Linguistics Behind the Scenes

Transcripts

Trailer: Welcome to Linguistics Behind the Scenes!

Christina: Hi! I’m Christina. I’m a professor of English and Digital Linguistics.

Dominic: And I'm Dominic! I'm a language enthusiast.

Christina: And this is Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Dominic: What you always wanted to know about language and how to explore it.

Christina: In this podcast, we’re going to explore topics like...

Dominic: How has Star Wars impacted the English language?

Christina: How many words are there for talking about being drunk?

Dominic: What about the language of comic books?

Christina: And many, many more!

Dominic: Christina, what makes this podcast unique?

Christina: That it’s got you and me in it, of course.

Dominic: Of course! And we are linguistics nerds, and we're going to pick the topics in linguistics research that our audience might find funny, interesting, or surprising.

Christina: Yes! And you’re going to get a behind-the-scenes tour of research projects and I’ll tell you all the interesting stories that happened in the background.

Dominic: I can't wait! So make sure to stay tuned right here and join us for new episodes as they become available.

Christina: We look forward to you joining us on Linguistics Behind the Scenes!

Episode 1: How has Star Wars changed the English language?

Dominic: Hello everyone, and welcome to the inaugural episode of our podcast.

Christina: I'm Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer. I'm a professor of English and Digital Linguistics from Germany, and I'm very excited about almost everything that has got to do with language.

Dominic: And I'm Dominic Piazza. I'm a language enthusiast with a background in international relations from the United States, and I'm also very excited to talk to you about all my favorite aspects of linguistics and language.

Christina: And in addition, you're going to get a behind-the-scenes tour of research in digital linguistics, in English linguistics, in all kinds of research that has got to do with language, and we're very happy to show you around and show you the things that you may not get to see or hear anywhere else.

Dominic: Indeed, we couldn't be happier. This is just one of our favorite subjects to talk about. And Christina, how are you today?

Christina: I'm fine. And you?

Dominic: I'm doing pretty well. You know, I've been playing this new Indiana Jones game and I must say, I find him quite inspirational, right? He speaks so many languages with this really deep knowledge, and he travels all around the world to solve these mysteries, and yeah, I want to be like him.

Christina: Yeah, he's really cool, even though some archaeologists might say he destroys a bit too much, too many archaeological remains in the process of actually finding treasures. But of course, it's lots of fun and I have to say, I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan. And he also inspired my own app Bridge of Knowledge, which I will talk about in another installment of this podcast.

Dominic: You're probably right. I suppose it wouldn't be a good action movie without the cave collapsing in on him every single time he finds the special artifact. But you're right, it might be a little bit too destructive for modern sensibilities. But you know, Indiana Jones is a George Lucas production, and George Lucas likes to do a lot with language. He has another very famous movie series, one might say, Star Wars, which has aliens and all sorts of different species and language. And Christina, I think you recently did some research on the language of Star Wars.

Christina: Yeah, I did, because I'm a huge Star Wars fan myself. I actually motivated myself to study for my A-levels by allowing me to have some Star Wars stickers every now and then.

Dominic: Oh that's wonderful, Star Wars stickers. That's wonderful. I'm also a very big fan and actually, I'd like to know, the age-old question: Which order do you think the films should be watched in? Do you think you should watch them in release order or do you think you should watch them in the numbered order?

Christina: Well, I'm personally a huge fan of the middle trilogy, the original Skywalker trilogy. So I would start with part four, then part five, then part six, then part seven, eight, nine, which I really enjoy very much as well. And then, end with one, two, three. What about you?

Dominic: I think I'm inclined to agree with you, and I think the prequels are more enjoyable when you know everything that happens later. But you know, on the subject of order and how we structure things, putting the back in the front or the front in the back, there's a certain character who speaks in a very unique manner, yeah? Yoda. What do you think of Yoda?

Christina: I think Yoda is fascinating. People quote Yoda all the time and very often, when people use an unusual sentence structure, they refer to Yoda.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, or Yoda speak, Yoda talk. And, you know, Star Wars is such an absolute behemoth of pop culture that it's really fascinating, the way it's permeated our mainstream culture.

Christina: Absolutely, and even our language. I mean, if you think about words like Jedi, Lightsaber, Yoda, Padawan, or even the expression to the dark side, they are very often used in contexts that have nothing to do with Star Wars. And that is what my research was about.

Dominic: Wow.

Christina: Yeah, it's cool. Have you ever been using these words in any ways that are probably not directly making an allusion to the films themselves?

Dominic: Oh, certainly, absolutely. I mean, especially when it comes to the dark side, I kind of figured that maybe this phrase already existed in English and that maybe George Lucas just drew inspiration from that.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, the dark side, the light side, so this idea of darkness being related to evil and of the light being related to something positive. I mean that has been around for ages. I mean, it's a very traditional idea. And it's an idea, it's a metaphor, which also makes sense if you think about it, because when it's dark, it's more difficult for you to do things, you know, you might bump into objects, you know, so it's obvious why it's better if there is light. So, it really makes sense. But in this idea of kind of moving to the Dark Side, behaving in a way that is less moral than you behaved before – this is something which was apparently influenced by the Star Wars franchise, because I looked at texts from different years, so at a historical corpus of English. And I noticed that before Star Wars, “to the dark side” wasn't really used in that sense very much. So the references that you have before that time with the “to” in front of it, well, they rarely carry that idea of immorality. It's more like “going to the dark side of the house” and things like that.

Dominic: Oh my gosh, that's so fascinating. So okay, it certainly seems here that Star Wars popularized, or may have even spawned, this specific kind of usage of it, and people are kind of using it in their general language without specifically referencing the movies. Because I know, I think, that's one of the really key distinctions here that when you're referencing something kind of on purpose, it's not really the same as sort of using the language almost generically.

Christina: Yes, I mean, very often if you think about movies, as you call them, or films, as I sometimes call them, if you think about that, then very often if you quote something, if you have a language reference in some way or another, then it is because you really want to allude to that film. So, if I might say something like "May the Force be with you,” then I'm very obviously referring to Star Wars in some way or another, and it's relatively rarely the case that you just have individual words that become part of the English language that actually come from a film. One of the exceptions is Mini-Me, and I really like the word Mini-Me, because, I don't know, have you got an idea where that comes from?

Dominic: Oh, goodness. No, I don't.

Christina: Have you ever watched the Austin Powers films?

Dominic: Ah, I haven't, but I'm very familiar with them.

Christina: Yeah, because there’s someone, he's called Dr. Evil. and he's got a clone. And that clone looks very much like him, just small. He's even wearing the same clothes and trying to behave in every way like Dr. Evil himself. And, so that's the Mini-Me, that's where that comes from. But interestingly, when people are using the word Mini-Me now, they're not using it in that sense. They're actually using it in a fashion context. So you might talk about a woman who is dressed in a particular way wearing a particular dress and accompanying accessories, and she's just dressed like her daughter, and the daughter is then her Mini-Me. And people who are talking about that, well, they will presumably not be aware of the fact that this comes originally from a reference to Dr. Evil's clone.

Dominic: Oh, wow, okay. Yes. We might even call that, when you wear matching outfits, we might call it twinning. Actually, there's a really great word in Japanese, wasei-eigo, which is Japanese-created English, English that they've created, but that English speakers don't say, and it's pea-rukku, which means “pair look”. And so maybe this pair look would be a little bit of a Mini-Me when you wear matching outfits.

Christina: Aw, it's so sweet, I love that. It's so cool that you speak Japanese.

Dominic: Oh, yes, and sometimes Japanese reminds me a little bit of Yoda because it has a different sentence structure, a different word order. It's subject-object-verb, so the verb comes at the end, which German does sometimes, but not in all cases. Japanese does it in all cases, and so sometimes you kind of have to reprogram your brain to kind of express ideas in a way that may not seem natural to an English speaker.

Christina: Yeah. You mentioned German and there, it's true, we have that, but it's just in a subordinate clause. So usually in a main clause, this is not the case. So, I could say, okay, it's not the standard, it's just like, yeah, special cases, subordinate clauses. But of course, these are also quite common. So, to give you an example, “Weil ich Linguistik liebe” you know, “Because I linguistics love.” Yeah, so you wouldn't say “Because I love linguistics,” but “Because I linguistics love.” But of course, this is something which you would use after an introductory part of the sentence, which makes it clear that this is a special one, a subordinate one. So, for example, “I'm doing this podcast because I love linguistics”.

Dominic: Yes, exactly. And in Japanese, I think you would have to essentially say, “I love linguistics, so I'm doing this podcast,” essentially. So everything has to be kind of structured differently. But, yeah, you're right, when it comes to German and the linguistic classification, we might say that it's subject-verb-object, but with a significant asterisk. That's a little bit of a joke in the language learning community. So, people are using these words in the English language, but how often, how frequently, do they actually use them?

Christina: I would say more often than I expected. I mean, I didn't check on every word, so, I mean, there's some words like “TIE fighter” that probably are less frequently used. But at least, if you look at those words that are recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, which I love, by the way, one of my favorite dictionaries. So the word “Jedi,” the word Jedi is used, let me think, once every four million words. Now, what does that mean? I wanted to make sure that I knew if that was a lot or not. And so I checked in the same corpus, and I found that other words with a similar frequency were “dizzy,” so when you're dizzy, when you're nauseous. And also the word “jewel,” like jewelry, rings that you’re wearing. So, I was really surprised that Jedi is as common as these two words, which are very general language words.

Dominic: That really puts it in perspective.

Christina: Yeah, definitely.

Dominic: To do this research, you said you used a corpus, you used corpora. What is that tool? How does that work?

Christina: So, a corpus is a collection of texts, a digital collection of texts. You could think about it like having lots of Word documents on a computer, and you just search them. So it’s a bit like a Google search.

Dominic: Oh yeah, like Control-F.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And so the nice thing, actually, is that in contrast to a Google search where you get those different hits underneath each other with a bit of context, there are special tools like AntConc, for example, which is produced by Laurence Anthony. That's, yeah, why it's called AntConc–Anthony Concordancer.

Dominic: Oh nice, it’s one of those syllabic abbreviations. Those are very popular in languages like Russian. They love syllabic abbreviations. Nice.

Christina: Yeah, and also in the east of Germany, by the way, you find a lot of syllabic abbreviations.

Dominic: Oh, very nice.

Christina: So in Chemnitz, for example, you find, yeah, different local institutions like the Rawema-Gebäude, which is a building where the syllables also refer to, well, to the full expression. Which I can't reproduce here, but I know it's one of those, yeah, syllabic abbreviations.

Dominic: Oh, that’s cool.

Christina: But in any case, so that concordancing tool is very, very helpful, and it's also free, by the way. So anyone interested in it could just use it. And so this concordancing tool allows you to search for certain words or also patterns in a text. So you might look for the word, yeah, “side” or the two words “dark side,” and then you just try to see what comes in front of it, or “to the dark side.” So that's what I did. So I searched for “to the dark side” and then I tried to see, okay, what occurs to the left of it, for example. And then you just sort it. That's the nice thing. So you get it neatly underneath each other, and by sorting those different hits that you find, you can get an overview of what types of context a certain word or expression occurs in. That's extremely helpful if you try to form generalizations about language, which we linguists try to do all the time.

Dominic: Yeah, very cool. So it's a lot more powerful than just a simple Control-F. These are some really granular tools that you have here. That is awesome. So we've established that there's this difference between maybe trying to specifically reference the movies and maybe using these words, this language, kind of more generically, without specifically referencing Star Wars. And it's this latter category which we might say is more interesting. So when it comes to kind of references versus innovation, what did you find there?

Christina: I've found that, actually, there's a lot of innovative uses of words from Star Wars in the English language. So among the examples that I looked at, I found that over a third are actually contexts where Star Wars is only mildly alluded to, if at all. So, for example, someone might be called a “finance Jedi,” or in the context of dating, someone might tell another person, “This is how it's done, young Padawan,” you know? And so, obviously, I mean, there is this allusion to Star Wars, but you don't necessarily have to think about Star Wars while using it in that context because it's got nothing to do with the films themselves. And so here a word like “Padawan” is used in the sense of an apprentice or a person who you are showing the ropes to, basically. And, yeah, you often get that. Also, I mean, “Yoda” is used in the meaning of a mentor, so sometimes people talk about wanting to meet “their Yoda.” And if you talk about wanting to meet “your Yoda,” well, the use of “your” here already implies that it's a more general meaning, and that it's not just the person or the character of Yoda, but this idea of a mentor.

Dominic: Oh, that's excellent. Well, I would very much like to become a language Jedi. For now, I might remain a Padawan, but we'll see if the Force is with me.

Christina: Oh, probably you already are.

Dominic: Aw, thank you. What initially gave you the idea to investigate this?

Christina: Actually, one of my students. I was teaching a translation class and we were translating a text about Dickens World, which is a theme park. I think it closed in the meantime and I mean, what would you imagine a theme park about Dickens to be like, Dominic? What would you expect?

Dominic: I would imagine it would be themed around A Tale of Two Cities and many of his famous works.

Christina: And of course, if you think about the kind of general attitude, the general spirit of the theme park, apparently it was relatively dark. And so, in the text they said that it felt like “Disney turned to the dark side.” And then my student asked me when we were translating this, “Do you think this is a reference to Star Wars?” And I said, “Could be, but I'm not a hundred percent sure about that.” And that got me thinking about Star Wars as a potentially interesting topic for linguistic research, and then I tried to see if there's other words, expressions, that might have entered the English language in the meantime. And I really liked this idea, because if you think about the Star Wars films, what really makes that universe special is that it's a used universe. So it's not all shiny science fiction, but, yeah, the different spaceships et cetera, they’re all very used. And so you're trying to kind of transmit this idea of this is familiar in a certain way. And so, I quite like this idea that therefore it's relatively easy for those Star Wars words, at least to a certain extent, to enter our universe and somehow it feels familiar.

Dominic: Well, it's a long time ago.

Christina: In a galaxy far, far away.

Dominic: Yes, and this is so cool because, you know, Star Wars, pop culture, entertainment, you know, it's so cool that it actually has some very real scientific merit for these types of investigations, these types of scientific inquiries. I think this is totally fascinating.

Christina: Absolutely, and I mean, if you think about science fiction, sometimes inventions that were just shown in science fiction films in the end became reality, you know. So, it's not just interesting from the linguistic perspective, but of course, also from the perspective of inspiration. I think quite a lot of researchers actually do take inspiration from science fiction when they're developing, yeah, new devices, for example.

Dominic: Well, Star Wars is certainly hugely successful, but we know that not everyone has seen the movies. Sometimes it can be very surprising if you meet someone who hasn't seen any of the movies. You kind of wonder, “Oh my gosh, where have you been? It's such a huge part of our culture.” So, what did you find? Do people actually have to know the Star Wars movies, or have to have seen the Star Wars movies to be using this type of language?

Christina: Not necessarily. I mean, there are some people who haven't watched the Star Wars films, but they still know what a Jedi is. Actually, I asked my mother, because I know she didn't watch the Star Wars films, and I asked her, “By the way, do you know what a Jedi is?” And she said, “Of course I do.” And I said, “Well, I just wanted to ask because I know you didn't watch the films,” but she did. And the same applies to some friends of mine, because the interesting thing about lightsabers, for example, is that they don't just exist as an idea. They also exist in the real world. There's quite a lot of children who are playing with lightsaber toys. And some children that I know had some lightsaber toys at home, and then I asked the parents if they were also Star Wars fans, and then they revealed to me that they had never watched any of the Star Wars films. And I was really surprised. So obviously they just found the toy attractive. And then, I mean, people have those toys and they talk about them and they don't mention it's a toy, but they just talk about their lightsaber. And there's even people out there who do lightsaber dueling as a kind of sport. And so there's different mentions of that in the corpora that I looked at. So that's actually quite fun. Yeah, so you don't necessarily have to have watched Star Wars to talk about it.

Dominic: Oh my goodness, yes. When I was younger, I was obsessed with those lightsaber duels and the fan films that I would see on YouTube. I even tried to put together some myself. So that is really fascinating. That really speaks to the really significant impact that Star Wars has had on our culture. I mean, it's kind of become a part of, almost, the collective human story now. Almost like the fairy tales of yore.

Christina: Absolutely. I entirely agree. And I mean, if you think about the narrative structures, then you will notice that the narrative structures that underlie Star Wars are very similar to those in fairy tales. But of course, fairy tales are a different story, and I hope to tell that one another time.

Dominic: Yes. Well, Christina, may the Force be with you. I think that we’re just about out of time for today's episode. Probably going to wrap things up. But this was a totally fascinating discussion. I'm so happy we got to sit down and talk about this today.

Christina: Yeah, I tremendously enjoyed this too. And to our audience, I hope so did you. So, stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time behind the scenes of English linguistics.

Episode 2: Does English have an infinite number of words for drunkenness?

Dominic: Hello everyone and welcome back! Thanks for joining us today for another chat about linguistics and language and all of our favorite elements of what goes into what we say and how we do it. Christina, how are you doing?

Christina: I'm fine. I'm so excited as well! It's great to be back!

Dominic: Yeah, I certainly agree. I certainly agree. And you know, as an American in Germany, it's been a really incredible cultural experience, observing German culture, observing all of the important things in German society, German language. And certainly a very famously important element of German culture is alcohol, usually specifically beer, although as I've learned, Germany also produces wine. White wine, right? White wine. If you want red wine, go to maybe Italy or France, but German white wine is considered quite good.

Christina: Oh, yeah, it's excellent. There's very, very good white wine in different regions, for example, in Franconia. Also in other areas like the Moselle, yeah. So we've got good wine, but I think that at the world level, we're more famous for beer.

Dominic: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I attended Oktoberfest, which is world-famous, attracts visitors from all over. And certainly it seems to me like maybe there's a large number of maybe idioms or metaphors or expressions in German that involve beer or alcohol in some way. What do you think?

Christina: Yeah, I suppose, yes. I would need to think about that, but of course, I mean, if I think about beer festivals, I mean, we say things like Prost and Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit, which means like ‘Cheers to coziness.’ I mean, Gemütlichkeit is one of those words that people find hard to translate, but it's this idea of, ‘hey, isn't it great that we are all together here drinking alcohol’, which, of course, can be dangerous in many respects, as we all know. But, yeah, I would say it forms part of German culture and of many cultures, if you can say so, in the whole world. And I mean, people are having fun with alcohol and provided that it stays at that level, they may also talk about it in a fun way.

Dominic: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, on the subject of language and alcohol, something I often went into with my German friends is that in English, when it comes to sparkling wine, we often refer to it generically as champagne. It doesn't matter if it comes from the Champagne or [c1] the Champagne region of France, but of course, my European friends, my German friends insist you can't call it champagne. Champagne is strictly from Champagne and I think the European Union has strict laws governing this. They take it very seriously.

Christina: Oh, yeah. It's very serious. Yeah, no, you mustn't call it champagne unless it's really from the Champagne. Otherwise, you would call it Sekt, for example, here in Germany, and British people may call it bubbly. At least that's what we used to call it when I studied there.

Dominic: Ah, fascinating, fascinating. Yeah, perhaps we're just not so strict about it. But you know, when it comes to alcohol, we have many, many words for alcohol and the conditions of being inebriated or intoxicated in the English language and in many languages around the world. And Christina, I think actually recently you did some research on all of the various words we have for the state of being drunk.

Christina: Well, I wouldn't claim to have done research on all of the words because there are so many different words that you can use to talk about being drunk in English. But my colleague and friend Peter Uhrig and myself, we carried out a study in which we tried to see how you can talk about being drunk in English, indeed.

Dominic: And what gave you the idea for this? I imagine you were sipping on a drink one day and then it struck you, “Hm, maybe there's some linguistic merit to this, maybe I should investigate this.”

Christina: Actually, that's exactly what happened. I was actually at a conference, which was an inauguration of a center on construction grammar, and we had had some bubbly. I was sitting listening to a conference paper, and I was in a, well, I don't want to say I was tipsy because I just sipped on that, you know, so all very decent. But still, I think this is what ultimately gave me the idea: “Oh, wait a moment! Are there any links between drunkenness and construction grammar?” And then it hit me that I had actually watched a routine, a comedy routine by Michael McIntyre, who's a very, very famous British comedian. Do you know him?

Dominic: Yes, I'm familiar with him because of you. Because you told me you're quite fond of some of his comedy routines.

Christina: Yeah, I’m a huge fan. And so one of my favorite routines by him is when he talks about, well, he claims that as a British person, or particularly a posh British person, you can use any English word to mean ‘drunk’, and he gives some very convincing examples. He says things like, “Yesterday I was totally car-parked.” “I was utterly pajamaed.” And a few more of that type. And of course, the audience laughs and they find that funny. But well, among the words that he mentions, like wellied, trousered, et cetera, which sound like complete nonsense to a person from Germany who hasn't heard those before, actually, those are recorded in dictionaries. So they are part of the word stock or vocabulary of the English language. Yeah, so the question is, why? I mean, why are there all these interesting words and how many are there? And is it possible to actually really do what he says? Peter Uhrig and I set out to determine just that.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, this is a very fun subject because, you know, drinking and getting drunk, hopefully, it’s usually a lighthearted and fun activity, at least we hope. And so, you might not imagine there's maybe scientific merit to investigating this sort of language, but there really is, and it's really fascinating because you found that there is, at its basis, this structure for the state of being drunk, right, which is: “to be or get, and then an intensifying modifier, and then a word ending in -ed”. And I have certainly found that this is true. You can substitute anything in there. “I'm getting totally grozzled.” “I'm getting totally wobbled.” “I'm getting totally rattled.” And in general, I think people will understand what you're trying to say. It's very playful, but, you know, if you're saying those things to your friends, it means you're probably in a playful mood. And so, you know, it's tolerated and it's understood.

Christina: Yeah, and I think, of course, the context plays a very important role, obviously, not the sentence, but also the larger context, I would argue. But, indeed, I mean, it's very interesting because, as you just said, it's got its merits because it might seem like a very lighthearted topic, but if you think about it, there's something which we can learn about how human cognition also works. So, construction grammar is a very interesting approach because what construction grammar tells us is that part of the meaning of words or, like, of what we say is actually also in the grammar, in the context.

Dominic: Christina, how many words did you find, how many “drunkonyms” as you call them, did you find?

Christina: Yeah, I mean, we used the word drunkonyms, which was used in the literature before. I mean, there wasn't a large amount of literature, but, yeah, so we actually found 546 drunkonyms, but that was just a list that we compiled from different resources. So, what we did is we searched the Oxford English Dictionary for adjectives that contained either drunk or intoxicated in their definition. And then we tried to see whether these actually referred to being drunk. And we also made sure that in our list, we didn't have any words that contained drunk itself because that's not what we were looking for, so not drunky or martin-drunk, et cetera. And then we combined that with some word lists that were partly generated by users. So we found them on the internet, so the BBC, for instance. They had a show about alcohol in some way or another. And then people voted on drunkonyms. And so we also integrated that list into that list of drunkonyms and also some words from a few other resources. So, it's all in the article, which, by the way, can be read on the internet. It’s accessible, and that list of 546 drunkonyms is also there. But of course, that's not all that there is to it. There’s many, many more. So other people have talked about 900 or even 3,000 drunkonyms. And I mean, if we take seriously what Michael McIntyre said and what our research also suggests, you can basically use any word to express that idea of being drunk. And I think that's the most important takeaway: that actually what was possibly meant as a joke, to some extent, can be taken seriously. So probably that's a very German thing to do, to take jokes and try to see if they might be correct or not. But I was actually very happy to see that this is actually possible and it really testifies to the immense creativity of the English language and its speakers.

Dominic: Immense creativity, certainly. Certainly. And to our listeners, I really hope that you'll take a look at this research paper because, in the appendix, Christina and her co-author attached the full list of drunkonyms that they found, and I must say, this is an extremely entertaining list of words. I mean, I was just laughing all the way through. This is a wonderful, wonderful list of words that I encourage everyone to read if you’re in need of some levity. And of course, certainly fascinating also from a scientific perspective, of course, some of them might be archaic, as was pointed out. Some of them might not be in use, but, even so, it's a very fun list of words to read. …And so you also said in terms of resources you used, you were looking at different dictionaries and, were you looking at, like, the Urban Dictionary or anything like that?

Christina: I also looked at the Urban Dictionary, or we did, but that was rather to see whether the words in Michael McIntyre's comedy routine were already in use at the time that he performed it. But we didn't really integrate words from the Urban Dictionary into the list. So I suppose that there's even many, many more out there. And I mean, what you just said about like being archaic and mentioning the Urban Dictionary. I mean, the Urban Dictionary is a wonderful resource if you're looking for contemporary slang because very often, I mean, when there's a new word and you don't know what it means, and it's obviously a slang word from the context in which you encounter it, then it's very nice to take a look at the Urban Dictionary.

Dominic: The Urban Dictionary, which is a certifiably kind of unserious, lighthearted place, I would say. It's a good place for a laugh, but it can genuinely be a useful resource if you're trying to learn about slang because slang moves very, very fast, often faster than dictionaries can keep up. And dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary, like Merriam-Webster, and so many others, they do incorporate slang periodically, but not as fast as the Urban Dictionary, which can basically capture it almost on day one. And I'm wondering if, as we talked about, slang moves so fast and there are so many of these drunkonyms in English, you know, many of them seem kind of like playful slang to me. Do you think that maybe one of the reasons we have so many of these drunkonyms is because they're so closely related to slang?

Christina: What I would say is that these drunkonyms are used in informal contexts. They're used in lighthearted contexts. When people are having conversations about their achievements regarding their alcohol intake on the previous day or what they intend to achieve on that particular day. And these are contexts which, well, are the contexts in which you might also use slang, but then again, I mean, it's a matter of definition, whether you say, okay, this is still just an informal word or this is a slang word. But in any case, yeah, I think they're not words that you would tend to use in a university essay or in an essay at school or in a newspaper article, except if you're writing about them. And that's why, well, I had the pleasure of writing many of these words in the article that Peter and I did together. So yeah, it was very interesting. And I learned a lot. I mean, I learned so many new words that I had no idea existed, you know, trollied, rat- arsed. I mean, there's so many colorful expressions that you can use to talk about drunkenness. It’s quite amazing!

Dominic: Oh, yeah, and many of them are often very abstract or very abstracted from the original meaning. There's quite a distance. You almost could argue that many of them are maybe euphemisms or they're euphemistic. They are abstract on purpose.

Christina: Yes, I would think so. Definitely. Because if you think particularly about those examples that Michael McIntyre gives, like gazeboed, I mean, what does drunkenness have to do with a gazebo? Nothing, you know. Or pajamaed? Okay, probably you put on the pajamas because you're tired after drinking, which is what happens to me. That's why I drink very little actually. But yeah, there’s a distance between that base that you have that you attach the -ed ending to, which turns it into a drunkonym like trollied, et cetera, wellied, whatever, and the meaning of drunkenness. And I think it's that distance that creates humor, and that's a very typical thing that you have a certain indirectness. You know, indirectness forces the listener to establish the link themselves between that word that they might never have heard before and the meaning of being drunk. And so, I think that's what creates the whole fun of it. And that's something which, I would say, particularly the English are very famous for. And there’s different other means of being indirect, which are also exploited to talk about drunkenness. For example, Cockney rhyming slang. I don't know. Is this something that you also have in the United States?

Dominic: Not to my knowledge, not to my knowledge. It's very distinctly British, and I think we admire it for that reason.

Christina: Yeah, I love it too. I mean, we don't have that in German either, but so the idea here in Cockney rhyming slang is that you have, yeah, a meaning, like in this case, that would not be drunk, but it would be pissed usually. And then you look for a word that rhymes with it. For example, you could take the name of the composer, Liszt, yeah? And then what you do is you find another word that is related to that composer's name. So let's take another composer's name, for example, Brahms, and then we say “Brahms and Liszt”, so that's a pair that rhymes with pissed. And then we can just replace Brahms with pissed and then say, “I was totally Brahms.”

Dominic: The closest analog I can think of to that is maybe Pig Latin, right? Or “Ig-pay Atin-lay”. But that’s something that young school children do, and something I only remember young school children doing, but it's this fun little structure or pattern that children might use because they want to speak in code to each other. And it almost sounds like a different language, but of course, it's just English, but with things scrambled. That's kind of the closest thing I can think of.

Christina: Can you give me an example?

Dominic: Oh, yeah, “Ig-pay Atin-lay”. Basically, you take the first letter of the word and then you move it to the end and attach “-ay.” So, yeah, a dictionary would be an “Ictionary-day,” or slang would be “Lang-say,” or something like that. And so, yeah, it's just been scrambled around with this specific structure, and children will use it with each other because it’s fun and they like the idea of speaking in code to each other or maybe speaking in a different language. Of course, it isn't really a different language, but if you're not familiar with it, and you don't know how to decode it, well, it's almost a bit like a secret code or a secret language.

Christina: Definitely. I think I would have loved that too as a child, but I didn't know it.

Dominic: Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, maybe we need to bring it back. I mean, maybe we could investigate that at a later time. But, Christina, here at Linguistics Behind the Scenes, we are all about dispelling myths, and one maybe sort of leading popular theory for why there may be so many drunkonyms in English is that it's because the English drink a lot, or they drink more than others, and it is very reminiscent, as you mentioned in your paper, it's reminiscent of this kind of popular myth that some indigenous languages around the world have more words for certain weather conditions like snow because they come from a particularly snowy climate or snowy geography. And the evidence for that doesn't always back it up. So, have you investigated this about English consumption of alcohol?

Christina: Well, I suppose that's something that one might believe. I mean, if there are many words in a language, it's because you need them somehow, or because they're culturally relevant. But, well, if you look at statistics, it’s not the English that drink most. I think it's actually the Germans, but we don't talk so much about being drunk, and at least not in a humorous way, you know? So, I’m not sure about the latest statistics, but in any case, I think that, well, people drink alcohol in many places all over the world. But at least to my knowledge and in the languages that I speak, no other language is as creative regarding the use of words for being drunk. And so I think that's a special achievement of the English language and its speakers. And it's got nothing to do with the actual consumption. I think it's more about the, well, attitudes towards talking about it. And I would say that fascination for playing with language, which I like so much about English.

Dominic: Oh, I certainly like it too. I certainly like it too. But for now, I think that's the end of it, Christina. I think we've had a very fun time discussing drunkonyms and words for alcohol. And of course, this by no means serves as an endorsement of drinking alcohol, but we can all agree throughout human history it's had a very important place in many societies around the world, and investigating it from a linguistic perspective, I think, bears some really fascinating and very entertaining results.

Christina: Definitely. Yeah, I also had lots of fun, and I hope so did our audience. So stay curious and have fun with language!

Dominic: And join us next time behind the scenes of English linguistics!

Episode 3: How can we keep Holocaust survivors’ voices alive?

Dominic: Hello everyone, welcome back. We're so happy to be back here with you and talking about linguistics and everything else that we find fascinating about the world of language.

Christina: Yeah, and there are so many things that one can talk about in the world of linguistics. So Dominic, what have you been up to lately?

Dominic: Well, I'm currently busy living in Europe, which I must say is quite an experience. You know, personally, I love history and Europe is an old place to say the least. I often get teased as the American, right? Our country is so young and perhaps our perception of time and what constitutes as old is a bit different than maybe how other people around from other parts of the world might think of it. So I love being surrounded by so much history. And Christina, you know, you grew up here in Europe. What's it like for you being surrounded by all this history?

Christina: I suppose it's normal for me because I've been living here most of my life and so I just go into different cities and I see old buildings and it's normal for me. Actually, it's unusual for me if I go to a city and it's not very, very old. Like when I go to the United States or to Australia, for example, because you don't go that far back in terms of the cities that you see, but obviously, of course, the cultural heritage goes much further back.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You see it in the cities and the architecture. I mean, in America, we do have old places, but probably not much older than maybe 200 or 300 years old. You know, if something's 100 years old an American says, “Oh my gosh, it’s so long ago,” but to a European, you know, 100 years ago was just yesterday. And my European friends have been really surprised when I show them maps of American cities and everything is designed in grids, right? Because, well, probably most of our cities are pretty young, and they were probably planned to a large extent, whereas in Europe, everything just kind of developed sort of naturally and haphazardly with no specific plan.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. So when I go to places as a tourist, I expect that I just need to find the cathedral or main church somewhere. And then I will be able to find my way around the most interesting part of the city center because all of the most exciting old buildings should be located there. And, so there are a few cities where it's different. So you also have such a grid-like structure in the city of Mannheim in Germany. But otherwise, most of the places that you go to in Europe have grown like that. And I really like going to different places and doing sightseeing and exploring new cities and their history and seeing all those old buildings that are very special and different from what I have in my own region. So, yeah, I’m very fond of that.

Dominic: Oh, I totally agree. Yeah, I realized here in Europe it quickly became almost a personal trope for me that it feels like in most European towns and cities, usually the nicest building in the town is the church, right? There's one big church, one big central church oftentimes, and it's often very, very beautiful. It seems to be a common theme to me. But I think what's really cool about Europe is how kind of old meets new. You know, you'll see all of these cities where you'll have these historical areas that are really, really well preserved, but at the same time, you'll have something brand new right next to it, and so you'll just be surrounded by things that are extremely old, but also just kind of living your normal, daily modern life, and new things are still being developed. And I just think it's really beautiful. It's really beautiful the way that you synthesize together old and new.

Christina: Yeah, I really like that very much, too. I have to say I care very much about old buildings, and I'm also a fan of preserving traditions. I mean, not all traditions necessarily. I mean, there’s also some that are really good to go. But otherwise, I think it's very important to make sure that you can conserve those things that matter to the region where you come from and to preserve them for future generations.

Dominic: Yeah, very well said, Christina, very well said. I absolutely agree. Historical preservation is very, very important to me, and there's a lot of history to preserve in Europe and around the world, and of course, being in Germany, I'd say probably the biggest historical subject that people think about is World War II, and there's a lot of really important history to preserve here related to World War II and the Holocaust. And Christina, I think you've been involved in a project related to historical preservation in this way.

Christina: Yeah, that's right, because, as I just said, I mean, I really care about preservation of history, in all its different facets. And also when it comes to World War II, I mean, everyone knows that the Germans played a really, really bad role there. And of course, I feel the responsibility as a person from Germany to ensure that future generations remember this and that they don't repeat the same mistakes that were committed in the past. And the horrible things that happened during the Holocaust in particular. So with that project, I'm part of a larger project, together with my team – of course, there's always a team behind all the things that I do. So even when I say, okay, “I did this,” I mean, it usually means I did this as part of a team, a great team. And so what we want to do is conserve the testimonies and memories of Holocaust survivors. And um, we use modern technologies to make them available to a general audience. So that users can interact with those memories and try to find something meaningful and relevant in what those people have to say about the horrible things that happened to them in the past, which we mustn't forget.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. And I totally love this because, yeah, we talked about history in Europe. There's also a lot of living history in terms of the people who are still alive today, who lived through some of these incredibly significant historical events. And especially when it comes to Holocaust survivors, I believe most of those who survive today are getting to be really quite old. And so I think it's so important that we preserve these memories because, you know, the thing about memories is, well, unless you write them down or preserve them in some way. Well, when the person passes, they are lost, and so I think it's so cool that you're involved in this kind of high-tech project for historical preservation. And I believe your project centered around a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor named Abba Naor.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. So Abba Naor is a very, very special person. He's getting close to 100 years now, and he's fascinating, very, very impressive. And I've had the pleasure of meeting him for real several times, which really was always wonderful. And the last time that I met him, he was driving around in a car with more than 90 years of age, you know, and we met and talked about the project and how we are trying to make his memories available to the whole world by translating them into English. And yeah, that was absolutely fascinating. And the great thing is that he goes to schools in different places in Germany and shares his memories with the children there, which is wonderful. But as you just said, I mean, yeah, I mean, he’s getting close to 100 years now, and in the future, it will be much more difficult for children to profit directly from Holocaust survivors that tell their stories in schools that can share first-hand experiences with them and tell them about all the atrocities that happened to them and show them that this is really something which must never ever happen again.

Dominic: Yeah, absolutely. And this particular figure, Abba Naor, is a really fascinating man. He's lived an incredibly interesting life. He's lived a very long life. He's had time to live a very interesting life. But of course, he was a Holocaust survivor, sent to a concentration camp, survived the death marches. And then after the war ended up living all around the world, moving to Israel, actually working for the Israeli government for the Israeli secret service, the title of his autobiography is I Sang for the SS: My Path from the Ghetto to the Israeli Secret Service, which I think is a very striking title. He's also run restaurants and businesses and he's lived part-time in Munich, actually, and he's done a lot of work in Munich, so he’s a fascinating character.

Christina: Absolutely. That's why it's so important to conserve his memories for the future, and he has a lot to tell.

Dominic: Well, yeah, I would certainly think so, considering he's lived such a long and fascinating life. I would think that you could just interview him endlessly for hours, and it would be so fascinating. But of course, it might not be so accessible to have such a long interview, and so I think what they did with this project was they captured all of his testimony, and then they used this technology to actually make it interactive and accessible.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. So Abba Naor was asked about 1,000 questions, and he was filmed with the latest digital equipment. So equipment which is also made to record 3D films. So, yeah, yeah, that was really very impressive. And so you can actually get a life-sized Abba Naor projection of the German version. And yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. And you can ask him all kinds of questions and follow-up questions in natural language, which is really, really cool. So, you just phrase your question, you speak it into a device, into the microphone, and then you will see a video of him answering. And the great thing about this is that you still get the impression that he's really talking to you because in between you have short bits of film in which he's waiting for someone to ask him a question. So it's very, very authentic and natural. And when I showed this to people, they asked me, “Oh, is he really sitting there waiting for me?” And I was, “No, no, this is really just a kind of video chatbot, but it seems so real”. And so, what will happen is that, yeah, he will reply to the question. Then it's wonderful because it means that you can basically ask him anything. The technology will actually match what the users ask with the videos when there is an answer for that.

Dominic: Yeah, wow. This is a really incredible deployment of technology. I mean, I'm quite the history geek. So maybe that's why I'm so excited about it, but you know, there's maybe like a little kind of small talk, kind of funny piece of small talk, a question you might ask someone, which is “If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?” Which I think is a very, very difficult question. It would be very hard for me to answer that and pick a single person. It could be a person who's long gone, someone who lived long ago, or maybe someone who’s still alive—doesn't matter. But I think it's a really fascinating question. And so kind of through this technology, you're preserving this person, you're preserving their memory, hopefully for generations to come, so that at any point in the future, you can sit down and have this conversation with Abba Naor about his life. So in a way, it's no longer a hypothetical. It's something that kind of today and in the future you might actually be able to do.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. At least that's the idea behind the project, that it's possible to continue learning from Abba Naor’s experience also in the future. And so this project, Learning with Digital Testimonies, I mean, the original is actually in German. So Abba Naor originally answered those 1,000 questions in German. And when I first heard about this project from my colleague, Anja Ballis, at LMU Munich, I was absolutely fascinated and I said, “Wow, this is wonderful, but I think it would be great to share this with the whole world.” And, yeah, “So why don't we make an English version of it?” And that's the part where my team and I came in. And so we translated a selection of the questions into English and then subtitled the videos in such a way that now people can also ask the questions in English. And then get an answer in German, but with English subtitles so that they can understand it.

Dominic: Oh, I love that. So, yeah, definitely making it more accessible for a wider audience. And, yeah, translation is an art form, right? Really an art form. Maybe it’s a lot harder than people might expect. It's not always so direct. There's a lot of creative choice that has to go into it. I'm actually a really big fan of Japanese animation, anime, which involves a lot of translation, right? Whether you prefer the dub or the sub. Usually I prefer subtitles. But there's debate within the community of people who want the translations to be more direct because they think a direct translation is more authentic, but well, I think I might disagree with them. I understand the sentiment, but I actually think a direct translation doesn't always really capture the exact idea or essence of what you're trying to say. But I've never professionally translated anything. So, Christina, can you tell me about the translation process, about what it's like to translate?

Christina: So what we did is, first of all, we had to get a transcript of what Abba Naor actually said in German, because we needed a text to work with for the translation. And then Julie Winter, who's a professional translator, Antonia Friebel, my PhD student, who's working on this project for her PhD thesis, and myself, we translated this, or rather Julie Winter provided a first translation into English, and then we discussed this. And we devised different principles that we wanted to follow regarding the translation. So we really wanted to make sure that the translation was as close as possible to the original. So we really tried to use the same metaphors if possible, the same sentence structure, wherever possible, except, of course, if it was idiomatic. So we really wanted it to sound like good English, and that's what we had that English native speaker for. Abba Naor is not a native speaker of German, so when he speaks, he speaks in a way that might be different from standard English in some respects. For example, like when you are using a preposition in a way that is not commonly used in one particular variety of English, for example, as a British person, I would say at the weekend, and it might sound strange to have on the weekend, but that's correct in American English, isn't it, Dominic?

Dominic: Yeah, that's right. To me, at the weekend sounds strange. Almost sounds like a mistake, but it’s regional.

Christina: Yeah, that's the thing. So sometimes there's variance. So it’s possible to say things in one way or another, but it doesn't sound so idiomatic. And in some cases, it might also be that there's, for example, simply a preposition that you wouldn't otherwise use in German. And we wanted to make sure that the translation had correct English throughout, and that's particularly important, because when Abba Naor speaks, he has his very own way of speaking German, which is absolutely lovely. So, I think he's charming when he talks, and you can hear his voice, and he's transmitting all of those emotions. And so, all of this comes together as something natural that characterizes him. But when you just have the letters one after another in the subtitles and you have something that is not grammatically correct according to standard grammar, it just looks wrong, and it makes him appear in an unfavorable light. And this is something we definitely wanted to avoid.

Dominic: Oh, yes, certainly I agree. That's one of the nuances of translating, that perhaps if you really, really wanted to capture the way Germans might hear it, then you could maybe replicate the non-standard speech in English. But as you said, it probably would not be favorable, right? And the reader might not even understand that that's what you're trying to capture. They might just think that it's just very poorly written subtitles or a very poorly done translation. So I absolutely see what you're saying. Did Abba Naor have any input about the translations?

Christina: Yes, so he did. In the beginning of the project, we actually made a translation of his reply to the question how he maintained the will to survive. And yeah, that's a tough one, definitely. And that's also one of the questions that I think are crucial here, one of the essential ones. And what he said is “Leben ist eine feine Sache” and we translated that as “Life is great.” And so we produced some subtitling and showed that to him as a little mock-up, together with a few other things, and he really liked what we did. So I was so relieved to see that he was happy with what we were doing, because, of course, that is crucial. And, but then he said, “Hmm, yeah, but couldn't you also say ‘Life is a gift?’” And then we said, “Ooh, that's even better. That's beautiful. Well, if you think ‘Life is a gift’ would be a good translation of that… If that is what you want to express, then, of course, ‘Life is a gift’ shall be the official translation.” So that is the one sentence where Abba Naor had his say and we even made a little recording of him saying, “Life is a gift,” and that was so charming and made us all so very, very happy.

Dominic: Oh, that's very sweet. And of course, not an exact translation of what he said, right? I suppose you could say “Life is a gift” in German more directly, but he felt that that translation captured the spirit of what he wanted to say. And so that's translation. That’s translation. That's what really makes it an art form. I was very surprised when I went to an opera here in Germany and I thought, “Well, you know, the opera will be in German. I won’t understand what they're saying, but it's okay because there are other parts of an opera that you can admire aside from understanding the lyrics.” But I was very surprised to find that at this opera house there was a screen at the top of the stage that had English and German subtitles, very surprised, so I was able to read the subtitles, and actually, because English and German were side by side and I'm learning German, I actually found myself looking at the German a lot and comparing the German to the English, and I could see many instances when they took liberty with the translation and I found it quite curious.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, in some cases, you need to do that because otherwise it won't fit, you know, that's one of the problems about subtitling, that you have to squeeze things into a particular time frame, basically. But yeah, and in operas in addition, and also in our project, I mean, you might want to make sure that people really understand everything, and then you probably want to make sure that the vocabulary is not too difficult. So, I mean, particularly in older operas, you might get some vocabulary that is probably hard to understand and you might have to use a very rare word. So this is also something that we tried to do in our translation project. We wanted to make sure that everyone in the world could understand Abba Naor’s message as well as possible, and so we tried to make it as easy to understand as possible. So there was, for example, one case where he was talking about how he was treated by the SS and he said, that, well, “They weren't exactly being treated with kid gloves.” So that's the translation that Julie Winter first suggested. And I think that's a wonderful way of expressing this idea, but at the same time we felt that this was really hard to understand. It's an expression that probably only advanced learners of English will understand. And so in the end we went for something simpler.

Dominic: Yeah, wow, yet another example. So this whole process is so important and so interesting. Our world is very international, but our world kind of runs on translation. And so hearing about all these different accommodations and things you need to make when handling the translation process is so interesting, and we didn't even get into dubs, right? Because I would think when you're translating for a dub, it's even more restrictive. You have to be even more creative and kind of abstract the translation because you need to translate the dialogue in a manner that fits the timing of the words being spoken on screen. So that sounds like an even more difficult process to me.

