you're a very unique person on RUclips; while the history of language has always been something of interest to me, you've brought out my curiosities in full through your videos. You have a very odd, almost entirely improvised style that leaves what's nearly a surreal touch to your videos, but your method of explaining things, as well as the familiarity that you bring about in your personality really do a strange wonder in educating. I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon your channel, and I do hope that you keep up your content; you're one of the few people who I get legitimately excited for once I see that you've uploaded; both for what I'm learning from your videos, and the rather relaxing experience in watching them. Thank you, and keep up the good work; stay safe as well.
I feel the same about Atomic Shrimp, and Alfie Aesthetic (he doesn't post anymore) - very english and calming, while being educational in a really individual way.
@@kingbeauregard There's an 18th century poetic work by Kellgren, where the following is said of the main character "Dumbom" (my translation from Swedish): "In his travels he saw how well fortune had provided rivers that lie where great cities flow" :D
“What we found when we decoded the Hittite language, which was an Anatolian language, was that it was an Indo-European language spoken a very long time ago, and it had reflexes of those laryngeal sounds. That’s very, very annoying.” Obviously you were talking about the noise of the saw, but that made me laugh!
"you can see this yourself, just make the sound "C&%Yhggghfh" and then transition to "a"...see? so simple....." edit : Not going to lie, that ending was very cool - listening to a word evolve through millennia like that.
@@yogummler I'll try and rope Simon in for a collab on Tolkien's influence on linguistics when I'm in the UK for ArdaCon and then your mind will explode hahaha
So interesting, I love linguistics but when I try to read about it usually too dense for me and I end up down a rabbit hole of looking up definitions, your videos are great.
@A hc You can go outside, just not out into the public domain. That leaves you some options for obtaining a daily vitamin D input (unless you are misfortune enough to inhabit some kind of share-cage.
@A hc Literally nothing required you to make that comment. Simon's linguistic videos rarely have non-linguistic topics even mentioned. You seem to be obsessed with defending something that literally has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
As a Spanish speaker it is very interesting to hear the proto indo european pronunciation of Wind, for me sounds like "Uentos" and if you change the U to a V as it used to be written in Latin, then we end up with Ventos, and in Spanish Wind = Viento(s)!!! very interesting.
You can almost hear where the language diverged paths when it moves further rather than closer to the end result. But that's not always accurate, as language evolution can be a curvy path.
Environmental factors must also be a factor. I have been learning Russian as an English speaker, and it's my theory (probably not unique), that the Russian love of complex consonant sounds and simple back throat vowels is directly caused by the cold climate; you can speak Russian with your lips barely apart and be perfectly understood - indeed watching a Russian speak would be a lip reading nightmare. The large round vowels are very warm weather friends.
This was truly fascinating.I am a science teacher, so the connection to biological evolution was really interesting to me. The transition to "wind" at the end was amazing, almost magical.
The way the story went reminded me of physics, where the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics predicted things discovered decades later, often after the originial inventor had long died.
Very Cringe: Yeah, I noticed that too. Who knows what it means? Maybe his brother's in a band called Painted Nails and Simon figured he'll give 'em some free publicity.
Great video! As a Portuguese native speaker, I completely related to the "phenomenon" of not pronouncing the letter H at the beginning of words, since we don't pronounce it at all. Quite the problem when speaking English or German...
I really like this video's ending. I also realized that Proto-Indo-European h₂wéh₁n̥ts (idk if that's the right word) sounds similar to it's Latin descendant "ventus".
@@VaxzaLimeIsCool okay this is one of these things about modern society that is really annoying. Firstly he is quite obviously a man, his name is Simon for fucks sake, that is just simple, contextual knowledge. Secondly I am on the left side of the spectrum, but I fucking hate when people say, "You can't just assume their gender!" YES I CAN, and if I'm wrong I will be corrected, people seriously can't be expected to actually ask for a persons gender, it is simply stupid.
I have watched so many of these videos, and yet, still have such a difficult time wrapping my head around the mechanics of it all! I am so glad someone does, and can feed us all bite sized pieces. Thank you Simon!
I'd love there to be a seminar or conference where everyone talked in Proto-Indo-European. I bet people would stumble across the mechanisms for sound changes or dropped letters or grammatical shortcuts almost spontaneously. Which would be a reflection of what would have happened over the centuries to turn PIE into the languages we have today. E.g. the verb "to be" was surely as irregular in PIE as it is in every daughter language - but we reconstruct it as regular. As if we reconstructed an English verb "I be, you be, he bes...I beed, you beed..." based on the infinitive. So if you get everyone together, surely they won't say "*h1ésmi" for "I am" all the time, they'd perhaps shorten it just to "esmi" ir even "smi".
