please tell me some cool random facts about lingustics!!!
Hi anon!!! Ahh thank you so much for allowing me to ramble about linguistics <3 this got super long I hope you donāt mind!! Iām just really passionate about this topic lol but here are some of my favorite random facts:
Languages see colors differently! Russian, for example, has two different words for light blue (Š³Š¾Š»ŃŠ±Š¾Š¹) and dark blue (ŃŠøŠ½ŠøŠ¹), whereas in English we classify them both as āblueā. Weirdly, English does distinguish between dark red and light red (āpinkā). But some languages even group colors like green and blue together! Vietnamese, for example, uses the same basic word for both (xanh) and then additional descriptors for whether itās light blue (sky), dark blue (ocean), or green (leaves). Thereās a lot of debate on how language affects the way we see colors because of this. This is called linguistic relativism and itās honestly fascinating! (Sources: x, x, x)
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You know that meme with the trolley problem? Youād probably think youād give the same answer no matter what, right? But some studies have found that our moral decisions are sometimes affected if weāre speaking a second language! The theory behind this is that:
The difficulty of speaking a foreign language makes people pause and give the question more thought. Interestingly, this usually relates to utilitarianism! So, in the trolley problem, people speaking a foreign language are more willing to sacrifice one person to save many, for example, and/or
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Listening/reading in a foreign language often produces a lower emotional response than your native language! So, if you picked up your native language from your family, friends, community, etc. it has a LOT more emotional connections than a foreign language you learned in a classroom, for example. And these emotions can affect the way you make decisions!
This is actually fascinating because it shows that our responses to moral dilemmas are not just about our values. They can also be affected by the language weāre using!
Now imagine all the forums like the United Nations etc. where people from all over the world are constantly deciding on moral issues. How many of those decisions have been affected because theyāre being discussed in a foreign language? Makes you think, right? (Sources: x, x)
Blind people actually gesture when they speak. So even people who have never seen someone else gesture will do it themselves, with the same frequency and types of gestures as sighted people!
Not only this BUT different languages will actually use different types of gestures! So for example, to gesture that someone ran into a house, English speakers typically use one gesture, whereas Turkish speakers tend to separate gestures for both motion (running) and path (into a house). And the research showed that both blind Turkish and English speakers gestured in the same way as their respective sighted speakers!
This is honestly so cool because it means 1) thereās something inherent about languages that makes people gesture to convey meaning! And 2) there's also something about the type of language itself that makes people gesture differently across the world. (Sources: x, x)
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Weirdly, spoken filler words like uh or uhm usually appear before nouns! As opposed to verbs, for example. The reason is that nouns typically convey additional information, so we normally have to pause to search for the right word.
And precisely because we usually pause before nouns, this likely affects the way grammar evolves over time! This makes it more difficult for nouns to evolve to complex forms. In German for example, itās much more typical to add prefixes to verbs rather than to nouns (ent-kommen, ver-kommen, be-kommen, etc.)
Also this is completely anecdotal BUT when I was attending a university in Germany, I was shocked that the professors barely seemed to pause or use filler sounds as opposed to my native language. I thought a lot about this and the way I could explain it was like the language in the movie Arrival, where writing a word means you have to know how it ends. Some sentence structures in German actually end with the verb, so you have to know how your sentence ends when you start speaking! And that leaves less room for pause. So, the use of those filler words before nouns could change depending on the sentence structure of the language! Again, this is entirely my own experience, but it sort of matches up with the study, with less pauses before verbs. (Source: x)
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Sort of related to the point above, but filler words also change a LOT depending on the language! Some languages use mostly meaningless sounds like e in Spanish or euh in French. But some others like German often use modal particles, which are words that actually modify the meaning! But theyāre mostly used for emphasis rather than actual meaning. Such as schon (kind of / actually) or eigentlich (actually). Here's a Wikipedia link with a list of some of the most common ones, itās honestly one of my favorite features of spoken language: (x)
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Finally, I covered mostly scientific studies, but I also love works of fiction that touch on linguistics! If youāre interested in this topic Iād recommend:
Manhunt on Netflix, a series that showcases forensic linguistics
Arrival, the movie I mentioned above, is overall a pretty cool sci-fi take on how language influences the way we think and relate to the world
Last but not least, one of my all-time favorite short stories is Tlƶn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges. Itās about a fictional country where the language denies the existence of nouns. One hemisphere focuses on verbs and the other on adjectives. Which means there are no objects, only conditions, and therefore no object permanence. The original is in Spanish, but I found a link to an English version here. I honestly LOVE this one!
And if you're looking for even more educational content, I'd recommend you check out Tom Scott's videos on language. They're pretty well researched and he explains the topics in a very simple and clear way! (Link: x)
Again thank you for indulging me anon!! I could honestly go on even longer about linguistics but I have to stop at some point lol
Note: This is entirely a hobby of mine so if any linguists or native speakers out there see Iāve made any mistakes, please feel free to correct me!