Christina: Yeah, I would say so, too. I think that's even more difficult definitely. And of course, you need to make sure that people don't move their mouth and not say anything, but it's even worse when you hear something being said, but there's no mouth movement. But, of course, in Germany, most films are dubbed, which is really very helpful for children in particular, but with Abba Naor’s testimony, we didn't want to do that. So that was a very, very clear decision because we just wanted to make it possible for audiences to also hear him speak in his very own characteristic, humorous way. I mean, you wouldn't believe that listening to the memories of a Holocaust survivor could also be entertaining and fun and an experience that doesn't only make you sad, but it's just like, it's so nice to listen to him. And we just wanted to share that with the world as well and at the same time make it possible for everyone to understand the content, and that's why we selected subtitles.

Dominic: Yeah, that was something that actually took a little bit of getting used to when I came here to Europe because, when it comes to like voiceover dubbed content, because, you know, coming from the U.S., well, a very large share of international media is in English, so we can just watch it as it is. But when we do watch foreign films or foreign media, I would argue in my personal experience, we almost always opt for subtitles instead of dubbing, pretty much always from what I've seen. So when I came to Europe and I saw lots of dubs and voiceovers on TV and in the movie theater, it seemed to me that Europeans are totally used to it because they grew up watching media with dubs and voiceover.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's the way that films are usually shown on TV in the cinema. It's the most normal thing for me to actually watch dubbed films. What about you, Dominic? What do you feel like when you watch dubbed films?

Dominic: Ah, well, personally not such a fan, at least when it comes to live action media. When watching live action media with a dub, I don't know. There's kind of like a strange disconnect or dissonance because I know the voice doesn't belong to that person, and also I know that the words don't quite match the lips. So maybe I'm not such a fan.

Christina: Yeah, I can completely relate to that feeling, but on the other hand, it's quite convenient, particularly for younger audiences. But, with the chatbot it was really so important to us to make Abba Naor’s memories available in a way that is as authentic as possible that we, well, felt it was important to actually have subtitling rather than dubbing. And of course, it's also easier to make and it's more accessible anyway. That's why, by the way, it's also possible to interact with the testimony in different ways. So what users can do is that on their mobile or on their computer, they can just talk into the microphone of their device. And then Abba Naor will answer. Or you can also type in the text. That's also possible. And there’s a third thing that I really, really like about our English version that the German version doesn't have. And that is that you get a suggestion of three questions that you can simply tap on or click on, and then you will get an answer to that question. So that kind of disturbs the immersion a tiny little bit, but at the same time, we feel it's really helpful because not everyone might come up with many questions, and that way you can get ideas of what might be a good question to ask him.

Dominic: Such a cool project. I love the way this is mixing kind of linguistics and technology and history, all my favorite things. And your project that you're working on, I think you're not the only ones in the world who are doing this type of digital testimony work, the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is also working on preserving digital testimonies using some similar technology.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they have a large collection of digital testimonies.

Dominic: Yeah, and they certainly have some famous backing, right? The Shoah Foundation was founded by Stephen Spielberg, actually, a year after he made Schindler’s List, which is a fantastic film. Have you seen it?

Christina: Yeah, I have. Actually, my whole school went to the cinema together and it really left a mark on us, I would say. I mean, definitely on me.

Dominic: I would say it left a mark on me, too. The use of color in that film is incredible because, of course, the film was made in the 1990s, and yet almost all of it takes place in black and white, which is used for this very powerful, creative artistic effect.

Christina: Yeah, I really admire that film. And so this going to the cinema, that was part of the Holocaust education that we have in German schools. So one of the things that you usually do is you also go to see a concentration camp. So in my case, that was Dachau, and going there and seeing those places where people were killed and the chimneys and well, and seeing the names of people on those boards, people who have the same name or share a birthday with you or other things. I mean, that's really tough and it makes you realize that we're actually talking about humans who have a lot in common with you and who were killed there on purpose, you know. I would say it was quite effective. I mean, it was with regard to me, but I think my whole class at the time, well, was really, very, very impressed. What about you, Dominic? Is there something like Holocaust education in United States schools?

Dominic: Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, you know, education in the United States is kind of highly variable depending on where you live because it's controlled a lot by the state governments and the local governments. But I grew up in California where I think the education and the history education is very strong. And so, of course, we spend a lot of time from elementary school, middle school, and high school, learning about the Holocaust and World War II. I also remember meeting a Holocaust survivor at one point because we do have some of them. We have some of them. And of course, I remember very distinctly reading The Diary of Anne Frank. We had to do that in middle school and that really left an impression on me because, well, I think she was a young girl, right? She was only maybe 12 or 13 at the time. And of course, when I was reading the book in middle school, I was also just about that same age. And so it made it a lot easier for me to kind of put myself in her shoes and to imagine that I'm in her situation. And it really drove home just how unpleasant and horrible it really was. So this type of education, this type of history education is really important, I think. It makes an impact.

Christina: Definitely. Yeah. I entirely agree. Reading Anne Frank's diary also made a very big impression on me when I was a teenager. I think it's mainly, yeah, because the diary tells her life story from her perspective, just like Abba Naor tells his story either personally in schools or through the chatbot, basically. And I think that's something that goes much more to my heart and possibly also to other people's hearts than if you just hear abstract figures. I mean, even if these are very, very large and you hear how many people were killed, still, I mean, knowing that there's this one individual person and hearing how exactly they suffered from the unjust situation at the time. These are things that really, yeah, convey very, very strongly that this mustn't happen again, yeah.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. When you capture these testimonies and you make them accessible, it really humanizes those who have been dehumanized. And like you said, it allows you to connect with them to see that you probably have a lot in common with them, after all, right? And I think that's really important today because, well, today, people are maybe very quick to talk about what makes us different from each other and our differences make us unique. Differences are not necessarily a bad thing, but I think we probably have so much more in common.

Christina: Yeah, definitely. So Dominic, if you had the opportunity to ask a Holocaust survivor a question or several questions, what is it that you would actually like to ask them?

Dominic: Oh, yeah. It would be hard to narrow it down. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is, of course, just asking them the basics about their experiences during the Holocaust. But I think maybe one that sticks out in particular to me is, you know, these people have lived very long lives. They've seen the world change. The world has changed a lot in the last century or so, not least in terms of technology, but also in terms of politics and society. You know, almost everyone alive today are people who were not alive during World War II, we’re kind of several generations past now. So I would love to ask them their perspective on how the world has changed, kind of what their outlook is, and how they remain optimistic.

Christina: Yeah, I think these are very beautiful questions, and I think you can actually also do that with the Abba Naor chatbot, probably more so with the German one because it's got more questions, 1,000, but I think we also have a question on that in the English version. There we had to actually narrow it down to about 200 questions in order to make it feasible. And it was really difficult to select the questions because we wanted to select questions that we hoped would be relevant for the users. So to ensure that, we asked different people, we did a little survey. Then came up with about 200 questions we felt were particularly important.

Dominic: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I know you've said that as a German, you felt a very personal interest and connection to this project. But as a linguist, what really got you interested in it? And how did you kind of deploy your linguistic expertise here?

Christina: Yeah, that's a really good question because this is probably the least linguistic project I've worked on simply because it matters to me due to the content. But of course, it's also interesting from a linguistic perspective. So during the translation process, there were many interesting things that came up, for example, how particles are used. So particles are small words that we use in German just like that to emphasize things. But then I'm not sure if they always have a purpose and then it's very hard to determine how to translate them into English. So in German, we might say something like, “Du kannst doch nicht einfach gehen,” which means “You can't simply leave,” but the doch there, it doesn't really have much meaning. But somehow it's something people would naturally add to make it sound German. And then the question was always how to translate these small words like doch, aber, et cetera. So you could say things like, after all, et cetera. But I don't know, like how do you feel about those particles? Have you encountered them? I suppose they must be driving you crazy, Dominic.

Dominic: Oh goodness. Well, when it comes to particles, actually, the first thing I think of is Japanese, because particles are an extremely important foundational part of Japanese and a fundamental part of every Japanese sentence, right? Essentially, they were explained to me that they're sort of like topic markers or things like that. They serve a very grammatical function. But uh yeah, particles in German can also be quite a bit tricky. Yeah, all of these little details that make German one of the trickier European languages, but not the trickiest, but yeah.

Christina: But it's good to hear that other languages have that too and also drive learners crazy. But yeah, we wanted to make sure that we don't unnecessarily translate those particles when they don't make an important contribution because otherwise they would have made the sentences more complicated. So that was nice.

Dominic: Yeah, and I would certainly think that another major difficulty, another major hurdle is that there are just so many different ways of phrasing things, of phrasing the same thing.

Christina: Yeah, and that's the interesting thing about language, that very often we have different ways of expressing the same idea. And this is also crucial when it comes to the chatbot because someone who wants to ask Abba Naor a question like “Where are you from?” might not necessarily use exactly the form in which the question was asked and which is the form in which we enter that into the system, into the technology that matches the questions and the answers. And for that reason, it was very important for us to determine different ways of expressing the same idea in a question. So instead of “Where are you from?,” you might also ask, “What's your hometown?” or “Where were you born?” We have to expect users from all over the world to express these ideas in slightly different ways. And that's why we tried to find as many variants as possible and our student assistant, Ahmad, was really crucial in that.

Dominic: Yeah, and I think this is part of what really makes it feel so natural because I think maybe, well, computers these days are becoming so extremely smart, especially with artificial intelligence, but maybe we've all been there in the past, where if you don't ask the computer exactly what it's been prepared to answer in exactly the way it needs, then it might not understand you. And so, yeah, you're accounting for that, essentially. You don't need to phrase things exactly as they were asked. You can phrase them differently and you can still have a chat.

Christina: Exactly. Yeah. So by setting the threshold in a different way, you can allow for more variation and that will allow more users to then actually come up with the correct answer for their question, hopefully. Of course, with 200 question-answers pairs, the virtual Abba Naor chatbot will not be able to reply to all questions, but we hoped the most relevant ones. And everything that you will see there is authentic, recorded material. So none of it was generated. So, well, you might think, “Okay, wouldn't it be great to have artificial intelligence to provide even more answers by just using the material that we have and then make it generate answers that are likely to be Abba Naor’s answers?” We decided not to do that because it's so important to us to really conserve the testimony as it is and to conserve other's memories as they are and make those available to users in the future.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, and this idea of taking kind of this digital testimony and combining it with artificial intelligence tools, at least some of the modern, large language models, this almost reminds me of like a digital afterlife. If you could feed all of this to an AI and then have it respond as the person. But actually, this idea was done on an episode of Black Mirror, if you're familiar with it, it's a British science fiction show that often dips into dystopia most of the time, and so well over a decade ago, they had an episode about if you have a loved one who's passed away, you feed all of their social media into an AI, and then the AI allows you to talk with them from beyond the grave. Of course, it's just a computer imitating them. And that's kind of the problem with these AI tools, right? It's mostly an imitation. They have a tendency to hallucinate maybe sometimes, to fabricate things completely. So we want to make sure that things stay authentic.

Christina: Yeah, we're also academics, we’re scholars. We want to conserve this just like you quote from a book, you want to make sure, well, that it remains the same. And of course, we feel the responsibility to really handle this sensitive data with the utmost care so as to make it available to future generations, in the way that it was given to us, but with the technical means that make it explorable for others.

Dominic: Yes, and when it comes to conversations with AI and computers in general, the old school test is called the Turing test, right? Which is very simple. Just basically, when you're talking to a computer, can you tell that you're talking to a computer and not a real person? And I think these modern AIs are really good at sounding like real people. But of course, with this project that you were involved with, you know that it's pre-recorded, that these are pre-recorded messages. So how do you make it feel natural? Can you have a natural conversation in this context?

Christina: Yeah, that's a good point. Of course, with only 200 questions, it will never be possible to have a conversation like with a real person or even with a chatbot that just generates language as you go along in the conversation. But I have to say that it's surprisingly authentic. So I can share my own experience with you. So at the inaugural event at which the interactive digital testimony was presented, I was in a kind of 3D cinema and we were wearing 3D glasses and I had the opportunity to ask the virtual Abba Naor a question by using a microphone, a device. And then the virtual Abba Naor replied to me. And then when I walked out of that cinema, actually the real Abba Naor walked past me, and I looked him into the eyes and I noticed he didn't recognize me, and it felt like, “Why is he not recognizing me? We just had a conversation,” and that was in spite of the fact that I was extremely aware that I had been talking to his chatbot so to speak. So that really showed me that it works better than you might expect. And even the smaller version, the version that is not 3D, we're so used now to having video calls with people either in a browser or on a mobile, that it feels very, very real. So I've had people next to me who actually asked me, “Oh, is that the real Abba Naor?” And I said, “No, it's really just a chatbot. You can ask him any question.” And people actually also sometimes feel guilty asking him questions that might distress him because they don't want to be rude to the elderly gentleman that they see. And so it's quite impressive.

Dominic: That's a very, very sweet story and yes, certainly very inspiring. But this is so cool, so Christina, if people want to engage with this tool, this project, where is it available? How do they do that?

Christina: It's available online. We have a website for the project, which you can find in our links. And there you will find both the German testimony and the English testimony and for the English one, well, you just click on it and it's there. It's free for you to use and we're very happy for people to use it, to share it with others. And to ask Abba Naor the questions that they would like to know more about in order to learn from him about the things he experienced.

Dominic: Very nice. I think I'll check that out. And of course, a very fascinating discussion about some of these AI tools and how they're changing language and the way we speak. But I think that would probably be a good subject for another day. So, Christina, thank you so much for sharing all of this with me. It was so wonderful to talk with you at this beautiful little convergence of linguistics and history and technology. This was just a totally fascinating discussion today and I think we covered a lot. So, yeah, thank you.

Christina: Thank you as well, Dominic. I really enjoyed our conversation and I was so happy that I was able to share this topic that I really care about with you and also with our audience. So to everyone out there, stay curious, have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time behind the scenes of English linguistics.

Episode 4: How difficult are comic strips and cartoons?  

Dominic: Hi, Christina.

Christina: Hi, Dominic. Great to be back.

Dominic: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And actually, I'm back in more ways than one. I just got back from a vacation to Rome, and well, last time we were talking about history in Europe and old architecture, yeah. Rome is a great place for that. But while I was there, I had some downtime, and I saw a new Marvel movie. I'm quite a fan.

Christina: Oh, excellent.

Dominic: Do you like comic books? Do you like superheroes?

Christina: Oh, I love comics! I also like superheroes, but I think I'm actually more into the kind of traditional comic books and also cartoons. But I also like some superheroes, like Superman.

Dominic: Oh, you like Superman. Very nice, very nice. So more of a DC person, maybe, you know, DC versus Marvel. Yeah, I like DC. I like Batman, but I'm probably more of a Marvel fan. Maybe if I really had to pick a favorite. I think it might be Spider-Man.

Christina: Oh, I really like Spider-Man, too.

Dominic: And did you grow up reading comic books?

Christina: Yeah, I grew up reading comic books and going to the library every week to get as many comic books as I could. I was only allowed to borrow seven comic books, which was not very much for me at the time. And I actually already started reading them on the way home.

Dominic: Alright. Yeah. I mean, comics today are absolutely like part of our mainstream culture, right? I mean, especially with the dominance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s I’d say totally acceptable and celebrated today to enjoy comic books and comic book heroes. But in the past, maybe there was a bit of a stigma. It wasn't so accepted.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, if you think about Germany in the 1950s or 1960s, people were very critical of comic books at the time. They thought that they were harmful to children, that they would make them dumb, you know, with that deficient language in the comic books and things like that. But now, I would say that, yeah, comics are very widely accepted in Germany as well. And we have huge events like the Comic-Salon in Erlangen every two years where people from, I would say, all over the world meet to get an idea of the latest comic books. And there’s also prizes for comic artists and things like that. It’s a wonderful event and I can very strongly recommend going there.

Dominic: Oh, yes. Comic book conventions are incredible. Of course, in the U.S., we have the San Diego Comic-Con and the New York Comic Con, but also in Germany, you have the biggest gaming and comic convention in the entire world, it’s called Gamescom. It's held every single year in Cologne. I have been there. It’s amazing. The convention center is so massive. It's like the size of a city and there are so many attendees. I think like hundreds of thousands of attendees, it looks like ants almost. So clearly today it’s huge and it's really, really wonderful to see, especially for those of us who have been fans of these properties since we were young.

Christina: So, Dominic, what kind of comics do you prefer?

Dominic: Well, for the most part, I've probably read Japanese comics known as manga, quite famous around the world, and manga are then often adapted into anime, Japanese cartoons, and actually I think almost all anime are adapted from manga. And the interesting thing about manga is that because Japanese traditionally is written in the opposite direction of Western languages, like English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, when these Japanese comic books are translated into other languages like English, they preserve this opposite orientation of the book, which is to say that when you pick up a manga, you open the book the opposite way. The back is the front, and you read it in kind of the opposite direction, so to speak, of like an English-language, Western language comic book. And I think it gives it a really unique, kind of strange look.

Christina: That's so cool. I mean, I'm not so much into manga, so I know more about the traditional comics like the Belgian ones. But yeah, like, the Franco-Belgian School. So, Tintin, Asterix and Obelix. And of course, I'm a huge Disney comic fan, I have to say. But these all follow the kind of standard reading direction you would expect. So, what's that like in a manga? So, you open it at the back, and then you kind of, if you've got text on a page, where do you start? So, does that go from right to left then? And bottom-up? How does that work on the page?

Dominic: Yeah, in terms of the direction of your eyes, right? Because comics, you have to look at the images kind of in a certain order as the story is told. Yeah, it also goes in the opposite direction. But when you read manga, you get used to it. And, Japanese comic books are full of onomatopoeia, which I think is a hallmark of comics, right? Bam! Boom! Wham! Pow! In Western comics as well, I really, really like onomatopoeia.

Christina: Me, too. I think onomatopoeia are beautiful. And then in comics, I mean, very often they're even written in a way that represents the idea. When you've got a Wham!, very often it's in huge capitals that are possibly even red and yellow, and you have a bold line around it. So, yeah, it's quite nice how onomatopoeia represents sounds in comics. But then, of course, it's necessary because otherwise, how should you represent them, you know? The surrounding landscape is represented visually. And of course, the text is usually in speech bubbles, but what do you do with those sounds otherwise? I think it's great because otherwise everything would be silent in comics.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Onomatopoeia are very important to comic books because, well, it's a book. It's silent. You need to have some way of kind of visually and textually illustrating the different sounds going on to the reader, and onomatopoeia across different languages are really fascinating. We have lots of words in the English language and others, which are imitative, right? They imitate real-world sounds, so it goes back quite a bit. In Japanese, they're very famous for having an extremely large repertoire of hundreds of onomatopoeia, even representing things that don't make any particular sound at all.

Christina: Like?

Dominic: Oh, my gosh, I mean they have onomatopoeia for like the concept of silence, which – silence is silent. It doesn't make a sound. Or onomatopoeia for something being fluffy or for a surface being smooth. These are concepts, not really sounds. And my gosh, they have so many, it's an incredible kind of unique function of the Japanese language. But Christina, how does onomatopoeia compare in German, for example?

Christina: Well, in German, we also have onomatopoeia. I mean, we have onomatopoeia like, for example, klatschen, which means ‘to clap’, you know? I think it sounds a bit like the noise that you make when you clap. Or, for example, we have got klappern, which means ‘to rattle’. But there are also others, for example, like Hatschi. I mean, like when we sneeze, we say hatschi. In English, it's achoo. Which is nice because it's a bit different, isn't it? So that's conventionalized. That's something very interesting, I think. You might believe that onomatopoeia should be the same in all languages, but then they aren't, which is very interesting, for example, when it comes to the kinds of sounds that animals make. For example, in German, if you have a cock or a rooster making some noise, they're going to say kikeriki. What would you say to that?

Dominic: Cock-a-doodle-do.

Christina: Which is so different, isn't it? And one that I really don't know, like in German, if you have a bee, it goes like summ, summ. What noise does a bee make in English?

Dominic: Bzzz, bzzz.

Christina: Ah, oh yeah, right. Like a B and then many Zs in one row, right?

Dominic: Yes, it’s buzzing. I would think the word buzz is also imitative. I would think so.

Christina: I would think so, too. And it's quite interesting. I mean, in comics, you very often have a sequence of the letter zed or zee that expresses this idea of snoring, which I think is strange. But I mean, if people snore, it doesn't sound like zzz at all.

Dominic: And then we have a phrase which is to catch some Zs, right? To catch some Zs is to get some sleep.

Christina: Oh, I didn't know that.

Dominic: But certainly I would think that that came from this visual convention of using Zs to represent sleeping. So it came full circle in a way.

Christina: That's so sweet. I love that when things come full circle and in the end, you have a new construction in the language.

Dominic: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And Christina, you kind of took the words right out of my mouth when you brought up animal sounds, because I love animal sounds and comparing them across different languages, how different groups of people around the world can hear the same animal, make the same sound, but then represent it differently, right? So, for example, the cat, right? To me, a cat goes meow, in many languages, it's meow or something to that effect. In Japanese, it's nyan. Quite a bit different. Or when a dog barks, I would say it goes woof woof.

Christina: In German, it says wau wau.

Dominic: Wow, see, that's quite different.

Christina: Yeah, and in Spanish, it's guau guau.

Dominic: Oh, I like that. In Japanese, it's wan wan.

Christina: Oh, I like that. Sounds similar to the cat sound though.

Dominic: Oh, almost in a way, yeah, almost in a way.

Christina: Wasn't that nan nan?

Dominic: Nyan nyan.

Christina: Nyan nyan. Nyan nyan and wan wan. Interesting. It seems to create a kind of proximity between the animals.

Dominic: Oh, that's a good theory. Well, I would at least hope that the cow can unify us all, right? The cow goes moo, right?

Christina: Yeah, I think so. In German, it's also muh. I mean, as far as I know, it should be moo in many languages.

Dominic: Thank goodness.

Christina: Yeah, that's the fun thing about the onomatopoeia, that you would believe it's the same in different languages, but it's not. It's just a matter of convention like everything else in language. It's closer to the kind of, yeah, real thing that you observe in the world, but even so, there is this kind of conventionalization that is so important throughout language. And so that also means that with regard to comics, you will have different kinds of onomatopoeia in comics from different languages. And I mean, we talked about the superhero comics earlier, so obviously, United States in English, but then there is this very, very strong tradition, of course, to have comics in French, from France, from Belgium, for example, so there’s Asterix and Obelix. I don't know if they're famous in the United States as well, are they?

Dominic: Ah, sadly, I wouldn't say so. I know about them because I learned about them in French class. But if it weren't for French class, I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere.

Christina: That's very interesting. Like, for me, from a European perspective, I mean, they're everywhere, you can't imagine comics without Asterix and Obelix somehow. But of course, um, there are many more. There's also Spirou and Fantasio, for example, in France. There’s Marsupilami, which is a, yeah, that's an interesting little animal from Palombia, which is a made-up country in South America. And, there’s so many different comics, yeah, I mean I can't mention them all here, but probably it's also interesting for you to know that in spite of the criticism regarding comics in Germany, I mean in the meantime, we have a vibrant comic scene and, for example, slightly older comics. We have the Ottifanten by a famous comedian, Otto Waalkes, which I enjoyed reading very much as a child. And, we have famous comic artists like Flix, for example, who produces wonderful graphic novels, and also very, very funny cartoony stuff. It’s fantastic, and Joscha Sauer, one of my favorite cartoonists. So there are plenty of interesting things in German, too.

Dominic: Oh, very nice. I'm so happy to hear that because, yeah, European comics are mostly a gap in my knowledge, for the most part. Of course, American comics we associate mostly with superheroes, but it's not just superheroes. I'm a very big fan of Calvin and Hobbes, for example.

Christina: Oh, I love them!

Dominic: I know, so cute. And even with the rise of the internet, it gave rise to the web comic, right? A brand new form of comic. So XKCD.

Christina: Oh, I love XKCD!

Dominic: There's an XKCD for everything, as they say.

Christina: Yes, and there’s also XKCDs about linguistics. I actually have a beautiful XKCD comic hanging on my office door. It's about linguistics, about the Tower of Babel, and you have different people who built this tower and then God wants to make them a present because they built that beautiful tower and asks them, “Hmm, I mean, what kind of things do you actually like about the world?” And then one of them says, “Hmm, words are actually quite cool.” And then God says, “Oh, great, I'm going to give you many, many different languages with different grammars, different words.” And then the others go like, “Oh, no, we should not have brought a linguist.” And I really like that one, for example.

Dominic: Oh, excellent. I love that. I’m happy to hear that. Yeah, you know, comics, we think of them as a very visual medium because they're full of art, a lot of artwork. But of course, we shouldn't forget they're also full of tons of text, not just the onomatopoeia, but the dialogue, which is a very, very crucial part of comic books. And so because they're full of all this text and language, that means that we can study them from a linguistic perspective. So, when it comes to the text itself, it seems to me the American convention is to write the dialogue and the text in all caps. I thought maybe this was for legibility, that it's easier to read something written in all caps, but apparently that might not be so. Maybe it's because it looks punchy and it grabs your attention.

Christina: Yeah, it's really a good question. I think there are studies out there showing that it's actually easier to read texts when they are in lower case mixed with upper case. But if you think about the early comics, I mean, they started off as comic strips, as cartoons in newspapers. And I mean, the paper quality was not so good. So that is sometimes used as an explanation, why it kind of started in all caps. But I also have the impression that the traditions differ here. If I'm not mistaken, I think French comics sometimes also use all caps, but in any case, they use hand lettering, whereas in German comics, we use, yeah, just printed fonts mixing upper and lower case, just as you would find them in any kind of other book. And of course, that changes the kind of quality, the visual quality of the comic as well.

Dominic: Oh, okay, very nice. Yeah. And certainly evidence to that effect of that perhaps it's easier to read a mix of lower case and upper case letters is that, well, like most languages, a lot of the kind of standardized conventions came about with the advent of the printing press and kind of mass media, printed material. And I read somewhere that the German convention of capitalizing all of the nouns, which to English speakers and probably French speakers and Spanish speakers looks quite strange, but the German convention of capitalizing all the nouns came about with the printing press, that printers at the time thought that when you capitalize all the nouns, it enhances the legibility.

Christina: Yeah, could be. But the interesting thing is that they did the same thing with English, if I'm not mistaken. And then actually, they got rid of that again in English, but it remained in German.

Dominic: Yeah, that would certainly seem so to me. Like every good U.S. history student, I've read the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, written in the 18th century, of course, and they capitalize all the nouns, and it looks really, really bizarre to modern eyes. So I think you're right.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, in German, they also capitalized other words apart from the nouns, but in the end, it seems that the nouns are the ones that remained. And that kind of characterizes present-day German, you know, but yeah, so, I mean, there are reasons for doing it and reasons for not doing it. And in the end, well, that's just a matter of taste, I suppose.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, style and taste. Well, comic books and well, maybe perhaps text and writing in general is all about style. And so Christina, talking about linguistics, I think at one point in time, you've actually done some linguistics research on comics.

Christina: Yeah, I did. That's a nice thing about linguistics, that it allows you to do research on the things that you love, and I love comics.

Dominic: Yeah, and I think, well, at least until now, the research was only available in German. So what can you tell us about your research? What was the core focus? What were you looking at?

Christina: I was interested to see whether the language of comics is actually easier than the language that we find elsewhere. Because if you think about those critical attitudes towards comics in Germany in the past, it was mainly about comics being too simplistic in their language and using onomatopoeia and things like that. And so I was just wondering whether this potential simplicity could be exploited as a means of studying languages more easily. And so what I tried to do is actually find out if, yeah, if the language in comics is easier.

Dominic: Well, that certainly seems like a good research question to me, right? Because well if you think comic books are for children, then you would assume they use simplified language, but, of course, those of us who enjoy comics know that some of them can be quite mature and tell quite mature stories. So what did you look for? How did you evaluate this?

Christina: What I tried to do is I tried to compile a little corpus, a collection of texts from comics, but that was very special because usually when you collect material from different types of text, you just basically copy-paste texts into a document. But that was not possible there because I first had to find out in what forms language occurs in comics, what I will accept, what I will integrate, and what not. And then I had to type that all manually into a document. And that was a lot of work, so that corpus isn't terribly long, but I still tried to kind of make it as representative as possible.

Dominic: So how did you go about making it balanced? That sounds kind of challenging.

Christina: Yeah, it is. So what I did is I tried to see what kind of text inside the world of comics I wanted to integrate. So I wanted to have popular comics that are very famous. So I decided to go for superhero comics. So I used some Batman comics and Superman comics, but I also wanted to include Disney comics, which I feel are very important as part of the English-speaking comic world. And since I really love comic strips, I also wanted to include some Calvin and Hobbes and some Peanuts because they have been running for such a long time. And in addition, I thought it would be interesting to also include some cartoons. So even if cartoons just consist of a single image, by contrast to comics which are sequential, which means that you have various panels one after another, well, I still thought that there's enough similarity here to the other types of comic. And I also included The Far Side. I don't know if you know that.

Dominic: I do. I do. And actually, the Peanuts have a very, very special place in my heart because my hometown in California is actually where Charles Schulz lived. The author, the creator of the Peanuts, it has a very strong association with him. His family is there. There's a museum there, and all around my home county, you can find statues of the various Peanuts characters, and you can take pictures with them. So, yeah, we even have an ice rink called Snoopy's Home Ice, and it's all decorated with Snoopy. I think it's actually owned and funded by the Schulz family. So, yeah, I’m happy to see the Peanuts represented here.

Christina: Oh, that's wonderful. I didn't know that. Fantastic. Yeah. So I thought they should definitely be in there. But of course, when you make a corpus, you try to select those particular bits of text that you use by chance. So for the Peanuts, I thought it might be a good idea to use those strips from the first of January. But then I noticed that, well, if you do that, it's all the time about the new year. And, since I wanted to have more varied topics, I decided to just select the 15th of January instead. And for the other comics, what I tried to do is to just pick those pages that ended in a zero, and I had just selected all the text from there.

Dominic: Okay. So that's how you were able to kind of standardize this, to kind of scientifically control it, essentially, for your evaluation here. Okay, very nice. So we've covered things like onomatopoeia, but what other ways does language occur in comics?

Christina: Yeah, there’s many different ways how it can actually occur. So I think onomatopoeia are so important because they stand out, but otherwise, of course, you have the speech bubbles or speech balloons, as you might possibly call them, in which we have the dialogue of the different characters who are speaking in the comics. And then we usually also have some boxes that contain the narrative.

Dominic: Oh yeah, you're right. If it's in a box, you're right. It's like it’s narration outside of the story. You're right.

Christina: Exactly. And it's not something you would think of. So usually you would probably think of the onomatopoeia and the speech bubbles, because that is so characteristic. But of course, there's also the narrative. And there's yet another type of language in the comics that we also integrated, and that is language in the environment, because you might have writing on a shop window, for example, or you might have a newspaper with important news or a name on a doorbell, and all of these, well, I also included that.

Dominic: Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, and the speech bubble, the humble speech bubble, it’s fascinating to me how this has become a convention that I would say is now universally understood. If you look at older comics, it seemed to me that if there was dialogue, essentially you would have the picture and then they would write the dialogue underneath the comic almost like a caption. So I would think that the speech bubble originated in comic books or was at least popularized there. And also, you know that if the speech bubble looks maybe less rounded and more like kind of a poofy sort of cloud, then you know it probably represents a character's thoughts and not what they're saying out loud. So I love this stuff.

Christina: Yeah, me too. And it’s wonderful because of course, the thought bubble represents the thoughts, and sometimes you also get a speech bubble with icicles on it, and then it shows that someone is speaking in a very cold voice. I love all these things, which are very visual, but of course, at the same time, that means that when I just typed the text into my corpus, it looked terribly boring because you just have the very, very plain text, and without the context, you notice, well, the comics, they really live from this interaction between the image and the word.

Dominic: Yeah, that's true. The text and visuals really kind of synthesize in a way that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. And when you kind of abstract it and just pull the text from it, a lot of the meaning is lost.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And that's what makes comics so similar to, well, the real world, because you also have the surroundings of the dialogue. And I think that's also what makes them easier for people to understand. But if you take all of that away and just look at the language, is the thing that remains, is that actually easier than what you find in other types of text? So, yeah, the question is how can you measure that? Yeah, so in linguistics, what we try to do is we try to find measures that can be used as a stand-in for something else. And if you think about how difficult a text is, of course, that could be due to the words that occur in it. So it could be that the words, for example, are very rare. And if they're very rare, they will usually be more difficult because people who speak a language will usually tend to learn the more frequent words earlier. So, that's one thing, one way of looking at it. And of course, you can also look at how complex the structures in the language are. So, for example, the sentences, how long are the individual sentences? We can just try and find where we have full stops or periods, and other punctuation marks like question marks, exclamation marks, and then just divide all the text into sentences and count how many words are in those sentences.

Dominic: Yeah, that would certainly make sense to me. Well, especially because the language in comic books is mostly dialogue, right? It's almost all dialogue, I would think. And dialogue, you know, we don’t – we speak in fragments. We don't speak perfectly grammatically correct. We don't have to. It's acceptable. And so if the entire narrative is told through dialogue, then I can understand how that would kind of change the form of the language that you're studying.

Christina: Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, in spoken language, we just expect the language to be less complex than, for example, an academic research article, simply because we have certain constraints on processing. When we talk, we have to memorize the things, or plan ahead what we're going to say. And of course, that's why spoken language is typically not as complicated. But beyond the sentence level, I mean, you can also just look at the word level and see how long the words are. You can just see, for example, what number of syllables they contain or how many letters they are composed of.

Dominic: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I saw a meme recently comparing English-language children's comics to German-language children's comics, and the German-language comics had some very tremendously long words, which, of course, to non-German speakers looks very funny to us, because the longer the word, the more difficult we would assume it is to understand, especially for a young child.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing, that actually the length and the frequency go hand in hand, so that different studies show exactly that. So if a word is very short, it's very likely to be easier and more frequent. And if it's long, it's likelier to be less frequent. And so that's why, well, what you can do is you can use things like the word length, which is something that is very straightforward. And then that also gives you already information about how commonly used a word is. And that’s fantastic. So there are some formulae, some, yeah, indices that you can use. So, readability indices. And, I just used one of these, the so-called Smog index. And, to that end, I just used the information that I got from my material, inserted it into the formula and then checked, well, how difficult the language actually is. And the question is what does the result mean? Because of course, in the end you get a certain number. And, in that particular case, it means how many years of, yeah, schooling you basically need to have in order to understand a text.

Dominic: A reading level. Okay, wow, Christina. So, I understand what you were looking for and I think I understand how you did it, how you measured it. What were your results? What did you find in the end?

Christina: Well, to some extent, I found the things that I expected. So, the sentences in the comics were actually relatively short, so a bit over six words. But then, of course, you should consider that I also counted onomatopoeia, and these are usually outside a sentence, so a Wham! just occurs on its own, and that will count as a single-word sentence. So, of course, that actually, yeah, reduces the figures. Most of the sentences have up to eight words or a bit shorter than that, but there are also some very, very long ones. So I actually found a number of sentences that had between 16 and 19 words, and one with 38 words in Batman, which was quite impressive.

Dominic: Okay. I could imagine perhaps a villain or an antagonist going on a monologue, right? About their evil aims, perhaps.

Christina: That's actually the thing, that very often it's the villains that use more formal language and more complicated sentences. Lex Luther in particular in Superman. So he said something about that, “Superman's carelessness with his special abilities has resulted in the clearance of almost every bank vault in the city and the hospitalization of half the special crimes unit,” which is really a lot to process, you know? It's not something you would naturally say in a dialogue. So that really characterizes him.

Dominic: Oh, so speaking in an advanced manner makes you sound evil?

Christina: Probably I shouldn't say that. No, but sometimes this is used as a characterizing means in certain types of film, actually.

Dominic: Yeah, certainly makes sense to me. Wow, Christina, that is really cool. This is really cool research. I like this.

Christina: Yeah, and I also found that if you look at the text, how difficult the texts as such are, then you find that they are not very difficult. They are at level six, which counts as low literate. So the Disney comics in particular, they were relatively low regarding the level, which means that they're very easy to understand. And Superman was very clearly above the others, which kind of is very fitting, you know, because Superman can also fly. So you have almost nine, and it's very close to the kind of level that you would be expected to have to read Reader’s Digest.

Dominic: Okay. Yeah, and that would be in line with, well, I would assume that Disney comics are probably targeting a younger audience than maybe superhero comics, right? Sometimes some very dark things happen in superhero comics, so you probably want to have maybe a teenage or a young adult audience. So that certainly makes sense to me.

Christina: Yeah, I entirely agree. That's what you would expect, and that's also what I found. But on the other hand, I was also surprised because I really like The Far Side by Gary Larson, and I think it's sometimes quite difficult. For example, there's one about a bird on the phone telling the children, “Will you kids shut up? I'll regurgitate something later.” And I mean, that's really complicated. I mean, it's hard vocabulary. So I thought, okay, for that reason, it might be that these are more difficult to understand. But then the academic vocabulary that you occasionally encounter there is counterbalanced by the surrounding words and the short sentences. So in the end, it's not as difficult as I had expected. So I was also surprised by my results.

Dominic: And that's the best type of research to do, right? It’s great to be surprised by your results.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. And one other thing that, well, I'm not sure if it surprised me or not, but I also wanted to check how common onomatopoeia actually are, because a lot of talk about comics revolves around onomatopoeia. And so I actually annotated these in my corpus. And I found that only about three to four percent of the words in the comics were onomatopoeia, but people still sometimes believe there's a lot more. And that's probably because they are rare elsewhere, you know. And they're also very characteristic and they stand out visually, with a special form, with a special shape, with color, et cetera.

Dominic: Yeah, no, that certainly makes sense to me, because onomatopoeia are so characteristic of comic books, from the outside, you might get the false impression that it comprises a great deal of the text in comic books, and then, yes, from the outside, you might think that certainly the language of comic books must not be very intellectual. But in reality, it's only a very small percentage.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And that's the nice thing about it. And it also means that the other things that you find there will mainly be dialogue and a bit of narrative. So I think that for that reason, comics can be strongly recommended to learners of the language because they've got everything that you need in order to learn new vocabulary. You've got the context that is provided by the image. You have relatively short sentences most of the time. And, well, quite a lot of the words are also high-frequency words like elsewhere, not all of them, actually less than I expected, but still, I would say that altogether, if you look at the language of comics, it's comparatively easy. And for that reason, well, it's always a good idea to read comics when you're learning a language.

Dominic: Oh yeah, I’ve actually bought before a bilingual manga, English–Japanese bilingual manga, where it has the dialogue. It has the text in both languages. Specifically for learners, of course. So yeah, I agree. Not only is it a good way to learn, it's a fun way to learn languages.

Christina: Absolutely. Yes.

Dominic: So Christina, over the course of our conversation here, something that's occurred to me is that, you know, when we speak, language does not exist in isolation, right? It exists in the context of, well, the person's expressions, their tone, their volume, the environment. That's why it's kind of a problem in writing that in writing there is no tone. So you can be misinterpreted if you're maybe trying to joke or you're trying to be sarcastic, just plain text, plain writing looks very, very serious. And so we have to kind of add things to the writing to kind of convey tone and emotion, notably emoticons or emojis. Sort of emojis are kind of adding a visual back to the text almost kind of like a comic in a way, right? It shows you that visuals and language really go hand in hand.

Christina: Yeah, I think emojis are very, very helpful because they can transmit those facial expressions or the intonation that usually comes with language and, yeah, make it more difficult for people to misinterpret what you're saying, because otherwise, something that is meant as a joke might come across as very harsh.

Dominic: Yeah, and well, much like comic books, I think emojis were once regarded as quite juvenile, but I think they're becoming increasingly acceptable. I see them all over LinkedIn, for example, which is a social media platform, but it's supposed to be kind of a more serious one, although I think it'll be a long time before we see emojis in a scientific paper or in a newspaper article.

Christina: Yeah, but you do see them in linguistics papers because there's actually linguistics research about emoji.

Dominic: Oh, nice. Yes, and well, some people have joked that emojis are the new hieroglyphics, but actually hieroglyphics are highly relevant to comics because in a way, they were kind of one of the first visual representations of actions and language.

Christina: I think I need to contradict you there, Dominic. Because what about cave paintings?

Dominic: Oh, yeah, you got me there. Cave paintings definitely are an extremely early visual representation of action. But I would think the hieroglyphics were more of kind of a standardized writing system.

Christina: Yeah, I suppose I can agree to that.

Dominic: Yeah, but it's fascinating the way these things differ across different regions of the world, different areas. I mean, like I told you, when it comes to Europe, for example, European comics pretty much are a gap in my knowledge, aside from Asterix and Tintin, maybe, really a gap in my knowledge. So I'm going to try to see if I can read some more German comics while I'm here in Germany.

Christina: That's definitely a good idea. You could probably try Nicht Lustig by Joscha Sauer, even though that's more of a cartoon, but it's very nice. Black humor, but in a child-friendly way, I would argue.

Dominic: Dark humor in a child-friendly way. Interesting. I would think that's a contradiction in terms. Okay, very German, it sounds like.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, if you think about comics, somehow we kind of also made Disney comics our own in a certain way, thanks to a very, very influential person called Erika Fuchs. So she was the translator of the Carl Barks Disney comics into German. And there's even a museum that was actually set up in her memory, the Museum for Comics and Language Art in Schwarzenbach an der Saale. And there you can get an idea of, well, the very important contribution that she made to making those comics available to a German-speaking audience, but at the same time she also influenced the German language.

Dominic: Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, gosh, I know nothing about this. Can you tell me more?

Christina: Yeah, so um if you think about the German language, then, for example, the infinitive usually ends in -en. So, for example, if you have seufzen, which means ‘to sigh’, in the end, the -en marks the infinitive. But in the comics, actually Erika Fuchs, she used the form without the ending. So seufz, yeah, which means sigh, as you would see it in a comic. And this is called the Inflektiv, or sometimes also the Erikativ in her memory, because this is something that was new, you know, or in any case, which is very strongly associated with her because thanks to her translations, this is something that became standard in German comic language.

Dominic: Yeah, wow. That is a direct impact on the language. And it reverberated kind of throughout the rest of the German language?

Christina: Well, I would say that whenever you want to speak like in a comic, then you would just do that. But otherwise, you don't use them. And that's the thing. So it's very characteristic of comic language. So in that sense, it kind of had an impact on the register of comics in German. And she is also the person who's responsible for the names that we use in German when we talk about the Disney characters for example, I mean, Donald Duck stays the same, but Scrooge McDuck is called Onkel Dagobert, so ‘Uncle Dagobert’, which is a name. And for example, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Donald's nephews, they're called Tick, Trick and Track. Completely different. And the interesting thing is that, I mean, she did a wonderful job because she also used different language to characterize the different persons in the comics. So, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, in German, they also use youth language. For example, the youth language of the respective time, or, for example, Uncle Scrooge uses very elaborate language. And it's quite interesting that actually, in contrast to what those critics argued in the past, she included a lot of quotes from traditional German poetry, from international classics, et cetera. So, there's actually a lot of allusions that you can find in the language of the comics. And so that way, you can actually learn something about culture in all its respects, also from a linguistic perspective, by reading the translations by Erika Fuchs and the people who came after her and did things in her tradition.

Dominic: Oh, that's so cool. This is all new to me. Thanks, Christina. I have to check this out. It sounds really fascinating.

Christina: Yeah. And another thing, by the way, that she also did is she sometimes Germanized things. So, she wasn't so keen at translating American cultural habits. And, for example, in the museum, you will find that there's one panel where they say something like “Bring us a lot of hamburgers and hot dogs,” and she translates that as “sausages” into German, because that's the thing that you would have in German.

Dominic: Yeah, localization, a very, very critical part of translation, I would say. If you translate without localizing, it might not necessarily be as effective. Yeah, totally. For example, at least the leading example I can think of is that in Japan, they have this animal called a tanuki, and you could call it a raccoon dog. It's more like a dog or a fox, but it has fur that looks like a raccoon. And so often when that's localized into English, they just call it a raccoon because English speakers wouldn't know what this animal is because it doesn't exist in English-speaking countries. But of course, it's kind of wrong to call it a raccoon. It's not a raccoon. It's a completely different animal. It's kind of more like a canine-type animal. But that's kind of part of the localization, you want to make the translation effective. You don't want to confuse the readers.

Christina: Exactly. And at the time, you might have confused them by mentioning things like donuts, for example, which were not so commonly known. And I mean, now, of course, it's different with globalization, with the internet. I mean, you know a lot more about other cultures. But at the time, of course, I think it made more sense to have that localization. And that's why Duckburg is also called Entenhausen, for example.

Dominic: Oh, that's awesome. Very nice. Well, Christina, today's conversation was really, really fun. I enjoyed it a lot. I think we did a good job of covering a really wide range of topics when it comes to comics and language. So, yeah, this was awesome.