Man, this is beautiful. It's so calm and conversational, rational and informative, set to the sounds of birdsong and hand-cammed views into cherry trees atop a blue sky. These aren't just wholly engrossing educational videos, but glimpses into who Mr. Roper is as a person. I think these videos are art and I'm in love with them. You're an artist, Mr. Roper!
I love everything about this video - the content, the way it’s explained, the conversational tone, and the fabulous fingernails! Nothing like something delightfully unexpected to bring a smile to your face.
I think these are the most enjoyable videos i've ever watched. I briefly studied basic linguistics and have a deep love for language but the science has always been too dry - until you came along. Your personality is as beautiful as your nails :)
Well well well . . . I had the video playing while I made breakfast, so I could listen. I happened to turn to the screen the one of the moments you flashed those nails, and it just made my day. Keep up the good work :)
Genetically, darker pigmentation tends (in primates) to be autosomal dominant and all lighter colors tend toward autosomal recessive. This means that two changes- or changes in two individuals- would be necessary in order to achieve an orange-haired primate. This could be taken to Skew the percentage chance for a diversion, but of course genetics is never so cut-and-dried. For its purposes, your analogy holds up well enough. Thoroughly enjoyable.
I thought there must be some confounding variables! Would that push the probability in favour of a darker-haired ancestor, then? Even so, that could be analogous to the fact that certain sound changes happen more readily than others, or that certain changes require one or several intermediate stages :)
Yes it could push the probability toward a darker ancestor, insofar as I have correctly applied my understanding of genetic inheritance. And yes I do believe you can extend the same analogy as you suggest.
There is also evidence from geographic distribution--the orange-haired apes are pretty localised to SE Asia, while the dark-haired apes are spread through Africa (and, in humans at least, everywhere outside of the western and northern fringes of Europe). Couple that with the conclusive evidence that the apes originated in Africa in the first place and that also skews probabilities. Though one could argue that the dark hair is novel and, coupled with the genetic properties you describe and some good old survival of the fittest, it could be more likely that orange hair was the start and was then superseded outside of Orangutans' ranges. I'm sure there are analogous tactics for arguing about linguistic classification.
@@simonroper9218 Heidi is actually wrong and is making a very common mistake. If, theoretically, only a single mutation is needed to go from an orange allele to a black allele (non-functioning melanin production vs functioning melanin production), or vice versa, then in either case only a single mutation is needed. The same number of steps is needed for all the copies of that gene in the population to be supplanted by this new version. Yeah, in one version we start with a heterozygous black ape in an orange population, and in the other we have a heterozygous black ape in a black population, but in either way the populations still have the same allele ratios (just inverted). Whether an allele is dominant or recessive plays no part in whether the offspring will inherit it. They're equally likely. Now, if you're making the argument that deleterious mutations -- like melanin production going from functioning to non-functioning -- are more common and generally require less mutations, then sure. That's a fine argument. But in terms of the original argument that was put forth: evolution happens at the population level. Whether or not the first one to get the mutation changes color doesn't make a difference.
Polish language displayed as direct descendant of PIE on diagram at 3:22. But in reality, polish is part of west slavic languages, and these languages belong to slavic family, and slavic family belong to balto-slavic branch of indo-europeans
You're right - I only put in the intermediate stages where I had several languages listed on the same branch. Now that you mention it, though, Lithuanian and Polish are both balto-slavic - thanks for pointing this out!
thanks, Simon! Very helpful and clear. One note, however, on your language chart: Polish and Lithuanian are both in the Balto-Slavic family of languages (also satem languages). Otherwise, very interesting!
On a separate note from my previous comment: I was just recommended to your channel today. I've watched several episodes because I enjoyed hearing you talk through your subject.
Many of the Spanish words which start with 'h' began with 'f' in Latin. For example farina - harina pronounced arina. Flour in English. The reason for this change in pronunciation, it has been suggested, is the absence of an 'f' sound in Basque.
How would that work? Do you think intermingling of Roman Spaniards with Basque populations could have contributed to their posterity's phonetic inconsistency? Jesus Christ, that's the most pretentious sentence I think I've ever written. I'm sorry.
@@mickrobertson7782 I'm just pointing out that sound changes might take place due to contact with speakers of another language, according to one theory. The examples in Spanish are numerous.
"F" and "H" surprisingly get interchanged in some languages. In some dialects of Japanese, they pronounce the same word with either an "F" or "H" sound
The illustration with great ape evolution is informative and really helps to visualize the relationship of languages that precede ancestors of our current languages (those that come before Latin, Sanskrit, Slavic, Germanic). One thought I had is that sufficiently divergent species cannot typically procreate or if they can the offspring are likely infertile, whereas languages can meld together (Old English and Norman French for instance). Are there good tools to see where languages have been _genetically_ crossed? You had given us the example of English sharing constructs of _do_ and _does_ with Welsh but not with any Germanic or Romance languages. Love your videos. Please stay safe.