Christina: Yeah, I also had so much fun, and I mean there's more to come because I carried out even more research on comics. So, everyone out there, stay tuned, stay curious, have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 5: Should we name prehistoric skeletons?

Dominic: Hey, Christina, it's good to be back.

Christina: Here we are back again.

Dominic: Christina, what's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Christina: Ooh, Shakespeare. I love that! Yeah, I mean, he's right, isn't he? Shakespeare as a linguist, because what he's telling us is that the form that we use in order to refer to something, to some object, is not necessarily related to the content. And, I really love that quote. I actually use it in my lecture sometimes.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Shakespeare was a man of many talents. He wore many hats. It's particularly impressive, considering I think he had quite a humble background as a person. But, you know, he makes a very good point that the words we use to describe things, sure, you can trace back their etymology. You can go all the way back to Latin, to Greek, to Proto-Indo-European, and these early languages. But ultimately, why we use a certain sound to describe something, it was an arbitrary decision that some early humans made at some point.

Christina: Yeah. Earlier or later in that process.

Dominic: Yeah, and why? Well, yeah, we don't really know. Some people think it might be imitative. Maybe that's for some words, but we don't really know. And this is kind of at this nexus of linguistics and archaeology, that when you go back far enough, well, there's a lack of written history. There's a lot we don't know about what people used to be called, what they used to call things, we just have to guess.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's really difficult to know how exactly people might have used language in the very, very distant past, but we can be quite confident that they did use language, because they achieved quite a lot of things already. At least the remains that we see – cave paintings or also, for example, that they managed to go by boat to certain islands, which tells us that there must have been some kind of joint effort among humans – and in order to coordinate that, you need language. So we can assume that language has been around for quite a while.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, we humans, we are social creatures. Actually, our ability to organize ourselves and work together socially, I would say really is our strength, right? We are more powerful and capable together than any one individual is. And certainly I don't think we're made to fight each other. Our teeth aren't very sharp, our nails aren't very sharp. We have to create weapons in order to fight each other because we don't have any real natural weapons. So, clearly, humans must have been communicating for a long time, and the parts of the brain that deal with speech are very crucial.

Christina: Yeah, definitely. I mean, speech really is something that characterizes humans. It's something which you only find in humans in this degree of complexity. I mean, you have communication among animals, too, but if you think about human speech, I mean, we can talk about what happened in the past. We can talk about what we think might happen in the future or in places that are far away, and we can even make up stories. And, all of that, of course, is quite special. So we're not restricted to the here and now. So language gives us wings to fly away.

Dominic: Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, the debate, is animal communication language? In my experience, linguistic students really like that question, and they really like to talk about it. Some of them are very passionate in arguing that animal communication is language, but nevertheless, we can all agree that for humans and animals, communication in one form or another is very, very critical.

Christina: Yeah, definitely. Communication is so important. And, I mean, it's also very important among animals. I mean, they also have their cries for warning each other and also for mating and all kinds of things. But of course, if we think about humans, I mean, there’s a few things that we do with language that are quite special. So, for example, we use language a lot to establish social links between people, which is something very nice. So, that's what I really like about language. And as a linguist, there's something that we can also do with language, and that is use language to talk about language. So, it's self-referential. That's really very special, too.

Dominic: Yes, in modern parlance, we might say it's meta, very meta. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and certainly something that's really human about language and communication is that we humans, we give each other names. Maybe animals do it too, but certainly I can't understand it if they do. But we humans very explicitly give each other names, and it's critical to our identity, to our history, to our society, to our culture. Names are really everything. And so, yeah, I think we can reasonably assume that early humans probably had names too.

Christina: I would think so in any case. I mean, if you think about how important names are for, yeah, what you just said, for identity formation and to know who you are referring to in a group, for that reason, I mean, I would say we have good reason to assume that also, in prehistory, people already used some kind of names or some way of referring to individuals, but we can't tell because we don't have any writing from that time. For that reason, we have to do what we very often do when we think about the past. We assume that things that are true at the moment and that we observe in present times, that they have always been the case. And of course, sometimes that's quite dangerous because a lot of the traditions that you would believe have been around for centuries and things like that actually are far more recent once you start doing research about them. But, something like names, I would actually expect that to be very, very old already, indeed.

Dominic: Yeah, certainly they must have had names in some form or some kind of unique identifier for calling each other, I would think. It's almost impossible to organize your society without that because you have to be able to tell each other apart. But, you know, that's kind of the problem when we're finding old, early human remains from, my gosh, not just thousands of years ago, but maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago, maybe millions of years ago. We don't know what they were called. We don't know what they were named. We don't have any records for that. So, Christina, how does that work in archaeology when they find human remains?

Christina: Well, when archaeologists find human remains from the past, sometimes they have some kind of information about the name. For example, in ancient Egypt, you might find a mummy with some indication of the name, but in Europe, very often, you will find human remains in places where you don't have any inscriptions. And at the time they weren't really using writing yet. So there is no way of knowing what their names were.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I mean, you would probably only be able to identify remains if they were the remains of royalty or perhaps someone really famous. So yeah, like Egyptian pharaohs, that would make sense. But everybody else, it's probably not recorded in history. And especially if it's prehistory, nothing is recorded at all because there is no writing. So what do you do in that case?

Christina: What archaeologists usually do then is that they just use some kind of ID, which is based on the place where they found the human remains. So, for example, “Haunstetten, Unterer Talweg, grave 34, number two”. Haunstetten would be the place name, Unterer Talweg, that would be the road where it was found, and then you get the grave and the number of the individual skeleton, and that will be the “name” quote-unquote. That's all that is traditionally used to identify the different skeletons and other humans’ remains.

Dominic: Okay, so there's a formula. It sounds like there is a formula here for creating these names.

Christina: Yeah, a formula, but then what do you get? You get a number, basically. And that's the thing. I mean, we talked so much about names being something that is so important for human identity, and here we have numbers to talk about people. And of course, this is something that dehumanizes them. Now, of course, one could argue that to a certain extent, prehistorical human remains aren't people in the strictest sense anymore, that they are objects. But then the question is, do you want to argue like that? The law in Germany, in any case, would argue like that. But then, of course, here we're still talking about someone who lived in the past, you know, and I have to say, I don't like the idea of just using numbers to talk about people.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. And when it comes to giving numbers to people instead of names, well, something we learned from Abba Naor, who is a Holocaust survivor, we spoke about him on a previous episode. He goes around and talks about his experiences during the Holocaust. And I think it's well known that the Nazis would assign numbers to the Jewish inmates in the concentration camps, and that was a deliberate effort to dehumanize them. And unfortunately, I think it's very effective. So yeah, if we can avoid that, it would be nice with these human remains, maybe not to refer to them with numbers, but to refer to them with something a little bit more humanizing and personifying.

Christina: Yeah, that’s what I also thought. And that's what two archaeologists also thought that I cooperated with in a project in which we carried out research about exactly that question, namely, Philipp Stockhammer and Kerstin Hofmann. And what we wanted to find out was whether it would be a good idea to give names to archaeological human remains in addition to those IDs, which are, of course, necessary for archaeologists, because they have to store the bones somewhere. They have to be able to refer to them in a systematic way. So I completely understand why archaeologists would like to have such a system, but we all felt that it would be a very interesting question to ask. So, is it a good idea to give names in addition to that? Or maybe not, because there are also some problems that are attached to that.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, well, you know, hey, we modern humans are the same, aren't we? We all have names, but then I think we all have a national ID number, don't we? Which is used for identifying us in a database where you have to organize and catalog. So, yeah, it makes sense to have a numerical identifier alongside your name. So I totally get that. So wow, you actually worked on this. You actually worked on kind of this convergence of linguistics and archaeology. So how did you go about this? What challenges did you encounter?

Christina: We thought it would be a good idea to do a survey to just ask, you know, the general population or general audience, but also some archaeologists and some linguists, how they feel about this topic. Because on the one hand, of course, we might want to use names because names have a lot of advantages, but then there’s also some problems. So if we give names to remains from the past, we kind of make them our own in a certain way. So who's got the right to name those human remains, you know? Because, people used to have a name in the past. So is it okay to give them yet another name? There’s quite a lot of things that we wanted to find out, how people felt about that. And so we did a survey and we sent it out to everyone we knew. So we just tried to spread it as widely as possible, but in the end, it was still amazing because we had exactly the same number of archaeologists and linguists, namely, 99 each. And then we had a roughly similar share of people who are neither of these, which is very nice because that way you get three different perspectives on this same question, one from specialists from archaeology, the other one from specialists in the field of naming, so to speak, and the other one from a general audience.

Dominic: Oh, wow, that sounds very interdisciplinary. That's how I like it. You know, nothing exists in isolation. It's good to kind of harmonize our different viewpoints and our different expertise.

Christina: Yeah, definitely. And I have to say in that survey, we were very grateful that so many different people participated altogether. It was over 400 people, 462, even, who started filling in the questionnaire. And in the end, 319 completed it. And I have to say I'm so grateful to all those people because the questionnaire contains a lot of questions that are really, really boring to answer, and I'll tell you more in a moment why. But, so I’m very glad that they went through this. And at the same time, of course, this also means that they cared about that question, and that was very nice. And, so we noticed that this is really a question that people had very strong feelings about. And in the replies that we got, some of them were highly emotional. So yeah, that was a very interesting experience across the boundaries of archaeology and linguistics.

Dominic: Okay. Very nice. And so you had a very successful survey, it sounds like. So how did people respond? What did they say?

Christina: It was very interesting because when we asked them if they liked the current system, the majority, so 65% actually said they were happy with the current system. But then in another question, we asked them if they thought it would be a good idea to give additional names, and 68% replied, “Yes, that would be a good idea.” And we asked them, “Would that be problematic or unproblematic?” And 66% said, “It would be unproblematic.” So on the one hand, they said, “It's fine as it is,” but on the other hand, they said, “Oh, yeah, we think it's a good idea to change it.” This really makes it a bit difficult in that sense. So we can say there's no clear mandate in one direction or the other.

Dominic: Oh yeah, it’s a coin flip.

Christina: Yeah. And the interesting thing, by the way, was that the archaeologists were a bit more skeptical than the average, which makes sense because they would be the ones who would have to implement the changes in a system that they already know. Whereas the linguists were clearly more enthusiastic than the average, because linguists like names and creating words and things like that. So obviously there was a bias there too. But altogether, if you throw it all together, well, that's the result that we got. So it was not very clear. But so the question, should we give the bones a name? Well, it's a kind of “Yeah, would be nice.” But not absolutely clear. And then we also wanted to know about the next step, namely, if we do that, how can we go about it? How can we give them a name? What would you do? I mean, if you found human remains, if you were responsible for giving them a name, Dominic, what would you possibly do?

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, first and foremost, I might try to identify whether the remains are male or female. I think that's something archaeologists typically do, although, as I understand, it's not always obvious, especially considering the condition of the remains, how much you have available, what you know about the people from that time period, and what have you. Then, well, the easiest naming scheme would just be to name it the first thing that comes to mind, but that could quickly become a problem, right? Because there might be a researcher in another part of the world who may have discovered something and they just so happened to coincidentally give it the exact same name. And now, do we have a duplicate? We have two archaeological remains with the same name. That would create confusion. So I would probably want something more systematic and more formulaic so that it allows me to kind of coordinate with researchers around the world so that we're not naming things the same thing and creating confusion.

Christina: Yeah, I think that's an interesting idea. Though, of course, with these ID numbers, you would have exactly that. So even if you had two remains that have exactly the same name, then, still, you could identify which is which based on their ID number. But of course, other things, I mean, like, might also be problematic. I mean, if you say you just pick a name that comes to mind, most likely it's a modern name. So it could, for example, be a name like “Christina.” And the question is, would you want to do that? And obviously no, because, I mean, you know, inside the name, you can see there’s certain meaning parts like the meaning of ‘Christian’, which the name is based on, which occurred after that person lived. So it would be very strange somehow to do that, I suppose. And the same thing if you used, for example, other names that might have certain ethnical associations, you know, it's difficult. So, if we use names that are used in the present, then we will carry over the associations of those names to the past. And that's why we thought it would be a good idea to, yeah, create a naming scheme that would allow archaeologists to avoid exactly that.

Dominic: That's true. It would be anachronistic. Naturally, it would be anachronistic if you give it a modern name, although it can certainly be recognizable to me just as an outsider to the field of archaeology. I'm very familiar with the early human remains of Lucy, although I actually don't think she was a human. She was a protohuman, an ancestor to a human. And I'm very familiar with that. It's just always stuck in my memory. I probably learned about it in school at some point as a child. And I believe that that name derived from, I think the researchers were very much enjoying the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Either it was popular at the time or they just so happened to enjoy it. But yeah, that is a modern name being applied to human remains from like three million years ago.

Christina: Yeah, Lucy is such a famous case, definitely. Another very, very famous human find is Ötzi. So that's also a name that many people know in Germany, but possibly also in the whole world. Do you know about the Iceman?

Dominic: The Iceman, yeah.

Christina: Yeah, that’s how he was first referred to. So it's a male mummy that was found in a glacier in the Ötztaler Alpen, so in the Alps, in 1991. And so what they did or what actually one person, one reader of a newspaper actually suggested is that he should be called Ötzi. So using the first syllable of the place, the Ötz-taler Alpen, and then adding the -i in the end, which is a kind of endearing suffix. And, the interesting thing is that this was very quickly adopted. So in the beginning, the newspapers, for example, talked about “the dead body”, “the find”, “the Iceman”. And, the interesting thing is that then they started to talk about “Ötzi”, and once they did that, actually, they talked more about the human behind those bones. They were more interested in the narrative and less so in the, let's say, more physical aspects of the objects that they found on the glacier, so to speak. And, I think that's very interesting. So once we have a name, we think more about the person behind it.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, it's really interesting to hear that Ötzi was a formulaic creation because it kind of sounds like it could be a name. Sounds like it would be a name, maybe from that part of the world, perhaps, and you're absolutely right when you personify them with this name, it has a really strong effect. Like, yeah, when I think of Lucy, she's almost like a celebrity, but when in reality, I think she was just one of many, right? But yeah, you're absolutely right.

Christina: And I mean, if you say that that Ötzi to you sounds like a name, that's exactly what we thought as well. I mean “Ötz-i,” people have known that, it's a kind of pattern that seems to be quite common. So actually with newer finds, this pattern was also used. So there's also “Ardi,” there's “Bernie,” there's “Ippsi,” there's “Kilti.” So in in many different places, when human remains were found, actually, or protohuman remains, what was done actually is that people used the first syllable of the place name and then an -i in the end, and that was basically the expression, the name that was used to refer to that human who lived there a long time ago.

Dominic: Yeah, wow. How cool. Well, I think it works. It sounds like a good naming scheme to me.

Christina: It, it is, but on the other hand, it's also a bit problematic because of course, “Ötzi” is unique, so it could also be a bit like a trade name, so in a certain way you're kind of distancing yourself as well from that person, that human who lived. And of course, if you think about the -i in the end, I mean, that's the kind of, yeah, suffix that you use to express endearment. And this is something that the participants of our study were very critical about. So we had a lot of people who said, “Oh, it's not okay to use that because you don't know each other well, at least someone like Ötzi, they don't know you,” you know? “So you have no right to use some markers of familiarity that you would otherwise use with friends, with people you know very well.”

Dominic: Ah, I see. Yeah, well, first of all, how you said the name is unique. You know, it's interesting how when it comes to names, we have kind of a stock of names in every language. We have a stock of names that are considered like established names, and they're acceptable. And then if you try to innovate or create a new name, socially, sometimes you might face a stigma, right? You might face pushback, like, “Oh my gosh, like that's a made-up name,” you know, “what were the parents thinking? Oh, they're trying to make the child special by giving them a completely unique name to make them stand out.” But this idea of a ‘made-up name’ is really kind of funny because if we really think about it, all names are made up, or they were made up at some point in time. It's just that enough time passed, enough people had that name that it became acceptable. So I definitely hear what you're saying there. And yeah, with the -i ending to make it endearing, yeah, we do have a lot of names, nicknames, Bobby, Joey, with animals, you have a doggie or a kitty. It does make it very endearing. You're right. But I'm not necessarily sure if it's a problem.

Christina: No, I don't think it's necessarily a problem, but it's something we wanted to test. I mean, to what extent is that the best way of producing a name? In addition, I mean, if you think about it, if you have various finds in the same place, you could still just create one name because you just have one suffix that you could add in the end. And so, what we actually wanted to try out is whether it would also be possible to create more names, but in a way that is slightly similar, because usually it's a good idea to try and keep things similar to what has been done before, because then the system becomes more acceptable. And so this “Ötz-i” naming system seems to be almost automatic when you have new finds somewhere, this is what archaeologists will do. And so what we did is we tried out whether it's a good idea to use some element, usually the first syllable, from the place name, where the human remains were found, and then combine that with different affixes, with different endings that are used to create names in German.

Dominic: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. If you're trying to establish a new norm, then you want to be consistent about it. But so give me some examples. What were some of the examples you came up with for these names?

Christina: The interesting thing is that in German, it's possible to see that names end in particular ways. And that is because historically, that is an ending that was attached. So that's a kind of word formation. And we used that by just using those final parts and attaching them to the first syllable of the place name. And that's how for the name Haunstetten, you get Haun, and then we created new names like Hauna, Hauner, Haunle, Haunsa, or Haunwin, and that gave us a long list of different names, potential names for human remains from the past.

Dominic: Yeah, nice. That's compelling. I mean, I'm kind of an outsider here, but those sound like real names to me. What did other people think?

Christina: The interesting thing is that in our survey, people also thought so. So, we had 35 names altogether, and out of these, 27 were rated as possible names for humans. And, the interesting thing is that quite a lot of these also received the highest possible rating in terms of, “Sounds like a familiar name. I don't know this, but I think it sounds familiar somehow.” And I mean, this really encouraged us to say, okay, well, apparently these names could be used because they fulfill the criterion of sounding like a human name. But at the same time, what you mention, namely, that you need to make sure that it's the correct sex, for example, we also tested that. So, I'm not sure what it's like in English, but in German, in any case, it's very often possible to guess a person's gender from their name ending. Is that the same in English?

Dominic: Oh, maybe there are some of them. Maybe there are some of them, yeah. If it ends in an -a, then it's probably a feminine name like Alexandra or Roberta or something along those lines. Anna, things like that.

Christina: And, we also have that in German. So the -a ending, I mean, that would be the most typical one for females, but actually that also corresponds to other vowels. So, usually when you have a German name that ends in a vowel, then it tends to be female. And when you have a German name that ends in a consonant, it tends to be male. And, that's quite interesting because we wanted to see whether people also perceived it like that and also what to do in those cases where for some reason or another, you didn't want to pick any of those two categories. And so, we also asked people to rate whether they felt that the name was rather for all genders or appropriate for males only or only for females. And they had to do the same thing with those 35 names. That's why I think they had a tough time, because we repeatedly asked them questions about all those names and they had to indicate that.

Dominic: Oh, names, names, names. Yeah, it's interesting with the sort of customary distinctions between male and female names. It's often you have to have a very firm grasp of the culture or the language for it to occur to you intuitively. So, for example, one time I had a Japanese friend and I showed her maybe the 100 most common male and female names in English. And I asked her, guess which gender this name is? Guess if it's usually a male or female name. And in general, unless she could remember a figure or a person she knew who had that name, in general, she couldn't really reliably guess which gender the name was. And that's okay because, hey, if I was looking at Japanese names and I had to guess the gender, in most cases I probably would not be able to reliably know which one is which, but a native speaker would naturally know what sounds like what. So how did it go in this study? How did it go with that?

Christina: Yeah, exactly as expected. So most of the participants were native speakers. And so they also classified the names according to the system that they know intuitively without being aware of it. And in spite of the fact that we had this neutral option where we said, “Okay, this is a good name for all genders,” in three-quarters of the names, there were gender-specific associations, which means that obviously when you use such a newly created name, it's important to keep that in mind as well.

Dominic: Okay, wow. So this whole thing is a lot more complicated than I thought. But also, I really admire the attention to detail here. And so kind of the core where we kind of started with, this was kind of the level of respect that we pay to these human remains, whether it's considered respectful or rude to give it a name at all, to give it a specific type of name and things like that. So how did that dimension play into it? How did people kind of regard the politeness or rudeness of these different names?

Christina: Yeah, that's a really, really good question. And that's one that I was also particularly interested in. And so the question is, how do you test this respectfulness? So what we did is we thought that age could be a good stand-in for that. Because if you think about how you as an adult usually talk to other adults or to children, we thought it might be a good idea to ask people, “Is this a name that you would use for adults and children or for adults only or for children only?” And that way we hoped to get an idea of whether people assumed that, well, some would be more respectful than others. And it turns out that this actually worked very well because there were three names that were rated as, “Yeah, these are really just good names for children,” and these were Haunchen, Haunlein and Haunichen, and all of them diminutives. And in addition, I mean, I mentioned Hauni earlier, and some people really got highly emotional about it saying, okay, “This is disrespectful.” And we actually found that here, people were very divided between two views. So slightly more than half of all participants said it's appropriate for all ages, and 47 percent said it's only for children. And so for that reason, well, it's not entirely clear. And the interesting thing is that in the end, we asked people to also tell us what their favorite name was, and many of them said, it's Hauni. So it seems to be a kind of love-hate relationship. So this pattern of “Ötz-i” seems to be very, very strong in people. So it was a very clear winner in spite of the fact that it's problematic.

Dominic: Yeah, how funny is that? From the outset people did not really like these kinds of more diminutive and endearing names, but then in the end, they kind of demonstrated a preference for it. It's a bit contradictory, but yeah, quite funny. And almost in a way, it reminds me of pet names, and when I say pet names, I mean the actual names for our pets, although pet names are also names we can give each other as people, and how typically we give our pets funny names, endearing names, names that you wouldn't give a person. But you can give your pets human names, and I find it immensely funny because it just sounds so serious, you know, “I need to go home and feed Robert,” or “I need to take Elizabeth for a walk.” It just sounds so extremely funny to give them these very serious human names. And you know what? It really personifies them in a way.

Christina: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It emphasizes that they're individuals and that they have a personality. So that's absolutely right.

Dominic: Yeah, a personality. It’s got the word “person” in it. Not only people can have personalities.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, with regard to the human bones, to the human remains, of course, this is very important because, of course, in the past, they were living beings, but now there's just the bones left, basically. And so I think this is also a very interesting aspect. And I think that's also why our naming system is quite good, because we have a combination in our minds on the one hand of Ötzi as someone who tried to cross the Alps, but then died, and at the same time of a mummy lying in a glass case, in a museum, and also that idea of a reconstruction. So it's these different levels. And that's why I think our names are quite good, because they combine the non-human place name with elements of human names. And so it's a kind of conceptual blending.

Dominic: Yeah, I like that a lot, because when it comes to these old remains, you know, often they are so extremely old that, you know, you might just see it as a collection of bones, and you might forget that it really was a living person, a living being at one point. And so whatever we can do to humanize them or to restore some of that quality by giving them a real name, I think that's a worthwhile endeavor.

Christina: Definitely, particularly since the latest methods in archaeology allow us to find out so much more about humans from the past. Yeah, for example, we know what teeth form at what age, and so based on where you live, the plants will grow in the earth, and the minerals from the earth will enter your body through the plants or through the drinking water, and then they get stored inside your teeth, and then archaeologists can see whether you moved from one place to another one during the childhood and the early teens when the different teeth formed, which is quite exciting, or, for example, it's possible now to carry out genetic analyses, and these help to see the family relations between different skeletons from the same region. So there's a lot of information now, which makes the humans from the past reemerge as personalities in their own right, and to talk about them properly, of course, we need names somehow, and that's, well, what we hope to provide with our study.

Dominic: Yeah, unlocking their secrets. Oh my goodness. This is brilliant, fascinating work. Things like these. It's why I have so much respect for archaeologists and the other types of researchers who deal with this because yeah, I mean, to be able to analyze these things and then draw these different conclusions based on the evidence available, evidence which is often very old and not always in perfect condition, I think is very impressive. When it comes to names, my understanding is that, well, what we might call “family names”, or in British English, they might call “surnames”, in American English we call it a “last name”. As I understand it, for a lot of history, the only people afforded family names were royalty or aristocracy, and they weren't really afforded to the masses until things became a bit more egalitarian. Kind of in the time before we really had established family names, I think people usually would use the place they’re from, right? I mean, the best example is Leonardo da Vinci. To the uninitiated, they might think his family name is “da Vinci.” Why wouldn't you? But if you actually know the origins of that, you know that it just means “from Vinci.” It's “Leonardo from Vinci.” That's the place he was from. In a way, that means he didn't really have a family name, right? Not really. It would be like “Dominic of America” or “Christina of Germany,” right? It's used to differentiate you, but it's not really a unique family name. So this idea of using the place as the name is not completely foreign.

Christina: Yeah, that's also the reason why we thought it would be such a good idea to use the place names, because there is tradition, also in German, to derive surnames, family names, from place names. For example, if someone comes from Altenburg, you would call them Altenburger, and that's a family name that still exists. So there’s also different family names still around in Germany that work like that. So it's a very natural thing to do.

Dominic: Yeah, and these words describing a person and where they're from. Well, they're called demonyms. Think of demo- like demo-graphics, demography describes people and places. And probably a favorite would be a person from the city of Hamburg in Germany is a “Hamburger.” That is not a coincidence. I believe they say it was maybe German migrants in the United States, probably who had hailed from Hamburg, who invented the sandwich with meat between the buns. But I don't think people immediately know that it's connected to Hamburg. And then, of course, you get creations like a cheeseburger, which is fantastic. And so, yeah, I actually have a friend from Hamburg. He says he is a professional Hamburger.

Christina: Oh, that's really, really sweet. Yeah, so places are really important in establishing identity. And I think that's why it's also a good idea to use that for the creation of these names for the historical human remains. And if you think about it, what kind of meaning would you like to give the name, the invented name, the newly created name for prehistoric human remains? How much do we know about those people that might also have been relevant to them somehow? And, if you think about that, then you will notice that the place where we found them will definitely have been relevant, because it's where they died. Probably they also lived there. But in any case, they have an important relation to that place. And for that reason, I think that makes sense. So if my body was found in a very distant future and people had to make up a name for me, I suppose it would be okay if it was the place name plus an ending that expresses that I'm a human, because it's a human name ending. So I think this is a respectful way of trying to go about the creation of such individual, such unique names for humans. And that's why I really like the place names.

Dominic: You know, Christina? Yeah, you're right. When I think about that, you know, you might not know my name, but you at least know where I'm from, and where I was from was an important part of my identity. So I don't mind that. I don't mind being called by where I'm from. So yeah, I suppose in the absence of knowing the actual name of the person, yeah, it's not a bad alternative.

Christina: Absolutely.

Dominic: Yeah, wow, Christina. Today's discussion was incredibly thought-provoking. I mean, names and identity, archaeology, human remains, history, what's in a name, as we started with. I mean, yeah, totally captivating and enlightening. I really enjoyed it.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And it shows you how wide linguistics is. I mean, in applied linguistics, we don't just help improve dictionaries. We don't just get ideas of what can be done in teaching language, but here, in the interaction with archaeologists, we actually tried to provide some system that can hopefully help people in the future when they want to select names for human remains.

Dominic: Yeah, dispelling maybe myths about what linguistics is and what linguists do. That's what we're all about.

Christina: Exactly. So stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 6: When does the day end and the night begin?

Dominic: Hey, Christina.

Christina: Hi, Dominic. High time we met again to talk about linguistics.

Dominic: It absolutely is, and what a time it is to talk about time. Yeah, well, as an American in Europe, an American in Germany, I very quickly realized that the words we use to talk about time, how we understand time conceptually, it is different across languages and cultures.

Christina: Absolutely. I agree.

Dominic: And well, one of the first things we learn in German class is how to tell the time. I took German classes here in Germany, and the way you tell the time, very quickly I realized it's quite different from how English speakers tell the time.

Christina: What struck you as the most important difference?

Dominic: Oh, there are several. But perhaps the key difference, the one that often gets lost in translation, is how I think Germans count up while English speakers count down, so to speak. So, for example, I would say half-past-six to describe 6:30, but a German would describe it as half seven. That very quickly becomes confusing for both of us.

Christina: Definitely. I mean, that's one of the very important mistakes that pupils in German schools very often make when learning English.

Dominic: Yeah, the other day I heard someone say in English something like half seven, and I understood, oh, she just translated it directly. She didn't know. But it gets more complicated than that. Because you'll also count from the middle of the hour. So you'll say like, “it's five minutes past half seven,” and I have to do math to think about what time it is.

Christina: Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's something we very often do. But it’s quite natural. But on the other hand, I mean, there are some ways of talking about the time that even Germans find hard to understand. It gets even worse when you take the quarters of the hour into account because you can, for example, say, viertel nach sechs, which is a quarter past 6:00. I think that one is still understandable, but you can also say viertel sechs. In that case that's one quarter past 5:00 because it's the first quarter of the hour leading towards 6:00, you know. And I mean, when it comes to the quarter of an hour that is still missing, you can call it viertel vor sechs, which is a quarter before 6:00, but you can also call it drei viertel sechs, at least in some regions, which is three quarters of 6:00, and some people will not understand that in some regions.

Dominic: Oh, goodness gracious. This is just immense pain and suffering for me. I wonder if the audience is as confused as I am. You know, it's just so much easier to just say the precise time, something like 6:15, 6:30, 6:45. And I'm almost wondering if, my theory is that, especially for young people, because we've grown up with a lot of digital clocks, we're very used to seeing the time as digits. And so maybe young people are more inclined to express the time as digits, at least that's what I think. I would much rather say 6:15 or 6:30 or 6:45, but older folks might not.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I think the military time, like 17:35, for example, I think that works when it's not the half hour or the quarter past. And so in the other context, I think that's also what quite a lot of people might do in German, but otherwise you just kind of, yeah, round towards the next quarter of an hour, basically, and then may just use that.

Dominic: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, military time, as we call it in the United States. I'm not sure about the rest of the English-speaking world, but yeah, you use the 24-hour clock here in Europe, or at least here in Germany. Not sure about the UK. But of course, in the U.S., we use the 12-hour clock. So I had to adapt to that. That wasn't so hard. It wasn't so hard to adapt to that. I'm still getting used to Celsius and the metric system. But, 24-hour clock, I think I've got it down.

Christina: I think that's because that's the easier version, you know? I think the 12-hour clock is more difficult because if you want it to be very clear, I mean, you have to add a.m. and p.m. I mean, I'm not sure. Do you do that all the time? Do you always say “6:00 a.m.”? Or do you sometimes just say “at six o'clock”?

Dominic: Oh, the context has to be obvious to just say, like “six o'clock” or “seven o'clock.” Personally, I think we attach the a.m. or p.m. all the time. But hey, if you think about it, you know, o'clock is two syllables and a.m./p.m. are both two syllables. So it’s not really making it more of a mouthful. But yeah, if I said something like, you know, “Hey, do you want to hang out tonight at 7:00?” Well, I don't need to say p.m. because I said it's happening at night.

Christina: Exactly. I mean, as soon as you know what time of the day it is, it's easier. But otherwise, if you don't mention that, and if you just say a.m. or p.m., I always have to think very hard about which is which. Like, “Ah, wait a moment, a.m., that's in the morning. It comes earlier in the alphabet. And, for that reason, that's the morning, and p. is, like, afternoon, because that's this ante meridiem and post meridiem from Latin, so this idea of ‘before and after noon’. But I always have to remind myself of that whenever I try to express times in that 12-hour way.

Dominic: That's right. Thank you for explaining the Latin. I once heard a trick that a German came up with to memorize, it was, they said, “a.m. is am Morgen.” In the morning. Pretty clever. Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a good one for p.m., but you don't really need it. As long as you have one of them, you know what the other one is. But actually, this is a good topic because it kind of gets into the fact that in German, at least, I'm sure other cultures, but at least in German is what I've been learning so far, there is a time of day that we don't have in English, which is the Vormittag, the ‘before midday’, which comes between the morning and noon.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a word that we use very naturally. So, for example, if you're talking about the time after, let's say, yeah, your second breakfast. I don't know if you have a second breakfast.

Dominic: No. Isn't that the Hobbit? Is that the Lord of the Rings? What?

Christina: What?

Dominic: Don't they have second breakfast? The Hobbits have second breakfast in the Lord of the Rings?

Christina: Do they?

Dominic: Yeah, this is like a characteristic feature of them, I believe.

Christina: They're very German then in that sense because actually, I think, this kind of second breakfast, I mean, it's more like a little kind of, yeah, pre-lunch break because if you get up really, really early – and I mean, traditionally people get up quite early in Germany – then you need to eat something before you have lunch because otherwise you just won't manage to get through that time. And so you just have a little snack, you know, the second breakfast. I mean, it sounds like too much. It's more like the kind of snack that you would have during a break at school. So basically, the time after you had that roughly before lunch, that would roughly be the Vormittag. But then, of course, I mean, Vormittag means ‘before noon’. And, so basically what you might expect is that it just refers to the time up until 12:00 noon. But the interesting thing is that, of course, people, they use those times of the day in a way that is a bit more flexible, not necessarily exactly what is designated by the words themselves.

Dominic: Yeah. Well, and Mittag, we could more directly translate it as midday, which is a phrase, it's a word we do have in English, but one that I think very sparsely gets used, at least in modern English, very rarely do we use midday. We call it noon. Noon is special. Noon and midnight are special. They have their own special names. But, actually on the topic of like eating and times of day, I believe there's a phrase in German for dinner, an alternative phrase for dinner, Christina, what is it?

Christina: Like for dinner?

Dominic: Yeah.

Christina: Abendessen. Abendbrot.

Dominic: Abendbrot, yeah. Which directly translates to?

Christina: Well, that’s ‘evening bread’.

Dominic: Yeah, evening bread. But it doesn't necessarily have to be bread, right? But traditionally it was?

Christina: Good question. I mean, in Germany, I mean, there's basically two groups of people. Either you prefer to have a big hot meal during lunchtime and then you typically have something lighter in the evening. Very often that will be bread and cheese, a bit of sausage, some fruits and things like that. And the others, well, they’d rather have a kind of packed lunch and then they have the big meal in the evening and that will be things like possibly pasta and soup or things like that.

Dominic: Oh, very nice.

Christina: Yeah, so I suppose, I mean like when I talk about my dinner, I suppose I would use the word Abendessen most of the time, but it doesn't feel completely wrong to me to say, yeah, “Let's have some Abendbrot. Today we're going to have pasta for Abendbrot”. I suppose it’s ok. So that's the kind of thing. So if you want to test such a statement, you just try to make up a sentence and see if it feels like a contradiction, and it doesn't feel so much like a contradiction because you don't think so much about the bread part in Abendbrot when you talk about dinner.

Dominic: Oh yeah, no worries. And the Germans aren't the only ones who do it. For example, in Japanese, the words for breakfast, lunch and dinner are Asagohan – Asa, ‘morning’, Gohan, ‘rice’ – Hirugohan, which is like ‘midday rice’, and then Bangohan, ‘evening rice’. And that Ban for evening is the same in, I'm sure you know Konnichiwa, which is ‘hello’, actually a more accurate translation is ‘good day’. And then to say ‘good evening’ in Japanese, there’s Konbanwa and then Bangohan. So Ban means ‘evening’. It's the same word. So, yeah, it's not just the Germans. And then obviously I should add that the Japanese don't have rice for every single meal. It does not need to be rice.

Christina: They don’t?

Dominic: No, I mean, well, they might have it with many of their meals, but of course it doesn't have to be rice. You could have anything for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but the words still apply. Morning rice, midday rice, and evening rice. And I find that really cute.

Christina: So what other things would they have for breakfast that might still be referred to as morning rice?

Dominic: Oh, it could be anything. But of course, a Japanese breakfast looks different from, well, an American one. American breakfast, we usually have maybe cereal or waffles and pancakes, often dessert foods. Yeah, American breakfast is dessert. I've had trouble kind of decompiling that one, but, you know, they might have like fish, maybe noodles, things like that. So, yeah, but probably different from Germany.

Christina: In Germany, I mean, we're famous for our bread. We have wonderful bread in Germany. And I love our bread. And so when I lived in Great Britain, for example, I really missed German bread.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, I learned that when I came to Germany. I learned that. Yeah, German bread is to die for. Now from the outside, I knew that France is famous for its bread. I thought France was the world capital of bread because they take bread very, very seriously in France. As it was explained to me, the French are the best in the world at making certain types of bread, for example, like the baguette, but at a German bakery, you will often find a wider variety of bread.

Christina: Yes, and we also have brown bread, for example, in huge loaves, which is still made in a traditional way that has been around for a very long time. And those loaves are immense. I mean, I don't want to say they're as big as a bike's wheel, but sometimes they're close to that in some regions.

Dominic: Yeah, very nice. These traditions go so far back. And, you know, especially when it comes to what we eat during certain times of the day, how we greet each other during certain times of the day, a moment ago, I mentioned Konnichiwa and Konbanwa in Japanese. But also, of course, in German and English, we have, you know, good morning, well, good day in certain varieties of English, in Australia, g’day, the quintessential Australian phrase. “G’day, mate” is the most Australian thing that you can say. “Put another shrimp on the barbie” might be another one.

Christina: Clichés!

Dominic: Very cliché. They do say g’day. But I don't think the British say it very often, and certainly the Americans really don't say it. It sounds old-fashioned. “Good day to you, sir, good day.”

Christina: It does. But in German, I mean, saying Guten Tag, that's a very natural thing to do. So we will just say Guten Tag. And before that we will say Guten Morgen. I mean, also like, you can basically say Guten Tag the whole day. You can say it in the morning, you can say it around noon and also in the afternoon, but Guten Morgen, which is ‘good morning,’ well, it's just in the morning. And then, in the afternoon, you wouldn't really say Guten Nachmittag. But you would say Guten Abend, ‘good evening’, in the evening. And Gute Nacht, well, that's rather something you say when you're going to bed as a kind of last greeting before you go to bed.

Dominic: Yeah, and this differs across languages. Well, first and foremost, another example, in French, you have bonjour. Now, people who don't speak French are taught that this means hello, and to a degree that is certainly true. It is used as ‘hello,’ but if we translate it more directly, bon, ‘good,’ jour, ‘day,’ ‘good day.’ And maybe you could say it in the evening, but you probably wouldn't. You'd probably say, yeah, bonsoir, which is ‘good evening’.

Christina: You know what? It's the same in Spanish. Buenos días? It also means ‘good day,’ but in the plural.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, you're right. But at least in Spanish, you have the alternative phrase hola, which, to my understanding, I don't know, French, I mean, they have salut, but I think salut is more like hi. It also means bye.

Christina: Yeah, but hola also is hi, or basically hello.

Dominic: Yeah, exactly. But also you mentioned with “good night.” So this is really interesting to me how, same in English and German, good night is something you can only say as a farewell, probably right before, you know, right when you're saying goodbye to someone before they probably go home or go to sleep. But in Spanish, it is acceptable to say good night as a greeting, right? Buenas noches?

Christina: I think so. I mean, my intuition might fail me there, but I think so. Even though I have to say, I think that was also common in English. I think in Shakespeare, you also have “good night” as a farewell greeting without implying that you're necessarily already there in your nightcap moving into the bed next to you.

Dominic: Is that so? Ok, very interesting. Certainly not anymore. I think the greeting is always “good evening,” no matter how late at night it may be. It could be like 10:00 p.m. at night, but you would still say “good evening,” even though I would argue that the evening has probably passed. You would never say “good night” as a greeting. And also, I had a moment in German where I said goodbye to some of my German friends and I said, “Gute Nacht.” And they were like, “Eh, don’t do that. That's really weird. It sounds like you're like at home with someone like right before they're about to go to bed.” And I thought, “Oh, well, in English, I would say, have a good night.” You can say goodbye to someone and say, “Have a good night.” “Bye, have a good night.” They said, “Ah, but in German, it doesn't really work. You might just say Schönen Abend, which means, well, it means “nice evening.” The full phrase, right, is “Ich wünsche dir einen schönen Abend,” which means “I wish you a nice evening” and yeah, it means “Have a nice evening.”

Christina: Yeah, but then sometimes the things that people say with regard to, like, the expected time are not a hundred percent corresponding to the real time. I have often actually captured myself saying things like, “Let’s do that tomorrow.” And I said it after midnight, but I actually meant that specific day. So, that wasn't absolutely correct either. So sometimes, well, we are in a different time zone than what we should theoretically be in.

Dominic: Yes, as the resident night owl here, although perhaps I'm not the only one, Christina, but as the resident night owl here, that has happened to me many, many times. I'm often up past midnight, which is technically the next day, although, of course, it doesn't feel like the next day until you've gone to bed for the night. And I’ve had moments where I've spoken to friends. I said, “Hey, I'll see you tomorrow.” Maybe it was 1:00 a.m. when I said that. And then the next day they didn't show up. And I'm like, “What happened?” Well, they said, “Well, you said ‘see you tomorrow.’” And I thought, “Oh, come on, man. Really?” You might think they did it on purpose. I don't think this person did do it on purpose. I think they genuinely misunderstood, but that's a strange misunderstanding to me because I feel like we understand based on the context, it doesn't literally mean ‘tomorrow’.

Christina: Absolutely. I entirely agree with you. And I mean, going to bed and sleeping. That's such an important part of structuring the day, which actually is relevant for thinking about what time of day is it right now, just like having lunch and eating, you know, same thing there. I think if I haven't had lunch yet, it doesn't feel like afternoon. I really need to eat something before it really feels like afternoon, I suppose.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, yeah, how we mentally segment the day. Yeah, and in terms of when we have dinner, you know, in the U.S., I think if you ask when is dinner time in the U.S., everyone will tell you, “At six o'clock,” that's the customary time. Doesn't necessarily mean everyone has it at six o'clock, but I think that's when restaurants experience the dinner rush. But then, I don't know, you'll always talk about a Mediterranean dinner, which is having it much later at night. What can you tell me about this?

Christina: Well, I can tell you that when I went to Spain and thought for certain reasons it would be good to have early dinner, we decided to have dinner at 8:00 p.m. And I thought, “Well, that's ok. That's a kind of compromise.” By German standards, you would typically have dinner at about 6:00 p.m. But then the people that I was having dinner with, they actually refused to eat anything because they said, “It's far too early. I can't have anything yet. I usually have dinner at about 10:00 p.m.”

Dominic: Nice. Well, I like that but I'm a little bit of an outlier. Yeah, I have dinner at 6:00, then I’m going to be hungry again before I go to bed.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. It depends very much on the lifestyle. But the way that we think about times and that we also segment the days. Have you ever thought about that? Isn't that interesting? Like when does a day stop and when does a new day begin?

Dominic: Oh yeah. Again, I would use my sleep as the delineating factor there. That's why it's always been interesting to me, you know, when news publications or what have you describe the hours past midnight, hours like 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. If something happens during that time, they call it “the early morning hours,” which I find so fascinating because I would think the vast majority of humans are asleep at 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00. But when I hear morning, ‘morning’ to me implies it's a time when people would be awake. But that said, if it wasn't the early morning hours, I'm not sure what else you would call it. And that's kind of the problem with midnight, isn't it? That because it's technically the next day, it creates this confusion, you might buy like a plane ticket or a train ticket. And if you're arriving past midnight, it will say, you know, “Leaving today and arriving tomorrow at 1:00 a.m.” It's like, “Ok, it is technically tomorrow, but it's not a big deal.” So yeah, it gets confusing how we segment the days.

Christina: Definitely. And I think it must have been even more confusing in the past to a certain extent when you didn't have clocks. But then, of course, what could you do? I mean, you could just watch how the sun rises and how the sun sets. And, well, I suppose that's the way how most traditionally days were separated off from each other. But then, of course, if you think about what we have now, a day actually ends at midnight and then the new one starts at midnight, which is a strange thing, isn't it? Because it's in the middle of the night. It’s not what you expect. And, so it seems that this actually goes back to astronomers, actually, who found it difficult that if you just took the sunrise and the sunset as the bases, this actually resulted in days of different length. And so what the ancient Egyptians and the Babylonians did is that they developed a system of days with equal length, which were split into two half days of 12 hours each. And this was then disseminated by the Greeks and by the Romans. And, so the astronomers, actually, since they wanted to watch the stars, they rather wanted to start at noon and then have midnight in the middle of their day, basically. But, later on, yeah, in European monasteries, actually, the day was also very regular-structured with different prayers and things like that happening at different times. And then clocks were introduced and bells were ringing at specific times. And so the conventions that were used there to count from midnight to midnight, apparently, became more widely established. And that's how we arrived at the current system of, yeah, segmenting time into different days, which I find quite amazing.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I mean, if anyone's ever had, you know, school assignments, often college assignments, in my experience, midnight is the customary assignment deadline. At least that's the one that's most common in my experience that professors and teachers use. Now they'll say, “Oh, the homework is due tonight at midnight.” Well, if I really wanted to be a super pedant, right? It's not “tonight at midnight,” it's “tomorrow at midnight.” And I think that's also why often they don't actually make it due at midnight. They make it due at 11:59 p.m. Because otherwise imagine it would say “due Tuesday, 12:00 a.m.” It just gives you the wrong idea that it's the next day when really it's not “Tuesday at 12:00 a.m.” It’s really “Monday at midnight,” so to speak. So usually they set it to 11:59.

Christina: I find that terribly confusing, I have to say, but I also have something nice to confuse you with.

Dominic: Oh, ok.

Christina: Because when we talk about the different days, sometimes we want to talk about, like, the previous day or the day before that. And in German, we have very beautiful words for that.

Dominic: Yeah, I know you do.

Christina: You do? Tell me.

Dominic: I learned these ones in language class. Well, to describe the day after tomorrow, which is how I would have to say it in English, it is a bit of a mouthful. You say übermorgen, which means ‘over morrow,’ ‘over tomorrow,’ so to speak. We should probably clarify to the audience that in German, the word for morning and the word for tomorrow are the same. And so the word for ‘yesterday’ is gestern, the word for the day before yesterday is vorgestern, which would mean ‘before yesterday’?

Christina: Yes, exactly. And the interesting thing is that we can push that even further. So if, for example, today is Thursday, I could use gestern to refer to Wednesday, vorgestern, ‘before yesterday’, to Tuesday, vorvorgestern to Monday. I could use morgen for Friday, übermorgen for Saturday, and überübermorgen for Sunday. So vorvorgestern and überübermorgen may sound like crazy words, but they really exist. They are listed in dictionaries, and we really use them.

Dominic: My German teacher did make us aware of those, but they said it was more of kind of a casual, cutesy, almost a humorous use of it. Because, yeah, to double up on that prefix, certainly, well, it would be unusual. I don't know if there's any other situation in German where you double on those prefixes, über-über-, vor-vor-.

Christina: We do it when we talk about kinship. So… but that's the same thing in English, like “the great-great-great-great-great-grandparents,” for example, you might have that. It's not very common to have that recursion in language, in word formation, but it is possible. And, yeah, well, probably it's also a regional thing, but to me, vorvorgestern and überübermorgen are perfectly possible. So, yeah, here’s new words for you to use while you’re in Germany.

Dominic: Wonderful. Yet again, you know, whenever I'm speaking German, I have to do math to calculate everything. I have to do math to calculate what time it is, I have to do math to calculate what day of the week you're referring to. Couldn't we just say Tuesday or Wednesday or something? But no, I find it very, very funny.

Christina: And I mean, like, I think the days of the week themselves are also very interesting with regard to the names that they bear. I mean, there's a lot of similarities here between English and German, I have to say, fortunately for learners.

Dominic: Yes, that's absolutely right. And the days of the week, it may not be immediately obvious. Well, of course, Sun-day is probably the most obvious. Monday is ‘Moon Day.’ It’s been stretched a bit. And maybe Saturday is based on Saturn. But the rest of them might not be so obvious, but I believe they're all based on Greek gods? Roman gods? Although the Roman gods were kind of a copy of the Greek gods.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, it's the Roman gods, but not directly. Actually, their names were translated by using the corresponding gods from Germanic, Norse mythology.

Dominic: Yeah, Norse mythology. That's right. Which for some reason we’re very familiar with in English. I think maybe because it was popularized by the Marvel comics, but maybe not just that.

Christina: So Tuesday is “Tyr’s Day.” Wednesday is “Odin's Day.” Thursday is “Thor’s Day” and Friday is “Frigg’s Day.” And all of these are based on the corresponding, yeah, Roman gods. And the one that stands out, however, is Saturday.

Dominic: Yeah, because it is still Saturn.

Christina: It is Saturn. Exactly. It's Saturn. But the interesting thing is that in German we have a different word here, which is Samstag, and the German word Samstag goes back to “Sabbath Day,” that is the day of rest, which makes sense if you think about it.

Dominic: Oh, it does make sense. It does make sense.

Christina: One thing that is very interesting with regard to Samstag, by the way, is that there's a very nice children's book, which is called Das Sams, because you could believe that it's “Sams Day,” and there is no thing as a Sams in German, and so the author, Paul Maar, he invented the Sams, and the Sams is a very special creature, which is a bit like a child, but not completely, because it eats all kinds of things and it's got blue dots in its face and you can use those dots for wishing. So if you make a wish, it will be granted, but you have to be careful what you wish for because very often the wishes will misunderstand everything that hasn't been said very precisely. So, for example, if you wished for lots of money in this room, then you might end up with small change in different currencies that is hidden all over the place.

Dominic: Reminds me of a genie in a lamp, right? It's always, yeah, the magic genie, they will grant your wish, but they're looking for any technicality to kind of undermine it in a way. Yeah, be careful what you wish for. Yeah, and well, at least with German and English, when it comes to Sunday, it follows the regular pattern of every other day of the week in that it ends with the suffix -day, so it doesn't look particularly unique, but in other languages, like Spanish and French, you have Domingo and Dimanche, which do not follow the pattern of the other days of the week. They are unique, although perhaps in Spanish not completely unique because Saturday is also slightly different, right? Sábado. But on this topic of kind of linguistic similarity and linguistic differences, going back to a topic we were discussing earlier, you know, I mentioned that tomorrow and morgen, there's a connection between them. That's because previously in English, morrow meant morning, right? So tomorrow meant ‘to the next morning.’ And of course, gestern means yesterday in German. Gestern sounds a lot like yester-. Yeah, yesterday.

Christina: Exactly. And I mean, basically it is. I mean, they basically go back to the same word. So, yesterday is “gestern day,” so to speak. And actually, there's a comedian, a famous German comedian, Otto Waalkes, and he actually translated the song Yesterday by the Beatles as “Gesterntag,” which would be “Yesterday Day.”

Dominic: Little bit redundant.

Christina: Yeah, it's very funny. It's a very nice little text, because it makes fun of the fact that you have those, yeah, linguistic differences, and then he also uses language that is not entirely grammatical for that translation.

Dominic: Yeah, very nice. Yeah, Gesterntag, Yesterday Day. Yeah, “Yesterday,” I think might be my favorite Beatles song, but that's a very basic choice, I know, but it's a really good song. And then, of course, in English, we do have the construction. We do have yesteryear, but I don't think we really use it in the way, because actually in German, this pattern of the day after tomorrow or the day before yesterday can be applied to the year as well. So they could say ‘the year after next or the year before last’. But I don't really think English speakers use yesteryear to mean ‘last year,’ I think it's actually used in more of a nostalgic sense, right? “The fashion of yesteryear,” meaning things that happened in the recent past.

Christina: I mean in German, you can say im Vorjahr, which means ‘in the previous year,’ so that we're also using the vor-, just like for vorgestern, but we wouldn't say *im Überjahr, like, for the following one. I mean, that's a pattern that I wouldn't expect.

Dominic: Interesting. Good to know. So for whatever reason, it's not consistent with that. But maybe you could. Let's innovate. Let's introduce it. Maybe if enough people say it, we'll make it trendy. Yeah, Überjahr.

Christina: Yeah, let's try and change the language. But most of the time it doesn't work to do it if you just have one person trying to kind of change the language, but sometimes it happens. I mean, it has to originate somewhere, so we could be leading the way here.

Dominic: Yeah, top-down language change, not usually a great idea. Things usually have to come from the bottom up, but not always, right? Not always.

Christina: But I suppose we're the bottom here too, because we can't really influence it in any way. So we have no power to tell anyone to use language the way we feel it should be used, at least, possibly, if we felt it should be used in one particular way. But, I mean, as a linguist, I subscribe to descriptivism, which means that I just try to describe what the language is like, how it's used, and I don't really try to tell people how to speak or how to use language.

Dominic: Yeah, policing language use, not a great use of time or effort. I'm glad you brought up the difference between descriptivism and prescriptivism, really a cornerstone of linguistics. Actually, whenever you do research, it's descriptivist research, right? So you're describing language, language use, and language change. And so I'd like to ask you a question to kind of tie this all together. It really gets back to the root of what we were discussing here today, which is, when does the day end and the night begin?

Christina: That's a really good question. That's something that I actually also wanted to know, and therefore, I carried out research with my colleague, Jenny Arendholz, and we actually tried to solve that by looking at how language is actually used. And we did that for German and for English, because we wanted to see whether there are any similarities or differences with how the words for the times of day are used.

Dominic: Oh, nice. Yeah, this is a point of contention. It may even be down to the individual. I want to say that the evening begins at five o'clock, and I suppose evidence in favor of my argument is that, you know, typically, I think typically we say that five o'clock is the time at which it's acceptable to consume alcohol. There's a humorous phrase, which, you'll say this humorously if you're drinking earlier in the day, you'll say, “Well, it's always five o'clock somewhere in the world.” But then, in German, there's a German phrase which is Kein Bier vor vier, which translates to ‘no beer before 4:00,’ which is an hour earlier than 5:00. So clearly these things differ across languages and cultures.

Christina: Yeah, but we found that the times of the day are used for hours that are actually earlier in English than in German most of the time.

Dominic: That is really interesting. So how did you actually go about investigating this? I wouldn't really be sure where to start, but I suppose you would just ask a bunch of people, right? Get their opinions and then kind of take a look at the data?

Christina: I think that's a very nice idea, but then, of course, I mean, if I asked you, well, “What do you think, at what time does the evening, for example, begin and end?”, the question is, the answers that you're going to give me, do they really correspond to how you're using the language? Because usually you're just using it naturally without even thinking about it. And you don't want to have that. So if you ask someone about how they're using language, in the end, the result might not correspond to what they're actually doing, because they're thinking about something. It's like when you're trying to explain to someone how you're driving a car. I mean, most of the time, you can just do that, you know what to do with your feet, with your hands, et cetera. But once you start thinking about it, it's like, “Oh, what exactly do I need to do in what order?” And if you try to explain it, you might get things wrong, and so it's a bit the same thing, and for that reason, it's actually often quite good to use a corpus.

Dominic: Oh yeah, I totally see what you're saying, that when you want to observe, I mean, and this is a problem just in science in general, right? When you're trying to observe a phenomenon, if you want to see how it occurs naturally, yeah, you don't want to ask about it because if you ask about it, that will change the results.

Christina: Exactly. I mean, you could always carry out an experiment in which you try to more or less hide what you're doing from the participants. Of course, you still need to inform them roughly about what you're going to do, because otherwise it would be unethical. But of course, you could give them certain tasks, which confuse them in such a way that they're not sure what it is that you're actually trying to do. So an experiment could also be possible, but then, of course, that would take a really, really long time because if you think about all the different times of day that there are, so we have morning, we have noon, we've got afternoon, we've got evening, we've got night, and everything else in German, too. I mean, if you wanted to find that out reliably with experiments, you would have to spend a long time with a lot of people doing that. And that's why corpora are such a wonderful method.

Dominic: Yeah, especially for questions like these where, I think, going to the extra effort and expense of designing and conducting an experiment wouldn't really be necessary for this specific question.

Christina: No, exactly. I mean, we just used texts that already existed, that were assembled in a collection of texts, a corpus. So one for German, one for English. The English one, the British National Corpus, has been around for quite a while. So since the, yeah, mid-1980s, and the German one actually covers the whole of the 20th century and it was built following the model of the British National Corpus. So the German one is called the DWDS Kernkorpus.

Dominic: Oh, but for English, you looked at a British corpus. Well, I'm not necessarily sure. I mean, these things are culturally dependent, right? So it's possible that in different regions of the world, like the United States, places like Australia, Canada, it's possible that they might have different definitions for times of the day, but I don't know. That's a worthwhile investigation for the future, perhaps. But how did you look for this? Did you just look for words like good morning and good evening and things like that?

Christina: Yeah, so what we did is we compiled a list of the times of day in English and in German, so morning and afternoon, all these words. And then we looked for them in that corpus, but we wanted to see when they are actually used at what times, and therefore we looked for the numbers being used with them, because we hoped that this would give us an indication of when exactly people feel it is morning. So that means that, for example, you would find sentences like, “They wake up in the night somewhere between 2:00 to 5:00.” Yeah, so, in that case, I mean, 2:00 and 5:00 are occurring relatively close to night here. So this tells us that 2:00 a.m., presumably, is supposed to count as ‘night’ for the person who wrote that specific sentence. And, well, you want to make sure that the numbers and the times of the day are close to each other. But at the same time, if you have a span that is too short, then you're going to miss out on a lot of things. So if you say something like, “At 1:00 in the morning last night, I did this,” then there's various words occurring between “1:00” and “night,” so “in the morning” and “last.” I mean, that's four words, in between, and so you have to admit for a certain amount of room that can occur between your target word, that is, “night” and the other times of day, and the numbers.

Dominic: Okay, I see. Yeah, it's so fascinating to hear it explained how you did this because, well, for any budding linguists listening, but you don't need to be a linguist to enjoy this podcast, but for any budding linguists who are listening, it's so interesting you have this research question, and then you're describing how you went about researching it because I told you my intuition was, I thought, “Oh, I would just do a survey,” but you did more of an observational study, so to speak.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. We observe what there is in the corpus. So we throw out our fishing nets and then we try to see what we can catch.

Dominic: Excellent metaphor.

Christina: Thank you. And basically we have those two end points. So on the one hand, we have the, well, the numbers up to 24 spelled out as words, but also as figures. And then, of course, we also have that list with the words for the times of day. And then we just try to see if the sentences that we get from that corpus, if they actually include what we wanted, because sometimes you also get the word night, in a context where you have, for example, one, yeah, like, “It was one night when da-da-da.” In that case, it's not really about “1:00 a.m.” So we manually went through these and then just threw them out, so that in the end, we just looked at those sentences which really capture what we were looking for.

Dominic: Alright. Wow. How cool. Very scientific, very systematic approach to this. Ok, so, and then in the end, you ended up finding that in English, the morning and other things like this, start a little bit earlier than in German. How did you react? Was this what you expected to find?

Christina: Good question. Were we surprised? I think I kind of expected to find that it's very similar in English and in German, at least for the times after noon, because why should there be a difference? But then, yeah, it was a surprise that actually everything seems to be delayed by two hours if you look at the times in German and in English respectively. On the subject of the morning or, perhaps even more interestingly, noon, there were also some differences there between English and German. I didn't expect that because, I mean, noon is a word that doesn't give you a very clear idea of when exactly that is as a convention, but in German, Mittag, ‘midday’ tells you it's the middle of the day, but still, you also know it’s 12:00, you know? 12:00 a.m or p.m.? Sorry, I'm mixing that up.

Dominic: 12:00 p.m. for noon.

Christina: 12:00 p.m. Okay. Yeah, true. Somehow it makes sense, but on the other hand it doesn't because, I mean, 12:00 is just a point on the scale. It should be neither nor in a certain way.

Dominic: It is the meridian, right? It's exactly in the middle, and it's supposed to be the time of day when the sun is directly overhead.

Christina: But the interesting thing is that here we do observe some differences because in English, all the hits that we found for noon, they really just related to 12 o'clock. But in German, there was a wider range. So it really seems to be perceived as a kind of mid of the day. And so, well, the article is full of graphics in which you can see what the typical times are in English and in German, what kind of range you have for the different times of day words and things like that. But of course, I think it's difficult to transmit all of that in a podcast, but I suppose these are the most important results.

Dominic: Yeah, and that's consistent with how I feel. To me, noon is specifically 12:00 p.m., not a minute too soon and not a minute later. Anything before 12:00 p.m. is the morning, and anything after 12:00 p.m., after 12:00 noon, is the afternoon. I was very quickly amused when I learned that the German word for to nap, to take a nap, right, is mittagsschlafen, which directly translates to ‘midday sleeping.’ Makes sense, right? Except that I don't always sleep at the midday time when I take a nap. I might take a nap in the late afternoon. Maybe I'll take a nap in the evening if I really want to do something dangerous or adventurous, but in German, it is technically ‘midday sleeping,’ but you don't have to do it at midday.

Christina: Definitely not. I mean, I think people would rarely do that because at midday they have their lunch, at least traditionally, even though I suppose I sometimes also have more Mediterranean times.

Dominic: Oh, sometimes I might skip lunch altogether.

Christina: Oh no. Oh, how sad. But in any case, the interesting thing is that if we compare English and German, then we see that there is a kind of delay here, actually, because in English, the morning and the German equivalent Morgen, I mean, you would expect them to work exactly the same way with the exception, of course, that German also has Vormittag as that additional word later in the day, and that's also what we found. But basically, you could look at the most typical times and then you find that in English, the morning has its typical time at 6:00 a.m. in contrast to the Morgen at 8:00 a.m., which is two hours later, and we can see that continued for the afternoon, which is 2:00 p.m. compared to 4:00 p.m. for the Nachmittag, and the evening, which is 6:00 p.m. in English, compared to the Abend at 8:00 p.m. So there is this kind of delay of two hours, which we can see consistently in the data when we look at the most frequently occurring typical times that we have for the words of the times of the day.

Dominic: Yeah, this is really immensely fascinating because this two-hour difference you're saying is consistent throughout the entire day.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. I also found that quite amazing.

Dominic: Alright. Wow. And yeah, once again, food for thought and perhaps for further study, I'd be very, very interested to see how this might compare in, well, the United States. I'm a little bit biased. But in other English-speaking countries, too, I would love to see if there's a difference here

Christina: Yeah, and I think it would also be very interesting to carry out the same study with a different corpus, because in the end, if you do it with a more recent corpus, certain traditions, I mean, change with time. For example, in Germany, if you think about the evening, traditionally, it's structured according to a very famous TV program, the Tagesschau, so the traditional news. And that means that all the programs on German TV usually start at a quarter past 8:00 p.m. And I mean, if you think about how this has changed in recent years with, yeah, people watching a lot of films on the internet, et cetera. It's just not as influential as before. And just like these things happen, people may use the times of day differently now than they did in the 1980s. So I think it would be very interesting to do that again.

Dominic: I would think that you could just use the exact same methodology, but with a different corpus, it sounds like the study is highly replicable. And replicability, the ability to replicate a study, to do it yourself and hopefully get the same result, is the hallmark of a strong scientific study.

Christina: I entirely agree, and that’s the nice thing about it. But talking about time, I suppose it's time to stop now.

Dominic: Yeah, you may be right. You know, we have words for the end of the day, but I don't think we yet have a word for the end of a podcast, but we can at least describe it. This is the end of this episode. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us today. And Christina, thank you for a really wonderful conversation. This was so interesting and so much fun.

Christina: Yeah, thank you, Dominic. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for contributing your perspective on this. I always find that extremely helpful, as a linguist and also as a person. So, everyone else out there. Stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 7: Can we learn through video games?

Christina: Hello, everyone out there. Welcome back.

Dominic: Yeah, it's good to be back.

Christina: Absolutely. So Dominic, when you're not here recording this podcast, what do you do with your life?

Dominic: Yeah, I just exist in like a state of stasis, you know, and I get unthawed when I need to record the podcast. No, not really. Not really. Although, when I was a kid, I used to think maybe the teachers actually live and sleep at school. Maybe other kids thought that too. Maybe other kids thought that too. But, no, when I'm not attempting to learn more languages and become a better polyglot, I like to play video games. I'm a gamer.

Christina: Yeah, I know. You told me so. So what kind of games do you actually play?

Dominic: Oh goodness, so many, so many. I mean, there are so many different genres, but I love Nintendo games. I love role-playing games. I love action games. I love shooters. I mean, there's just so much variety.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing. So many games out there and so hard to select which ones to play, and they're all interesting in their own way. Well, I'm a linguist, so what I really like is games that are related to language in some way or another. Well, this one is not a video game, but I like Wordle. So when I have to wait somewhere, I'll just try to find a few words. But what I really, really like as well is You Don't Know Jack. Do you know that?

Dominic: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I’m a very big fan. Well, I just love trivia games in general. I'm usually pretty good, but not across all like categories of knowledge. But yes, and I love the company that makes those games, Jackbox Games, because they make these party games that you can play often with very, very large groups of people, like up to 10 people or more. And you don't need to be a gamer to play it.

Christina: Yeah, I've always loved those. And I love their slogan, “Where high culture and pop culture collide,” because that's exactly what this game is about. So you get these very weird questions with strange-sounding titles, and you have to think outside the box in order to answer them. And I really like that. So, yeah, that's a fun game. And you know what's really cool about that game? This game has been around for such a long time, you know? I think 1995 or so. And, I mean, now having this kind of virtual character talk to you and engage you in a quiz show, I mean, it's a very expectable thing because we have AI that can do these things. But at the time, I mean, they just pulled it off with some recordings, you know, and that variety, those different ways of asking questions and of reacting to people's answers, I mean, it's relatively simple to implement, but it works so well. I mean, Jack seems so real. I love that!

Dominic: Oh, very, very nice, very nice. Well, I've never played the original release, but I love video game history and retro gaming. When I was a child, and I discovered there were all of these games that came out before I was born, not to make myself sound young, but I was just so, so fascinated. And especially because the people around me, my young friends, usually didn't know anything about them. So, yeah, it felt like specialized knowledge. So that's really cool. The original game. And you know what, Christina, speaking of 1995, 1996 is actually the year when Pokémon was introduced to the world. It’s coming up on 30 years old, which is kind of crazy. It still feels kind of new. But, Pokémon is extremely relevant to linguistics.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, the interesting thing is there's an own branch, which is cool, Pokémonastics. I mean, people have conferences and they write articles about the names of Pokémon, but I'm sure you know a lot more about that than I do. So what can you tell me about that?

Dominic: Oh my goodness, so much, but I will condense. But basically, usually each Pokémon name is a portmanteau, kind of a clever mashing together of two different words in kind of a punny, sort of fun way. And what's really, really cool is that a lot of the time across the different language translations and localizations, they actually go to the trouble of constructing new names for the Pokémon in those languages, creating portmanteaus in those languages, which is a lot of work, but also so much fun to pick apart from a linguistic perspective.

Christina: Definitely. I mean, I also know some Pokémon names in German. For example, there is one Pokémon that is called, I think it's called Psyduck. And in German, it's called Enton. I mean, it looks a bit like a duck and Ente is duck in German and that's why it's called Enton, but probably it's also because Anton is a name. I'm not sure if they also try to capitalize on that.

Dominic: I think they do. I think they do. Yeah, very nice. Yeah, Ente, duck, yes, and then of course, Abra, Kadabra, and Alakazam. We should probably say for anyone who doesn't know Pokémon that the Pokémon grow, the word is evolve, but they grow into these larger alternative forms and each form has a different name.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, interestingly, in German, we also have Abra, Kadabra, so they also took that for this particular Pokémon. So Abra and Kadabra is the next step, but the final one, they just called that Simsala, but actually what you would rather say in German is Simsalabim. I wonder why they did that because possibly, I mean, they could just have included a fourth syllable. Alakazam also has four syllables, so I don't know, but well, apparently they preferred Simsala for some reason or another.

Dominic: Yeah, it can create …, because they often have different names across different languages. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they just pull it from English or Japanese, but it can create situations where if I'm talking to someone who speaks a different language, for example, when I'm talking to a German person and I mention a Pokémon, they might have no idea what I'm talking about because the Pokémon has a different name. In particular, I can think of Snorlax, which is a very famous, extremely large, like, fat, sleeping Pokémon. Well, in German, he's called Relaxo. And so I was speaking to a German person and they didn't know, they know Relaxo, but they didn't know the name Snorlax.

Christina: Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, sometimes when names or film titles and things like that get translated into another language, they sometimes are so different that you have no idea what is meant when people use the original. But then, of course, I mean, it's for the effect, you know, because apparently, for example, the Japanese names, apparently they are also sound symbolic, so apparently, at least for Japanese speakers, they represent the qualities that the Pokémon have.

Dominic: One hundred percent, Christina, one hundred percent. The mascot of Pokémon, the Pokémon that even non-Pokémon people know, is, of course, Pikachu.

Christina: Oh yeah, he's so cute.

Dominic: He is very, very cute. Pikachu is actually one of the few Pokémon names which actually, it isn't localized or translated at all across languages. It's pulled straight from Japanese. It's a Japanese name. And Pikachu, well, as we spoke about on our previous episode, Japanese has a very large repertoire of onomatopoeia, pika pika is the sound of electric sparks, and then -chu is the sound that a mouse makes. Think of squeak, squeak, and Pikachu is an ‘electric mouse’. It might not be visually apparent, but he is an electric mouse. So, yeah, it makes sense.

Christina: It does make sense now you're telling me. But the interesting thing is, I mean, I wouldn't have guessed it myself, but if you gave me a range of alternatives to select from, probably I would have guessed, too. And I think if I'm not mistaken, I mean, apparently to a certain extent, the English names are also partly sound symbolic, but then I'm not sure if that's the case for the German ones. I mean, many of them, I am at a loss how to interpret them. But in other cases, I can see, okay, this idea of kind of growing and developing. I mean, there is one Pokémon that is called Bisasam and then Bisaflor is the next step or is it the final one? I can't remember. But the interesting thing there is, of course, that -sam, I mean, that reminds you of Samen, which is ‘seed’, and then -flor obviously is this idea of ‘flower,’ because that's the, well, the word for flower in some languages. So, yeah, I like that idea. So you can actually see quite a lot of meaning there in those names, and that's something that I highly appreciate. I love puns.

Dominic: Yeah, you brought up Bisasam. Fantastic example for those who don't know. He's like a little dinosaur reptile with a big plant on his back. And in English, it's Bulbasaur, so think of a bulb like a plant bulb and then -saur for, like, a dinosaur. In Japanese, it's Fushigidane. Now Fushigidane is a pun, Fushigi means ‘mystery’ or ‘mysterious,’ -dane means ‘seed,’ so it could mean ‘mysterious seed’. However, Fushigidane also means, ‘Mysterious, isn't it?’ So it’s a pun and I love that so much. And I think in French it's Bulbizarre, so bulbe for ‘a plant bulb’ and then bizarre for ‘weird’.

Christina: Oh, that's beautiful because of course, like, it's a blend, because the -b in the middle, I mean, it works as part of bulbe, which is, like, the first part, and bizarre, which is the second part. Yeah, I really appreciate it when so much effort goes into constructing names for, well, in that case for Pokémon.

Dominic: Oh, I completely agree. And you know, Christina, there are over a thousand Pokémon now and I could go on forever, but I won't. But I did come prepared. I did come prepared with at least one example here. In English, we have Charmander, which is, he’s a little fire lizard, almost like a dragon. He's a little fire lizard, well, Charmander, I think, you could see char, like ‘to be charred’, the verb meaning for, like, fire when it burns something, and then salamander. In Japanese, he's Hitokage. Hito- means fire or flame, -kage means lizard. In French, it's Salamèche for salamandre, ‘salamander,’ and mèche, which is ‘the wick on a candle’, and in German it's Glumanda, which is a combination of glühen, ‘to glow or burn,’ and Salamander for ‘salamander’.

Christina: Yeah, it's nice to see how they do it slightly differently in the different languages because probably in the end, the result is more aesthetically sounding. Yeah, I have to say I quite like the Pokémon because I think that they look very cute, and I mean, it's really all very well thought out. And what I also tried out is Pokémon Go. I quite like that because I'm actually into augmented reality. I find that something very, very interesting. And so I wanted to see what it's like when you actually see those Pokémon in your surroundings. And yeah, that was really highly interesting.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, Pokémon Go. Well, that game is hugely popular. Let me just add real quick that actually the name Pokémon is a truncation of Poketto Monsutā, which is Pocket Monsters, but transliterated into the Japanese sound system. Yeah, Pocket Monsters, which makes sense because they shrink down and you keep them in your pocket inside the capsules. But Pokémon Go is a very special game, I would say. When it released in the summer of 2016, some people to this day joke that it was the closest we ever got to world peace because the game was so hugely popular, and you would go outside and you would see people playing it. And it would be very obvious that they're playing it because they'd be walking around looking at their phone or they would congregate in certain places because the way the game works is that certain Pokémon appear in certain real-world locations, and then everyone will converge on the same location. People made new friends. It was social. It was a magical, magical time. So I'm a very big fan of Pokémon Go and these types of, like, augmented reality games that can actually bring people together in real life.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. I think it's fascinating to bring that element of the fantastical into the real world, you know. As a child, I always loved Mary Poppins, you know, like, combining those animations with the real world, and augmented reality can do that. That's a great thing about it.

Dominic: Yes, it can. Yes, it can. And I think, you know, proving that this linguistics podcast might be different from the rest here talking about video games, Christina, I think you actually made a video game. You made a virtual reality game.

Christina: Yeah, well, I did indeed, because I actually thought it would be a nice idea to combine linguistics with gaming and gamifying learning because I believe that it's a very good idea to make learning fun. And so I try to do that whenever I can. And, well, a lot of people enjoy playing games, video games. Now, in my case, I'm not sure if that actually qualifies as a video game. It's a mobile application. Would that qualify?

Dominic: Yeah, I'd say so. I'd say so. A nice little casual game.

Christina: Okay. Yeah. So I – or rather we, because as usual, I mean, in these kinds of projects, it's not me doing things but a whole team – actually, we developed this application, which is called Bridge of Knowledge, and it currently exists in a VR version that you can play on your mobile or any other kind of handheld device. And, I love the game. I fought really hard to get the money to make this. I had to convince people that it's a good idea to do this kind of learning by dying, but, in the end, I managed to convince them, and I was really, really glad.

Dominic: Quite the motivator. Learn or else. No, of course, I'm joking, but I have played the game, and first of all, I honestly think it's really cool that you even did this. I mean, I don't know, how many professors make a video game? But it's a really cool game. And essentially, to describe how it works is that it’s kind of like the rope bridge scene from the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, right?

Christina: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what inspired me. I mean, I told you before, I mean, I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan. And I mean, you can say all kinds of things about, like, when you watch the films again, like, “Oh my God, there are scenes which you probably don't like so much anymore when you're an adult and have thought about post-colonialism and things like that,” but still, it's so much fun. It's such a thrill. And yeah, I love that scene where he just kind of takes this machete and severs the ropes and then everyone falls into the abyss, but he doesn't because he was clever enough to grab those ropes. And well, I thought that could be exploited for a game that could bring a bit of thrill into studying linguistics, but also other subjects.

Dominic: Yes, yes, that's the climax of the film. By the way, spoiler alert, although it came out 40 years ago. So I hope everyone's seen it by now. But yeah, a very, very iconic scene. And so in the game, you're trying to cross this precarious rope bridge over this ravine. And if you answer a question incorrectly, what happens, Christina?

Christina: You fall. You fall into the abyss. But no worries. I mean, there's no blood. So this game is actually very suitable for all ages. Actually, I know a lot of children who enjoy playing it. And so the thing is that you have a parchment that's hovering next to you, and you get a question on that parchment. And then you have several alternative answers that are projected onto the planks of that bridge. And then you just have to move your head when you have the mobile in a VR viewer made of cardboard, for example. Yeah, and once you have selected what you think is the correct answer, you just look for a certain while. And then you get a kind of circle, and once it closes, the answer is locked in. And if you’re right, then you move forward on the bridge, but if you're wrong, you fall. But you just hover, you hover over a little river, you know, and then that's nice. Actually, people enjoy that. It's quite nice, and you've got jungle sounds and things like that in the background.

Dominic: Yeah, and VR can really sell the illusion. I think we've all seen, maybe, there are some funny videos online of a person in VR losing awareness of their physical surroundings in real life, maybe breaking something by accident or what have you. It looks really funny, but actually when you play VR, you realize it can really sell the illusion, and you actually can forget your real-life surroundings. So it really can feel like you're falling.

Christina: It does. And the interesting thing is that, I mean, it's just your mobile in a cheap cardboard viewer, you know, but then it feels like falling, that so-called vection effect. So that's like, yeah, I suppose you've probably experienced something similar. So sometimes when you're on a train and there's a train on the other platform, and then, well, sometimes you have the impression that it's your train that is starting to move when actually it's the train on the other platform. And that is because you don't really have a reference point for your eyes, you know. And it's the same thing with VR. I mean, like, you have that VR viewer, you can't see, like, the real world, and for that reason, it feels to you as if you were falling. So it's the same thing, just vertical.

Dominic: Yeah, this effect that you're describing, well, of course, as the American, I've spent a lot more time in the car than on the train, but I've experienced it a lot, and it can be really jarring.

Christina: That's interesting. I didn't expect that this would also be possible in a car.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Depending on your frame of reference, maybe if you're not looking forward or what have you. Yeah, totally.

Christina: Yeah, but it's really interesting. And I mean, it shows how real these things can feel. And of course, I mean, this idea of falling into an abyss is probably not something that everyone will like. I suppose thrill-seeking personalities might like it more than others. But I can assure you, I mean, like, I know a lot of people who played the game and said, “Well, it’s not really a big deal. And it actually all feels very nice.” And in addition, we also made sure that people with a fear of heights can also play the game because what you can do is there's a kind of special button that you need to look at, and then you can raise the water level of the river below, and if you do that, then you don't fall. You just kind of cross that river instead of an abyss, and you also don't fall. So that’s made for everyone who would still like to play the game, even if they are slightly more afraid of falling.

Dominic: Oh, fantastic. Yeah, so, accessibility. I love accessibility. And yeah, speaking of accessibility, yeah, it might sound like we're really promoting this game, but it comes for the low, low price of free, actually. You can download it right now.

Christina: Yes, that's true. And I mean, right now, it's possible to play the VR version. At the moment, we're actually developing a second version of it, a 360-degree version. And in that 360-degree version, you don't even need that cardboard VR viewer anymore. I mean, like, it's very cheap. You can get it for under five euros, just a few dollars, you know, but even so, the new version will make it possible to also play it without the viewer. It's already possible now because you can just, kind of, when you download the game, you have that split screen, and I mean, you just have a smaller image, but in the future, it will be possible to also play it on an undivided screen. So, that will also make the writing more legible. So it will become even more accessible in that way.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not to explain the science of it completely, but yeah, in order to sell the illusion of VR, each eye needs to get a slightly different image, right? Which is what gives us depth. And so that's why, yeah, because the game is made for VR, it's split for both of your eyes. But that's cool that there will be a non-VR mode so that, I don't know, if you're on the train or in the car, it might be a little bit easier to play it.

Christina: Yeah, and for technical reasons, it may be that the VR mode won't be available forever, at least not in the version that we currently have. So we also have plans to reintroduce that in the future. But in any case, so the 360-degree version will be out soon, I hope. And I really look forward to that because it will also make it easier to use that in classrooms, for example. So for students, for pupils. So the idea is to use this as a very general kind of game, not just for studying linguistics at home, but, of course, for different types of subjects.

Dominic: Oh yeah, and I think this highlights the fact that the game is a work in progress in that you're often issuing updates and expanding it, aren't you?

Christina: Well, that's the plan. I mean, we're trying to get funding, and the more funding we get, the better the game will become. So, there are certain functions that we want to have in the future. But for the time being, so the next step will be implementing this 360-degree version. And, of course, enlarging the number of levels. But the nice thing is that this is something that not we as the core team do, but we actually have people from different places who contribute those levels, namely teachers. So, it’s actually very easy to create a new level. So, that's one of the special things about that game.

Dominic: Yeah, it is pretty easy, right? You have an Excel template that people can use to submit new levels to you.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. So, basically, you just need to write in a question, a correct answer, and three incorrect answers. And then, well, we transform that into a CSV file and we load it into the game, and then everyone in the world can play with it, which is quite cool. So, I've done that with my students before, and it was very nice. So, we created different levels, and they also contributed questions to levels. And of course, I mainly created linguistics levels. So, for example, on morphology, on syntax, on semantics, pragmatics, all the different fields that we have, also phonetics, of course, like, the different fields that we have for linguistics. But there’s also some levels that are about general knowledge, about mathematics, archaeology, philosophy, Japanese, by the way, so that might be interesting for you. So, that's the nice thing. It's a whole range of different topics because it just works with multiple-choice questions. So, it's very basic. So, that was the idea, to create a game which would make it possible to create new levels easily and still have something attractive that, yeah, students and pupils might want to work with.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, exactly. I think we've all, whenever we're studying a subject, often, we make flashcards and things like that, and this is essentially just kind of a cooler, more fun, more interesting way to do flashcards in a way, to crunch and to study and to work on getting down these topics you want to learn.

Christina: Exactly. And. I mean, you get immediate feedback. I mean, if you get it wrong, you fall, but then the nice thing is that you're shown the correct answer. So you learn something and then you can just start again. And if you manage to answer 10 questions correctly in a row, then you manage to cross the Bridge of Knowledge.

Dominic: Oh, and Christina, what is awaiting the player on the other side, should they cross the Bridge of Knowledge?

Christina: Well, possibly I shouldn't tell our listeners in all detail. But at the moment, it's actually a sign that will congratulate you, and I won't reveal the text. I carried out an experiment, actually, with some media psychologists, namely Katharina Jahn, Markus Suren, and Günter Daniel Rey, and we wanted to find out what motivates people to cross the bridge. So what we did is we presented the participants in our experiment with two different narratives. Either you were on holiday with a friend or you were on a treasure hunt with a friend, and then in the game itself or before actually coming to the bridge, you got a speech bubble, and in that speech bubble, you got the text. Either the text was, “I am stuck, get here quickly or I'll fall off the bridge,” or it was, “I found the treasure, come here quickly or the treasure will fall off the bridge.” And so we wanted to see to what extent one of these motivates people more. And in those experimental settings, in the end, in addition, people also got to see a newspaper with an image of a treasure and a person that was saved, and you also got some applause. And so we contrasted those two modes, and we found that actually people were more motivated to play the game when they had to rescue someone, which is actually a very nice thing, I think.

Dominic: Yes, that would certainly make sense to me. And it's one of those things where you would assume it would be the case. But actually in academic research, it's nice to research things you would assume to be true. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they might not be, right? So that is very, very cool. And yeah, the psychology of motivating players and reward mechanisms, I mean, it's kind of, it's outside my area of expertise, but I'm a very firm believer that no subject or discipline exists in complete isolation. So I love this kind of interconnected interdisciplinary work you did with media psychology. That is cool. So Christina, you said that you conducted an experiment here, which is really cool, very scientific, but there are probably an infinite number of ways to design an experiment and conduct an experiment. So can you share with us? I don’t, I've never done an experiment myself. It can be quite challenging, right? You have to get a lot of approvals from your institution, and you have to really plan things ahead of time. So what's important when you're conducting an experiment or designing an experiment?

Christina: I would say the most important thing is that you design the experiment in such a way that it really allows you to answer the question that you want to answer. That’s crucial. And so you need to operationalize things.

Dominic: Yeah, that's a verb right there. Can you explain that verb, please?

Christina: It means that you try to break down your general idea into something that can actually be measured, carrying out different experiments, doing different things, you know. In our case, what we wanted to see is the effect that Bridge of Knowledge had on the learning process, for example, and on the motivation and different other things. And so what we did is that we put the same kind of material into Bridge of Knowledge and into another application that was just a very simple quiz where you just got the questions and nothing else. And so we were able to compare that with each other that way. If you want to see if someone learned something, then obviously it's a good idea to teach them something that they didn't know before, but you want to make sure that all the people that you test, and we tested over 80 participants, you know, you really want to make sure that they don't know these things. So we actually went for teaching them vocabulary, and of course you could just invent some words because then obviously they wouldn't know them, but at the same time, you want to proceed in an ethical way. You don't want to teach people just nonsense. It's nice if you teach them something that they can use in the future. And so we actually went for difficult words.

Dominic: Can you give me some examples?

Christina: Well, what we did is actually, we just searched for lists of difficult words on the internet and then we just selected the ones that would work well with the kind of story that we wanted to present. One of them, for example, was epistolary.

Dominic: Oh gosh.

Christina: And the question that we asked was, “What is the meaning of epistolary?” And then you had the options: “Written in the form of letters,” which is the correct answer, “Making use of guns,” “Extremely dangerous,” or “Resembling a riddle.” And so you can see that we tried to get some distractors which kind of sounded plausible as well, because, I mean, if you hear the word epistolary, you might think there’s pistol in it, and so the guns seem like a plausible option, but of course that's not the case. So what we did is we just, like, used such word lists, and we also, for example, used the word antediluvian, which means old-fashioned, because it's “before the great flood,” if you kind of split it up into its parts.

Dominic: That's one that I think I've heard, but I wouldn't be able to tell you the definition offhand.

Christina: Yeah, like another example would be proclivity, which is a tendency to do or like something which is considered bad. But, same as you. I mean, like, I tend to forget part of the meanings of such words, you know? So we really made sure that these were difficult words that people wouldn't know, and then, well, we taught them these words and then we tested to what extent they had actually learned these words after being able to cross the bridge. Because if you teach them ten words, and if they manage to cross the bridge, it means that they must have selected the correct word every time because it's just ten questions. And, which means that either they learned it or that they pressed the correct button for some other reason, but that’s the thing, to a certain extent, well, you, you try to make everything as clear and obvious as possible in an experiment so that in the end, you kind of measure what you want to measure. But then there's always things that might go wrong. But well, we did our best.

Dominic: Yeah. Budding scientists, take note. I mean, this is a really cool project because, I mean, if we take a step back here, you are a professor of linguistics who worked on a team to develop a virtual reality video game and then you took this virtual reality video game and used it in an experiment in collaboration with media psychologists. I think this highlights kind of the open-ended nature, the things that you can do in the world of science and academic research.

Christina: Yeah, that's the nice thing about linguistics. You can basically do anything because practically anything is related to language. That's what I love so much about linguistics. And it gives me the opportunity to cooperate with people who do very different things, who work on video games, who write code. So I learn a lot from them and I really enjoy that very much too. So, the nice thing about the Bridge of Knowledge is that it kind of exemplifies that learning process, that learning journey, through how you advance on that bridge, because the more you know, the more you learn, the further you advance. But getting there has also been a journey for me, and, well, I hope to continue that journey because it's really lots of fun.

Dominic: Oh yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I studied international relations, which is also very interdisciplinary, and I often tell people you can kind of study anything you want as long as it's related to the world, which encompasses a lot, certainly encompasses language, which is also part of my interest in language. It's so, so important to the world and to international relations and how the world works and how people interact with each other. So yeah, it really demonstrates that in academia, learn what you want to learn, study what you want to study.

Christina: Yeah, and I think what you just said, I mean, like, that language is so important to international relations. I entirely agree. If you communicate, you can try to make a better world, you know?

Dominic: I one hundred percent agree with you, and I hope we're contributing to that in some small way. At least bringing people a little bit of entertainment and joy and maybe teaching them something along the way, I hope.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. That's the idea of this podcast, but I think that we have arrived at the end of it today. I mean, there's a lot more to be said about video games and language, and we might do so in the future. Well, so, stay curious, everyone out there. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 8: What does your accent say about you?

Christina: Hello everyone. Hooray, we're back!

Dominic: Yeah, it’s a cause for celebration. Always happy to be back here on our podcast!

Christina: Absolutely. And, Dominic, how is your German language learning going?

Dominic: Es geht. It's going. No, moving along smoothly. I hope. I really like learning languages, trying to learn as many as I can, but when people ask me how many languages I speak, I say: “Well, completely fluently, just English,” which is my mother tongue, but I don't know, what even is fluency anyway?

Christina: Yeah, that's really hard to tell. I suppose it's when you speak naturally at the speed that people would expect you to speak at.

Dominic: Yeah, I guess so. I kind of feel like it's almost like an arbitrary finish line that we've created for ourselves in our mind. But, yeah, and you know, in a way, you kind of spend your whole life learning your own mother tongue, right? I mean, I learn new words in English all the time, maybe every week. Certainly every month, I encounter new words I haven't seen before.

Christina: Yeah, same thing here.

Dominic: Language learning happens very slowly, sometimes frustratingly slow. I know people want to move quickly. They want to learn a language quickly.

Christina: But in the end, the question is, I mean, what's the kind of standard against which you're measured? And I suppose the most important standard is being intelligible and making yourself understood.

Dominic: As long as people can understand you, I don't think you have to speak perfectly, but unfortunately, when it comes to learning a language, I think perfection is something that learners frequently chase, right? They want to have a perfect accent or they want to have perfect grammar. They want to speak like a native. It's a very noble goal, but I worry that it's such a lofty goal that you'll feel very deflated and defeated as you're studying the language. It'll feel like it's like an insurmountable obstacle.

Christina: Yeah, I agree. It's really, really difficult, even if you try very hard and even if you study the language for many years. But of course, I think it's still a very laudable goal to try and get a pronunciation that is as good and as clear and as understandable as possible. So I even wrote an article about that.

Dominic: Yeah, probably now with a focus on English, I believe, there are a lot of English learners around the world, and a lot of them want to have a very native accent. Yeah, it is a very noble goal. It's nice to have good pronunciation, but I don't think accents are so bad. I think it makes us unique. It shows that you have an interesting story to tell, that you might be from somewhere else.

Christina: Yeah. But of course, the other thing that you just mentioned, that the accent reveals a lot about ourselves, is, of course, a very important aspect, too, because the moment you open your mouth, people are going to hear where you're from, typically. So I think the regional aspect is particularly important. But of course, there’s actually many things that the accent can give away. So, for example, also your gender, you know, voices will sound differently. And if you can't see someone very well, but you hear them speak in the dark, you will get an idea of, “Well, that could be a female person,” or, “Hmm, that person is probably older than I expected,” because also the vocal tract, like, the articulatory organs that we use for producing speech, they change with time. And so, there’s a lot of things, a lot of information that we derive from when we hear someone talk.