What would be really cool is to use a bunch of indo euro patterns like this as AI training data and use machine learning to construct (or reconstruct?) hypothetical proto indo European languages
It's being done, but probably not the panacea you'd expect - essentially because AI is good at the first 90%, the low (and medium) hanging fruit, and all that work has been done decades ago. I expect your proposed method may help to block out other less-studied language families though :) and maybe after THAT work we'd find deeper connections (although professional linguists would be Very skeptical of basing reconstructions on other reconstructions).
I really enjoy that you incorporate the local flora and fauna in your videos!...Language origins are very interesting to me. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in such an easy going and informative style!
As others have pointed out there's something magical about your style of presentation blowing in the *H₂weH₁n̥tos. I'm a sucker for comparative linguistics and language reconstruction stuff but as far as I know a lot of RUclips contents on prehistoric (European) civilisation/culture and languages tend to be fraught with certain kinds of worldview implicit or otherwise, especially in the comment sections. But your videos are different as your approach to the topic is unapologetically academic while not coming across as too clinical or boring.
As a English Language graduate (1980), history geek and a retired TEFL teacher, i find these videos totally fascinating. But can i also say that i adore your painted nails
8:30 - My impression is that is that 'pa:ti' is NOT related to 'feed' but something else like 'fend' and 'defend' (cognates from Latin). There's two different meanings (plus teh maybe unrelated *ph₂tḗr, father) in the IE reconstruction of *peh₂-: to protect (defend) and to feed, a different meaning altogether. Latin 'defendo' (defend, protect) and 'offendo' (offend, attack) are made instead to derive from an unattested *fendo, which in turn is made to derive from PIE *gʷʰen- (to strike), which may be even less consistent. Latin de- has not the English meaning of reverse but just "of, from", thus de-*fendo would be "of fend" (relative to fend), while its antonym offendo does include ob- (mostly 'against' such as in obstruct, etc.) so it seemst to make 'against fend/fence', what makes 'attack'. These two Latin words sound like created in military drills of some sort and the *fendo root (legit IMO) would be in the 'protect' group of *peh₂-, along with Sanskrit 'pa:ti' and others and distinct from 'feed' and the 'food' words in the *peh₂- category. I thought two hudred years of Indoeuropean linguistics would have been more fruitful, really. There's still much to prune and clean.
I thought you would be the person who would choose soft and muted colours for nails. I would never expect these vivid splendour that are displaying upon your nails right now. ^u^
Really interesting research. I enjoy broadening my knowledge on things I never formally studied. It was fascinating how you took the word 'wind' through it's maturation. I would love it if you could do this with many more words. Thank you for sharing your area of expertise. You have a bright mind.
No snails, but nails! I like your content. Please make more. I'm playing Far Cry Primal, tried that game? Takes place 10k BC in Europe. Apparently they consulted language people on the language in game.
I have tried it! The sabre-toothed tigers in Europe might be a bit sketchy, but it's a fun game - the language aspect was really interesting! I think the languages were based on Proto-Indo-European.
Spsnish change "f" latin sound to unvoiced "h" because interferences of euskera/basque. All of the others Iberian romances conserve the "f". Funny thing is that we indicate the ausence with unvoiced h. Another Iberian caracteristic is the fusion "b" "v", aka dissapear of v. In Roman times, romans joke about "beati hispani quibus vivere est bibere" Happy Spanishs who to live is to drink...
From learning Spanish and observing certain words and their Latin ancestors, I noticed that "f" in Latin often turned into "h" in Spanish (fac- vs. hac-, ferro- vs. hierro-, etc.).
@@WilliamFord972 Being from Galicia, a Spanish nation with our own language, separated from Portuguese around 700 years ago, and due to Galician preserving those f, I don't even need to know the latin word, and the same with the Spanish j (x in IPA), I know in Galician it will probably be a ch or a x (sh in English), and the latin pl and cl, which in Spanish gave ll, gave us ch: Hijo -> Fillo (Filius) Lluvia -> Chuvia (Pluvia) Llave -> Chave (Clavis) Hierro -> Ferro (Ferrum) Hacer -> Facer (Facere) Hoja -> Folla (Folia)
There’s something so beautiful, spiritual, and timeless about the way you portray yourself and edit your video. It’s been quite windy in my side of the world these last few days, it’s almost like the wind is speaking at night. Khwentos sounds so much like the Spanish word for stories “cuentos”. You do such a beautifully poetic job at explaining this theory and wanted you to know. Curious to know what you think of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.
11:59
On the other side, the construction worker says: "Sorry, someone's doing some language reconstruction work"
Shira Meir Drexler lmao, the thought that they’re both equally annoyed at each other.
Language Reconstruction Worker
LOL
There's no such thing as an English suburb without the sound of someone's bloody circular saw.