Dominic: Yeah, language is very, very closely connected to identity, isn't it? And the way we see ourselves and the way we see others.

Christina: Yeah, and I think that's why it's so important as a learner that you think about what kind of identity you want to construct when you speak. And I mean, this idea of “I want to sound like a native speaker.” I mean, ultimately, that's a goal that probably you won't achieve. So the question is, “What do you want to settle for and what is the kind of goal that you want to set for yourself?” So within that idea of, “I want to be understood,” you could still say, “Okay, it's fine for me to, for example, use certain pronunciation quirks that are associated with where I come from because, well, that’s just part of who I am, you know?” So, no need to apologize, but just to embrace that, for example, certain sounds don't exist in certain languages, and that for some speakers, it's harder to pronounce a sound like a th (/ð/) or a th (/θ/), like in the thing. I mean, in German, we don't have that. So naturally we would rather say something like “se sing.”

Dominic: Oh, yeah. When it comes to kind of these stereotypical quintessential accents, the ones that everyone might think of because they had exposure to it in a movie – which, by the way, sometimes those regional accents and movies are done by actors who aren't even from those regions – so they're just copying it. But there is a, you know, with every rumor, there is a kernel of truth in that a lot of these stereotypical accents are due to sounds that exist in English, which do not exist in these other languages. And so what people will do is they will use the sounds they already have, and they will try to approximate the English sounds, just as you described with the th, the th sound. This sound, as I understand it, is extremely uncommon.

Christina: Yeah, and it's also something that children acquire relatively late when they learn to speak because it's hard to produce. And I mean, if you try to teach learners, of course, you can make them aware that you can stick your tongue between your teeth roughly and then try to produce a sound that way. But yeah, it’s difficult to achieve. And that's not the only difficult sound of English. So another hard sound is the R.

Dominic: Yeah, maybe, almost the most famous one. Of course, this is the distinguishing factor between British English and American English, or at least the most famous distinguishing factor, I think. It's called rhoticity. Whether something is rhotic or not, is just about, “Do you pronounce the Rs or do you not?” So American English is rhotic – the Rs are pronounced – and British English is non-rhotic because in most cases they're not pronounced.

Christina: Well, it depends. I mean, in most cases, I mean they're pronounced before a vowel. So I would, for example, say ready, yeah, so there's an E following, so I would pronounce it ready. But in a word, like car, I wouldn't say “kar,” I would say “kah,” using British English as the standard that I'm trying to embrace here. Because in British English, you wouldn't pronounce an R at the end of a word, unless there is another word following.

Dominic: Yeah, exactly. Car and driver.

Christina: Exactly. CaR-and-driver, because it's the same kind of intonation unit. And so the important thing is that you have something following that is not a vowel, so either a pause or you could also have a consonant. So if it wasn't caR, but for example, woRk – I can't pronounce it so well because I never do it. In British English, it would just be work.

Dominic: Exactly. Yeah, I think Brits and Americans are acutely aware of this pronunciation difference. Of course, there are other rhotic accents. For example, the Scottish accent is rhotic, although they actually roll the R, which the Americans don't do. And then the Irish accents are also rhotic, but they don't roll it. So actually, I think the Irish R is a bit more akin to the American R in that way.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, the R is a very special sound. And I mean, in German too, by the way, I mean, we are a bit similar to British English in the sense that we don't really pronounce the R at the end of a word like teacher, Lehrer. It's spelled with an R. So you could expect it to be pronounced LehreR, but it's not. So it's a kind of a sound in the end.

Dominic: Yes, and I think also for even native native speaker children, right, this is one of the last sounds that they acquire.

Christina: Yeah, R is notoriously difficult, but the fun thing is that still, sometimes people insert it, even in places where it's not really supposed to occur. So that's a so-called intrusive R.

Dominic: Yes, and this is distinctly British, by the way.

Christina: It is, yeah, because you might talk about the fact that you're drawing something, but then some people will say drawRing. And I recently heard someone do that; so that was a learner, a German learner, and the person used that intrusive R and I was like, “Wow, this is amazing, because it shows that you're very used to how English is pronounced, because otherwise you wouldn't be doing this, because there is no reason at all to insert an R sound here, neither based on English nor on German.”

Dominic: Ah, yes, it means that they received some input and then they copied it. It had an impression. They copied it. And that’s what we should do when learning languages, is get input and then try to imitate what we hear. I mean, like, that's how children acquire language, isn't it? Imitation, right?

Christina: Exactly. I think, well, imitation learning is very important. I mean, not just for learning languages, but for everything else. I suppose that's why parents often try to set a good example to their children, because if the children see that the parents are doing something, well, they're likely to do it. And it's something we can exploit in language learning, and that's why I think it's so important that, for example, if you are planning to be a teacher, so for students studying English to become teachers in the future, studying the pronunciation is a very important aspect, because you're going to provide an example to the pupils or to the students.

Dominic: Yeah, I read a couple of years ago that some American parents were complaining that their children were starting to speak with British accents because they were watching lots of Peppa Pig. I don't know. I think those claims are a little bit dubious. I don't know if it was really happening, but it wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world, right? If a young child is receiving that input, they reproduce what they hear.

Christina: Absolutely. You're likely to try and reproduce it as you heard it. And by the way, there are also studies that show that when British people sing American pop songs, they also use an American pronunciation. So it's quite interesting. So these things do happen. So it very much depends on what you're presented with. And of course, that makes it immensely difficult if you are uncertain about what different varieties of English you're being confronted with. So in Germany, for example, we have a very strong tradition of having English teachers who speak with a British accent, but then that changed in the past, I don't know, 20 or so years. So there’s a lot of people who are using an American accent, but then you might have a teacher using one model during one year, and then one using another model during the other year. And in the end, you end up with a mixture and you don't really know whether you should say “kah” or “kar,” because the people you listen to use different pronunciations.

Dominic: Yeah, as you said, with the German learners, yeah, technically in Europe, the standard here is to learn British English, but then, well, through the media, through movies, through TV shows, through social media and YouTube, there's so much exposure to other varieties of English, namely American English, of course, with the American media, that it ends up that the German kids, the European kids, their mind is a big mixture of different varieties.

Christina: Which is perfectly fine, I would argue, because of course, the English language belongs to the whole world and there are so many different varieties all over the world. I mean, we are mainly discussing British English and American English here because these are the varieties that we are most familiar with. But of course, there's a wealth of different varieties all over the world. And so I think that’s wonderful, to have all this variety. But at the same time, of course, when you speak and you want to be intelligible, then consistency can be helpful. And for that reason, I think it's also useful if we draw learners’ attention to the fact that there are different kinds of convention. And so for students of English who want to become teachers in the future, that's what the article was about, I would feel it's helpful if they decide what they want to do more or less systematically, so that people who listen to them know what to expect, and that makes it easier to understand them.

Dominic: Yeah. Thank you for touching on that because, you know, we are not the language police by any means. I would say we're the anti-language police. I believe in a much more laissez-faire approach to language and especially language learning and so telling people what to do. Well, I think there are plenty of others out there who like to tell people what to do when it comes to language and language learning. But I definitely agree with you at least that it is good to aim for consistency, because if you mix and match pronunciations, I think it's more likely to kind of set off alarm bells in someone's head, if they're a native speaker and they hear someone who's speaking inconsistently, so to speak. So you can use whatever variety you want, but try to pick one and stick to it more or less.

Christina: At least at an advanced level, I would argue. And so the target group in that discussion, in that article, was students of English who are training to become teachers in the future. But of course, if you are not aiming for that level, anything goes as long as it's kind of understandable, and actually these were my very first steps in the context of teaching pronunciation, because, as you know, I also speak Spanish as a second native language. And so when I was a student, I did an internship with Langenscheidt, a publisher of dictionaries, but also language learning materials. And I had the funny task of helping Spanish users of a German phrase book pronounce German sentences by writing things down in a way that they could just read out using the conventions of their own language, and then it sounded like German.

Dominic: Oh, a phrase book, yeah, handy dandy little book of common phrases that you carry with you when you're traveling abroad or working abroad. Yeah, they still sell those, but with smartphones and the mobile internet, I think they might be a bit antiquated these days.

Christina: Yeah, I would think so too. Even though I have to admit that, yeah, a few years ago, I got one as well when I worked in Poland for a while. So I was actually very happy to have one and be able to read through it and see what kind of sentences I might want to produce in certain situations. Yeah, so at that time, it was just not possible to do that. And I mean, I suppose you've seen in dictionaries, you have these special symbols that represent how words are pronounced in other languages.

Dominic: Yeah, they look quite strange.

Christina: They do, exactly. That's the International Phonetic Alphabet and that's the academic, linguistic way of doing it. And it's very precise and very, very helpful if you know how to use it. But if you're just a normal user of a phrase book, you don't want that. You just want to go from, yeah, what you know, how things work in your own language, and then you just want to read things out as they are, and you hope that it sounds like in the other language, and that's what I tried to do.

Dominic: Yes, the International Phonetic Alphabet, the IPA, not to be confused with an India Pale Ale, which is a type of beer. I think it might be my dad's favorite type of beer, actually. But actually, I learned IPA in my introductory linguistics class. It looks scarier than it really is. And, it's kind of awesome because it really tells you very precisely how to pronounce something.

Christina: Yeah. And so that's something that I actually have taught students for many years. So when I was teaching students in Bavaria who are studying to become teachers, they have to take a state examination, which is the same for students from all the universities, and so you train them to be able to write down text in English using those symbols, and you can pick between British English and American English. At least that's the way it was at the time. And that, of course, is very precise. But for the purpose of that phrase book, you know, for Spanish users, we just wanted to make things as simple as possible, but Spanish pronounces sequences of sounds differently from German and English. So let's take the German word danke, so danke means thank you, and it's spelled d-a-n-k-e. Now, as a Spanish person, you may just say daNke, but that's not correct. You don't want to pronounce the N sound like at the end of man, but it should sound rather like the sound at the end of ring, so danke, just like thank you. So you would automatically produce that, Dominic, because you’re a native speaker of English, but so for the Spanish speakers, I just had to insert a G there in the middle of danke, which is not there in the original spelling, but which will help people pronounce it. And that was an interesting task, and you get dizzy if you do that for too long.

Dominic: Yeah. Fascinating. Because it's something I wouldn't have thought about otherwise, because yeah, in English N-K, whenever N and K come together, there's that hidden kind of ng sound that links them together, but that's not necessarily universal across all languages.

Christina: No, that's the thing. We would always tend to think that what we do in our language is what everyone does, but very often it isn't.

Dominic: Absolutely. When it comes to these hidden, linking sounds, the word that comes to mind for me is warmth. There is a P sound in there, but there is no P in the way it's spelled, but I think it's because if you try to pronounce it without that linking P sound, it's really hard. It's hard to bring M and Th together without that sound linking them. I think it's something about just how the lips come together naturally when you go from one sound to the next.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. I mean, our articulatory organs, I don't want to say they're lazy, but they go from one position to the next and sometimes you produce those intermediate sounds on the way. It's the same in German. So there’s the word AbeND, which means ‘evening,’ and abeNDS, which means ‘in the evening.’ So you have an N followed by a D and then an S sound, and you have MorgeN and morgeNS. But, I mean, there's no D at the end of Morgen, but still I think I sometimes produce a D sound between the N and the S in MorgeNS as well, just because that's what naturally happens when you go from N to S.

Dominic: Exactly. Or it just makes it easier. Because trying to do it without it would require much more energy and effort. So, yeah, this phenomenon is responsible for a lot of pronunciation changes and accent changes throughout history, well, across almost every language, I would think. But when it comes to pronunciation, it's interesting, the impact that pronunciation can have on the way that we're perceived. It can be quite a big impact. And yet I feel like at least in my experience, learning languages, it’s kind of the aspect of language learning which receives the least amount of attention, right? Because when you're learning a language, you want to get up and going. You want to start speaking, you want to start learning. So to get hung up on pronunciation feels very slow and dull or frustrating, or it feels like it’s kind of ancillary to really learning the language and speaking it, but it can have a huge, huge impact.

Christina: Yeah, it definitely does. I mean in many different ways. And the interesting thing is that if you invest into practicing your pronunciation as a learner, it might even pay off in unexpected ways. There's a very interesting study by Thomas Herbst in which he actually had different texts, short texts with the same content, but some of the texts were absolutely correct grammatically in terms of the vocabulary and these things, and the other texts contained different types of mistake. And then he had them read out by someone with a very strong German accent and someone with an English native accent, and the interesting thing is that the text that contained many mistakes spoken with a native English accent was rated better than the correct text with a strong German accent. I think that's quite impressive.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, that would make sense to me intuitively that, you know, if you have a really, really good accent, if you sound like you have a very high command of the language, then people will assume you do. They might assume actually that your vocabulary is bigger than it might really be, or what have you, which, I would say, is probably a good thing. It works in your favor. And let's not forget that native speakers speak ungrammatically. Native speakers speak ungrammatically all the time, so if someone has a really good accent, but they say something not quite grammatically perfect, I’m not going to assume that they're a language learner.

Christina: Yeah, so you're just going to think, “Oh, well, the person didn't concentrate, but it's not due to their competence.” Exactly. And so that's the kind of effect that we have in psychology and also in other fields. So once you have a really good impression of someone, well, they have to do really bad stuff so that you change that impression. And it also works the other way around. So having a pronunciation that has positive associations for the people you're talking to may actually be a bonus.

Dominic: Yes, I certainly agree. And there’s a lot of associations when it comes to accents. Americans really love the British accent because, well, first of all, the term “British accent,” what a silly term. There are like hundreds of accents across Britain, and Britain has more than one language, right? They have Scots and Welsh and Irish, but nevertheless, I think the British accent I'm referring to is probably the Received Pronunciation, which is the kind of high-class, kind of posh accent that they might speak on the BBC or maybe with the King, or the Queen might speak back when there was a queen. I think Americans find that it seems to exude elegance or intelligence to them, which I think British people find very, very funny, because as you know, your accent is not directly tied to any of your personal traits.

Christina: I mean, the regional accent in any case shouldn't be. I mean, that would be very, very strange, you know. There’s people of all types that speak with a British accent and with an American accent. So there's no reason why some of these people should be friendlier or more intelligent or things like that. So it's really certain ideas that we have, certain stereotypes that we have, but, of course, ultimately, this is definitely not the case. And I mean, this accent that you're referring to, I mean, I’m not an expert in the latest developments there, but for example, if you listen to the radio, if you watch the news on British TV now, you'll see that it's now much more diverse. So not everyone is using that, but traditionally, this kind of standard, that is also referred to with different names, has been used in teaching learners abroad. And that's the kind of standard British pronunciation that is still used, for example, in schooling in Germany.

Dominic: Yeah, “standard,” whatever that means. Sometimes it’s kind of arbitrary. Standard American. I have no idea. They say it’s an American accent with no regional markers. And so, or shall we say maybe General American, I should call it. I think my accent is pretty general. People like me, if you ask them what their accent is, they'll say, “Oh, I don't have an accent.” Which is very silly, right? Place them in a foreign country and they will very quickly realize they do have an accent, but I think it demonstrates an awareness that they know that they speak in this more general, less regionally marked manner.

Christina: Which is interesting because in German, for example, people typically speak the standard language with a regional accent. So when I speak German, for example, I have an accent that shows other people that I'm from the south of Germany. I wasn't aware of that myself before receiving training in linguistics, actually, because there's a sound that will very quickly give me away, and that's the S in the beginning of words. So if you take the word sun in English, well, in German, that would be Sonne. I would say Sonne. But let's say that the more standard pronunciation that is not from the south is Zonne. So I never use the Z sound when I speak German, usually. So for that reason, that will show people that I'm from a particular region, because in Germany, we don't have that tradition of having a kind of standard pronunciation that is used, for example, by certain classes, regardless of where they're from. Like RP originally was because it's the educated pronunciation that people acquired when spending time in boarding schools, for example.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. And well, also you have to think about the dialect that learners learn. So if you pick up a German textbook to learn German as a foreign language, invariably I think you're going to be learning High German, which I would like to say, I had a classmate once who thought, “Oh, High German,” they thought the “High” was a reference to social class, that High German was spoken by maybe upper class people. Totally understandable, but actually that's not what it means. That's not what the word High means, it actually refers to the highlands and the lowlands in Europe, in Germany. And actually, the Netherlands, Netherlands means ‘lower lands.’ That’s the root of that. I think it's about the actual elevation of the territory. It does not have to do with social class. But nevertheless, High German, I believe, originates from Hanover or the Hanover area, which really surprised me when I was learning because, you know, standard French is the French of Paris, standard Japanese is the Japanese of Tokyo, so I assumed that standard German was the German of Berlin, but Germans said, “No, no, no, the Berlin dialect is totally different.”

Christina: No, it isn't. And I mean there’s still debate on what exactly represents that kind of standard pronunciation. And again, I mean, I’m no expert on that. So for that reason, I wouldn't venture into making very strong claims here. But even so, I mean, there is a certain kind of standard pronunciation that you will hear, for example, by newsreaders traditionally, which doesn't have that feature that I just talked about, that is distinctly southern. But otherwise, I mean, also in the region of Hanover, people will speak in a way that makes other people notice, “Okay, they're from that region.” So in Germany, well, the regional marking is very important, but, I mean, in Great Britain, RP traditionally was unmarked regarding region.

Dominic: Oh, very interesting. Well, and certainly Britain has that very famous London working-class accent, right? The Cockney accent, which is very famous. I'm not sure if it's a positive or negative connotation. I think actually it's viewed as quite friendly. It has kind of a friendly sound to it.

Christina: Yes. I think there’s a lot of positive associations with it. I mean, traditionally, it's got these working-class associations, but at the same time, people associated with friendliness and things like that, being approachable, solidarity, you know. For that reason, I think it's got a very positive image. And if I'm not mistaken, actually, some features of it have also become part of, let's say, the latest kind of developments of standard British English, so to speak.

Dominic: That is what I've heard. Yeah, dialect leveling, which is this phenomenon of when you have people with different dialects living around each other and interacting with each other every day, their dialects kind of rub off on each other, so to speak. And yes, I have heard that as well, that some features from Cockney have slipped into RP and that maybe some features from RP have also slipped into Cockney as well. So yeah.

Christina: Might be, that's the thing. Like when people talk to each other over an extended period of time, their language becomes more similar, but also in a conversation, you will notice that you might actually use words which you otherwise wouldn't use. And so I'm speaking a lot to you, and you use American English. So this opens up the potential that I might be using some words in the future which I didn't use so much before, simply because I hear them so much. So that's a phenomenon that is known as accommodation. And it’s nice because it shows that you are trying to kind of get closer to the other person by taking over things that they're doing. It's kind of a sign of respect, I would say. And it’s nice in that sense to see how languages change in that way too, because of speakers who talk to each other, you know?

Dominic: Oh, I agree. Certainly. Well, you know, when it comes to American English and American accents, it's far from monolithic. America is a really, really, really big place to say the least. And you know, I'm not an expert when it comes to Northeastern accents, and Southern accents, and Midwestern accents, but they do have some very distinct features. Actually, I have a friend from the Midwest. I think she's from Minnesota. And, there's a marker that gives her away, which is that instead of saying bag or flag, she said bEg and flEg. And I was just totally obsessed with her accent, but she just thought it was so funny to hear me saying, “Oh my gosh, your accent,” because nobody's ever told her, “Oh, you have an accent.” But she has these markers, these distinct markers. And when she says those markers, I know exactly which region she's from.

Christina: Yeah. So, that's the thing. That's what happens. But then, as we just said, I mean, with learners, it might be different because they have input from so many different regions. But then, of course, that's also a good thing because in the end, well, we might end up with some kind of general accent that is highly intelligible and that people use online for communication. But then again, I mean, it's very difficult to predict such things. So when you study linguistics, most of the time, you look back rather than to the future – but of course, even that is sometimes possible.

Dominic: That's true. Yeah, we very well might. I think we're certainly seeing this at least in the U.S., right? I mentioned dialect leveling, that if you bring together a group of young Americans from different regions of the U.S., yeah, you might be surprised to find that there's quite a lot of similarity and overlap in terms of how they talk. This is a generalization, of course. There are some very distinct accents in the U.S. You know, earlier I said American English is rhotic, but well, that was a generalization. General American is rhotic, but there are non-rhotic accents in the U.S. Very famous ones, like the New York accent, like the Boston accent, very famous for their non-rhoticity. It's a very distinct feature. There are some, like, quintessential sentences that people will throw around humorously that really display these Northeastern accents. You know, Park the car in Harvard yard is a good one, or you put your “kakis” in your “kakis,” which is you put your car keys in your khakis.

Christina: Yeah, I think that's so interesting, because as a German, I mean, as a learner in general, that's what makes it obvious to me that someone is speaking American English, that you have the rhotic R everywhere. But there's a very famous study in which William Labov actually looked at the R as a marker of social class in New York. And I have to say this is one of my favorite studies because I love the research design. Because what he wanted to see is if using the R or not in all places is linked to your income and your social class. And so he went to three different department stores, one very expensive one, one in the mid-range, and a cheaper one. And then he had found out beforehand what articles were placed on the fourth floor, and then he asked shop assistants, “Excuse me, where can I find so and so?” And then they would say, “on the fourth floor” or “on the fourth floor.” Or a mixture of both, who knows? Because he wanted to see whether people would use the R at all, and if they would use it before a consonant in fourth and at the end of a word, in floor. And, well, in the end, it turned out that the more prestigious variety was the rhotic R. So that's what American English is famous for. And I thought that was an extremely interesting study. It's an old one. It's from the 1970s, but a very famous one. So yeah, it’s interesting to hear you use those example sentences.

Dominic: Oh, that's a very cool study. I like the way he designed that. That's really clever. He was actually, he wasn't in a lab. He was going out into the wild and collecting data, which is very, very clever. And yeah, the 1970s, these accents actually can change quite rapidly, especially with newer generations of people. I think if you listen to a lot of younger New Yorkers, I think you'd find that rhoticity is probably more popular these days, but well, I'd like to see what the science has to say about that. But nevertheless, it's so much fun to fixate on these regional differences. At least I find it fun. But overall, I think that even British and American English are maybe more similar than they are different. And one thing that, of course, unites them, just in general, maybe all varieties of English, is the use of weak forms.

Christina: Yeah, weak forms. I mean, that's really difficult for learners of English. I mean, in Germany, if we have a letter on the page, we just pronounce it, but in English, there’s so many grammatical words which are just reduced, particularly the vowel. You have this Uh sound all the time. So you don't say of, you say of, yeah, and, for example, if you want to say, “I've been waiting for hours,” you have to be careful and say fer hours and not for hours. Otherwise it sounds like ‘not three, but four hours.’

Dominic: Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, these grammatical words, they're called prepositions, but yeah, they are these little linking words that are littered throughout our language that we need to express what we want to express, and I think they are some of the most likely culprits to be reduced. Like you talked about saying for instead of for, I would say the preposition to as in t-o. It's almost never pronounced as to. I think it's almost always pronounced as te, which is perfectly fluent and perfectly correct. And as you mentioned, it can sometimes be a marker of a non-native speaker if they pronounce these words exactly and they don't reduce them because it makes them sound like a computer or a robot. They're speaking a little bit too precisely.

Christina: Yeah, you're so right. I mean, as a learner, you just try to do a really good job and to do everything right, you know. And, by the way, this sometimes will also result in pronunciation problems. So in German, we have the sound V, but we don't have the sound W. So we have, like, the sound that you have in window. It just doesn't really exist like that in German. And when we learn that, then we will sometimes use it in contexts where we think, “Oh, wait a moment. I'm not supposed to use it. I have to use W instead.” And then instead of saying “village” we will say, “willage” because we're overdoing it. So yeah, learners typically try to pronounce things in the best possible way. But in the end, if you just pronounced everything as it is written on the page, well, for the weak forms, it just wouldn't be correct. And so it's not sloppy. That's just the way it is pronounced correctly. And that's what learners should also learn.

Dominic: Oh, totally. Even if I was trying to speak my most perfect and hyper-formal, I would still have weak forms. And if you listen to the BBC ,where they speak in the most beautiful King’s English, of course, it has weak forms. Yeah, because it's not sloppiness. It's English.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. That's how English works, you know. All languages have different underlying rules. And I mean, as a speaker, you're very often not aware of the rules of your own language. For example, in German, there's a very funny phenomenon, which is the devoicing of word-final plosives and fricatives, which means that, it’s quite a mouthful, in German it's called Auslautverhärtung. But the idea is that if you have a B, D, or G at the end of a word, it's going to be pronounced as P, T, or K.

Dominic: Yeah, like perhaps the most internationally famous German phrase, “Guten Tag.” Well, at least that's how I said it in the beginning, but in German class, I quickly learned that actually it's pronounced a bit differently.

Christina: Yeah. So, I mean, like, I think it sounds quite good when you're saying it. So I have the impression that you're already doing the right thing, but so this G sound in the end is not a G but a K. And so you wouldn't say “Guten TaG” but you would say “Guten TaK.” So you just don't use voicing here. And this is something that, for example, Germans will also carry over to English. And then they will not say, “There's a nice little dog,” but “There's a nice little doK.” And so this is something that we also need to be aware of when we speak English.

Dominic: Yeah, these different habits that we might carry over from our native language. Sometimes it might work. Sometimes that habit might be shared in the target language. But in other cases, it might not be, and this is a case where it's not.

Christina: Yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, linguistics can help learners understand when this is the case and when this isn't. And that's why I think it's so useful to also study some linguistics as part of practical language teaching, because in the end, I mean, teaching a language, well, relies on knowledge, linguistic knowledge. Linguistic in the widest sense, but to some extent also linguistics in the sense of the academic discipline of, well, applied linguistics.

Dominic: Oh, I totally agree with you. If you know some linguistics, if you know IPA, then you don't need to worry about the orthography or the spelling because IPA will tell you exactly how to pronounce a foreign word.

Christina: Oh, yes. Spelling. I mean, it's a fascinating topic, but I think we're going to save that one for another time, Dominic.

Dominic: Yeah, probably for the best.

Christina: So to everyone out there, stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 9: How do comics come to life on the big screen?

Christina: Hello everyone. Welcome back to Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Dominic: Yes, and we are so happy to be back. Christina, how are you? What have you been up to?

Christina: (laughing) I've been working a lot.

Dominic: Very understandable. Very understandable. I have also been working a lot, but when I'm not working, well, there are many things I like to do. One of which is to watch Japanese anime, Japanese cartoons.

Christina: Oh, that's cool.

Dominic: Oh yeah, and you know we have previously established that you and I both really like comic books. And so I think you might like checking out anime, because almost every single anime is adapted from a comic book. It's adapted from a manga.

Christina: Oh, yeah. I mean, I have to say I find manga very interesting in the sense that they are very beautiful, very aesthetically appealing. But I don't know very much about them. So I actually, I read more European comics. So what can you tell me about manga and anime?

Dominic: Well, as we previously talked about, of course, because it's Japanese, the book opens the opposite way, but that's kind of just the surface-level detail. Actually, all manga, I believe, are in black and white. And so part of the fun of seeing it adapted for the screen is seeing this world in color for the first time. Outside of maybe the cover of the book might be in color, but the entire comic book is in black and white.

Christina: That makes absolute sense to me. I mean, I suppose I'm okay with reading comic books in black and white, even though I have to say when I read the very old Disney comic books in black and white, I was always very happy to have color pages in between, because I think it's just easier to interpret the images in the comics when they are in color. But I suppose watching the whole film in black and white, that would be kind of strange. And probably you would also need gray in between, right? I mean, are they just black and white? Or is there also gray in between usually?

Dominic: Yeah, gray. Basically, every technique that you can use to create detail, just using the range of colors between black and white. It really takes a lot of skill, right? Especially if you have a really busy scene with a lot of detail, you don't want it to look like an amorphous blob. You want the reader to be able to distinguish what's happening in the scene. So I think it takes some talent to be able to illustrate with those limited colors.

Christina: Definitely.

Dominic: Something that I think is really striking about anime that I've noticed is that often it's like almost a one-to-one adaptation visually from the manga, almost like the manga serves as a storyboard of sorts for the screen adaptation. And this got me thinking about comic-to-screen adaptations across comics from other regions of the world.

Christina: Yeah, actually, that's a thing that I'm also very interested in. And, just for different types of comics, so I'm more interested in the European comics that I have known ever since my childhood, particularly Tintin. Do you know the Tintin comic book series?

Dominic: Yes, thank goodness. I am familiar with Tintin. I think there have been some international adaptations, which were quite popular in places like the United States, in contrast to Asterix and Obelix, which sadly I was not familiar with outside of French class, but I do know Tintin.

Christina: Yeah, I really love Tintin. I mean, for everyone who doesn't know Tintin, I mean, it's a relatively old series, I think from the 1940s, by a Belgian comic artist, Hergé, and Tintin is a young journalist and he's got a little dog, a fox terrier, Snowy, and he lives different types of adventure all over the world. And he's a really good guy. He tries to help people and it's all very beautifully drawn. So this special style is called Ligne claire, so “clear line,” because you've got very clear outlines and they're filled with color. So I really love that. And the interesting thing is that if you look at these images of Tintin, these panels, actually what Steven Spielberg once said is that they look as if they were a storyboard already. So probably that explains why he turned Tintin into a film as well. And as you just said, I mean, there have been different adaptations, but I suppose the one by Steven Spielberg is the most famous one.

Dominic: Oh nice. Maybe we should explain what a storyboard is, maybe for those who are unfamiliar, right? That during the film-making process often you actually have an artist sketch out visually what you envision each scene will look like. A lot of sketches actually. Like they really storyboard the whole thing, so that by the time you actually start filming and producing the movie, you kind of try to set things up and frame things as you envisioned in the drawings.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if you look at the Tintin comics, then you will see that they are very beautifully drawn. And, I mean, based on that quote from Steven Spielberg, you might have expected that in his film, he would do things exactly as they are already in the comic book. And so I set out to write an article about that, comparing the language that is used in the comic books that basically represent the original story for that plot, namely, The Secret of the Unicorn and theoretically Red Rackham’s Treasure. But actually what turned out to be is that they didn't use the second part of that story. So they kind of left out the second comic book, but instead they used The Crab with the Golden Claws and kind of combined that into a new story, and in the end, actually there was just very few scenes left. So I had set out to compare the language in the comics with the language in the film by placing the scenes next to each other, but in the end, that wasn't actually possible. But that's how it sometimes works out when you do research.

Dominic: So Christina, this film you looked at, it was an animated film, right?

Christina: Yeah, that's right. They made that in motion capture. And I think that's actually a very good idea because this world of Tintin is very highly stylized. And I think, so having motion capture, which on the one hand is quite realistic, but on the other hand, very clearly not the real world, I think that was an excellent choice.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, I love motion capture. Well, motion capture is huge in the world of video games. It's being used for almost everything now for capturing actors’ performances. But the reason I wanted to know if it was animated is because I think that when you have these animated film adaptations, for example, manga to anime or comics to an animated film, you know, you're going from one illustrated medium to another illustrated medium. And so it's kind of easier to really adapt it for the screen, I would think. Whereas with a live-action adaptation, it probably serves as more of an inspiration, right? And you take a lot more liberty.

Christina: Yeah, I would think so as well. But I have to say that they took quite a lot of liberty with the screenplay. And when I tried to find passages that I could compare with regard to language, only a few were left, but still, that was enough and it allowed me to see how the language that occurs in the comics is actually rendered in the films.

Dominic: Very nice. And I’m curious to see what you found because, well, for example, usually in comics, I think the dialogue is very brief, right? It's very short because there's very limited space. So that's one thing they can easily change in the film adaptation is they can give the characters more dialogue.

Christina: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, the comics, they are a printed medium and you just have the limited space within the speech bubbles, speech balloons for the spoken dialogues. So they will by necessity be relatively short. And of course, film is audio-visual. So you can just have longer conversations because you're not restricted by any boundaries in that same way.

Dominic: Yeah, the speech bubble. I'm a big fan. Incredible how the speech bubble very quickly became almost a convention in the visual arts to represent speech, and now everyone understands exactly what it means. Of course, there are other types of ways that information is presented in comics, as we touched on in our previous episode on comics. There's exposition, which is presented in different boxes, which is almost like a narration on the setting, and what have you. And there's also like language in the environment.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, all these different types of language are also represented in the films when the comics are adapted to the screen. So, for those text boxes, I mean, what can you do if you want to narrate something in a film? You could have insertions, that is, text that is overlaid in writing over the images. Or sometimes you will also have a voice-over where someone might just say, “20 years later, here I am again,” or something like that. And, if you think about onomatopoeia, I mean, onomatopoeia are so common in printed comic books because they represent sounds. And of course, if you make a film, then you just use the real sounds because it's more realistic.

Dominic: Of course, yeah.

Christina: And of course, I mean, written language in the environment. I mean, if someone's reading a newspaper or if there's a name on a doorbell or a shop sign, of course, you also expect that to be around in a film. So it's just transferred. So all of this actually occurs in the films as well.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, have you seen, like, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?

Christina: No, I haven't, but I'd like to.

Dominic: Well, you would love it. You would love it when it comes to adapting comics for the screen because they went for this, at the time, I think the film released in 2018, they went for this very unique visual style where they really tried to imitate the visual aesthetic of comic books, both in the way the characters are illustrated, kind of using the outlines and such, also with the onomatopoeia, but also they use this style of animation called decimated animation, where instead of having fluid motion, the motion looks very kind of staccato, almost stop motion in a way, which just, it just kind of invokes a comic book, almost like you're reading across the page.

Christina: Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. So creating this a very artificial kind of style that reminds you of the printed page. And of course, the different panels where you as the reader have to make the connection between the different images. And so that's the same thing. So in film, I mean, what is a film? It's just a very fast sequence of images. Particularly in animation, it’s kind of obvious, you know? But yeah, so I think it's a very interesting artistic choice.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I mean, these visual languages have become so signature, so finding creative ways to adapt it is so cool. But aside from the visual language, we're also very interested, when it comes to linguistics, we're interested in the kind of spoken actual language.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And that as well. I mean, you have to make quite a lot of choices because if you come to think about it, when you read a comic book like Tintin, as a reader, you are reading all the different characters. So if you do that kind of internal reading, so probably to some extent, they have your own voice. But on the other hand, of course, you would expect different characters to speak with a different voice when you see them on the screen, when you hear them on a screen. So, Tintin, for example, I mean, he's got a very youthful appearance. So you would expect him to have a youthful, male, slightly higher voice possibly, whereas Captain Haddock, I mean, he is that, well, that captain. He loves drinking. He uses a lot of swear words that are quite harmless, but still he often gets angry, so you would expect him to be rougher in his voice. And he's also older. So you would also expect to hear that.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, I mean, I think maybe an analogue for this would be Thomas the Tank Engine, which I watched a lot when I was younger. Not quite a comic book, but a children's book series, so it's full of illustrations. And when they adapted it for TV, they would just have a single narrator narrating the whole show, and the single narrator would do the dialogue for each character, almost like you could imagine a parent reading you the story. But then when they finally went to the big screen and they created a feature film, they actually hired individual voice actors to voice each character. And you can imagine some people when they heard the voices of these characters, they thought, “Oh, I don't know if I like that. That's not the voice I imagined that character having.”

Christina: Yeah, exactly. That's a very strong feeling because, obviously, I mean, it's different when you have an actual actor, because, I mean, they will just use their own voice. But when it's an animated film, well, you have to give them some kind of voice. And so you want to meet the expectations. So I think it's very interesting what you're saying there about Thomas the Tank Engine, because in Germany, we also have a program which is called Die Sendung mit der Maus, which is “The Program with the Mouse,” and there they also read children’s books to children. And they will also do the different voices just like a parent would.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, that’s very cool. Yeah, very nostalgic. Also interestingly, Thomas had, they had different narration for the UK and U.S. version because it's a British program. It's a series of British children's books and the show is made in Britain, but then would redo the voiceover with an American narrator, which is very funny, English to English, and it seems to me that, you know, most of the time when it comes to American and British media, we don't dub it or do voiceover. We just take it as it is, we can understand each other. But it seems to me that sometimes for children's media, when it comes to the different regional accents, regional varieties, they actually go to the trouble of redubbing it and redoing the audio.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, that's a very important aspect that you're mentioning because also for Tintin, I mean, the stories basically take place in Belgium. I mean Tintin is from Belgium. So it's neither British nor American English, but when you're making a film for an international audience in English, then you need to pick one of these two varieties. So what variety would you go for?

Dominic: Yeah, so to maintain the European feeling, yeah, I would probably go for a British accent. Yeah. Because even though it's being translated from the French, it still feels European when you hear a European accent.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, that's also the decision that Steven Spielberg made. And I have to say I quite like that, particularly, I mean, since British English is the accent that I'm more familiar with. But it's not the only accent that has been used in Tintin adaptations. So, there's an earlier adaptation as a series from the 1990s, and there, they actually use American English. And I mean, there’s also things to be said in favor of using American English here because if you think about Tintin, I mean, Tintin is very, very neutral. So, you would also like to have an accent that people identify with. And, so, I mean, many Hollywood movies are made, and they are very popular all over the world. And so, I suppose on that level, American English would be quite unmarked. So, that also makes sense as a decision.

Dominic: Yeah. I mean, I think about, you know, other settings like, for example, fantasy settings, if it’s The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, they also go for the British accents, for the European accents. Some have said that the American accent would just feel way too out of place in this fantasy setting. And I can understand it's almost anachronistic, right? Because medieval times, these things unfolded in Europe, and the United States didn't exist yet. But, you know, it's okay. Maybe it would be weird if there was a Western, something set in the Wild West and they had British accents. That wouldn't sound right. So, it's totally okay, to each their own. So, I totally understand how these regional varieties, these accents that we choose, it can actually have a big impact on the feeling of the adaptation.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And, that's the thing. I mean, on the one hand, you have the historical context, but on the other hand, I mean, you've got that neutrality. So, I mean, anyone who has seen Tintin before can identify Tintin, I think. But the interesting thing is, once you try to identify Tintin when you don't see his hair and when he's not accompanied by his dog Snowy, actually it gets difficult because then you see it's just a kind of smiley. So it's just two dots as the eyes and it’s very reduced. Yeah. And this is a very interesting aspect because, I mean, in some comic books and their adaptations, I suppose you kind of want to see a hero who's living these adventures and who's the kind of role model, but in the case of Tintin, I think that Hergé really tried to put the reader in the role of Tintin, so that you can identify with Tintin. And I think that's why it's particularly important you have to take care of all these aspects when turning that into a film.

Dominic: Oh, I totally see what you’re saying. I mean it depends on the perspective of the viewer, of course, right? But yeah, if you're an American watching Tintin with the British accents, it feels foreign, which is okay because I think that's the point. But, if you wanted it to feel more neutral and personal, then it would make more sense to use a regional variety native to where you're from. So yeah, this is really fascinating. I never quite thought of it like that. Nice.

Christina: Yeah. And it's only when you start looking at the comic books and their adaptation that all of a sudden you notice the things that you never were aware of. For example, Snowy the dog, he actually talks in the comic books and they're actually using speech bubbles for him, not thought bubbles, but actually Tintin ignores what he says. He doesn't react to it. And in the film, yeah, but in the film, actually, what happens is that Snowy doesn't talk. And there’s a very interesting interview with Steven Spielberg in which he also explains why this is the case because he says, in the film, Snowy can move. And so the movements allow Snowy to express his feelings, and that enables him to communicate with Tintin. But of course, in the comic books, this wouldn't have been possible because even though you have the feeling that a story is unfolding in front of your eyes, actually it's just individual drawings and there's not so many of them that you would see the movement of the dog, right? So that's why Snowy actually has those speech bubbles in the original, but it's not kept and I'm glad they did it like that. I think it would have been very weird to hear Snowy talk for real in the film, whereas it's perfectly okay to see that on the printed page.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, well this is, I mean, and this is just kind of a general struggle when it comes to adapting any, like, a book for the screen, right? Is that ultimately, whether it's a third-person narration or a first-person narration, there's so much information in the book that just can't possibly be conveyed in the film. Often they stick just to the dialogue and so for example, the character's thoughts, how will you convey those? You could have the actor do a voiceover, right? Representing their thoughts. But if you did it a lot, it might be kind of overbearing. You could have the actor do an aside or a soliloquy. Those are very rare. I like them. But yeah, so that is fascinating about how do you convey these things for the screen? You know, there's a lot of artistic choice in this. I don't think there's any right answer.

Christina: No, there isn't. Also some people will prefer some choices over others. But then, I mean, it also depends on what kind of target group you have in mind. So, for example, in the Steven Spielberg film, they use far fewer swear words than in the original comic books, because Captain Haddock, I mean, he famously swears all the time, but it's very, very mild swear words that he uses. So one of his catchphrases is “billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles.” And I checked that. I wanted to see what a barnacle is, and it's something completely okay. It's just an animal, right?

Dominic: Yes, I believe it's a sea creature of some kind. Although I'm not a marine biologist, sadly.

Christina: Yeah. That's also what I gather. And so nonetheless, I mean, they drastically reduce the amount of swear words that he uses in the film by comparison to the comic book. But then possibly just having him be angry once or twice will be enough to convey that idea in the film, whereas in the comic book, well, probably people just enjoy reading those long sequences of made-up funny swear words.

Dominic: Oh yeah. Well, and I also like the way sometimes the way swear words are represented in comics is with a grawlix, right? Which is this term that someone came up with. It's when you use the series of symbols, you know, like the pound, the at sign, the exclamation, the dollar sign, you just put all the... all these symbols together and it very clearly represents a swear word, but it could represent anything. So, yeah, that is also very interesting about swearing or made-up swearing and how that gets adapted across different languages and adapted for the screen.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, talking about different languages, I mean if you think about the language in the real world, in the film, you have to make a decision whether you want the text on a shop sign to be in French, whether you want it to be in English. And again, I mean, different adaptations of Tintin made different choices. So Stephen Spielberg went for English, and I think that makes sense. But at the same time, well, this English text, for example, on a scroll of parchment that is very important because it informs about where a treasure can be found, in the German version, it's still in English. So since the films are for very young viewers, so starting at six years, they might not be able to to understand the text if they had to read a translation that is superimposed, for example. And so, one of the decisions that they apparently also made is to have Tintin read out all the important text passages that are written, and very often, and I think that's great, very often he just reads them out to Snowy. That makes so much sense, telling his dog what he's just reading. So he doesn't have to just mumble it into the air, but at the same time it's very well understandable for all viewers.

Dominic: Yeah, and I really like what you said about with the environmental language because, like, you know, if they did keep it French, for example, it wouldn't be entirely weird to me as the viewer that, oh, the environment’s in French because it takes place in Belgium, but the characters are speaking English because, you know, they're speaking English for me, but I can just try to imagine that this is French. They do that a lot with adaptations. Actually, recently, there's a very, very famous TV show called Shogun and it takes place in Japan in, like, the 1500s or 1600s. And at that time in history, the Japanese had very little contact with the Europeans, but they had some limited contact and Portuguese was the lingua franca at the time, the lingua franca of the seas. And so the characters, the European characters and the Japanese characters, will speak Portuguese with each other. But whenever they're speaking Portuguese, they're speaking in English, of course, for the viewer, because it's an English-language production. And that was jarring for me initially, because they'll say things like, “Oh my gosh, you speak Portuguese. Well, your Portuguese is so fluent,” and they're speaking in English, right? So I have to mentally imagine that there is a different language happening, and that took some adjustment.

Christina: Well, that's a thing that happens to Germans, I mean, when we watch dubbed films and someone might say, “Oh, you speak great English,” but they're saying it in German, and we just have that more often than you, I suppose.

Dominic: Yes. That's why I must say I do sometimes enjoy it when something takes place in a different region and they actually speak that language. But of course, you need to read subtitles, and so for a children's program, something like Tintin, which is aimed towards a younger audience, you probably wouldn't want to do subtitles. Although interestingly for anime, I think the community actually prefers reading the English subtitles with the Japanese audio over listening to the English dub. But of course, the English dub exists and you can listen to it if you'd like.

Christina: Yeah, but I mean, I can understand that. I mean, in Germany, we don't have a lot of subtitled films. But when I was studying in Great Britain, we actually had a series of Chinese films in Chinese with English subtitles, and I really enjoyed listening to the Chinese original text. I mean, even though I didn't understand it, I thought it added character to the film. I think it was a very good choice. So, yeah, I'm quite in favor of that. But of course, for films that are targeted at children, I think it's really good to provide them with everything they need in the audio of their language. And I mean, if you think of the written language in the world of the film, I mean, the special thing about written language is that you can always return to what you just read and read it again. That's why written language is quite different from spoken language. If you read an academic article, sometimes you have very long sentences. And that is because you can just read those slowly at your pace, you go back to that. So that's perfectly okay. But in spoken language, we have the limitations of our cognitive processing, we are simply unable to produce very, very long complex sentences. And they’re also very hard for listeners to understand. And so that's why we have these differences. And in the film, however, what happens is that you have written language, you have that text on the parchment, for example, but then it's just visible for a few seconds and then it's gone. So it's a very unusual situation, so normally writing is permanent, but in the film, it isn't for the viewer because it will be gone in a moment, when the camera shows something new.