I've been wired to find circular saw sound comforting. I'm from Poland tho, and never lived in UK haha. It's amazing we are so familiar.
Right?! What are they actually doing?
Same here in France lol!
Genius
Nor an American suburb without someone's goddamn leaf blower.
Most RUclipsrs when completely inside with a great mic: “I’m so sorry guys the neighbor four doors down is doing some construction so if you hear anything sorry about that” and there’s absolutely no background noise the entire video
Simon when he’s on the patio and a guy 30 ft away starts up a circular saw: “Well that’s annoying, anyway,”
Edit addendum: I joke but I actually really love the honest straightforward way Simon makes his videos. Like, I’m not here for perfect sound quality; I’m here for the knowledge he has to share
lol
Simon, on a serious note, you're a very unique person on RUclips; while the history of language has always been something of interest to me, you've brought out my curiosities in full through your videos. You have a very odd, almost entirely improvised style that leaves what's nearly a surreal touch to your videos, but your method of explaining things, as well as the familiarity that you bring about in your personality really do a strange wonder in educating. I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon your channel, and I do hope that you keep up your content; you're one of the few people who I get legitimately excited for once I see that you've uploaded; both for what I'm learning from your videos, and the rather relaxing experience in watching them. Thank you, and keep up the good work; stay safe as well.
I feel the same about Atomic Shrimp, and Alfie Aesthetic (he doesn't post anymore) - very english and calming, while being educational in a really individual way.
@Nim Boo Thank you very much for that detailed reply. I will come back to it. Very interesting stuff.
@Nim Boo "Evidence" doesn't mean what you think it means.
Exactly
Well, this was absolutely ribbiting.
Hamarbi Ljungskile oh no you didn’t
🤣 I am laughing way too much
you f**king mad lad you
No that's frog language, it was gueeeerrrrate!
How do you say that in Proto-Frog? 🐸
"that would have been quite an act of foresight" 🤣
We should start calling English and Chinese "proto-Alliance". :D
Historians are the best at giving people chuckles
@@Herodollus Maybe so, but only to other historians.
Kind of like how the Lombards settled in a part of Italy known as "Lombardy". Imagine how surprised they must have been when somebody told them!
@@kingbeauregard There's an 18th century poetic work by Kellgren, where the following is said of the main character "Dumbom" (my translation from Swedish):
"In his travels he saw
how well fortune had provided
rivers that lie
where great cities flow"
:D
“What we found when we decoded the Hittite language, which was an Anatolian language, was that it was an Indo-European language spoken a very long time ago, and it had reflexes of those laryngeal sounds. That’s very, very annoying.”
Obviously you were talking about the noise of the saw, but that made me laugh!
Came for the subject, stayed for the frog.
Ф R Ø Ä G G H
For 25 seconds, I thought I'd clicked on the wrong video.
I love everything about you and your comment isn't bad either.
I love your profile name and profile pic. Pure genius.
"you can see this yourself, just make the sound "C&%Yhggghfh" and then transition to "a"...see? so simple....." edit : Not going to lie, that ending was very cool - listening to a word evolve through millennia like that.
@Mirzə And how is this pronounced? The closest thing I have in the languages I know is /x/ and is not even a laryngeal
@Mirzə I'm not an expert in IPA and I'm only familiar with the symbols of Spanish, English and Korean. But I google it and they're pretty similar tho
Υδωρ(Greek) - outor - outer - water
@@kimonas70 are suggesting that English got the word "water" from Greek?
@Mirzə vulvar? geez, ic dont newill make sound like ðat.
I think you explained laryngeal theory better than some if my past linguistics profs
Rude frog. Never said a word.
@A hc Definitely.
Not even “ribbit” (Modern Frog). 🐸
Wtf he just gave a mini lecture on linguistics?
Maybe it was about to croak, and couldn't do anything ribbetting.
He’s just shy
This may be the nicest comment section I’ve ever seen.
Hey man, can you do more of those graduated shifts through PIE to modern English? Like you did with 'wind' at the end? Fascinating stuff.
Well look who it is 😄
@@yogummler Well hey there ;) how good is Simon's stuff haha :D
@@Zorpazorp didn't expect to find you here when I was just randomly scrolling through the comments lol
@@yogummler I'll try and rope Simon in for a collab on Tolkien's influence on linguistics when I'm in the UK for ArdaCon and then your mind will explode hahaha
@@Zorpazorp 🤯
So interesting, I love linguistics but when I try to read about it usually too dense for me and I end up down a rabbit hole of looking up definitions, your videos are great.
Ah yes voiced uvular fricative
I feel the same
@@juch3 To be honest after you learn the terminology it gets really easy.
lol right? I'm now trying to understand what the difference between laryngeal and pharyngeal is
Clever ending and nice to see that you are sticking up for our amphibian friends
Our amphibian friends can use all the help they can get.