Dominic: Yeah, another fascinating observation, Christina. You have many fascinating observations. Yeah, totally, the way we speak is not the same way as the way we write. I hope, if that's a myth we have to dispel, you know, especially because when we speak, you're right. Generally we keep it briefer. And also we speak in fragments. We speak in sentence fragments. We are not beholden by the laws of grammar, not completely, when we speak. I mean, if you do speak ungrammatically, it can kind of confuse or stun people, maybe, but we do not have to speak in perfect complete sentences. We can speak completely differently. So yeah, you're totally right.

Christina: Well, it's something that we do naturally, but that we are very rarely aware of. I mean, as a linguist, I became most aware of this when I looked at corpora of spoken language, at transcripts of actual spoken language. And the moment you do that, the moment you look at a conversation, you're going to notice that it looks very strange. Sometimes it's very hard to place the boundaries between sentences. Should a full stop go here or is it rather a comma? It's really a different thing. And so, yeah, when we watch films, we have the impression that the language in the films is actually very natural language, but then it isn't. It's been written to be spoken and to sound as if it was spontaneous, but it isn't.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, what you said with the transcripts. You know I sympathize because I often, I put together the transcripts for our podcast episodes and, yeah, trying to decide on the punctuation, where one sentence ends and another begins, it is a fool's errand. It is just far too difficult. So very quickly I get confronted with the fact that we speak differently than we write, which is really interesting, though, that speaking and writing are two different art forms. And so it's fascinating to hear about how this factors into adapting comics to the screen, maybe just adapting books for the screen in general, too.

Christina: Yeah, definitely. I mean, very often the films that we get to watch are adaptations of comics or of novels, because very often the producers hope to attract the fan base to go and watch those films. But yeah, still, it's not spoken language, just like the language in comic books isn't 100% like spoken language, but very close. So is the language that is used in films. For example, you have very little overlap. So if you have a group of people talking, you will rarely have them fight for who speaks next, or you get very few interruptions in a film, or you get very few false starts, that you start a sentence in one way and then go off in a completely different direction. There’s a lot of things, yeah.

Dominic: Yeah. And Christina, something you reminded me of, the Academy Awards or the Oscars, probably I would say the most famous award show in Hollywood, the most famous award show in international film, though obviously mostly with an English language film focus. They have two different categories, right? They have “Best Original Screenplay” and they have “Best Adapted Screenplay,” right? Which I think highlights the fact that these are two different art forms. These are two different skills.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, I think it makes a difference in how the whole thing is produced. But in the end, if you look at the dialogues that people have in screenplay writing, it seems it's very important to get rid of everything that doesn't drive the narrative and the action forward. And for that reason, for example, if you have a conversation with someone in real life, sometimes they will say things which don't really contribute anything to the conversation, and you wouldn't have that in a film because you need to save space. You don't want to produce various minutes of conversation that are good for nothing to tell the story.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, I think there's a term people will say, what is it? A “throwaway line of dialogue,” right? Which is if a character says something offhand, which has no impact. You're right. Usually you'd want to avoid, I mean, it can make things kind of seem more natural. You can have a little bit of that so that the characters really seem like real people. But, in general, yeah, I think the audience is going to assume that what the characters say is important for the plot in some way.

Christina: Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is something that we always assume anyway as humans when we have conversations. So this cooperative principle, that we assume that if I ask you a question and you reply to me, even if it's not a direct reply to what I asked, I can assume that somehow I can derive some information from this. So, for example, if you asked me, “What time is it?” And I might say, “Hmm, I've just had lunch.” Well, probably it means I can't tell you the time because I don't have a clock nearby, but well, you know when I usually have lunch, so you can guess what time it may roughly be.

Dominic: Probably around noon, yeah.

Christina: Well, not always in my life. But it's a very German thing. Having lunch at noon is definitely a very German thing. So it's good. You already got used to that in Germany, Dominic.

Dominic: That was always lunchtime at school in the U.S. Just about 12:00 noon, always. But I like this, this cooperative principle, that in general you assume your conversation partner is engaged in the conversation and replying in a manner which moves the conversation forward in some way, even if it's not always immediately apparent. Yeah, that is another fascinating thing. That is so cool. It's so cool to have this linguist’s perspective on these things. I like this.

Christina: Yeah, me too. That's a nice thing. I mean, I love reading comic books, I love watching films, and being a linguist allows me to do both of this and then also derive what I feel are interesting ideas. And I'm glad you also liked the discussion of these. And I mean, if you look at the comic books and the films, then you will see that there are quite a lot of similarities there, too, because I mean, in contrast to a novel, what they have in common is that you have the surrounding context, as an image. I mean, either a still image or a moving image. And this allows you to use language in a way that is similar, by saying things like, “Drop that immediately.” And then, well, you just look at the image to see what is meant, you know? That's not something that you could do in a novel without explaining with language what is meant. So, yeah, so the comic books and the films, they have a lot in common in terms of language, but at the same time, we can see some differences there. And I thought that was a very nice result for me after this initial frustration that I couldn't compare long stretches of dialogues with each other. I still found a few passages which I was able to compare. And so that still enabled me to kind of draw very interesting conclusions from the material.

Dominic: Oh yeah. And I like also what you said, yeah, comic books are almost kind of like the halfway mark between a book, or a novel, and a film or a television show, a motion picture of some kind, an animation. So, yeah, and also what you said with the results, well, that's part of science, right? That's the scientific process. And what I do like is I like how you really highlight for our listeners that, you know, when it comes to science, when it comes to research, you really get to research what you're most interested in. You get to have fun with it, because there's probably a perception about scientific research, academic research, you think maybe it's very dry or it's very dull. I don't know, you imagine a school textbook or a scientific article or something. But, you know, you get to research what you love. You have to research what you love because it requires so much motivation and effort that if you don't love what you're researching, you won't be able to do it. So I hope people kind of get this idea that research can be fun.

Christina: Definitely. I mean, that's what we hope to transmit with this podcast. So by picking out the things that I hope could also be interesting for a general audience, I hope that, well, some people out there will see that linguistics is a wonderful subject and, well, they might want to engage more with linguistics in the future.

Dominic: Yeah. We certainly hope so. I mean, you know, I'm not a linguist by training, but it's just so extremely fascinating that I can't stay away, right? It's my little hobby. So, no, you're absolutely right.

Christina: More than that I would say. You know so much about it.

Dominic: Yeah, maybe so. But yeah, Christina, fantastic, fantastic discussion today. I think, I'm going to go watch Tintin.

Christina: That's a very good idea. It's a nice film. So watch it or read it. Either way. It's a good idea. And yeah, so to everyone out there, stay curious, have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 10: Why do we check in at the check-in but check out at the checkout?

Dominic: Hi, Christina, back again for another episode.

Christina: Yay, here we are. So, Dominic, on a recent episode, I asked you how your learning of German was going. So, have you got an update for me?

Dominic: Yeah, you know, moving along nicely as usual, but German is tricky. It has a reputation for being tricky, although in some ways, I think the difficulty is overstated, but it's got some really tricky grammar.

Christina: Yeah, that's true. I'm so glad that I speak it naturally and don't have to think about it. Oh my God. All those cases and the different, gendered articles. I'm so glad that I can just speak it like that.

Dominic: Yeah, and the declensions and the three grammatical genders. Yeah, you know, it has a reputation for being really difficult. It's certainly more difficult than the Romance languages. I feel, like, more difficult than maybe French or Spanish, but, you know, not as hard as, like, Russian or Chinese or something. But yeah.

Christina: Well, that depends, you know. It depends on whether you are a native speaker of Russian or Chinese, because obviously, if you are born into a community that speaks those languages, you will feel it's easy for you.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You're totally right. It depends on what your first language is. So, obviously, here I'm speaking from the perspective of an English native speaker, but, maybe if you were a Dutch speaker, German would be maybe the most straightforwardly easy language to learn because it's the most closely related language to Dutch, and the grammar is largely shared, and a lot of the vocabulary is shared. So yeah, definitely, you're right.

Christina: Yeah, I suppose it would be easier, even though I have to say, if I think about Dutch, I'm not sure. I mean, like, if I tried to learn it, I suppose I would still need to learn a lot of things by heart. So in the end, having a lot of cases, having a lot of things like gender of articles, et cetera, to learn by heart, this is something that does make a language more difficult.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, totally. Well, they say that Dutch is halfway between German and English, so I'm hoping that with knowledge of both German and English, maybe Dutch will be a slam dunk, but I haven't attempted it yet. But there's actually a feature that Dutch shares with German, which is really long words. German is notorious for this. It takes all the fall for it internationally for long words, but actually, as I've learned, Dutch also has long words.

Christina: Yeah. I’m sure they do, but yeah, I know the German reputation, of course. I mean, we have long compounds like Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, and things like that, which are contrived, but still, it shows the principle. We can just string different words, one after another. And in the end we get a very, very long compound.

Dominic: Yes, really long words like Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen or Unabhängigkeitserklärungen. To complete outsiders, to people with no knowledge of German, these words look really crazy because I think maybe they're imagining that all on its own, it has a completely unique meaning. But actually, it's just a noun compound. It's just many nouns put together with no spaces in between. And so as a German, when you know all of the component words, you know, you just read them one after the other. It's actually not so bad.

Christina: No, it isn't. So in contrast to English, where you typically have spaces in longer compounds, in German, the general rule is that you just string everything together. I mean, you can also insert a hyphen occasionally, but let's say that the standard is that you just, yeah, write everything together as a single sequence of letters. Also when it's really long. But of course, these very, very long compounds, I mean, they're not so frequent in the language. So this is something that we are well known for, and there are some that are really used, like Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz, but very often we just use abbreviations for these very long ones.

Dominic: Yeah, you're totally right, at least in my German learning. You know, these super long words are usually things you only encounter in quite formal speech. Certainly legal contexts, a lot of laws, a lot of the longest words in the German language are legal terms, and so legal terms are not an everyday occurrence, I would say, unless you're a lawyer, perhaps. But there's actually a very famous person, a very famous writer, in the English-speaking world who took issue with the long words in German, Mark Twain, an American treasure, an American gem, one of our best. Have you read any Mark Twain?

Christina: Oh, yes, I have. As a child, I read Tom Sawyer. I found that really interesting, and I think the idea of making other people want to paint a fence for him and pay him to do so, I thought that was a really, really clever idea.

Dominic: Yeah, very nice. I'm happy to hear that. He was many things beyond writing novels. He was a humorist as they say, what a great word, a humorist. I would like to be a humorist. And he was very witty. It's actually to the point where you might know, like, he is, like, very serially, quotes are misattributed to him. Anything that's even remotely funny or witty people will attribute to Mark Twain. He did say many funny and witty things, but certainly quotes are overattributed to him, I would say. But putting that aside, he wrote this delightful essay called “The Awful German Language.” Are you familiar with it?

Christina: Oh, yes, I know that one. I really like that one because he's poking so much fun at German. And I think he's got a point in many of the things that he says.

Dominic: Yeah, I mean, certainly the title is already a bit incendiary, but actually it's because he actually spent some time in Germany learning the German language. And so that's why he ended up writing this essay where he complains about the features of German that he finds extremely difficult for a learner, at least an English native speaker, a learner like he was. He talks about all of these different issues and makes his suggestions for how he thinks German can be improved. And one thing he takes aim at is the compound words. Famously he says, “These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions.”

Christina: Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean to his English language-eye, they must have looked like monsters when you have a sequence of 44 letters and one hyphen like Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-Hyperaktivitätsstörung, which by the way is just the spelled-out form of ADHD in German. Well, that looks like it's contrived, but it isn't. It's real.

Dominic: These remarkably long compound words are really a hallmark feature of German, but English has compound words as well, though usually shorter, right?

Christina: Yeah, you're right. I mean, most English compounds are relatively short, but then there’s also some longer ones. But if we talk about compounds, probably it's a good idea to consider what is a compound, actually. I don't know if everyone out there knows that. So I would define compounds for the purpose of this podcast as a word that is made up of two or more words, which also occur on their own in the language. For example, bedroom, because a bedroom is a room that contains beds.

Dominic: Yeah, when it comes to these compounds, in certain cases, it feels like it can almost be a matter of personal preference or style or even regional differences that decide whether someone chooses to spell it as two words or spell it as a compound word or spell it with a hyphen. English spelling is already notoriously difficult for other reasons. And so when it comes to writing these compound words, it seems all the more chaotic. In cases like the ones you mentioned, like bedroom, it's universally agreed, but not in all cases, right? Sometimes there's disagreement.

Christina: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, there’s quite a lot of compounds which supposedly, and not only supposedly, have different spellings. I mean, one example that you find in the literature is flower pot. How would you spell flower pot, Dominic?

Dominic: I want to say that would be two words.

Christina: Yeah, I would say so too, but the literature also tells us it's apparently possible to spell it as a single word without a space or with a hyphen, which looks strange to me. And that's the thing. So I mean, we have certain intuitions about how words should be spelled. I mean, in some cases, it's less clear, but in other cases it's a lot clearer. I actually got interested in this whole question of how compounds are spelled because I wanted to find out whether the German word Sandburg corresponds to the English word sand castle, and then I typed that into the dictionary, uhm, a monolingual dictionary, and I spelled it as sand and castle with a space in between, but I got no results. And so I thought, “Oh, okay, is it not the correct word then?” But then I had the idea, “Oh, wait a moment, so probably I should spell it as a single word or with a space,” and I tried these two options and they both yielded different results. So in the case of the hyphenation, I got a list of suggestions saying, “Did you mean these words here?” And only when I typed in the word sandcastle as a single word with no space, did I get the entry that I was looking for. And I thought, “Oh no, that can't be. I mean, how can something as seemingly unimportant as the spelling of this compound, which doesn't even have any reflection on how it's pronounced, how can that prevent me from finding what I'm looking for?” So, yeah, and that got me interested in this question of spelling compounds.

Dominic: Yeah, I’m so surprised there because sand castle, I would definitely spell as two words. I feel like, I mean, that's just my feeling. I wish I had something more scientific to go off other than it's just a feeling I have of what feels right as a compound word. But I guess these compound words can actually be closely connected to feelings because I think maybe to some people, this certainly must seem like an exceptionally nerdy thing to focus on. But actually, people get very impassioned about these types of stylistic choices.

Christina: Absolutely. It matters a lot to people, and, if you talk to people about spelling, they very often have preferences, very clear preferences and intuitions. But then, of course, sometimes the intuitions fail. And the nice thing is that in the research that I carried out, I actually noticed that these intuitions that you have, that I have, they’re actually founded in certain, yeah, statistical preferences that certain compounds have of being spelled with a space or with a hyphen or as a single word. And that actually allows you to bring, kind of, order into this chaos.

Dominic: Oh yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes I envy mathematicians and engineers because math is very beautifully orderly. Language is a bit more like anarchy, but that's okay. That's what makes it fun and beautiful in its own way. And so Christina, in your research, it seems you actually found a pattern for compound words. So can you tell me what you found?

Christina: Yeah, so, what I actually wanted to do is I wanted to make a website. I thought I would test many different hypotheses based on a lot of language material, and that's what I did. And then I thought, “Okay, I'll take all the different features like how long the words are, what part of speech they consist of, the frequency of the parts, the historical origin, whether any sounds, any letters clash at the boundaries and things like that. And everything that is relevant, I'll put all of that into the big statistics machine and then produce a website, which people can use, and then they can just write in the parts of their compound, and the website will tell them what, let's say, the likeliest spelling is.” But the fun thing is it didn't work out like that. In the end, it turns out that if you do all of that and if you look at the many, many different reasons that determine why compounds take a hyphen or not, then you're left with a very, very easy rule of thumb and you don't even need a website for that. You can just kind of learn it by heart.

Dominic: Oh, okay. A rule of thumb. Okay. What is this rule of thumb?

Christina: It's actually very easy because the most important thing that you need to know is whether you want to spell an adjective, an adverb, a verb, or a noun. So if you want to spell a verb like to blow-dry, use a hyphen. If you want to spell an adjective like world-famous, use a hyphen. If you want to spell an adverb compound like well-nigh, use a hyphen. So everything except nouns is basically hyphenated. So I think that already takes a lot of weight off the chest of someone trying to spell compounds.

Dominic: Okay. All right. This sounds pretty intuitive so far. But you know, we opened with talking about these really long German noun compounds, and we do have noun compounds in English as well. So, what did you find there with noun compounds?

Christina: Well, I found something that completely supports what you said earlier, Dominic. Namely, if you have a long noun compound in English, you use a space. And long already means that if you have two parts and one part has two syllables and the other part has one syllable, like in bathing suit, then you're going to spell it with a space in between.

Dominic: That's a pretty low bar for it being a long word. It has more than one syllable. Okay.

Christina: Yeah, English is different from German there. I suppose a long compound would be different in German.

Dominic: Oh yeah, oh my gosh, you're right. Okay, can you hit me with some examples here?

Christina: Yes, let's take some sweet stuff, apple cake, chocolate cake, they’re spelled with a space.

Dominic: Oh, those are some nice examples. I like those concepts. What about other types of cake?

Christina: Well, there’s other types of cake too. I mean, there's also cheesecake, and cupcake, and pancake. But, well, these are usually not spelled with a space as you might have noticed.

Dominic: No, those are beautiful compound words.

Christina: Yeah, beautiful compound words, beautiful concepts. But in these cases, they are spelled as a sequence of letters without a space in between, and that is because they only have two syllables, so they're noun compounds with two syllables, cheesecake, cupcake, pancake, and the second part has more than two letters and therefore it's spelled as a single word.

Dominic: All right, so cheesecake, cupcake, pancake, two single syllable words put together, I can understand that. But then, Christina, why do we check in at the check-in but we check out at the checkout?

Christina: Because that's the last rule that is still needed to complete the picture, because the word check-in as a noun, the check-in that you go to, also has two syllables. It's a noun, but the last part just has two letters. And in these cases, like check-in or make-up, there's a preference for a hyphen, at least in British English, and that's what I looked at. But of course, if you have the verb to check in, well, that is a verb that is not a compound. This is a so-called phrasal verb. So, you just spell it with a space.

Dominic: Yeah, phrasal verbs. English is littered with these, as is German, so I won't complain. I won't complain in German, but these things are very troubling for learners. To get in, to get out, to get up, to get down, to get over, to get through. This must just be an absolute nightmare. But yeah, so we have a lot of these compound words that are built out of these phrasal verbs. One that always trips me up is when you hang out with people, it's two words, but then if you had a nice hangout, it's a single word.

Christina: Yeah, because it's a noun, you know? So, it always depends on the part of speech. So, in the end, the part of speech is the decisive factor. I didn't expect that. But then, of course, I mean, in research, you often don't expect the things that happen. I started that topic of researching the spelling of English compounds because I thought, “Oh, that's a nice little thing to do after finishing my PhD thesis, and I'll write a nice little article about it, which helps me have an idea what to do when I'm in doubt.” But then I spent many, many years working on this, but in the end, well, it became a Habilitation thesis, my second big book, and I was very happy to have written it.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. And it seems to me it did attract quite a bit of interest. When this was written about online, actually, the comments were quite plentiful.

Christina: Yeah, that's true. I mean, it was very unusual for me because, I mean, this is a book that was published by Cambridge University Press, and I was very, very happy about that, a very good publisher and very serious as a topic, I thought, and then I was asked to do an interview with the Daily Mail, which is probably not the first, yeah, let's say, newspaper you have in mind for covering academic research. But I have to say it was fantastic, a wonderful experience with a journalist who really went into all the trouble of asking me questions about my research for a long time and doing her very best to portray it for a general audience. And that was really exciting. And then people, yeah, started commenting on it. I didn't expect that. Not all of the comments based on compound spelling only, but still almost 900 comments. That was a lot. I didn't expect that.

Dominic: Yeah, fascinating, Christina. No, I can certainly understand the interest. I'm very interested in this. I'm actually really curious. You know, a moment ago, you mentioned that perhaps there is a regional divide here. I don't know anything about this. Can you explain some of that for me?

Christina: Well, I mean the regional divide. I suppose you mean American versus British English?

Dominic: Yes.

Christina: Yeah. So one of the things that I also did in this very long book was to try and test whether there's a difference between British and American English spelling. And I did expect to find fewer hyphens in American English than in British English, but in the end, the corpora, the text collections that I looked at, they didn't really differ, at least not drastically, from each other. But then it might be because the material was from the 1990s. So that actually contradicts my intuition about the way it should be. But of course, I mean, I just have to accept what my material tells me, but I will assume that in the meantime, I should find a lot more hyphenation in American English than in British English. So probably an update, a follow-up study, would be timely.

Dominic: Yeah, those results make sense to me at least because I feel like sometimes when it comes to hyphenating versus compounding, it can be just a matter of personal taste or personal style. I wouldn't expect to find a kind of regional pattern, but you did. Why did you expect to see a regional difference?

Christina: Because that's what the literature told me.

Dominic: Oh, the literature said that.

Christina: Yeah, that was the expectation. And I mean, it was also my intuition. I had the impression it should be like that, but then my material just didn't suggest that.

Dominic: Nice. So in some ways you found what you expected to find and in other ways you didn't. Okay. How did you go about investigating this?

Christina: I thought that if you want to find out, for a new compound, whether it's likely to spell with a space or with a hyphen or as a single word, then you need to look at those compounds that are always spelled as a single word, or with a space, or with a hyphen. And so I wrote to different dictionary publishers and asked them if I could have the headword lists from their dictionaries. And then I had someone write a script for me so that we could compare the different lists with each other and then see which words were always spelled in one particular way. And then I coded a lot of things for those words. So I coded how long they are, where they're from, I coded whether there are any letters that collide at the boundaries and things like that. And, yeah, in the end, well, that's what I used to determine that spelling strategy that I told you about.

Dominic: Nice. Yeah, writing a computer script to try and look into this. You're really putting the digital in digital linguistics. A “headword list,” what is a headword list?

Christina: So a “headword” is that word in bold print that you find in a dictionary, which is the word that you're interested in.

Dominic: Ah yeah, okay. So just the words themselves and not their definitions.

Christina: Exactly. Yes.

Dominic: Gotcha. Okay. That is very cool.

Christina: Yeah, it's very cool. And I have to say, I'm very grateful for all the support that I received. I mean, from the dictionary publishers who trusted me to use their word lists, the support that I received in writing the program by Lennart Schreiber, and also from Antony Unwin, who supported me with the statistical research. So at the time, he was a professor of statistics at my university, and I was very happy to have him help me to do everything in such a way that I would arrive at the best possible strategy.

Dominic: Yeah, very nice. Well, not all of us have the dictionary on speed dial, so this certainly sounds like a really cool opportunity, a really cool privilege that you had here. So this strategy that you developed, well, a stopped clock is right twice a day. How confident are you that this kind of technique will work going forward?

Christina: I was very happy to find that the strategy works very well. So what I did is I got some texts and I looked at new compounds, and then I tested how well I could predict their spelling. And actually, it worked in three out of four cases, which is quite good, considering that you have three different options to choose from. And in addition, what I also did is that I asked two English native speakers who were also experts on language to provide the spelling of compounds, and in the end, they did practically exactly as the algorithm did. So my spelling strategy is about as good as someone who knows English spelling really, really well. And I think that's really great news for learners.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, this must seem so daunting for learners, but actually, it's difficult for native speakers too. I sometimes have to Google these things. I have to Google things in English all the time when writing if I want my writing to be really, really strong. But I think one of the takeaways here is that, first of all, sometimes there's no consistency with some of these compounds. So don't worry about it too much. But if you are worried about it, and if you want to apply some regularity to your writing, then Christina's wonderful rule might be helpful for you.

Christina: At least that's what I hope. Yeah. So I would say, the basic takeaway is that the spelling of English compounds is not completely chaotic. So, there’s actually many, many different things that play a role, and that's why superficially you would think it's chaos, but it isn't. And so, by applying that strategy that we talked about, and that can also be found on the website, for example, that is still around, you can just get an idea, yeah, of a principle that will allow you to spell in a way that most people would say looks kind of right. And I mean, if the spelling strategy provides you with a spelling that you feel is not okay intuitively, there's also a list of reasons why that might be the case.

Dominic: Yeah. You mentioned this website tool that you made. It's really very handy, so I think we'll include that in our episode description, in the links, if anybody wants to check that out. In the meantime, Christina, I think I'll go experiment with it and try to make some compound words.

Christina: Yeah, excellent. That's the spirit. And everyone else out there, why don't you do that, too? So stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 11: How can you translate the magic of fairy tales?

Dominic: Christina, once upon a time, two linguistics nerds gathered to record another episode of their podcast.

Christina: Lo and behold, it was Linguistics Behind the Scenes. Hi, Dominic.

Dominic: Hi, that was good. Yeah, Christina, you know, as I've told you, I've been here in Europe. I've been trying to travel around. And when I went to Paris, I happened to pass by Disneyland Paris. Have you ever been?

Christina: Oh, yes, I went there when I was still at school. We did an exchange, and I was so happy to be going there because I had always wanted to go to Disney World. But of course, it was very far away in the United States. And it was just so exciting to finally be able to go and see the castle and all those, yeah, figures, those different characters from the Disney films and go on the different rides. It was just fantastic, yeah.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I'm a big fan. I did not have a chance to go inside the park at Disneyland Paris, but I was outside in the front area of the park in the Disney Village, which is like the shopping area with the restaurants. Actually, in Disneyland in the U.S., that area is called Downtown Disney. I learned being here in Europe that apparently downtown is an American term. You'd be more likely to say city center?

Christina: Yeah. I would say so, yeah. Center.

Dominic: Okay. Yeah. I've been to Disneyland in the Los Angeles area. It's actually in a city called Anaheim. It's about an hour outside of Los Angeles. I've been there several times. It was a little bit easier because I'm from California, but even then it was like an eight-hour drive.

Christina: Wow.

Dominic: Yeah, well, it's Disneyland. But I absolutely, absolutely love Disneyland, just a magical place.

Christina: Absolutely. I mean, that's what Disney stands for, right? I mean, this kind of fairy tale magic.

Dominic: Yes. It's all about escapism in a way. When you enter Disneyland, at least in the U.S., maybe at the other parks, there's a plaque right above the doorway, and it says, “Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.”

Christina: Oh, that's beautiful.

Dominic: And of course, I would say, really the foundation of Disney going back to the early films, the early cartoons, well, aside from Mickey Mouse, were very heavily based on classical fairy tales, right? Like Cinderella, Snow White.

Christina: Oh, yeah, particularly Snow White because that was the first feature film that Disney made. And it was quite spectacular at the time because of course, it also used music, so the musical score was also quite a success and it was a complete film and people were very fond of all those different characters. And while the film didn't really get an Academy Award, an Oscar, the following year, he was presented with an honorary one and seven small ones, which I think is so cute.

Dominic: Oh, very nice. Yes, Snow White, the original from 1937, it's so important because I don't think it was the first feature-length animated film, but it was certainly the most prominent to have an entire movie being animated. And of course, back then it must have been so much work because it had to be hand-drawn. So, yeah, I have a lot of respect for that. And I think it's so cool how Disney in the early days drew from these collective human stories, which were just out there in the public domain. Anybody can work with them and retell them.

Christina: Yeah, that's the thing. And it's always been like that because the fairy tales, I mean, now that we think of the fairy tales, for example, by the Brothers Grimm, we might say, “Okay, do you know the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm?” But then, I mean, there’s not just one version. I mean, they went through a process of re-editing. And of course, the fairy tales themselves, they go further back and they have been told in very different versions around the fireplace. At least that's like the traditional idea. So people telling each other those stories. And also, yeah, modifying them ever so slightly as they pass them on from one person to the next.

Dominic: Yeah, that is the problem when writing down these sort of oral histories or oral traditions. I think actually Homer's The Odyssey is a similar situation where that was actually like an oral story that had been passed down, and he was just the one to finally write it down and compile it. We kind of attribute it to him, but he's not really the author, so to speak.

Christina: Yeah, it's the same thing with the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. So Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm lived in the 19th century in Germany and, well, by the way, they were linguists. Did you know that? That's so cool. So they wrote a very, very important dictionary and they also found out about sound laws, how the European languages are connected to each other and ultimately go back to Indo-European, really cool stuff. But what they also wanted to do is they felt that they were living at a time, well, when industrialization was starting, and they had the impression that people were stopping to tell each other fairy tales around the fireplace. And so they thought, “Oh, well, it would be really important to document these before they die out.” And so they just collected them. And supposedly they went into the countryside and had people tell them to them. So the farmers. But actually, there's also quite a lot of ladies, yeah, that lived in the cities, who also knew a lot of stories and then told them these stories as well. So they collected them from different people. They wrote them down and, well, published them in book form and now they are such an important part of cultural heritage.

Dominic: Yeah, that's field work. That is field work. You have to go out into the field and interview people and collect data. And yeah, I would assume that every single time you ask someone to tell you this story, certain details are going to be different, right? And that's actually why for many of these fairy tales, we do have different versions. So I'm wondering how they kind of accounted for that to kind of try and develop the most neutral version of the fairy tale.

Christina: That's a really good question. I don't think they wanted to do that. They wrote down the stories as they were told to them. At least that's what they say in their introduction. And so they didn't have the aim of trying to kind of capture all the different variation there, but they just wanted to write down the version that they were told. And you're right. I mean, there’s different versions, for example, for some of the fairy tales, there's a slightly different version that is also documented in France. So Charles Perrault, he was also a collector of fairy tales. And you also notice that, for example, in the German tradition, Cinderella is different from Cinderella in the, let's say, English tradition.

Dominic: Ah yeah. I mean, because normally, you know, we think of, you know, Snow White is a German fairy tale. Cinderella is a French fairy tale. But in conversations that I've had with you outside of the podcast, I think you've stressed to me that really these fairy tales go so far back that trying to apply these kinds of modern nationalities to them is probably not the right call.

Christina: Yeah, well, I mean, like, for example, it seems that these ladies that the Brothers Grimm also had among the people telling them fairy tales, they had also partly heard French fairy tales. I mean, what’s German? What’s French? You know, it’s a kind of joint heritage in a certain way anyway. And there are these differences between the versions that you notice, for example, when you compare the version by the Brothers Grimm that is read to German children in kindergarten and in which Cinderella actually gets the dresses that she needs in order to go to the ball and to win the prince's heart. So she gets those from a little tree on her mother's grave and from a little bird. But of course, I think most people will know the Disney film version, which is the version that is from France and that is also very common in the English-speaking world, and where you have a fairy godmother who turns pumpkins into a carriage and then you get, what is it, the mice that turn into horses, et cetera.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, and when it comes to the Disney films, to the Disney versions, I really like them, but they are certainly sanitized and child-friendly, family-friendly, because when you actually read some of the originals of some of the fairy tales, they are quite dark and sometimes quite violent.

Christina: They are. And this is something that you may not necessarily have considered, because like when you present them to children, you usually give them this kind of, yeah, as you called it, sanitized version, which is less gory. But yeah, the original fairy tales were quite violent. And I mean, there's still quite a lot of violence in there, if you come to think about it. I mean, think about Hansel and Gretel. Or is that how you would call it? Hansel and Gretel?

Dominic: Yep, that's right. And we know that one. Yeah, I think that one still makes the rounds in the English-speaking world.

Christina: You know, I mean, sending your children into the forest in order to try and get rid of them and a witch trying to eat the children and the children pushing the witch into the oven. I mean, there's quite a lot of violence in that fairy tale as well, even in the version that children are told. Probably that's why there's no Disney version of Hansel and Gretel.

Dominic: Yeah, there's really no way to sanitize that one. What are you going to do with the witch? Yeah, that is true. Christina, we've actually, for a while now, been working on a project with Grimm's fairy tales and we can't reveal too much here, but at least what I can tell you is that I've actually had to read a lot of these fairy tales. And so I've been learning a lot about them and, yeah, they can be quite dark, quite violent. But the great thing about the fairy tale world is that the laws, the rules of reality do not apply. And so sometimes when a person is killed or hurt, it can be magically undone.

Christina: Exactly. That's what happens very often. And I mean, in the end, usually everything turns out well, at least for the heroes of the story, for the good guys, you know? And that's what we all want. Don't we want that? I mean, like, that in the end, everything turns out well.

Dominic: Yes. They all lived happily ever after. That’s right.

Christina: Exactly. Yeah, and I mean, the project that you just mentioned, this TransGrimm project, that's a really large project. So we're collecting the fairy tales and we are formatting them in such a way that we can automatically analyze them. And so there's a lot of different topics that we're currently preparing for research, linguistic research, on the fairy tales, but I have also carried out some research on fairy tales in the past.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, the compendium of fairy tales is so much larger than people might think, because I think in terms of, I mean, it's hard to generalize, but I think in terms of popular fairy tales that still make the rounds, maybe it's a group of 10 or 20, but there are hundreds of fairy tales.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, like, what fairy tales would you say are the best known fairy tales in the U.S.? Like, what are the ones that you probably encountered?

Dominic: Yeah, hard to generalize. Well, aside from the Disney ones, which I'll put aside, you know, we have Little Red Riding Hood. We have Hansel and Gretel. We have The Boy Who Cried Wolf. We have Goldilocks. But I don't think all of these relate to the Brothers Grimm. They’re not German. Are they?

Christina: No. I mean, take Goldilocks, for example. I mean, Goldilocks is definitely not in the Brothers Grimm. I mean, I'm aware of Goldilocks. It's a very, very nice little fairy tale about a little girl who, well, she gets into a house and three bears are living in there. And I mean, it's a very cherished tale, isn't it, Dominic?

Dominic: Very cherished, yeah. And it actually extends into the language. So, for example, we have the “Goldilocks zone,” not too hot, not too cold, it's just right. And actually, they say in astronomy, they say that the Earth is in a Goldilocks zone in terms of its distance from the sun, that the temperature is just right. There's kind of a myth that it's exactly right, but it's actually a zone which is just right. And we are in that Goldilocks zone. So I like it. Very illustrative.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, Goldilocks, I mean, is one of those fairy tales that are very common in the English-speaking world, just like Jack and the Beanstalk, for example.

Dominic: Oh, I know that. Yeah. Very familiar with that one too.

Christina: Yeah. But, I mean, they're not part of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, but, I mean, the Brothers Grimm collected a lot of fairy tales. So all together, you have 200 fairy tales in the version of the book that is most famous, the edition from 1857. And there’s also a lot of fairy tales that people don't know about. There’s fairy tales, like, for example, The White Snake, in which if you eat a certain white snake, then you can speak the language of animals, which I think is a very nice idea.

Dominic: Almost reminds me of the Parseltongue from Harry Potter.

Christina: Oh, right. Yeah, but in that case, it's not just like talking to snakes. You can talk to all animals.

Dominic: That's true, yeah.

Christina: And the nice thing, of course, is that then the animals, they also cooperate with you. That's also a very nice thing. And well, I mean the fairy tales, they typically also teach us something. And in that case, it's that, well, animals can be kind and that we should also be kind to animals, you know?

Dominic: That's true. The moral of the story, right? Usually I associate fairy tales with having a moral, that's one of the reasons why you tell them to children is because you're trying to teach them something. I mean, or maybe just entertain, but I always thought of fairy tales as containing a moral or a lesson that you're trying to teach.

Christina: Yeah, I would also say so. I think the fairy tales traditionally have morals, such as, for example, treat others respectfully. I mean, there’s a lot of fairy tales which revolve around people who are not what they seem at first sight. They’re typically some kind of magical creature. And if they are not treated in a polite way by, well, one of the main characters of the story, in the end, it will not do them any good, you know?

Dominic: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And earlier, you mentioned just a moment ago, you mentioned the 1857 edition, because, you know, something important here is that the Brothers Grimm were German. And so when they documented the fairy tales, of course, they were doing it in German. So that means that in order for the rest of the world to read these and enjoy these, they need to be translated. And translating fairy tales is quite an endeavor.

Christina: It is, but it's definitely worthwhile, I would say, because, I mean, you also encountered the fairy tales as a child, at least some of them, like Hansel and Gretel. And I suppose you never wondered like, “Oh, is this a German story,” or was it presented to you as a German story?

Dominic: Not that I can remember, but I could tell that it took place in some kind of a fantastical past. It didn’t take place in the modern world.

Christina: No, definitely not. I mean, that's a typical characteristic of fairy tales, that it’s some kind of imagined, faraway past where magic is normal. And I mean, you have all those talking animals and magical objects and things that are happening that wouldn't happen in real life, but no one wonders about that, you know? No one is surprised that, for example, you have a little pot and if you speak a few magical words, then all of a sudden it's going to produce a lot of food. And, I mean, again, I mean, that's also one of those little stories that show you you shouldn't be greedy because you shouldn't overuse it because otherwise in the end it produces too much food and you can't go back into your house.

Dominic: Oh, okay. Yeah, it would be fun. It would be fun to, like, compile a list of all of the morals from each fairy tale and try to find which one is the funniest or the most unique. Yeah, that makes sense.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, like, the fairy tales, they have these central messages that I think a lot of people all over the world can identify with somehow. I mean, there’s different oral narratives in different cultures, but somehow the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, well, managed to be received, to be read all over the world. And actually, they have been translated in over 160 languages. Would you believe it?

Dominic: Yeah. Wow. Okay, well, 160 languages. I wasn't expecting the number to be that large, but yeah, definitely. I mean, these stories are very European. I mean, frequently, they feature knights and kings and castles and princesses and all of these very European features, I would say. But I would hope that the lessons they teach could be universal in a way.

Christina: Yeah, well, I mean, I would assume so to a certain extent, but then, of course, I come from Germany, and that is the place where they originate. So I might be a bit biased, but I have to say, I mean, those 160 languages... I'm a linguist. I don't think that I could name 160 different languages, even if I tried. But of course, it makes them so important. So I think it's one of the books that has been printed most all over the world next to the Bible.

Dominic: Yeah. Or maybe Shakespeare, as well.

Christina: Oh, Shakespeare. Oh, yeah, Shakespeare, presumably as well. Even though, of course, Shakespeare is also very often performed. So I don't know how often people read it. I read Shakespeare.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. They made us read it in school, much to the chagrin of students because they struggle to understand it.

Christina: Well, I have to admit that I also read it while in school, but I read it just for fun because I had watched Much Ado About Nothing and I really loved that. So I wanted to also read Shakespeare in the original with the German translation and I really enjoyed it very much because it had such beautiful language, just like the fairy tales. This is a very special kind of language, a special kind of style. And of course, if you translate, then you also have to make sure that you capture that somehow. And that is a topic that I'm very interested in as a linguist. And this is, of course, a direction into which we're going with the resources that we're currently compiling.

Dominic: Yeah. So, yeah, with Shakespeare, for example, you can get a modern English translation or even a bilingual version where it's the original on one side and modern English on the other side. But in general, I think you'll find teachers will really heavily discourage this. They don't want you reading the modern English translation because while it might be easier to understand, it's not the same. It doesn't capture the same essence. And so I would assume that this applies across languages when you're trying to translate these very stylized, fantastical fairy tales or these fantastical plays from hundreds of years ago.

Christina: Yeah, so I still feel it's very nice to read the fairy tales in the original version. And when I say the original here, I mean, the edition that is now typically considered the original, is actually the seventh version that the brothers produced themselves. Because in the beginning, when they first collected the fairy tales, I mean, when they first printed them in 1812, 1815, I mean, that edition changed considerably over time. And I once looked at the differences between the first and the last edition. And I noticed that at least for the passage that I looked at, I think almost half the words in the passage had been changed or had been added. So yeah, they did change them a lot. And the interesting thing is that they did so because they also wanted to make them more suitable for children. So I suppose for modern tastes, as we discussed earlier, I mean, they're quite violent to some extent, but still, I mean, there's a lot of, kind of, very important things that happen in the fairy tales that are about how you develop as a person, how you grow. They have a lot of, yeah, I would say important content that helps children also handle emotions that they have and come to grips with difficult situations that they might experience. It helps them kind of, yeah, deal with the world.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I totally agree. And you can imagine over the centuries, you know, sitting around a fire and showing these stories. Yeah, certainly meant to entertain, but also meant to teach. So I totally agree with you.

Christina: Yeah. Dominic, are you familiar with UNESCO World Heritage sites?

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I've been visiting a lot of them here in Europe. We do have some in the U.S. It seems that most of ours are like national parks and things like that. But here in Europe, a lot of the UNESCO World Heritage sites are like man-made constructions and things like that.

Christina: I really love world heritage sites as well, because when I visit other countries, I usually try to find out what world heritage sites are there. And then I visit those. And I mean, they usually turn out to be extremely impressive. So it's usually a very good choice.

Dominic: Yeah. It's a very special distinction.

Christina: Exactly. And the thing is that this also exists at a documentary level. So in 2005, the Grimms’ Fairy Tales were recognized as “UNESCO World Documentary Heritage,” and I think that really testifies to their importance for the whole world.

Dominic: Yeah, nice. Well, it makes sense, these fairy tales have been passed down for so long. They've become such an integral part of our kind of collective canon. At least in the West, but maybe actually all around the world at this point because they've had such an immense reach. It makes sense to me that they should be honored as part of our world heritage. Nice.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there’s a very famous American scholar, Jack Zipes, who, well, he's published lots of research on fairy tales and he's actually also translated the fairy tales into English. And he said that the Grimms’ Fairy Tales are a treasure that belongs not only to Germany, but also to many other countries in the world. And I think he's so right about that. And that's why translating is so important. And would you believe that the very first translation of the fairy tales was into English?

Dominic: Oh, into English first. Okay.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, it happened very soon after the original fairy tales had been published in German by the Brothers Grimm. So as early as 1823. That's just, well, about 10 years later, which is really very, very early.

Dominic: That is fast, yeah.

Christina: And it wasn't the complete fairy tales, but a selection. And that was done by someone called Edgar Taylor. And of course, I mean, the fairy tales are a very special type of text. I mean, they have this very special magical atmosphere. And of course, it's also very important to capture that when you translate. And I think he did a really good job at that.

Dominic: Yeah, undoubtedly. You know, we spoke on a previous episode about translation. We talked about translating a dialogue, subtitles for Abba Naor, a Holocaust survivor. In that instance, we were, you know, you were translating speech, non-fiction speech, and that is very difficult. But I would think that translating fiction is maybe even more difficult because fiction is really a work of art. It's very stylistic and you have to find a way to capture that in a different language. And, yeah, more of an art than a science. I would think that's really hard.

Christina: Yeah, I think so too. I mean, it's basically the highest level of translation that you can achieve, I would say, because in addition to the content, which you should always try and, well, reproduce accurately in such a way that everything that is important is included and that, well, everything has been covered in the correct order and things like that, you also want to capture the essence of it. And I mean, if I think of the German fairy tales, when I read them, I mean, they really evoke that magical world inside me. And of course, as a translator, you also want to achieve that. And I have to say, when you look at the translations into other languages, it's actually really good. So when I was still in school, I was in a French drama group and we wanted to do a play on Snow White. And so I actually wrote that with a bit of help from my teacher. And to do that, I had the French translation of the fairy tale, and I was really impressed by the poetic language, and I thought, “Wow, apparently it is possible to also evoke those feelings in another language.” And, well, this is my personal journey there, but of course, Edgar Taylor came a lot earlier. And may I just kind of read two sentences to you?

Dominic: Yes. I wanted to ask you about this because you actually can read the original German, and then you could read an English or a French translation, and so I'd like to hear about this.

Christina: Okay, here it comes. “Bald darauf bekam sie ein Töchterlein, das war so weiß wie Schnee, so roth wie Blut, und so schwarzhaarig wie Ebenholz, und ward darum das Sneewittchen (Schneeweißchen) genannt.” Which is interesting, because here, I mean, the name is Sneewittchen and not Schneewittchen. And you will notice that there's also a difference in the name that Edgar Taylor uses in this translation of the same passage. “And so the little girl grew up. Her skin was as white as snow, her cheeks as rosy as the blood, and her hair as black as ebony, and she was called Snowdrop.”

Dominic: Yeah, it does sound very poetic. I mean, of course, the vivid descriptions of the colors, but also the repetition in the structure of it.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, repetition is a very, very important feature of fairy tales in general. I mean, not just of the language, but also of the narrative, but of course, these two go hand in hand because it's the language that, well, represents, that realizes the narrative. And the interesting thing is that the Brothers Grimm actually wrote several letters to Edgar Taylor, the translator of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales into English, and they told him that they really liked his translation. So apparently they were able to read English and they said that it read very, very well and that they also found the style very appropriate for children, possibly even better than the kind of standard High German that people might use in other contexts. So it's very interesting to see that they, well, discuss the style of their own fairy tale collection with the English translator, and then Wilhelm Grimm went on to develop this very characteristic fairy tale style through the seven editions up until the last one, which is the one that we now know so much.