I love Simon’s videos: it’s like I just dropped by and we hang out in the garden and discuss vowels but there’s also a frog and trees and the sky
These are very chilled and interesting vids. Also, the goth nails on one hand and Shazzer style on the other added to the general oddness. Thanks.
A hc go outside
@A hc You can go outside, just not out into the public domain.
That leaves you some options for obtaining a daily vitamin D input (unless you are misfortune enough to inhabit some kind of share-cage.
@A hc Literally nothing required you to make that comment. Simon's linguistic videos rarely have non-linguistic topics even mentioned. You seem to be obsessed with defending something that literally has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
"Quite an act of foresight" Got to love that British sarcasm
Understatement.
@@Mr.Nichan Irony? And anyway, anyway, a palindrome of Bolton would be Notlob.
I'm just happy he mentioned Romanian, it gets very overlooked.
cam asa e..
@@randomname2159 ai dreptate
Subscriu
As a Spanish speaker it is very interesting to hear the proto indo european pronunciation of Wind, for me sounds like "Uentos" and if you change the U to a V as it used to be written in Latin, then we end up with Ventos, and in Spanish Wind = Viento(s)!!! very interesting.
You can almost hear where the language diverged paths when it moves further rather than closer to the end result. But that's not always accurate, as language evolution can be a curvy path.
matter-of-factly, in Latin the used to be pronounced probably as /w/ and-or /u/.
Thank you for this, it feels like I'm just chilling in someone's garden while they tell me interesting shit about language, and I love it.
Thank you :) I'm glad it's come across well
Environmental factors must also be a factor. I have been learning Russian as an English speaker, and it's my theory (probably not unique), that the Russian love of complex consonant sounds and simple back throat vowels is directly caused by the cold climate; you can speak Russian with your lips barely apart and be perfectly understood - indeed watching a Russian speak would be a lip reading nightmare.
The large round vowels are very warm weather friends.
For a moment I thought maybe this was going to be a fifteen minute long video of a frog, for April Fools.
This was truly fascinating.I am a science teacher, so the connection to biological evolution was really interesting to me. The transition to "wind" at the end was amazing, almost magical.
The way the story went reminded me of physics, where the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics predicted things discovered decades later, often after the originial inventor had long died.
Simon painting a goddamn rainbow on his nails
Perhaps he has a young daughter.
I like it. Needs no explanation.
@@robbicu cringe
Very Cringe: Yeah, I noticed that too. Who knows what it means? Maybe his brother's in a band called Painted Nails and Simon figured he'll give 'em some free publicity.
Callsign Frosty sure
Great video! As a Portuguese native speaker, I completely related to the "phenomenon" of not pronouncing the letter H at the beginning of words, since we don't pronounce it at all. Quite the problem when speaking English or German...
I really like this video's ending.
I also realized that Proto-Indo-European h₂wéh₁n̥ts (idk if that's the right word) sounds similar to it's Latin descendant "ventus".
Love the explanation, love the nails, great work
Ugay
palmtrees - nothin wrong with being gay, but how do you know this person isn’t a girl?
@@VaxzaLimeIsCool isn't there though? also he's obviously male.
@Taiwanlight makeup is wrong on both men and women but wronger on men because its feminine
@@VaxzaLimeIsCool okay this is one of these things about modern society that is really annoying.
Firstly he is quite obviously a man, his name is Simon for fucks sake, that is just simple, contextual knowledge.
Secondly I am on the left side of the spectrum, but I fucking hate when people say, "You can't just assume their gender!" YES I CAN, and if I'm wrong I will be corrected, people seriously can't be expected to actually ask for a persons gender, it is simply stupid.
Interesting video and a nice way to make difficult linguistic concepts easier to understand. Love the nails too mate - very spring-themed
I have watched so many of these videos, and yet, still have such a difficult time wrapping my head around the mechanics of it all! I am so glad someone does, and can feed us all bite sized pieces. Thank you Simon!
Love how everyone is near unanimous in loving your nails dude!
Awesome video as usual.
Gays are a tight knit group
I'd love there to be a seminar or conference where everyone talked in Proto-Indo-European. I bet people would stumble across the mechanisms for sound changes or dropped letters or grammatical shortcuts almost spontaneously. Which would be a reflection of what would have happened over the centuries to turn PIE into the languages we have today.
E.g. the verb "to be" was surely as irregular in PIE as it is in every daughter language - but we reconstruct it as regular. As if we reconstructed an English verb "I be, you be, he bes...I beed, you beed..." based on the infinitive. So if you get everyone together, surely they won't say "*h1ésmi" for "I am" all the time, they'd perhaps shorten it just to "esmi" ir even "smi".
Nailed it, and with your usual colorful manner evident.
Man, this is beautiful. It's so calm and conversational, rational and informative, set to the sounds of birdsong and hand-cammed views into cherry trees atop a blue sky. These aren't just wholly engrossing educational videos, but glimpses into who Mr. Roper is as a person. I think these videos are art and I'm in love with them. You're an artist, Mr. Roper!
Loved the video and the nails.
Agreed! Very cute!!
@@mariabaxter8843 gay*
@@algonzalez6853 you called?
@@algonzalez6853 if he were, what would be the problem? You are a poor minded person, THAT is a real problem.
@@GiandomenicoDeMola ah not really, the gay is though. It's a shame because I thought he was a man.
I love everything about this video - the content, the way it’s explained, the conversational tone, and the fabulous fingernails! Nothing like something delightfully unexpected to bring a smile to your face.
It's pretty evident he has a daughter who wanted to practice nails and used him as a guinea pig :)
Love your work, love your nails.
Simon: it's an awkward sound to make repeatedly, *khee khee khee"
Wales: hold my cheese on toast
Swiss-Germans: Hold my entire language
Man, I watch a lot of shit on RUclips, but your videos are always the most calming and informative. Glad I found this channel!
Your nature shot intros add an incredible sense of awe and serenity to my day. I almost frogot my worries...
Came for the subject, stayed for the nails
Gay
@@algonzalez6853 Its ok to be gay😐
@@algonzalez6853 you sound like an edgy teenager who has learnt a new word..
@@conlangknow8787 it isnot okay to behave bizarrely because of it
@@nsk370 no u
I think these are the most enjoyable videos i've ever watched. I briefly studied basic linguistics and have a deep love for language but the science has always been too dry - until you came along. Your personality is as beautiful as your nails :)
I think you nailed it there
My God man I cant stop laughing.
Well well well . . . I had the video playing while I made breakfast, so I could listen. I happened to turn to the screen the one of the moments you flashed those nails, and it just made my day.
Keep up the good work :)
9:00 Thats why in german the "ch" [ç] in "Ich" has an other phoneme than the "ch" [x] in "Bach"
ohhhhhhhh, thank you, i’m learning german and i was always confused about this. major lightbulb moment right there
The special sounds are always the hardest. For example, the most germans I know (incluse me) can't pronounce "th".
pretty common tbh even in greek tho i think they pronounce it more like [x̟] [ɣ̟] than purely palatal [ç] [ʝ]
The visuals on this video (and background sound) are top notch
I really enjoy your videos, Simon. And there is something very spiritual and calming about your personality that adds to the interesting content.
I keep coming back to your videos, the are so interesting and strangely soothing ❤️
Genetically, darker pigmentation tends (in primates) to be autosomal dominant and all lighter colors tend toward autosomal recessive. This means that two changes- or changes in two individuals- would be necessary in order to achieve an orange-haired primate. This could be taken to Skew the percentage chance for a diversion, but of course genetics is never so cut-and-dried.
For its purposes, your analogy holds up well enough.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
I thought there must be some confounding variables! Would that push the probability in favour of a darker-haired ancestor, then?
Even so, that could be analogous to the fact that certain sound changes happen more readily than others, or that certain changes require one or several intermediate stages :)
Yes it could push the probability toward a darker ancestor, insofar as I have correctly applied my understanding of genetic inheritance.
And yes I do believe you can extend the same analogy as you suggest.
There is also evidence from geographic distribution--the orange-haired apes are pretty localised to SE Asia, while the dark-haired apes are spread through Africa (and, in humans at least, everywhere outside of the western and northern fringes of Europe). Couple that with the conclusive evidence that the apes originated in Africa in the first place and that also skews probabilities. Though one could argue that the dark hair is novel and, coupled with the genetic properties you describe and some good old survival of the fittest, it could be more likely that orange hair was the start and was then superseded outside of Orangutans' ranges.
I'm sure there are analogous tactics for arguing about linguistic classification.
@@simonroper9218 Heidi is actually wrong and is making a very common mistake. If, theoretically, only a single mutation is needed to go from an orange allele to a black allele (non-functioning melanin production vs functioning melanin production), or vice versa, then in either case only a single mutation is needed. The same number of steps is needed for all the copies of that gene in the population to be supplanted by this new version. Yeah, in one version we start with a heterozygous black ape in an orange population, and in the other we have a heterozygous black ape in a black population, but in either way the populations still have the same allele ratios (just inverted).
Whether an allele is dominant or recessive plays no part in whether the offspring will inherit it. They're equally likely.
Now, if you're making the argument that deleterious mutations -- like melanin production going from functioning to non-functioning -- are more common and generally require less mutations, then sure. That's a fine argument. But in terms of the original argument that was put forth: evolution happens at the population level. Whether or not the first one to get the mutation changes color doesn't make a difference.