Dominic: Yeah, that is really fascinating because they were contemporaries, which, yeah, that's not always the case, right? You could be translating something a hundred years, 200 years after the original author lived. So that is really cool. And we know at least that Taylor's translation had the original authors’ blessing.

Christina: Exactly. And of course, I mean, they have been translated so many times, I mean, also into English. And the translations must necessarily vary in their quality. And of course, in a study that I once did on the translation of the style of the fairy tales into English and how that can be measured, I wanted to find out how well the different translations of Snow White actually captured that. And well, in order to determine which is a really good translation, I could just have said, “Oh, that's the one I like best,” or I could just have used my measures and then see what turns out. But what would that give me, you know? So I had to find out what is the best possible translation. What would you do in order to find that out, Dominic?

Dominic: Oh, that is so tough. Yeah, because if you just gave, kind of, your opinion, that’s kind of arbitrary. It's not so scientific, is it? This is art. How do you scientifically judge art when it comes to translation? I mean, I guess I would want to see, you know, does it contain all the details? Are details left out? Of course, it's okay to leave out some small details when translating, but you don't want to leave out the really important ones. That is so difficult. Yeah. Maybe, maybe how much of the original it captures in terms of content and then how well it captures the feeling, but I have no idea how you can scientifically measure feeling. It's so, like, personal. It's so human.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, there are some ways of doing so, but I think we need to talk about those some other time. But of course, in this context, as you said, I mean, it's such a subjective decision. And so, I mean, a thing that we often do when it comes to subjective decisions is that we try and ask a lot of people. We try not to look at our own evaluation, but we try to see how others evaluate something. And then we try to find out what the most popular one would be in this case. And there's actually an American book from 1916 for which the authors asked library experts in children's literature and professional storytellers which they thought were the best English translations of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. And they determined that the translations by Lucy Crane, by Mrs. Edgar Lucas, and by Marian Edwardes were particularly good. And what they then did is that they selected the best among these fairy tales for each of the specific fairy tales. And, well, in that case, I knew which the version was which a lot of experts on fairy tales thought was a particularly good translation. And so I was able to just apply my measures and see if my measures would manage to represent that well.

Dominic: Nice. Very nice. So people have been trying, when it comes to translating these fairy tales, they've been trying to, for quite a long time, evaluate, kind of, what is the best translation. Yeah, really fascinating stuff. As an outsider, I would have no idea how to approach this. So, now, that was more than a hundred years ago. But today, in the modern day, what kind of measures did you use to try and evaluate this?

Christina: I carried out some research about fairy tales that I presented at a conference, which was dealing with combinations of words. And so I tested different measures in order to see if by using those, I would arrive at the best-ranked fairy tale version from those children's literature experts. And it's n-grams that actually worked best.

Dominic: Oh, okay, wow. An academic conference, yeah, in the world of literature and linguistics, fairy tales are a very serious business. But an n-gram, what is an n-gram?

Christina: N-gram just means that you have n words in a row, and n can be a number. So you can have 2-grams, 3-grams, and 6-grams. So 2-grams basically means you divide up a sentence into chunks of two words. So if you take the Beatles song, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” then 2-grams would be, “I want,” “want to,” “to hold,” “hold your,” and “your hand.” And you could also make 3-grams. “I want to,” “want to hold,” “to hold your,” and “hold your hand.”

Dominic: Okay, so the n is like a mathematical variable, like x. I see.

Christina: Exactly. And I mean, if you had a 1-gram, that would be each word separated by spaces on its own. And if you, in this case, had a 6-gram, the 6-gram would be, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” So that's the complete title. So the 1-grams, well, I mean, that's just the individual words. They're not going to tell you very much about a text, and the 6-grams are going to be highly specific. So, I mean, you can basically have an n-gram that captures the whole text in once. But of course, that just applies to this particular text. So if you want to kind of find a meaningful grouping, you want to have something intermediate. And so I checked out the 3-grams. So I just split up the text into groups of three. And then I looked at the most frequent 3-grams and I marked them in different colors. And then I compared them with each other. And this actually worked very well. So by using those combinations of three words, I was able to actually determine quite well which English translation captured the style particularly well.

Dominic: Nice, Christina. Nice. Yeah, wow. You know, I feel like people might not expect that you can conduct such a scientific and critical analysis of something like a fairy tale. But I think this kind of highlights what we've mentioned before, in the world of research, that, you know, as long as you can find an interesting or unique angle, you can research anything you want.

Christina: Yeah. Basically, you can. Of course, it always depends on whether you have the time and the funding to do it.

Dominic: Logistics, yeah.

Christina: Logistics, yeah. And also, I mean, people who can help you with it. But ultimately, yes. And I mean, there’s a lot of interesting things that can be done research on in linguistics. And so I hope there's more to come in the coming years. So we're currently preparing the ground. We're currently also developing software that allows us to analyze things automatically. Well, and I hope to talk more about that in the coming years.

Dominic: Yes, watch this space, as they say, in the industry.

Christina: Yes, indeed. And, well, I think with this, we've reached the happy ending of our podcast.

Dominic: Oh yeah, we have. And hopefully both you and I and our audience can live happily ever after.

Christina: Oh, very nice. So stay curious, everyone out there. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Christina: Hi, Dominic, time for another chat!

Dominic: Yes, it is. Always happy to be back for another chat! Christina, how are you?

Christina: I'm fine. And you?

Dominic: Doing all right. Happy to be back here! You know, I am still in Germany, and Germany is renowned around the world for its beer, for being the land of beer.

Christina: That's so true.

Dominic: But I was a bit worried before coming to Germany because, well, honestly, I hardly drink at all. But when I do, I don't usually opt for beer and wine. I usually opt for cocktails.

Christina: Oh, I love cocktails. But the same thing as you. I mean, I hardly drink anything, but if I do, I like the sweet stuff and particularly cocktails.

Dominic: Yeah. Same here. And I was worried, you know, before I came, like, well, you know, I don't really like beer. Will German society accept me? Of course, I mean that a bit humorously, but also maybe not. And of course, I learned that, yeah, no, Germans love cocktails too.

Christina: Absolutely. Well, I used to live very close to one of the best cocktail bars in Germany. I mean, it got some prizes, but unfortunately, for some reasons, it had to close down, but that was just so good. I mean, they were excellent. The “Alchemists of the Night,” as they called themselves.

Dominic: Or the mixologists. Yes. I would have liked to visit that place. That’s too bad. But I was here in Germany during the summer, and at least in Germany, maybe in other European countries, but during the summer, the most popular cocktail by far, in my view, is the Aperol Spritz.

Christina: Oh, yeah. It's so popular. I think you can get it everywhere now. It would be strange not to have it on a menu. Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's a kind of very German cocktail in the meantime. Maybe not originally, I suppose, but yeah, so typical. What kind of cocktails are common in the United States, Dominic?

Dominic: Oh, well, hard for me to say. All of the basic ones, you know. I'm a big fan of the Screwdriver, which is vodka and orange juice. I believe in German, you call it a Vodka-O.

Christina: Probably, because O is sometimes used for orange juice, because the O stands for Orangensaft.

Dominic: Ah, very nice. Yeah, cocktail names are fun, especially how they compare across different languages. One of my favorites is, there's a cocktail called a French 75, and it's named after a cannon, like an artillery gun from World War I, like a French, maybe, like, a 75 millimeter cannon. And the lore is that it's called the French 75 because drinking one feels like getting shot by a French 75 cannon.

Christina: Oh, wow. That's a very interesting origin of that name. I mean, one of my favorites is Swimming Pool, which is kind of bluish because of the Blue Curaçao it contains. So I suppose that's where that name comes from. And I also really love Piña Colada, which, well, yeah, it's a very creamy coconutty cocktail. Love that one. But I actually very much like the alcohol-free version of it as well, and that's a Coconut Kiss.

Dominic: Oh, I gotta try one of those. Yeah, a mocktail, as they are called. Another word is virgin. Virgin drinks. Never understood the origin on that one, but that is the word they use for an alcohol-free kind of cocktail. Yeah, I'm also a fan of mocktails.

Christina: Yeah, me too. I mean, most of the time I actually try to go for the mocktails because then I can still think clearly, but at the same time enjoy how all those different tastes blend into something completely new.

Dominic: Excellent. Well, I agree it's good to be able to think clearly because that way we can think about things like linguistics.

Christina: Exactly.

Dominic: Yeah, mixology and linguistics might be more connected than people might think because while mixology is being an expert in mixing different ingredients together to make the best cocktail, in some ways, languages and words are a bit similar.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, at least I once wrote an article about that topic. It's about hybridization in language, which sounds a lot more serious, but the idea is the same, that is considering to what extent languages are actually a mixture of different things at different levels.

Dominic: Yeah, very nice, hybridization. You know, when I hear hybrid, well, partially, well, probably first and foremost, I think of cars. Hybrid cars, which are, you know, cars that have both an electric engine and a gasoline-powered engine or petrol, as they might say, on the other side of the pond. But I also think of plants, hybrid plants.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's where that concept comes from, from biology, basically. I mean, if you think about animals like a mule, I mean, a mule is an animal whose father is a donkey and whose mother is a horse. And you can also have the opposite. You can also have a hinny, whose father is a horse and whose mother is a donkey. But in both cases, you are going to get an animal from that combination, which differs from donkeys and horses. So something completely new that arises from these different sources. So it's a bit like a cocktail. I mean, where things blend into something completely new.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. There are a few hybrid animals. I always forget about that because it's just not so common, right? They have to be closely related enough that you can breed them. On the topic of the mule, you know, in English, we have a saying, “Stubborn as a mule.” I don't know if mules are really stubborn, but there's a little linguistic connection there.

Christina: Yeah, that's a reputation. And I mean, there’s plenty of animal idioms too. But I suppose that's something we should discuss another time.

Dominic: Oh, that could be an episode in itself, yeah.

Christina: Definitely. But getting back to the animals, I mean, you're so right. I mean, they have to be similar enough somehow to be able to reproduce. There's a very silly joke in German, you know, because there's an animal, the anteater, and the German name is Ameisenbär, which is ant bear. And obviously, I mean, it would be very difficult to conceive how an ant and a bear could have children with each other.

Dominic: That's okay, because in other languages, like Chinese, the word for a panda, if you literally break down the Chinese characters, it means bear cat, which I love, which – it must be an allusion to the behavior of the panda, right? Which is, they kind of laze about and they're rather slow and docile. I love that so much. And then a penguin is a business goose, which must be a reference to their black and white kind of appearance.

Christina: That's so sweet. But of course, I mean, in terms of hybrid animals, I mean, you could also have the spider monkey. Yeah, as if it was also engendered by spiders and monkeys, but obviously, I mean, that must have a different origin as well, I suppose.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Or, yeah, hedgehog, which is not a hog in the least. But, you know, in German, you have this wonderful word. It's like an equivalent phrase almost for someone who is a Jack of All Trades.

Christina: Oh, yes. Eierlegende Wollmilchsau.

Dominic: Yes, which means in English?

Christina: Well, it's an egg-laying wool milk sow. So it's an animal that produces all kinds of different produce that you would like to have as a farmer. But obviously, I mean, it’s just imagined, but there are some beautiful images on that on the internet.

Dominic: Yes, an imaginary animal that does it all. An all-in-one. Yeah, that is a wonderful phrase. I'd like to import that into English. That might be a bit of an uphill battle, but I like that one very much.

Christina: Yeah, it's very sweet, of course. But I mean, that is imagined, but at the same time, of course, I mean, hybridity is something very, very real. And I mean, so this is something that we observe a lot in the field of biology. Like that's where the examples we just discussed came from. But of course, when we think about language, very often we also think about language as if it were some kind of animal or organism in any case. So for example, we talk about the family trees of languages in history, or we sometimes say that languages die out, or that they evolve. So it sounds as if we were treating language like an organism. And so it also makes sense to consider it from this perspective and see to what extent, well, mixtures, hybridization, are possible there.

Dominic: 100%. We talk about this all the time in linguistics, with the language families, probably maybe the three biggest ones in Europe are Germanic languages, like German and English, Romance languages, languages with roots in Latin, languages like French and Spanish and Italian and Portuguese. And then the Slavic languages, of course, languages like Russian and Polish and Czech. But when you put them together in these families, it might deceive you into thinking they're more similar than they might be. For example, English and German are part of the same Germanic language family. You might get the idea that they're very similar. But, of course, English quite famously has assimilated so much vocabulary from other languages like French and Latin and Greek that in many ways, it's quite dissimilar from German.

Christina: Yeah, that's true. Dissimilar, but at the same time, I mean, the basic vocabulary is still very similar, which makes it easy for Germans to get a kind of first grasp of it. But of course, also for speakers of French or Spanish, I mean, there are quite a lot of words that they will recognize, very often more formal words. And then, of course, it's also easier to learn new vocabulary.

Dominic: You're absolutely right. Often, kind of, the Latin or French-based vocabulary in English is kind of shared across some of these other Romance languages, but German as well. So when speaking German, I try to lean on Latin-based, kind of French-based words because there's a chance that it's shared in German often, but not always. And then, of course, in French, you know, the common pitfall for an English speaker learning French is if you don't know the word in French, you just take the English word and pronounce it in a French way. Sometimes it might work. Other times it might not. In fact, other times it might even be a false friend. So you might end up saying something you don't intend to say.

Christina: Yeah, but very often it works. I mean, whenever people around me are trying to find a Latin word for something, I just try to use the Spanish word and then kind of, yeah, rework it into something that sounds Latin, and very often it's quite close. So I’m always quite happy to use that as a strategy. And so that means that the hybridity of the English language in terms of the historical origin of the vocabulary is, of course, an advantage. So there’s a lot of advantages to hybridity, you know, not just in language, but also in other fields.

Dominic: I agree with you completely. The beauty in hybridity and, yeah, in other fields as well. A moment ago, you mentioned biology. In places like the United States, genetic tests are very, very popular. I know the Europeans might think this is maybe a little bit funny or peculiar, but, you know, because people in the United States, a lot of people have immigrant origins, they come from elsewhere, there's a lot of interest. You kind of, you want to know where you come from. It's just, it can be really fascinating. And so these genetic tests are very popular, where it actually tells you all of these different regions from the world from which you have DNA ancestry. And it's a lot of fun. I got the test. I had a lot of fun exploring ancestry that I didn't even know I had. For example, I have a little bit of Spanish ancestry and that was nowhere in my family's kind of oral history. There was nothing about Spain. I found that fascinating.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot about Spain in my family because I'm half Spanish. But, I mean, if I go further back, I know that there's also some Italian ancestry, but I haven't done any genetic testing. I would say for different historical reasons, possibly also in Germany, people are possibly slightly more reluctant to do that. But of course, it's something very, very interesting.

Dominic: Yeah, I do understand the historical sensitivity in the German context, but it seems to me that just in general in Europe, these kinds of ancestral DNA tests aren't so popular. Maybe it's because Europeans feel that they're more certain of their family history, right? That if you hail from a certain place and as far as you know, all of your ancestors hailed from that same place, then you might not think that a DNA analysis would be so interesting. But I think what people would find is that, you know, in actuality, over the millennia, people have been traveling around and intermingling for such a long time that actually I bet most Europeans have much more mixed ancestry than they would assume.

Christina: Oh, definitely. I would think so too, you know? And there's a very nice film about that too, about the big surprise that people get when they do genetic testing. In French, it's called Cocorico. It's by Julien Hervé. And so, for example, a person, I mean, he's French. He's very skeptical about Germans, but then he finds out that he actually has German ancestry, and all of a sudden it completely changes his outlook on how he should behave and what cars he should get and things like that. Which is very funny.

Dominic: That is funny. I hope people don't necessarily... I hope, well, identity is complex. Do what you would like with your identity. Yeah, maybe I should start getting more into, like, flamenco, like, you know, like, Castilian culture and dance, now that I know I'm, like, 5% Spanish or something like that. No, I don't think I will. But yeah, that is wonderful.

Christina: Oh yes, Dominic. We could dance some flamenco together.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, well, you know, that's my thing now. Now that I know, you can't unring the bell.

Christina: Just kidding.

Dominic: I'm just kidding as well. Or am I? But in some ways, hybridity can be better. For example, with, like, alloys and metal, right? Like, gold, right? Like, pure gold, as I understand it, is actually quite soft, softer than would be desirable. So they often mix it with things to strengthen it.

Christina: Yeah. So that's one advantage of hybridization, you know? And, I mean, not just in the field of, like, metallurgy, but also in biology. I mean, if you think about the different plants.

Dominic: Yes, and famously, this is absolutely the case with a lot of the fruits and vegetables that we eat, if not probably all of them, that through selective breeding, we have given these plants desirable traits and qualities that we wanted them to have, that for the fruits and vegetables that we eat today, if you were to look at what they looked like originally before we selectively bred them, sometimes they look almost unrecognizable. For example, the banana, right? The banana, I love bananas. How wonderful that it fits perfectly in your hand and then you unpeel it. It almost looks like it was made to be eaten by people. And that's because it was selectively bred to have those exact qualities. If you look at what the banana used to look like originally in nature, it looked nothing like that.

Christina: Yeah, well, I don't know enough about bananas, but I'm sure you're right. And I love bananas, too. Yeah, but so, hybridity, hybridization has a lot of advantages. But then, of course, I mean, if you have a hybrid, sometimes it will not be able to reproduce. I mean, the mules and the hinnies, they're not able to have children.

Dominic: Yeah, they are sterile, yeah.

Christina: Yeah, so that's a disadvantage. And that's also why hybrids didn't have a very good reputation in the 19th century, for example. But then, of course, in the 19th century, people were also very much into very clear categorizations. And of course, that's the opposite of hybridization and hybridity, where you kind of transgress boundaries and make new things emerge. And this is something that, with the development of genetics in the 1860s and particularly since the 20th century, has been kind of reevaluated. So now it's considered more enriching. But, well, that's the interesting thing. Very often, you can view the same phenomenon from different perspectives and either value it as positive or negative.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, this has actually been hugely consequential for human history, this connection between language, linguistic purism, and kind of nationalism and kind of the creation of nationalism, the idea that one nation of people should speak one single language and that this brings them together, this creates identity, because, you know, in reality, that's just not really how language works. That, you know, before this idea of the French nation or the Italian nation or the German nation existed, people in these regions spoke all different varieties of languages. They had to be, like, there was a time when they were trying to construct, for example, the French state, where they had to teach French to the French because they chose one variety from one region, I think in this case, around Paris. And then they had to teach that to everyone. And to this day, it can still be a sore spot, for example, in Brittany, where they still have a local language, the Breton language, which is not French, and they are trying very hard to keep it alive.

Christina: Oh, yeah, definitely. And they're also doing really well at keeping traditions alive. I mean, there’s a lot of things like traditional dances that they perform. It’s really, I mean, language is very often connected to culture. And don't make me define what culture is because this is really complicated. But in any case, yeah, it’s so intricately connected. And it's also something highly emotional. But in the end, I mean, if we look at these things, if we look at languages like the German language, the English language, you will notice that there is no such thing as a pure language, you know, because it's always been kind of taking vocabulary from different types of sources. I mean, in English, it's particularly obvious with the English and, well, with the French vocabulary that you already mentioned. I mean, after the Norman Conquest, after 1066, I mean, there are so many French words that entered the language. So I would say that's the most kind of obvious instance where we can see, okay, language, as such, can be hybrid, but actually, there's hybridity on all kinds of levels.

Dominic: Yeah, and what even is English? What even is German? What even is French? You know, with English, we have American English, British English, Canadian English, Australian English. With French, we have metropolitan French, we have Belgian French, we have Swiss French, we have French across large regions of Africa, with German, you know, we have Germany, we have Austria, we have Switzerland, so many different varieties. And they can be quite different from each other. They can have different vocabulary, they can have different accents. But typically this nuance, I don't know, we just kind of talk about languages as if they are just monolithic things, but that's just so far from the reality.

Christina: Absolutely. And you can see how things are interconnected. If you, for example, look at the level of the vocabulary, because these different words, these words with origins that are from Germanic languages, that are from Romance languages, can be combined. Take a word like textbook, you know? The word text is ultimately of Latin origin and book is a Germanic word, but they're combined into one compound, textbook. And as a user of the language, you're completely unaware of that. Or courthouse. Yeah, again, court is Romance, house is Germanic, but they're combined.

Dominic: Yeah, I think among the more kind of, like, grammar linguistic purists, the sticklers who try to invent rules for English, there was an idea that maybe you shouldn't mix words and roots of different origins, completely silly because as you've shown, there are countless words where we do that. Another example is television, right? So I think tele is Greek and vision is Latin. It's a classic example right there. You can't separate, you can't keep languages. I mean, these things just naturally mix together. It's a fool's errand to try and keep these things separate.

Christina: Yeah, and why should you, you know? Because take a word like to dislike. I mean, same thing there. So like is a Germanic word. So it's been around since Old English. But the prefix dis is of Romance origin. So French-Latin origin. And, well, dislike is a completely normal word. And so that's the thing. So even within word formation, everything is combined, everything melts together. And that's nice because ultimately, that's what gives us the characteristics of the English language.

Dominic: Yeah, I think it's really beautiful. And English in particular, like I said, it’s famous, perhaps even infamous, for the fact that it just incorporates so much vocabulary from so many different languages. There’s so many jokes you'll make. Like English is three different languages in a trench coat and top hat or something like that. Or English beats up other languages and steals vocabulary from their pockets or something like that. Like so many different little idioms and metaphors that people use that shows that they're very aware that English is this huge blend and mix. And I think it's awesome.

Christina: I think it's interesting that you're using the word steal here because most of the time we speak of borrowings. So we borrow words from other languages, but actually we never give them back.

Dominic: Yeah, a loanword. Typically, a loan, you're supposed to give it back. So, yeah, loanwords. It's not being given, it's taken.

Christina: But on the other hand, probably it's a bit like fire. I mean, if you kind of borrow fire from someone. in the end, I mean, you don't really have to give it back because it kind of, it's okay to also have that fire yourself because it kind of, it becomes more.

Dominic: Yeah, or there’s also, I think, people joke, like, you might say, like, “Hey, can I borrow a piece of paper?” But obviously what you mean is, “Can I have a piece of paper?” Because you're going to use it and you're going to keep it. You're not going to give it back. But maybe just borrow sounds nicer than to have. So, yeah, people also think that's pretty funny.

Christina: Yeah, but then this is something which is also kind of unique to language in terms of hybridization, but, like, also on other levels. Let's say you have a hybrid organism. I mean, you have that one person with that one genetic makeup, and that person is unique in the world. But if we have a hybrid word like to dislike in English, I mean, we have this word in the system, but then it's used so many times by different speakers. So, there's a distinction there between having the word in the system as a kind of abstract content and using it in different situations in real life. That's something that Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the founders of modern linguistics, stated, that there are these two different levels of langue, which is the system of the language, and parole, which is the actual realization in speech. And this means, well, that we don't have to give things back because somehow, I mean, in the language, in the system, it's abstract anyway, and then the realizations are infinite in number.

Dominic: Fascinating. Okay. So the langue and the parole. And so if my French isn't too rusty, that's the language or the tongue, so to speak, and then the word.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. So, the langue is the system of the language, like, all the words in the language and the grammar of the language, basically, as a kind of simplification. And then the parole is what you as a speaker make of it. So the system is always abstract as an idea, and the parole is the language that you can read in a book. Or when I talk to you, I'm producing parole, because any speech that I produce with my speech organs will be parole.

Dominic: Okay, yeah, so the langue, well, there are some people who might want to control it or at least claim to control it, right? The beauty of language is that there is no central authority on language. There's no central authority on English. There can be central authorities, at least who claim to be the central authorities, on the language and might seek to maybe influence or issue suggestions. I think the most well-known example is the Académie Française or the French Academy in English, which is the authority on the French language, or at least the purported authority. In reality, I don't think anyone can really control language. It's the speakers who control language. But, you know, for example, there are a lot of, today, English loanwords in French. There are English loanwords in probably every language. The best example I can think of is the word email. The French were using the word email, but the Académie Française thought it would be nicer if maybe they used a French alternative. So they suggested a courrier électronique or an electronic courier, which would be elegantly shortened to courriel. However, as I understand it, it didn't really work. French people still say email, although I was recently looking at a government form from the French government and it did use courriel. So maybe the French government listens to the guidance of the French Academy, but actual French speakers, they just kind of do their thing and say what they want.

Christina: Well, I mean, it's difficult to regulate language in general, you know? But the Académie Française, I mean, I think they see one very important task in documenting the language and preserving those things that are kind of relevant, that belong to the core. And so writing a dictionary that, for example, records all the words that are part of the French language proper, but then they will wait a certain amount of time to see to what extent words are, for example, adopted by speakers. And, well, I don't know how prescriptive they are being right now. I mean, probably they were more prescriptive in the past. But then, again, I mean, there are different linguists who are working on the topic of prescriptivism. But I think the effects have been different in the past, in different contexts. So sometimes it's possible to push people in a particular direction. And, for example, we've had that in Germany, you know, with the orthographic reform. I mean, technically, no one has to spell the German language in that way outside of school and some institutions. But people still do because that's what they learned in school, and that's what they see in most books and newspapers, and they want to conform to these ideas. But otherwise, very often, I mean, trying to tell people not to speak in a particular way, well, isn't always likely to be a success.

Dominic: Yeah, with German, I think kind of the quintessential German letter is the “sharp S” or the Eszett. To me, it's very German. I've only seen it in German. Maybe it's used in other languages, but I think people around the world also think of this. It looks like the letter B actually, it's really just more pronounced like an S. But actually, a couple of decades ago, or almost three decades ago now, there was actually some spelling reform in Germany, which changed the rules surrounding how this letter gets used.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. I mean, because the word dass, which occurs very, very frequently in the language, used to be spelled with a scharfes S, so with an Eszett, but now it's spelled with a double S because now a double S is used after a short vowel, like in dass or in Kuss, which means ‘kiss.’ But if you have a long vowel or a diphthong, like in Fuß, then you would use an Eszett.

Dominic: Yeah. And then this creates a mess for people who learned the previous spelling. One of my German teachers was an older man. He said that before the spelling reform, his German spelling was brilliant. After the spelling reform, it was no longer brilliant. It was a little bit messy. Of course, does it really matter? It depends on who's enforcing it. So, you know, if you're at school or if you're taking an exam or if you're doing a job where they want you to use the spelling reform, then, yeah, you might actually face some consequences for not necessarily conforming to the new spelling.

Christina: Yeah. So, I mean, I also had to learn it because I wanted to work in a profession that used language, but yeah, so kind of not using that would have meant that I wouldn't have been conforming to, let's say, the kind of standard. And even though you're not forced to use it officially, it's a convention to use it, and you might suffer negative consequences because people who know that kind of spelling might see how you're spelling if you're still using the old one and feel that, yeah, that something is lacking, you know, that you're lacking a certain skill. So for that reason, in the end, that's how people sometimes conform to such reforms, in spite of the fact that they're not officially forced in any way.

Dominic: Yeah, thankfully, for me, I'm learning German today well after the reform has taken place, so hopefully I won't be too confused. But actually, as I've learned, the Swiss don't use the Eszett or the “sharp S”. They don't use it at all. They always use double S.

Christina: Yeah, you're absolutely right. But by the way, since we are talking about hybridity, the sharp S, as you call it, the scharfes S or the Eszett, is actually also a hybrid letter because it combines an S and a Z, at least with more traditional shapes of these two letters into this completely new letter that looks more like a B to outsiders. And so I would also say, well, that you could also call that an instance of hybridity on the level of letters. And we also have hybridity, by the way, on the level of sounds, because if you think about words in connected speech, for example, the word broadcast, sometimes people might not say “broaDcast,” but “broaGcast” and produce a g sound instead of the d. And that's very interesting because here, the g sound carries over things both from the d, which is the voicing of the sound that should originally be there, but also of the k, which is the letter following it. So that's what we call assimilation. And so when you say “broaGcast,” yeah, instead of “broaDcast,” then, well, that would also be an instance of hybridity on the level of sounds.

Dominic: Oh, wonderful. But the Eszett, which, to translate Eszett, it's the “S Zee” or the “S Zed” for other English speakers, which sounds a lot more like Eszett, yeah, it's literally an S and a Z kind of melded together. It doesn't quite look it, but if you go back in the history, it becomes more obvious. And it almost reminds me of the ampersand in English, which is also a ligature. It's et in Latin, E-T, which means ‘and.’ And it's the two letters E and T that have been melded together to create the ampersand symbol, which represents the word ‘and.’ And well, it's not just kind of letters that come together in these ligatures, these kind of morphing together of two symbols. Words also do. You know, we get portmanteaus. We get words like brunch, for example.

Christina: Oh, yes. Yeah. I love brunch. Not just as a word, but also as a concept.

Dominic: Yes, I agree. But do you have brunch on top of breakfast and lunch? Well, I guess it depends on the situation.

Christina: I mean, technically, I mean, brunch, if you look at the word, if you look at the word formation, it's a combination of breakfast, so you have the br part, and lunch. So that's where the unch comes from. So technically, it should be breakfast plus lunch, but then I would say it's neither. It's a kind of combination, but it's different, different from both breakfast and lunch because you could go to a brunch and you might have had breakfast before, but then you might eat some breakfasty stuff and some lunch stuff and then kind of breakfasty stuff in between again. So it's a kind of mixture. The food you get there, I mean, it's not typically the food that you necessarily have for your own breakfast or for your own lunch, you know, but it's kind of special food and you typically go to some kind of restaurant or hotel to have it. So I would say, it's something new that arises as a concept, but also, if you look at the words themselves, they're kind of fused together.

Dominic: Yes, they did. Yeah, I also view it as denoting the time that the gathering will take place, right? That it's at a time which is too late to be breakfast, but too early to be lunch. So I don't know. Let's say maybe 11:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., maybe. So in that way, it's almost, it's not so much a description of what the meal will be, but rather when it will take place.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, yeah, a bit of all. So, and I think that really shows very neatly that it's a hybrid of breakfast and lunch. It's neither nor, it kind of borrows parts of it, but turns it into something new. And, I mean, that's not the only, yeah, blend or portmanteau word that exists in the language. I mean, there's quite a lot of these. There's also words, for example, like motel, which comes from motor and hotel.

Dominic: Oh, I didn't know that. Oh nice.

Christina: Yeah. And in that case, I mean, it's kind of obvious how you combine them, you know, because you have the motor and the hotel. So using the O as the linking part makes total sense. But in other cases, it's probably more difficult. I mean, think about a very beautiful hybrid, namely from the movie Shrek. So Donkey and Dragon, they have children. And yeah, you've seen that. I know you did because you told me. So what would you call those children that are a mixture between donkeys and dragons?

Dominic: I have no idea. A drackey?

Christina: Yeah, could be. Other ideas?

Dominic: A dongan?

Christina: Yeah. Or a dronkey.

Dominic: A dronkey?

Christina: And that's the thing. I mean, it's kind of not self-evident. I mean, there’s all these different things you could do. It's possible to kind of fuse donkey and dragon in different ways into this kind of hybrid. So it's something where, here the form, the shape of the word, parallels the concept behind it. And I actually checked that. So apparently, officially it's dronkeys, but I mean, it's not necessarily the most obvious one.

Dominic: No, yeah, not all hybrids followed this rule. You know, earlier we talked about the mule, which is a cross between a horse and a donkey. At this time, I would like to officially petition that we change the name to either a dorse or a honkey.

Christina: Oh, I love it.

Dominic: I love honkey. Well, dorse is also pretty good, but I love honkey. Maybe we can choose, like, depending on which one is the father or the mother, we get to use both.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And apparently they're more similar to the mother. And usually in English, the head is at the end of a word. So the mother should be placed at the end of the word.

Dominic: Oh, okay. Very nice. So if the mother was a horse, it would be a dorse. And if the mother was a donkey, it would be a honkey. All right. Now we're making progress.

Christina: Yeah, we actually have something similar in German. I mean, at least for one of the two, namely, we have the word Maultier, and we have the word Maulesel. Tier is just animal. Forget about the first part, but Tier is just animal, but in that case that stands for the horse. But for Maulesel, I think there it's very nice and transparent. Because the Esel, the donkey, is at the end, and that's the mother. So that's a hinny. So a hinny is a Maulesel. But I love your suggestions, Dominic, and probably we should start a petition to rename mules and hinnies.

Dominic: I agree, a petition to whom, right? There is no authority. You can petition the dictionary, but even the dictionary is not the authority. The dictionary just documents.

Christina: It does. So the only way would be to get people to use it all the time. And in the end, it would end up in the dictionary because lexicographers monitor how people use language.

Dominic: Well, then, yeah, that's right. Well, then, the authority on language is the speakers themselves. So then it's a good thing we're making this podcast because we're getting the words out there. Maybe people will start saying them. Yeah, who knows? Well, this is the first step.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know what, Dominic, there's a particularly nice one that I learned when I was in primary school. And that is because I grew up in a place where we have a river, which is called the Regnitz. And the Regnitz is the result of two other rivers flowing together, namely the Rednitz and the Pegnitz. So what the Regnitz does is that it borrows the R from the Rednitz and the G from the Pegnitz, and then you end up with the Regnitz. And as a child, that seemed so obvious to me, that if rivers flow together, in the end, the names also flow together. But it's apparently not the most common pattern.

Dominic: That is very funny. It was a portmanteau of sorts. And then, well, pattern recognition, children are very good at pattern recognition. So you thought this might just be a general pattern. That is so funny. But I suppose when it comes to language hybrids, you know, learning German, we talk a lot about Denglisch, which, for those who might not know, it's not immediately obvious, it's Deutsch and Englisch or German and English mixed together, in German, of course. And so there are plenty of German words in English, some of which are used kind of in the right way, others, which are sort of maybe a bit of German creations. We spoke previously about Wasei Eigo, which is Japanese-created English, English words that they use, but that English speakers don't use. So, I don't know where they got it, but they made it somehow, and I think it's amazing. There's also, in the U.S., we're very familiar with Spanglish because we have an incredibly large number of Spanish speakers. I recently learned it's the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, which I didn't know. And then in French, you have Franglais, which is Français and Anglais, French and English, in French. And often when people are bilingual or multilingual, they end up kind of speaking these sorts of hybrids where they mix in words from different languages they know.

Christina: Yeah. People do that all the time, you know? So yeah, we also have that. I mean, so we also have hybridity in a certain way at the level of individual languages used by individual speakers. Definitely. I mean, yeah, and that’s not the only one. I mean, in that article, I just went through the different levels of language and tried to see where else we can identify hybridity, and even in the field of grammar, we find hybrids in the sense that we can't have neat categories. For example, if you take a sentence like, “They admired his quickly building the tower.”

Dominic: It's a nice sentence.

Christina: Yeah, very nice grammatical sentence. But if we have, “They admired his quickly building the tower,” then building is very special because on the one hand, well, building is like a verb, because it's about building the tower, you know, and also quickly building the tower. So you have an object there, the tower, and you have a pre-modifying adverb. So all of this indicates it's a verb. But at the same time, it's also a bit like a noun because you say his building the tower, but his is a word that usually occurs before nouns, his car, his bottle, whatever, you know? And so building in that case is what some grammars like to call a gerund. So it's got features of both nouns and verbs. So we do have instances also in grammar where we can say, well, it's kind of hybrid.

Dominic: Oh, that's very interesting, because usually we think of grammar, you know, the building blocks of language. They're usually very nice and neat categories. Interesting.

Christina: Ah, no, they're not at all. Not at all. And I mean, “the building blocks of language,” like words as the building blocks and grammar that kind of combines them as a kind of mortar, oh, that's also kind of a more traditional idea. But I think, well, that's probably content for another episode.

Dominic: That's the way it's explained to us in school, but that's also probably to keep it simple because, you know, the world is a very messy and chaotic place, but in a way that makes it so fascinating and interesting and beautiful, also means it's very hard to understand. And so as humans, we naturally try to put things into nice and neat categories because it makes it easier for us to understand. But naturally in that process, something is lost.

Christina: Absolutely. But I'm very much in favor of such simplifications because they help us deal with this complicated world, you know? But then it’s usually good just to know that behind that simplified idea, there's something which is way more complicated as a kind of next step. But yeah, so, and that's the thing, I mean, we have hybridity almost everywhere. And that's also this kind of messiness in a certain way, because, for example, we can also have hybrid modes of communication. I mean, think about chat, you know, when you write in a chat, I mean, the language is quite informal. It's quite close to spoken language, but it's not spoken, it's written. So it's also kind of intermediate in some ways.

Dominic: That's right.

Christina: Or, for example, there are certain types of text where you might say, “Oh, wait a moment, this is a mixture of different other genres,” for example. For example, there’s advertorials, you know, which kind of combine advertising with journalism.

Dominic: Yeah, or infotainment, right? Which is, I think, usually trying to make kind of educational content, which is simultaneously entertaining.

Christina: Yeah. Which is something that I really subscribe to.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well. Are we doing infotainment right now? I don't know.

Christina: I hope so.

Dominic: I hope it's informative and entertaining. That is true. I hope it has these qualities to it.

Christina: Yeah, exactly.

Dominic: Yeah, there's really a beauty in hybridity, in hybridization. And I think it's unfortunate that, you know, as we talked about, you know, language is so closely connected to culture and identity, I think it's unfortunate that sometimes this hybridity is maybe stigmatized or discouraged. For example, we mentioned Spanglish, sometimes Spanglish, sadly, it's not always viewed positively. Or, for example, in Quebec, which is a province in Canada where they speak French, you know, they are surrounded by English speakers on all sides. And so for this reason, they really want to kind of protect their kind of unique French identity. And so for this reason, in some ways, the use of Franglais, French-English mixture, can be discouraged in Quebec, but of course, plenty of people in Quebec do speak English. But when it comes to language hybridity, probably the most important subject here would be pidgin languages or even creoles, right? So pidgin languages are kind of new languages that are born when two languages come together. I think creoles are the same thing. I just think that creoles usually are associated specifically with the Caribbean. For example, number one is Haitian Creole, which is a creole in Haiti, which is a mixture of a local native language and French. I know French. I can't really understand any Haitian Creole. It's very much a different language, but with a lot of French vocabulary and a lot of French influence mixed in. I find these sorts of pidgins and creoles so interesting.

Christina: Oh, they definitely are. And a lot of linguistic colleagues of mine are working in different parts of the world and conducting research on pidgins and on creoles. And I mean, yeah, so the creoles in particular, because the interesting thing about the creoles is that they are spoken as a native language by children. So the pidgins aren't, but so the creoles are really fully-fledged languages in their own right because they have their own native speakers.

Dominic: Yes, that's absolutely right. They absolutely do, and you can write books in those languages as well. And yeah, it seems quite different to me. And so, you know, there's a humorous, or at least I think it's humorous, maybe it's not humorous, maybe it's academic, but there's this question, you know: English has so much French vocabulary. Is English a French pidgin?

Christina: Yeah, that's a very, very famous debate. I mean, is it a pidgin or even a creole, you know, because there are so many native speakers of the English language in the world. I'm no expert in historical linguistics, but as far as I'm aware, it really depends very much on how you define different aspects. But I think the important thing to take away from this is that there's a lot of hybridity in the English language, and not just in the English language, but also in other languages. And, well, language is beautiful, and a lot of great things in life are hybrid, like cocktails. So I think it's very nice that in this sense, language is a bit like a cocktail, after all.

Dominic: Oh, yes, it is. And interestingly with English, yeah, while there's so much French and Latin vocabulary, actually, as I understand it, if you look at the kind of the most basic, extremely high frequency words used in everyday ordinary speech, actually, the vast majority of them are Germanic, English, in origin. You could always find a fancy French or Latin alternative, but often there's kind of a simpler, more high-frequency English version of that word. So, yeah, there is definitely beauty in hybridity. Lots of things can be hybrid, like cocktails, like cars, for example. As we mentioned earlier, actually for a time, actually maybe still, the fastest cars in the world were hybrids because electric cars have faster acceleration than gasoline cars, but gasoline cars typically have a higher top speed. So if you want the best of both worlds, if you want to make the fastest car in the world, then you make it a hybrid gasoline electric, electric for that super fast acceleration, and then it switches to gasoline for that higher top speed.

Christina: Yay. So let's celebrate hybridity in language and elsewhere.

Dominic: Absolutely. Let's celebrate it, let's encourage it, let's call attention to it, and let's highlight how beautiful and fascinating and amazing it all is.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. Hybridity, diversity, similar things in some ways, something to celebrate and something that enriches the world.

Dominic: Couldn't agree more, Christina. And with that, I think I'm going to get in my metaphorical figurative linguistic hybrid car and speed away.

Christina: Oh, excellent idea. Well, so everyone out there, probably, you might want to get in your hybrid cars as well. Stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 13: Can we predict the future of English? | Current trends and language change

Christina: Hi, welcome back, everyone.

Dominic: Hey, Christina.

Christina: Hi, Dominic, and welcome to everyone out there.

Dominic: Yes, and Christina, it's moments like these where I feel like we live in the future. I mean, how cool is it we get to record a podcast and broadcast it to everyone across this global network?

Christina: It's fantastic. I would have never imagined doing this, and now we're doing it.

Dominic: Now we're doing it. There are so many things that we can do today that maybe we kind of take for granted, right? So many incredible things.

Christina: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, just think about the phones that we have. I mean, I still call mine a mobile because when I grew up, we just had a landline, and that was fixed in one particular place. But now I have a phone that I carry around, and it's not just a phone; it's a camera, it's my calendar, I watch films on it. I do so many things with my phone. It's fantastic. And I wouldn't have expected that as a child. It would have been total science fiction.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. A veritable Swiss army knife, as it were. Yeah, modern smartphones are amazing. I mean, rather than being a telephone which is also a computer, it's more like a computer which is also a telephone, really capable computer too, a portable computer; you can carry it around with you everywhere. And the mobile internet, like, I remember, this was in, like, 2009; my cousin had an iPhone, and I thought it was so fascinating that with the mobile internet, she could go on Facebook from anywhere while she's in the car, while she's on the go. Because for me growing up as a child, the internet was something you could only access either at home or at school or at work, right? You had to be indoors on a computer to use it. And now the internet's all around us, and we think nothing of it.

Christina: Yeah, on the contrary, I mean, we get annoyed when there is no internet around us, which may happen. I mean, it happens more frequently than you would expect in Germany. But yeah, it's something we would like to have everywhere, permanently, so that we can access all the knowledge of the world via the internet, Wikipedia, for example.

Dominic: Yeah, yeah. Almost the entire knowledge of humanity. Although there may be some gaps, some archives that still need to be scanned and digitized, as I've been made aware. But it's remarkable. And not to mention the new AI tools, which you can also access from anywhere. I mean, it's just remarkable, but it just feels normal to us.

Christina: Yeah. That's a great thing about living at the time we live at.

Dominic: I totally agree. Especially living abroad. I mean, oh my goodness. So many, I mean, well, first of all, video calls, which are amazing, the fact that I can talk on video with my family from across the world and it looks crystal clear. I mean, that's just... I mean, oh my gosh, past humans, they would have thought it was utter witchcraft and wizardry, I would think. But also translation. Come on, machine translation. Machine translation is a traveler's best friend. I don't know what I’d do without it.

Christina: Yeah, it's so extremely convenient because sometimes I need to have conversations with people whose language I don't speak, and then it's just so extremely handy. Oh, by the way, Handy is the word that we use in German for a mobile phone.

Dominic: Yeah, Denglisch, Deutsch-English. Yes, yeah, an English word that only Germans use.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. And I mean, since you talked about traveling, I mean, I don't know what I would do without GPS tools. I mean, that's fantastic. I mean, in the past, it was so difficult to find your way around or when you're in a different city finding out about the museums there and when they open, and restaurants, I mean, it's just so much information at the reach of your fingertips. It's something I find exciting every day, and I use it a lot every day.

Dominic: Oh, I strongly agree. And a lot of these technologies, you know, the origins, often military origins. The internet was originally developed for military purposes. GPS, I think, was the U.S. military, and then they decided to open it up for public use. And so, these tools, yeah, they may have been developed for different purposes, but now we put them to use every day for things like driving around, navigation, and knowing where we are on the world. It's amazing.

Christina: And communicating with others. So I think it's so nice now. I mean, when I was a student abroad a long time ago, I had to use a phone booth, you know, and I had to go there and I had to make an arrangement with other people to be there at a certain time at home to kind of make sure that we could catch each other on the phone. And actually, there are a lot of films also, which, if you come to think about it, if they had had some phones, well, they wouldn't have had to go into all the trouble.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. How many plots of like movies and books and things like that would be solved simply by having access to Google? That's a good question.

Christina: Yeah, just imagine, Home Alone, you know? I mean, Kevin wouldn't have had to stay home alone for such a long time. He would have called his mom. And if you think about the bandits, I mean, he could just have filmed them and sent the pictures to the police. So, yeah, plenty of films that actually wouldn't be like that anymore because now you have mobile phones. There are so many things you can do immediately, very easily.

Dominic: That's exactly right. And much like our lives are changing with all of these new developments, naturally, our language changes with it, right?