I did say It only held up so far as I applied it correctly. 😄
That was the best You Tube ending I have ever watched.
YESS!!!! Go off with those nails! I love you videos on language history! It's such a fascinating subject makes me feel connected to my ancestors
Phenomenal work, man! Instantly one of my favourite channels!
Thanks for all your lovely informative and interesting videos! Hope you're looking after yourself and coping well with the lock-down :)
Seconded.
Thank you! :) I am, I hope you are as well
Polish language displayed as direct descendant of PIE on diagram at 3:22. But in reality, polish is part of west slavic languages, and these languages belong to slavic family, and slavic family belong to balto-slavic branch of indo-europeans
He knows this he just wanted to show a slavic language descended from PIE
I would say considering the content of his videos he may just be aware of that fact.
You're right - I only put in the intermediate stages where I had several languages listed on the same branch. Now that you mention it, though, Lithuanian and Polish are both balto-slavic - thanks for pointing this out!
@@simonroper9218 also SO much Latin in Polish!
That diagram was absolutely useless
This is so cool! It was so interesting to hear the progression of pronunciation of a word at the end. Amazing.
Great video. Also, living for the nails, they're fantastic!
thanks, Simon! Very helpful and clear. One note, however, on your language chart: Polish and Lithuanian are both in the Balto-Slavic family of languages (also satem languages). Otherwise, very interesting!
@Roli G Them are fightin' words to some :)
I love your nails!!
On a separate note from my previous comment: I was just recommended to your channel today. I've watched several episodes because I enjoyed hearing you talk through your subject.
One of my favourite lockdown subscriptions!
Many of the Spanish words which start with 'h' began with 'f' in Latin. For example farina - harina pronounced arina. Flour in English. The reason for this change in pronunciation, it has been suggested, is the absence of an 'f' sound in Basque.
How would that work? Do you think intermingling of Roman Spaniards with Basque populations could have contributed to their posterity's phonetic inconsistency?
Jesus Christ, that's the most pretentious sentence I think I've ever written. I'm sorry.
@@mickrobertson7782 I'm just pointing out that sound changes might take place due to contact with speakers of another language, according to one theory. The examples in Spanish are numerous.
"F" and "H" surprisingly get interchanged in some languages. In some dialects of Japanese, they pronounce the same word with either an "F" or "H" sound
Formosa and hermosa
Bro really hit us with the 💅
Enjoyed your explanation (forklaring), your nails (neglene), the images from the garden (hagen) and the frog (frosken). Thank you!
I love your videos. Very interesting. Thank you.
The illustration with great ape evolution is informative and really helps to visualize the relationship of languages that precede ancestors of our current languages (those that come before Latin, Sanskrit, Slavic, Germanic).
One thought I had is that sufficiently divergent species cannot typically procreate or if they can the offspring are likely infertile, whereas languages can meld together (Old English and Norman French for instance).
Are there good tools to see where languages have been _genetically_ crossed? You had given us the example of English sharing constructs of _do_ and _does_ with Welsh but not with any Germanic or Romance languages.
Love your videos. Please stay safe.
What would be really cool is to use a bunch of indo euro patterns like this as AI training data and use machine learning to construct (or reconstruct?) hypothetical proto indo European languages
Perhaps you could extrapolate back further?
It's being done, but probably not the panacea you'd expect - essentially because AI is good at the first 90%, the low (and medium) hanging fruit, and all that work has been done decades ago.
I expect your proposed method may help to block out other less-studied language families though :) and maybe after THAT work we'd find deeper connections (although professional linguists would be Very skeptical of basing reconstructions on other reconstructions).
I've become fascinated with the "genetics" of language from watching your videos. You make the subject accessible.
I really enjoy that you incorporate the local flora and fauna in your videos!...Language origins are very interesting to me. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in such an easy going and informative style!
As others have pointed out there's something magical about your style of presentation blowing in the *H₂weH₁n̥tos. I'm a sucker for comparative linguistics and language reconstruction stuff but as far as I know a lot of RUclips contents on prehistoric (European) civilisation/culture and languages tend to be fraught with certain kinds of worldview implicit or otherwise, especially in the comment sections. But your videos are different as your approach to the topic is unapologetically academic while not coming across as too clinical or boring.
Love the shirt!
Your unique video format is really refining itself man, keep it up.
Refearing to the images, sounds and structure os the video, this is super poetic stuff, I enjoyed it all the way
he looks so similar to the anglo saxon guy
LOL. 🙂 Good one.
I once adopted a frog.....but the he started speaking french so we had to return it to the orphanage......
You made that up,didn't you?
@@honkytonk4465 did he?, seems like a likely story.
You manage to combine a beautiful artsy video with a deep and insightful lecture. Well done!
I think this is a new channel for me to video binge, I can't wait to see the next.
Mate, I love your videos but also your shirt game is fantastic 👏🏽 edit: yas fellow Nail Gang!! 😍
Thank you friend
If I lived in the UK, I'd ask if you fancied a pint at the local.
As a English Language graduate (1980), history geek and a retired TEFL teacher, i find these videos totally fascinating.
But can i also say that i adore your painted nails
I totally love your style (style of video and your own)
and here we are, you just got me interested in your topic and subscribe :-D
the beginning with the frog (toad?) made me very happy
love this video! my go-to example to illustrate just how amazing historical linguistics is
That end bit with the wind... I could listen to a whole video of just that with various words. 😌
8:30 - My impression is that is that 'pa:ti' is NOT related to 'feed' but something else like 'fend' and 'defend' (cognates from Latin). There's two different meanings (plus teh maybe unrelated *ph₂tḗr, father) in the IE reconstruction of *peh₂-: to protect (defend) and to feed, a different meaning altogether.
Latin 'defendo' (defend, protect) and 'offendo' (offend, attack) are made instead to derive from an unattested *fendo, which in turn is made to derive from PIE *gʷʰen- (to strike), which may be even less consistent. Latin de- has not the English meaning of reverse but just "of, from", thus de-*fendo would be "of fend" (relative to fend), while its antonym offendo does include ob- (mostly 'against' such as in obstruct, etc.) so it seemst to make 'against fend/fence', what makes 'attack'. These two Latin words sound like created in military drills of some sort and the *fendo root (legit IMO) would be in the 'protect' group of *peh₂-, along with Sanskrit 'pa:ti' and others and distinct from 'feed' and the 'food' words in the *peh₂- category.
I thought two hudred years of Indoeuropean linguistics would have been more fruitful, really. There's still much to prune and clean.
PS - Maybe English did not make 'fend' and 'fence' from French but from a retained Latin *fendo and *fensa lost everywhere else?
I like your nails :). The language stuff is great interesting too!
I thought you would be the person who would choose soft and muted colours for nails. I would never expect these vivid splendour that are displaying upon your nails right now. ^u^
Really interesting research. I enjoy broadening my knowledge on things I never formally studied.
It was fascinating how you took the word 'wind' through it's maturation. I would love it if you could do this with many more words.
Thank you for sharing your area of expertise. You have a bright mind.
i love ur nails :)
When you were pronouncing "khi" it perfectly sounded like the colloquial word for "why" in Armenian
That'll be the Spanish influence.
Que?
Amazing insight and beatiful nail work!
Mate it'd be beast if you could do a vid on PIE phonology. The laryngeals and platal velars are sending me round the twist
No snails, but nails! I like your content. Please make more. I'm playing Far Cry Primal, tried that game? Takes place 10k BC in Europe. Apparently they consulted language people on the language in game.
I have tried it! The sabre-toothed tigers in Europe might be a bit sketchy, but it's a fun game - the language aspect was really interesting! I think the languages were based on Proto-Indo-European.
ngl, i'm gonna do my nails the way you did. Always a pleasure watching your videos, Simon! love you
First time seeing your channel and I subscribed as soon as the video was over. Great video!
Thanks very much for your very interesting videos.
Spsnish change "f" latin sound to unvoiced "h" because interferences of euskera/basque. All of the others Iberian romances conserve the "f". Funny thing is that we indicate the ausence with unvoiced h.
Another Iberian caracteristic is the fusion "b" "v", aka dissapear of v. In Roman times, romans joke about "beati hispani quibus vivere est bibere" Happy Spanishs who to live is to drink...
So you subscribe to the substratum theory?
From learning Spanish and observing certain words and their Latin ancestors, I noticed that "f" in Latin often turned into "h" in Spanish (fac- vs. hac-, ferro- vs. hierro-, etc.).
To live is to drink
The v-b happened in India first
@@WilliamFord972 Being from Galicia, a Spanish nation with our own language, separated from Portuguese around 700 years ago, and due to Galician preserving those f, I don't even need to know the latin word, and the same with the Spanish j (x in IPA), I know in Galician it will probably be a ch or a x (sh in English), and the latin pl and cl, which in Spanish gave ll, gave us ch:
Hijo -> Fillo (Filius)
Lluvia -> Chuvia (Pluvia)
Llave -> Chave (Clavis)
Hierro -> Ferro (Ferrum)
Hacer -> Facer (Facere)
Hoja -> Folla (Folia)
Lovely nails!
What an exquisite human you are. :) Thank you for being you.
There’s something so beautiful, spiritual, and timeless about the way you portray yourself and edit your video. It’s been quite windy in my side of the world these last few days, it’s almost like the wind is speaking at night. Khwentos sounds so much like the Spanish word for stories “cuentos”. You do such a beautifully poetic job at explaining this theory and wanted you to know. Curious to know what you think of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.