Christina: Yeah, all the time. I mean, every time you have new software, for example, you need a name for it. I mean, there are plenty of words that are related to digital technologies that have entered the English language. But even so, I mean, there are also other changes in the language that you're less aware of. And that's things like grammar, for example, because it's less easy to spot.

Dominic: Yeah, especially with the advent of social media, which is so popular and widespread. I think people are aware of the way the internet is changing our language, maybe mostly in a playful way, because there's just a huge volume of internet slang and lingo, but also in a more serious way, right? A lot of kind of digital technological terms have entered our everyday language.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, a lot of these are English, so in languages like German, you have a lot of Anglicisms now and even proverbs, for example, “the early bird catches the worm.” I mean, when I was younger, it wasn't okay to translate it literally, but now it's okay. So that has changed the German language too.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, I heard about this when I first came to Germany, for computer words. So, like, download and upload. In German, you could say kind of the German translated equivalent, and sometimes people do. Other times they just use the English words.

Christina: Yeah, in German we say hochladen, which is upload. And herunterladen or runterladen, which is download. So we directly translate this into German.

Dominic: Yes, exactly. And as you and I recently learned, there are actually maybe some German terms that have made their way into English, but they just don't seem German because they've been translated.

Christina: Yeah, it's so cool. I mean, the word earworm, for example. I mean, it's been around for a very, very long time in German, and I never really dared use it in English because in German it means a song that you can't get out of your head. And it's a very nice and metaphorical word, but I recently learned that this is also now part of the English language, which I find so cool.

Dominic: Yes, it is. I wouldn't say everyone, everyone knows it, but I've been familiar with it for quite a long time now.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, people, they will hear a lot of English, but they will hear different varieties. And I mean, I hear a lot of American English from you, but I also watch quite a lot of films on the internet, but so many now that sometimes I start referring to films as movies. So using American words instead of British words. And I see how that is kind of sneaking into my language, but actually that's a very common phenomenon. So that's one of the things that we can observe. If we look at how the English language is changing, we can see that there's a kind of Americanization.

Dominic: Well, that might make sense to me because it's the largest dialect. And so it might be the dialect to which people receive the most exposure. That makes sense to me.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, just think of things like student, you know, when I learned English at school, I was taught to talk about pupils, but it seems that now you might speak of students even in British English when you refer to children.

Dominic: Yes, I was so excited when I, because I learned this from you about the students versus pupils, and I was so excited when I went to London and I spoke to some British people, I wanted to show off my intercultural linguistic knowledge. And I said like, oh, well, you call them pupils and we call them students. And the British person I was talking to was a young person. She gave me an extremely kind of, yeah, quizzical look, and she said, “What? No, we don't. We call them students.” She didn't seem to have any idea. And so at that point, I learned that apparently, this particular difference is disappearing.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, if you imagine, when I learned English, I mean, it's not so long ago. I mean, I'm older than you, but still not so old. So still, you can see, I mean, there are those changes. And so to young people, it might seem like a very weird kind of word use already that I'm using here. And, I mean, there are other things that are happening in the language now. I mean, you might believe, okay, well, the English language is kind of monolithic, but it isn't. I mean, there are a lot of things that are going on all the time. And people over their lifetime start changing how they talk. For example, I noticed that I recently tended to use past tense instead of a present perfect when I was talking about the very recent past. So traditionally, in British English, you would say, “I've just come in” or “I have just come in.” But in American English, you would say, “I just came in,” right?

Dominic: Yes, or yes. And the textbook example is, “Have you eaten?” versus “Did you eat?”

Christina: Yeah. And so probably I wouldn't say, “Did you eat?” but I tend to use that structure from American English more now. And I mean, it's easier, I suppose, in some ways because using the past tense is usually shorter. So that's something that also drives linguistic changes. So this idea that if a form is shorter, then people are more likely to use it. And so I do the same thing. But it's not always like that. There’s also the opposite.

Dominic: Yes. You know, language changes, I think, but it changes slowly, but it certainly changes. Often to the chagrin of people who might be a bit more conservative in their language use, I feel like whenever there's a linguistic trend or linguistic change, there's probably a group of people who oppose it.

Christina: Yeah, most likely. But then, I mean, these things just naturally happen. And, I mean, since I'm a linguist, I also think about how I use language. Every now and then, I surprise myself because I feel, “Oh, I want to use language in a different way now.” And I wonder if that is because I'm kind of making a mistake here as a German learner or because there are some kind of trends that I have been subconsciously observing in the language around me. And, I mean, quite a lot of the input that I receive is from you, so that might explain why I recently used the form gotten instead of got. But again, I mean, like, this Americanization is common. But then there are other things. For example, the use of the progressive. So if I talk about the future, let's say about a conference, I could, of course, say, “I will speak about this topic,” but I think I would rather tend to say now “I will be speaking about this topic,” so using an -ing form here, and that's also something that apparently is happening a lot in the English language now, that people use the progressive more.

Dominic: Yeah, sounds perfectly good to me. Yeah, I find these kinds of things so incredibly interesting because you really have to ask yourself, why? Why are these things happening? In terms of word use, I think, probably the one that our audience will be familiar with because it's so popular is the use of the word literally. That people do not use the word literally maybe in the way that it originally was intended to be used. And those who oppose this linguistic change are very vocal about their frustration in how the word is used. But at this point, I think history shows that those who oppose linguistic change almost always lose, almost always, because people are just going to speak and use language the way they want to use it. And so yeah, of course, literally used to mean ‘it's literal,’ which means that something occurred exactly as it's described. Now I think people in a more colloquial sense, they use literally as a general intensifier. And it’s literally the most interesting thing ever.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, sometimes if you think about these current changes in the English language, some of them are not necessarily completely new. I mean, you might think of it, for example, in the sense of the gender-neutral ways of referring to people, using they or them as a gender-neutral expression. For example, “If a student wants to do well on their exam, they need to study for it.” So what you would be doing here is use the plural form to refer to a singular student, because we said, “a student.” But of course, in this case, what you managed to do is you don't have to specify the gender of the person. And of course, this is a thing now that modern societies are thinking about, but it’s been done for a while already just because, well, in some cases, you don't want to specify, you just want to use it in a neutral way. And then the plural is, of course, ideal because it naturally hides it.

Dominic: Yes, Christina, I strongly agree. I'm so happy you brought this up, this particular example, because it's true that today we're having in our society, we're having a lot of discussions about gender-inclusive language, but this particular case of using they and them as this sort of theoretical, hypothetical word for a hypothetical person, this goes back really, really far. We have a lot of evidence for this. In other languages, there's a dedicated pronoun, right? In German, you have he, she, and then man, which is for a hypothetical person. In French, there's he, she, and then on, right? For a hypothetical person. And there are two different ways to translate this. Sometimes in English, we use the second person you, right? When we're talking, “If you want to succeed, then you would need to...” But even though we're not really talking about the person we're addressing, or the more fanciful form is to use one. “If one wishes to succeed, then one needs to...” It sounds a little bit archaic. I do it in my formal academic writing, but I do not do it in my casual speech.

Christina: It sounds a bit posh.

Dominic: Yeah, it sounds really posh. Not that posh is a word Americans say, by the way, but I'll accommodate. I'll accommodate you, and maybe we're watching linguistic change happen in real time.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that's a great thing about linguistic change. I mean, that it takes place right before our eyes and also right inside our mouths while we're talking. And that's quite special because it also means that while the language is changing, it still needs to remain functional because people still need to be able to understand each other in spite of the fact that certain things might be different from how they have been used, particularly in grammar. And so you could compare that a bit to driving in a car and you're repairing the car or you’re modifying the car as you're driving. I like that analogy. I think that's a beautiful image that I read in a linguistics book.

Dominic: Modifying the car while you're, yeah, that is language. You are modifying the car while you're driving it. Oh, goodness. Yeah, you know, Christina, I've found that, well, a couple of things, like, when it comes to, like, human nature, you know, humans hate uncertainty and it makes sense, right? Because uncertainty is a threat to our survival, right? We want to be certain about what will happen so that we can feel secure. And I've found that often, kind of the public looks to experts to predict the future. Please tell us what's going to happen. Please tell us what's going to happen. But I think that history shows that humans are actually really bad at predicting the future.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. Predicting the future is usually very difficult. And I suppose, I mean, if you had a crystal ball and magical powers, you could probably do it, but, I mean, as a linguist, I don't. But still, I mean, it's a topic that I find interesting. Can we predict linguistic change? Is it possible for us to kind of have an idea of where English might be going in the future? And, yeah, so it's something I've actually looked into in the past, but of course, I mean, one of the very important things that you need to think about in that context is why languages change in the very first place.

Dominic: Yeah, wow. Well, first of all, I really respect you. You're very brave for even daring to venture into trying to predict or examine future change in language because, you know, whenever we make predictions about the future, we are opening ourselves up to future criticism when people might look back on our predictions and tell us where we were wrong and where we were right. And inevitably, I think probably most of our predictions will be wrong.

Christina: Yeah, that's something, but still, I think it's very interesting to think about it because, I mean, we are making predictions all the time. You are also making predictions, Dominic, just like me. I mean, imagine if I threw a ball at you, probably you would be able to catch it. And that is because you can predict the trajectory of the ball flying through the air. So you will kind of assume what is going to happen in the not-too-distant future. Just like when you have a conversation with people, usually you also try to guess what comes next. I mean, you do it subconsciously and this is how humor works, because your expectations, well, don't turn out to be correct. So that's what jokes use, you know?

Dominic: Yeah, you're totally right. That's one of the theories of how humor might work, is subverting expectations that your brain is constantly trying to predict what will happen, including in conversation. And when those expectations are subverted, it triggers a laughing response. Yeah, you know, I once looked into, like, why it’s so satisfying to plan about what we will do, but then often following through on our plans is much more difficult. And maybe I've read that one reason is because our brains are future planning machines. And it means that, that planning is really, really satisfying because it's what we're made to do. But I think anyone will tell you that often when you make a plan, it often doesn't actually unfold in reality.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, these things happen, but even so, I mean, as researchers, it's something we do all the time because we will formulate predictions. We just call them hypotheses, you know, and then we say, okay, this is what we're going to expect. And then we test whether that is the case or not. And if the explanations that we have accordingly should be correct or not, you know? I mean, it's a short version of it, but even so, I mean, what we do when we carry out scientific research is exactly the same thing. We make predictions. So in the end, I mean, like, if you think about making predictions, it's less mystic than you might believe.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. And it's interesting in science because, you know, something I learned in one of my classes once: all data is from the past. Even if you have something that's giving you real-time data, it's still old by a fraction of a second. All data is from the past. And so we can only make future predictions based on historical data.

Christina: That's the thing. And the question, of course, is where does the future of the English language start, you know? But what we assume is that the principles that were valid a few moments ago will still hold in a few seconds. And so that's what we also make use of in linguistics. So not only me, but also other researchers, we try to describe the language and we try to find out to what extent people tend to use, for example, one particular linguistic feature in some contexts rather than others. For example, there's a study by Stefan Gries, which looked at the ordering of verbs and particles and objects. So would you rather say “John picked up the book” or “John picked the book up,” you know? Or when I looked at my compounds, whether to spell them with a space, or with a hyphen, or as a single word, in the end, what we find is that there's a certain percentage with which people will tend to use particular forms in one situation rather than in another one, because of the form or some other reason. And so what we then do is that we use that information to test our model. Then we just use new data and then we apply our model and then we try to work out to what extent our rules work and can correctly predict the way it's done in that other situation. And then we might arrive at values like, yeah, well, the model was right 83% of the time or 75% of the time, you know? And this helps us to see, well, there are these tendencies in the language, but so ultimately it's also about testing predictions.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, well, yeah, you're right. Kind of science in general is about testing predictions. That's true. Yeah, that is so cool. And when you're looking at these different language trends, yeah, one that I want to mention is sort of what's called, like, the YouTube speak, the YouTube dialect, which actually, I want to give a lot of credit to Dr. Geoff Lindsey on YouTube. He's a linguist who – he loves documenting in detail current language trends in English. And he's from the UK, but he also studies, like, American English and Australian and Canadian, and he loves looking at how, like, he thinks British English has gotten more American and things like that. And so he identified this sort of, like, YouTube, well, maybe he didn't identify it himself, but he talks about this sort of, like, YouTube speak, where, well, the way you judge a foreign language is very much based on your frame of reference. And so one reason why German, for example, English speakers might say German sounds, quote unquote, “choppy” is because German has these very characteristic sort of glottal pauses between each individual word, whereas English usually doesn't. Except it's getting worse. English is developing this sort of what's called “hard attack,” where you'll notice that people, if they want to speak in a sort of this punchy manner, they will speak with these sorts of glottal pauses, and it's all over YouTube. They speak the way I'm doing right now. So with this type of linguistic change, kind of maybe with all change in society, we would assume it's spearheaded by the youth. Is it?

Christina: Well, I would say so. I suppose most YouTubers are relatively young. I mean, there are also some older ones. But I would say the majority, yes. And if we think about changes in the language, where changes come from, then actually it's very often young people who start a change. And it's also informal context, that is, casual conversation, where, well, innovations start.

Dominic: Yeah, with a lot of these youth language trends, especially on social media, you know, they're usually kind of, like, goofy and silly, and that's fun. That’s why language is fun. There's a particular construction that's used a lot in memes, which is “be like,” and I was stunned and charmed to learn that Germans, for example, have sought to mimic this construction. So they will say sein wie, which is ‘be like’. It's the verb to be, and it's not conjugated. Normally it would be. I find this incredible to see this spreading across languages.

Christina: Yeah, but that's the thing. I mean, that's what's happening all the time. But still, I mean, in both languages, what we see is that these colloquial expressions, these informal expressions get into the language. So very often, the changes go from spoken language to written language. And for example, if you think about contractions, can't instead of cannot, this is also something that you wouldn't traditionally use in academic texts. But I have read academic texts which are using that now. And so we can see a lot of changes in progress here, or rather, as we should probably call it, a lot of variation, because variation and change are very closely related. So very often at the present, we have the opportunity to choose between different alternatives. For example, can't and cannot. And then we can see what tendencies there are. And it might have started out just as cannot. Then you have can't as an additional form. And then, in the end, it could be, well, that can't will be the prevailing form. And then, in the end, you might even get rid of the old form. So that's how change happens. So there is usually a period during which you have alternatives, you have variation, and then, well, one of the variants might become particularly common and then lead to a change.

Dominic: You've seen academic texts that have contractions?

Christina: Yeah.

Dominic: That’s a mortal sin. Anyone who's ever had an English teacher will know, we've had this pretty thoroughly drilled into us. That is fascinating. There's another trend in academic text that I'm actually probably happy about, which is that for the longest time, you know, we're taught that when you're doing formal writing or academic writing, you don't use first-person pronouns or first-person language. You don't say I and things like that. It's just not scholarly. And so academics will bend over backwards to rephrase sentences to not use first-person pronouns, and they end up using passive language. So instead of “We observed subjects,” it will be “The subjects were observed.” And when you phrase it like that, it's like, who did it?

Christina: Yeah, but the thing is, this is also changing. So I see that it’s changing.

Dominic: And I'm happy about it. I'm happy about it.

Christina: I'm also very happy about it because I don't really like the passive so much. I mean, in some cases, it can be helpful, but otherwise, I think it's okay to use, I mean, we definitely is fine, but I is also fine. I mean, if it's a single person, it's presumably better to say I than to use a we, which is not correct in that case.

Dominic: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, and there's a classic example of when you're trying to kind of maybe linguistically avoid taking responsibility. Instead of saying, “We made mistakes,” you might say “Mistakes were made.” Who made them? You know?

Christina: Yeah, they were made.

Dominic: They were made. They were made. But, yeah, going back to linguistic change, you know, why does language change? We talked about like, well, sometimes it's amusing. It's fun that language changes. But why else does it change?

Christina: I mean, one of the most important reasons that is very often advanced is the principle of economy. I mean, there are some expressions that are complicated. And then very often you will find that these get less complicated. For example, in Old English, the word knight was pronounced “k-n-ight.” And that has a kn- in the beginning and -ight in the end. So complicated combinations of consonants. And this is something that was reduced to knight in English.

Dominic: Yeah, there's a meme that goes around, it's from The Office, of a character saying, “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” And so, and I feel, like, people mock, well, they kind of look down on the principle of economy that, oh, everyone's gravitating towards expressing things in the shortest way possible, that, I don't know, maybe it's less elegant, but it makes perfect sense.

Christina: Very, very often it does. And I mean, other things that, for example, drive linguistic change is analogy, so that you notice that elsewhere in the language, you can recognize something systematic happening. For example, in English, if you think about the plural, usually you have an -s in the end of a word, but in Old English, the plural of shoe used to be shoen because it belonged into one specific kind of, yeah, noun group, you know? But then it was regularized to shoes, like all the other words, like, or most of the other nouns. I mean, there are a few like mouse mice, which still survive. So, as you can see, not all irregularities are gotten rid of.

Dominic: Oh, very nice.

Christina: But, I mean, words of high frequency tend to resist the change in some cases. And so analogy is very important, particularly for less frequent things. And so in German, for example, the past tense of to bake, I mean, the present tense is backen. And then the past tense would have been buk, but now many people are just saying backte, you know, by analogy to other forms in the language, where you also form the past tense like that. And we also have that in English, like like dreamed instead of dreamt, you know, I think that's becoming more and more common now. Most of the time people simplify things. And this is a tendency we can observe. And, I mean, a reason for that is presumably because it's easier for us to process language that way when we talk. I mean, think about compounding. I mean, most compound nouns, for example, yeah. They will be combinations of two nouns, like football. And you very rarely find very, very long combinations. For example, yeah, very rarely they're longer ones, like holiday car sightseeing trip.

Dominic: Mouthful.

Christina: That's so long, exactly. I mean, it's very unlikely that in the future, we'll have a lot more of these. So when you think about what is likely to happen in the future or not, sometimes, you can also predict that certain things are not going to happen. We can say, well, we're not likely to have extremely long sentences in the future because we as humans have certain limitations on our memories.

Dominic: I definitely agree. Or, like, if a certain sound is difficult to produce, like, speaking while breathing in, people probably won't do it. Or, like, I think we have lots of examples. You know, yeah, English spelling. We all know it’s strange, but I think oftentimes maybe a word might be pronounced differently than it's spelled because perhaps the way it was once pronounced was just rather cumbersome to say. And so over time, people said it in a less cumbersome manner, and now the spelling no longer corresponds.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. And so it's very unlikely to go back. So if you simplified, I wouldn't expect it to go back. So if we look at the languages of the world, there are some sounds which are not very common because they are hard to produce. I mean, the Th sound in English, I mean, this is not extremely common in the languages that exist. And so this is very unlikely to increase in frequency or kind of go into other languages, you know. So we can make certain predictions about what is not going to happen. And, well, that's a serious thing.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I think at this point I want to give a shout out to Tom Scott, who is greatly renowned, an incredible, incredible man on YouTube.

Christina: Huge fan here.

Dominic: Oh yeah. I'm a huge fan. You know, he's amazing because I believe he is a computer scientist by training, but if you look at his YouTube channel, it's incredibly eclectic and he has a great deal of work on language, on language in general, linguistics, the English language. And he has a great video about the sounds that could exist but don't, of sounds that, yeah, sounds that humans are capable of producing, but that we don't find in any language throughout the world, which is crazy, because there are like thousands of languages out there.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely.

Dominic: Yeah, I love these sorts of fun discussions around language and linguistic change. So you actually looked at it, you know, scientifically in kind of a more serious and rigorous way. How'd you do that?

Christina: Well, the fun thing is that it actually started out as a kind of joke, because there's a very, very nice linguistics journal, which is called Speculative Grammarian. And they had an article in which they said, or pretended, to want to sell a Bible in the English of the future, in the dominant dialect of World English of the 22nd century, with gold pages and things like that. So it won't change very quickly. And so it's a prediction of the future, so it's a good investment. And I found that very funny. And so I started to think about the question. And I mean, we know things about the present. We know how languages change. So we know that, for example, they don't tend to change at the same pace, but usually when we have a change, it starts slowly, then it gathers momentum and then it kind of gets slower again. And possibly not everything will change. And so I thought, okay, well, we know about these changes, we know about the past, we know about the present. So couldn't we kind of extrapolate from that and make some predictions about the future, like, seriously? And then I, well, I started thinking about a workshop. And so I organized a workshop at a conference.

Dominic: Okay, very interesting idea, a workshop. So what did this workshop look like? What kind of people did you get to attend this?

Christina: I was so happy, I have to say, because I mean, at the time I was a young postdoctoral researcher and I thought this was an interesting topic. But I felt that this really needed experts. And so I just wrote to the most important linguists that I knew in the field who had something to say on the topic and they came. It was just amazing. And that really showed me that this is a topic that, while it might seem very weird at first, actually, there's a lot behind it. And so while conducting research on it, I also noticed that a lot of the most important linguists in English linguistics actually dealt with this topic. And so that's really quite cool. So it's a bit like the, like for the Ig Nobel Prizes, you know, that kind of topic where you, the idea behind that is that you have research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. I've always been a fan of that.

Dominic: Cool, I don't think it's a weird research topic. I think it's really cool. But like we discussed, predicting the future is really, really hard, especially if you want to be right. So what are the challenges here?

Christina: Oh, there are plenty of challenges. I mean, the problem is that, of course, I mean, there are these principles, like the principle of economy, but then, of course, there might be certain things that are completely unpredictable. I mean, if you think about the history of the English language, I mean, Old English is so different from Middle English. Why? Because the French invaded the country, and so a lot of French words entered the language. And of course, I mean, people wouldn't have been able to predict that, you know? So, I mean, sometimes things happen in the real world that have a very strong impact, and it's very hard to predict them.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, 100 years ago, who could have predicted something like the internet? I mean, 100 years ago, I love retrofuturism, by the way. I love retrofuturism, which, for those listening, it’s past visions of the future. What people in the past thought the future would look like. You know, think of something like The Jetsons if you're familiar with that TV show from the 1960s. I love that. And, you know, there are certain things that people in the past predicted right. There are certain things they couldn't predict. And I would wonder if with our super hyperconnected world, if that has an impact on linguistic change. I would think it does.

Christina: Yeah, I'm sure it does in different ways.

Dominic: We mentioned how with, like, modern communications technologies like the internet, certain regionalisms spread around. You know, we talked about how Americanisms are spreading around. But of course, I think there might be a general assumption that because America is like a young and new country, that therefore the language is young and new, but actually sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's old. Sometimes American English is conservative. They use words that are older than the words used in Britain. Maybe the example would be fall versus autumn. So it's actually, like, this isolation. You actually see that old words will stick around.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. So, sometimes you have that, but on the other hand, you can't always be sure. So there are instances where you could say, American English is more innovative than British English, and in other cases, it's the other way around. And so that's the thing. I mean, to a certain extent, it's hard to predict what is going to happen because, I mean, some of the linguistic changes are part of culture, you know? It's like trying to predict the fashion of next year. I mean, it might be possible to some extent, but you can't be 100% sure. And so, since language is part of culture, it's hard to predict. So that’s one of the takeaways, obviously. So we can't, kind of, as linguists, make sure that we predict things with 100% certainty.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. I mean, obviously I'm biased in favor of language, but I would almost say language and culture are two sides of the same coin. Actually, I would say they are two sides of the same coin because often when you take a language course in university or – university, I'm accommodating you. In college, we Americans say – it's often, it's language and culture. It's always French language and culture, German language and culture, Spanish language and culture, because you just can't learn about the language in isolation. It's almost one concept.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, it's not just the culture, but also things like technology, you know, because, I mean, if you think about, yeah, digital communication, I mean, like, in the past, handwriting was so important, you know, but then, of course, now people use very little handwriting. So for that reason, I mean, that's something you couldn't have predicted in the past that, for example, handwritten language would become less important. And, I mean, we don't even know what the future is going to hold in terms of communicative means, you know? So, for that reason, it's very difficult to predict things. And language is such a complex system. You know, it's got so many different levels. We've got the pronunciation, the vocabulary, the grammar. And so in the end, of course, it's very hard to make predictions. And that's why, I mean, as a linguist, even when I'm dealing with the topic of predicting linguistic change, I mean, there are some very general ideas that I have what might happen, but of course, I would find it very hard to say, “Okay, this is what English is going to look like in 50 years' time, and here's a text that is going to simulate that.”

Dominic: Well, I'm certainly ready to make a prediction right now. Cursive. They made me learn cursive in school, and maybe some schools still do. But of course, I didn't like it. I don't use it. And I don't like reading it. I think a lot of people don't like reading cursive because it can be very difficult. It’s beautiful. Cursive is beautiful. It's gorgeous. But man, I think it can be hard to read. And each individual person's cursive or style of handwriting looks different. And I think eventually we're really gonna see cursive disappear almost completely. That's my prediction.

Christina: Yeah, I would also expect that, to be honest.

Dominic: And we also see trends in German, when I got to Germany. Without getting too complicated, you know, German has these four grammatical cases, but one of them is really not used as often as it used to be. And some Germans, it's the genitive case, how Germans form possessives. And some Germans will tell you they do think that it may disappear completely with time.

Christina: Yeah, I mean, you don't know. It could be, but I mean, there are ways around the genitive by using a dative. So for that reason, yeah, it's possible, but we don't know. But there are other things, for example, for the English language where I can be very certain, and one of them is that the English language will continue to change.

Dominic: Oh, yeah.

Christina: I mean, it might seem obvious, but I mean, that is because, well, languages change. And so this is something that we can predict in the sense that we assume that was, I mean, it's something that was valid in the past. It's something that applies now. And very likely this will be the case in the future because language will continue to adapt to the needs of the users. And for that reason, this is something that I can be very certain about. But then, of course, there are some other things, for example,words like fewer and less, I mean, ten items or less? Ten items or fewer? Well, technically it should be fewer, but I think more and more people are using less now in contexts where fewer is used. So while I couldn't claim that with a hundred percent certainty, I would assume that this is a kind of trend as well, just like the ones that we described before, you know, and we might see that this will grow stronger in the future.

Dominic: Yeah, and actually with the less and fewer, which for the listeners, usually, you use less for something that's uncountable and you use fewer for something that's countable. But my understanding is that this “rule,” quote unquote, was invented by pedants. It was never really a rule in English. And that's often the case with some of the “rules” in English. They were invented by people who I don't know. Either, well, trying to make English like Latin, a long history of smart people trying to make English Latin when it's not Latin, but also just, yeah, inventing rules which have never really existed in English.

Christina: Yeah, but I mean, rules are also something that might influence language in the future. So if you have an institution that has the power to decide how language needs to be used, for example, how the spelling has to be fixed in a particular way for some variety like British English or American English, then of course, this can have an impact. But most of the time, I mean, these changes will just happen, you know, because users will just change the way they talk, the way they write. And this is harder to predict. But still, as linguists, we do have some ways. And for example, if you think about the weather forecast, you know, the weather forecast is getting better and better. So when I was a child, actually, people were making fun of the weather forecast, and in Back to the Future, well, it's quite spectacular because there they know exactly when it's going to stop raining. But actually, my mobile can also do that. So I have an app on my mobile that tells me very well when it's gonna rain and when it isn't gonna rain. And I can watch a radar film of clouds, and that tells me quite precisely whether I should take an umbrella or not. And so while it might sound mystical, like something impossible to achieve, well, it's happening now. And as linguists, we also have certain ways of predicting the future.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, I saw a map once of the world of, like, how far out is the forecast reliable? You know, three days out, five days out, seven days out, depending on where you live or the region, it changes. And of course, the thing about the forecast is, yeah, it's more accurate, kind of, the closer it is, right? So if it's tomorrow, it's really accurate, two days out, very accurate, three days out, and then so on and so forth, and as you go farther out, it becomes less accurate. When I was in Germany, I was talking to a German, and they said, “Oh, well, I'm not sure if it's going to rain today. It kind of looks a bit cloudy, stormy outside.” And I looked at my weather app and I said, “Oh no, there's no chance of rain today.” And they said, “Oh right, because your app is more accurate than looking at the sky.” And I thought, “Well, it's strongly evidence-based and data-based, so it might be.”

Christina: It might be. And so in the end, did it rain or not?

Dominic: No. Did not rain.

Christina: Yay. Of course, rain is good. I mean, like, you have to be quite happy when it rains these days because otherwise sometimes there's too much of a drought. But, yeah, but in terms of language, to bring this back to language, what we notice is that if we look at the English language in the world, there are different dialects, different varieties of English. And as we mentioned before, I mean, some of these are more conservative and others are more innovative. And we can observe that in the past, there are certain changes that happened in these varieties at a different time, in a certain order. And so in the innovative varieties, the changes happened first and then the others followed. And so now when we can see a change happening in the innovative variety, well, we can predict with a certain degree of certainty that the other varieties are going to follow. So again, I mean, this is not magic. This is not a crystal ball reading, but of course, it's also evidence-based. And so to some extent, we can predict the future in this way.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think the internet is really key. For example, a hypothesis of Dr. Geoff Lindsey is that when you see language written, it's not so regionally marked, right? You know language is regionally marked. If you can hear someone speaking and you can hear their accent, then you kind of have an idea of what region they're from. But when you see it written, you can't really tell what region someone's from. So you might read a regionalism and not realize it's a regionalism. And then you will go and repeat it. And he believes that this is one way in which many Brits might be using American words.

Christina: Yeah, I entirely agree. I mean, I'm no Brit, but I'm using British English and still, I mean, I sometimes see written expressions and then I will use them. And yeah, they might be American in origin. And then you tell me, you point them out to me, but otherwise, I would have no way of finding that out because the people that I otherwise have conversations with are not necessarily all aware of these differences either. So it's a fascinating topic. And so we can see that, I mean, there are so many changes that can happen, you know, in the language, on so many different levels. And as linguists, we can predict some of these in the sense that we can say it's likelier or less likely to happen, but that's what we usually do. So most of the research in linguistics is probabilistic, so we can talk about the probabilities. We can say, “Yeah, this is more likely to be the case than something else.” But still, of course, that doesn't prevent some very unlikely things from happening and very likely ones from not happening. Like if you have some kind of, yeah, football match in which the people you expected to win actually lose. So in language too, I mean, some grammar can exist for centuries that is not really ideal. And on the other hand, I mean, things that work well might change again. And it's hard to predict. But so what we can see is that linguistics can help us have certain ideas about what could be happening, at least to some degree. So it's a bit like being in a car and knowing where you're roughly going, but we don't know if there's going to be a traffic jam or some accident blocking the road so that we have to move in a different way. And so, yeah, we can predict linguistic change, but of course, not with a hundred percent certainty.

Dominic: Yeah. A football match you mentioned earlier. Do you mean a soccer match? No, I'm kidding. You know, the Europeans make so many jokes about the Americans calling it soccer, but we're not the only ones. The Irish call it soccer because in Ireland, football is a different sport. It’s Irish football, which is quite intriguing, by the way. I don't know much about it, but we're not the only ones.

Christina: Yeah, so I haven't taken that over yet, so it's not part of the Americanisms I have taken over. But, well, who knows, in the future. Anyone interested out there in reading more about this, I mean, the publication is available, open access. You can simply take a look at it. And in that publication, I mean, we also have articles about changes that reverted.

Dominic: Yeah, well, you know, just like how sometimes, like, a fad will come and go, it wouldn't surprise me if the same thing applies to language, that sometimes linguistic trends come and go, while other things kind of stick around permanently. But Christina, on the subject of coming and going, I think it's time for us to go.

Christina: Yeah, I think it's time for us to run. So everyone out there, watch this space. Stay curious. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 14: Is English full of lonely words?

Christina: Hello, Dominic, and hello, everyone out there. Welcome back to Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Dominic: Welcome back, indeed. Christina, how are you?

Christina: I'm doing very well. What about you?

Dominic: I'm doing well. I'm always doing well when we sit down to record a podcast.

Christina: Same as me.

Dominic: Christina, I must say, when I originally came to Germany, I expected to learn a lot about German, but actually during my time here, it's astonishing to me how much I've actually learned about English, particularly because normally the variety of English used here is British English or European English. And I thought I knew most of the British vocabulary, but I keep finding new words I didn't know.

Christina: Yeah, I also find that very interesting. I mean, I think quite a lot of the people that I speak English with speak British English, but talking to you has helped me learn so much about American English. I think it's really, really so interesting. I mean, most of it is the same, but there are these differences that are fun.

Dominic: Yes, I agree. Like, I mean, aside from the accents, I feel like they're 99% the same. That might be too much. 95% the same. But I still keep finding new things I didn't know. For example, at one point, you and I had a very spirited conversation when I first encountered the phrase washing-up liquid because I genuinely did not know what it was.

Christina: That really surprised me. I mean, it's so obvious. Washing-up liquid. It's the thing that you use, which is liquid, for cleaning your dishes.

Dominic: Yeah, except that I feel like washing up might mean you're personally washing yourself up, so maybe it might be like a type of body wash or something like that.

Christina: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. But so what would you call that thing that you use to clean the dishes?

Dominic: Yeah, it's dish soap.

Christina: That also makes sense.

Dominic: Yeah, because it's soap that you use for the dishes. So.

Christina: Even though I have to say to me, like, when I hear soap, I mean, I know there's also liquid soap, and I also have some liquid soap at home. But actually, when I hear soap, I think more of a soap bar.

Dominic: Ah, interesting. A bar of soap. Yeah, I mean, not so uncommon, like, you know, we have laundry detergent, which we call laundry detergent, but more casually, it wouldn't be uncommon to hear someone call it laundry soap. Certainly we do that in my family. Might say, “Oh, we're out of laundry soap. We need more laundry soap.” Because it functions as soap. It functions as soap that goes in the laundry, so it cleans the clothes.

Christina: Yeah, it makes total sense. And I have to say what I also found very interesting is when you told me that you call something horseback riding.

Dominic: Yes, that's right.

Christina: Because if I talked about riding on a horse, I would just call it riding. So no need for me to mention it's on a horse or on the back of a horse because I would say that's kind of expected.

Dominic: Right, but if you're just riding, then what are you riding? Because also we ride on a train or we ride in a car, we ride on a plane, which apparently, in British English, they don't. Apparently they don't ride on a train. Maybe they take a train or they go by train?

Christina: Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think that would be said in British English, but then, of course, I mean, I'm a learner myself. So I wouldn't know everything. But what I find very interesting as well is that most of the time, I mean, people will still understand, you know, because the context will make it clear it's a horse or it's a train or whatever you're riding. I mean, imagine I said, yeah, I like reading. What would you think I was reading?

Dominic: Yeah, to me, this strongly implies that you read novels, in my opinion. And I think that's how people usually understand it. If you say, I like reading or I don't know, I read books, I think it implies that you read novels because maybe novels are, they're more associated with kind of leisure and entertainment, whereas nonfiction is much more informational and encyclopedic.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. Even though I have to say that I think I actually also read more nonfiction in my free time. But yeah, so if I said, I like reading, I would also assume that means reading books and less reading magazines or newspapers or websites, which is interesting, isn't it? So, I mean, we do fill in things. So that's a normal thing that we do when we hear words which are kind of unspecified.

Dominic: Yes, I also, by the way, like, I prefer to read nonfiction, which is always a great disappointment. I'll meet someone and I'll say, “I like reading,” and they'll say, “Oh, I like reading too. What are your favorite genres?” And then I'll say, “Oh, I read nonfiction. Sorry.” And then immediately their enthusiasm evaporates because nonfiction is generally viewed as a bit more dry because often it can be very dry, but it can also be, if it's done well, it can be really engaging.

Christina: Absolutely. That's why I love it. But to come back to those differences, I mean, between British and American English, I mean, what I find very interesting is, for example, the word fancy dress. So if I asked you to come to my party in fancy dress, then I would expect you to come dressed up, for example, I don't know, as a superhero or whatever, but I know it's different in American English.

Dominic: Yes, it sounds like you'd expect me to come dressed up in a costume. Yeah, a fancy dress to me would be formal attire. Maybe if I was a man, it would be a tuxedo, which also I learned the British don't say tuxedo, they say dinner jacket; or maybe if I was a woman, it would be like a very elegant type of gown or dress. Yeah, I didn't actually, the fancy dress one I just learned very, I learned that, like, like a month ago. So I didn't even know about that until now. So if you're in the UK and they talk about a fancy dress party, don't show up in your tuxedo. You will be out of place.

Christina: Yeah, but the good thing is, you can always pretend you're James Bond or something like that.

Dominic: That's right.

Christina: It's worse the other way around, you know? Like Bridget Jones. Going to a party dressed up.

Dominic: Yeah, definitely would be if you came to, if you went to a black-tie event in a Halloween costume. Yeah, that would be worse. You're right.

Christina: Yeah, sometimes it can be dangerous to try and work out what compounds like fancy dress mean. It's the same, by the way, in other contexts. I mean, think of chocolate biscuits. I mean, chocolate biscuits are biscuits that are covered in chocolate or that contain some cocoa, you know? But then there's also dog biscuits. And dog biscuits don't contain any dogs, hopefully. They’re made for dogs.

Dominic: Yes, you're right. Very, very, very fertile ground here for jokes upon jokes upon jokes. You can find so many words where, yeah, the noun in front does not describe the contents of the noun that follows. That's right.

Christina: Yeah, that's right. And I mean, the reason for this is that compounds are very special. I mean, they're very short and economic, but at the same time, that also means that they're more ambiguous than a phrase. So in compounds, the different parts that come together to form this new word, the relations between these parts can be of very different types. For example, a cane chair is made of cane. So here we've got the material relation, but an armchair is not made of arms. It has arms. So it's a kind of, yeah, part-whole thing. Or if you have a deck chair, a deck chair is found on a deck, or a swivel chair allows you to swivel, or a folding chair can be collapsed. So here we're dealing with the function. So there are many, many different kinds of relation that you have between the parts. And of course, that can be exploited in jokes.

Dominic: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And this, I think is, well, this is, we're talking about English here. It's interesting how maybe other languages do compounds or don't do compounds. So, for example, with French, as I understand, compounds in the kind of English style are, well, I almost never, I never really see any compounds like that. Instead, they end up extending the phrase out, which kind of eliminates the ambiguity. So what I mean to say is in English, you'd have a paper towel. And in French, it would be ‘a towel of paper.’ Okay. That tells you the towel is comprised of paper. Or in English, you'd have body wash. Does the wash have body in it? No, it's wash for your body. And in French, you have savon pour le corps, which is ‘wash for the body.’ So, while they can't quite do compounds in the same way, it ends up actually being more descriptive in a way that they don't have this kind of same weird ambiguity.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. That seems to be a kind of Germanic thing, and French is a Romance language. So they use these kinds of prepositional structures. But still, I mean, most of the time we understand what is meant even in English, because we know the conventional meaning of the compounds. And, well, we know that the dog biscuit is for dogs and not with dog meat.

Dominic: Yes.

Christina: But it's something that people are very often unaware of. I mean, like, I recently also kind of read about someone who said, “Oh, it's interesting. The word birthday consists of birth and day. I hadn't noticed.” And that is just because, like, we think about them as chunks, as concepts, you know?

Dominic: Well, there's a famous line in a very famous TV show called Breaking Bad, which I won't spoil anything, but there's a character named Saul Goodman, who, he’s kind of a criminal underworld lawyer. He specializes in helping criminals. And so he says, “You don't just need a criminal lawyer. You need a criminal lawyer.” So that's a direct wordplay on these compounds.

Christina: I love that one. Yeah. And I mean, of course, what you can also do is, like, you can sometimes also see, oh, wait a moment, there are interesting parallels that you didn't expect. Like, there are outlaws, people outside the law, but there are also in-laws who are your spouse's parents.

Dominic: Yeah, that one is a bit more clear when you see it written down, but certainly when you hear it spoken, yeah, yeah, you might expect that if an outlaw is someone who is outside the law, then an in-law must be a law-abiding citizen or someone living inside the law.

Christina: Yeah, somehow. Yeah. And I mean, like, different languages too. I mean, they do that in different ways. So, for example, I mean, if you think about the word drawer, you know, in English, what's a drawer? I mean, a drawer is something that you can draw, that you can pull. But in German, we have the word Schublade, which is like a ‘pushing box.’ I mean, it's true. I mean, you pull and you push a drawer, but there's a different focus in each.

Dominic: That's true. The German philosophy of drawers, which I personally discovered during my German language learning journey. Yes, in English, you pull a drawer, you draw it. The connection there isn't so obvious because the pronunciation is so changed, but a drawer is a drawer. That hurt to say. But in German, it’s you push it, which is fascinating. Now, I would argue that a drawer in its default position is closed. So I think pulling it out is maybe the more important action, but hey, to each their own, right?

Christina: Yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah, it's interesting what you focus on. Same for a word like screwdriver.

Dominic: That's right. You drive it in, which to drive something, yeah, can also kind of mean ‘to push it or orchestrate it in a way.’ Yeah, but in German, it's a screwpuller?

Christina: Yeah, exactly. Schraubenzieher, which is strange. But, I mean, both ideas are part of this concept, but then different languages decide to somehow use a conventional word that emphasizes a different aspect of this.

Dominic: That's true. Well, you do use a screwdriver for unscrewing things. Yeah, but once again, is it the more famous action? I'm not so sure.

Christina: I'm not so sure about these. I have to say that, to be honest, I think the English words make more sense here.

Dominic: Yeah, but maybe in terms of, it serves a dual function, but which function is the prime function? Yeah, that's true.

Christina: But then, of course, I mean, there are other cases where I would say German wins. Okay, for example, if you think about the word a watch, in German, we say Armbanduhr, which is ‘arm band clock.’ So, I mean, that makes more sense, I would say, because it's like, it describes the idea of a watch, whereas a watch just relates to the fact that you watch it. So I think that's kind of very general.

Dominic: That's exactly right. German has many examples where they use this very kind of cute description. Well, I call it cute from my perspective because it's so directly descriptive of what the item is. A personal favorite of mine is instead of a glove, the Germans say Handschuh, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a ‘hand shoe.’ And who am I to disagree? A glove very much is somewhat like a shoe for your hand. So I love these things. Or another one would be, instead of a kettle, they have a Wasserkocher, which is a ‘water cooker.’ And that's exactly what a kettle does. It cooks water. It's just so, yeah, I don't know. It's just so cute how explicit it is in directly describing these items.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, there's a very famous Swiss scholar, Ernst Leisi, who said that this is a kind of typical thing for the German language in contrast to the English language in general. He observed that the German word mündlich, which means ‘oral,’ is related to Mund, which means ‘mouth.’ But if you think about the word oral in English, well, that's very different from the word mouth. And so, after looking at different examples, he came to the conclusion that the English words are kind of anti-social, as he called them, that they're not integrated into families. And, well, this is something which was taught for a long time as a theory in English linguistics in Germany and which I tested in my PhD thesis.

Dominic: Right, yeah, mündlich, which we could create an imaginary translation for, it would be mouthly, and that's what it means, right? Relating to the mouth, just like oral means, of course, I don't think mouthly is a word in English. Maybe it was at one point. But there are some instances, maybe many instances, where you have a Germanic variant and then a kind of Romance alternative. Maybe one that comes to mind right now is something relating to the Earth, it could be earthly or it could be terrestrial. Which I think is Latin. Terra.

Christina: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And that's a very good example. And this is something that you can observe in general. And I mean, if you go back in the history of the English language, then this is due to the fact that, well, the Normans invaded England in 1066 and afterwards, I mean, French became the language of the rulers, and so a lot of French words that ultimately came from Latin became part of the English language, which had been a Germanic language, basically, up to then. And so, if you think about it, then, well, there's quite a lot of very common words in English, like day, thing, mother, you know, all these high-frequency words? They're all Germanic, just like the prepositions in, up, grammatical words. But as soon as you have more sophisticated words, like sophisticated, they come from Latin. They're longer, they're less common. So you have words like justice, or government, or notorious, compensate. And yeah, so that allows you to kind of play with the different stylistic levels.

Dominic: Yes. And then because there are often kind of Romance alternatives to these Germanic words and usually the Romance alternatives seem, yeah, more sophisticated, more complex, more learned, more elegant, perhaps, you can, you can exploit this for comedic effect, right? You can take a phrase which could probably be described in sort of a concise and short way and sort of artificially elongate it using this kind of complex Romance vocabulary, which makes it funnier.

Christina: Yeah, I absolutely love that. I mean, one example would be, “I'm walking the dog,” and you could also say, “I am perambulating the canine.”

Dominic: Ah, yes, or one that I came up with today, which is, “Christina and I will record a podcast today.”: “Christina and I will be spending this present moment of the calendar week utilizing electronic telecommunication to procure a distributable facsimile of our voices for the purposes of proliferating it across the global network.”

Christina: I am impressed, Dominic.

Dominic: Well, it was meant to impress, but that's kind of the thing about this language is that it’s affectatious, right? It's pretentious. And sort of that you kind of imagine that if someone is maybe, I don't know, upper class or educated, then they might seek to speak in this sort of educated manner in order to display their education to everyone. And yeah, it has this sort of pretentious association.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, one of the reasons why a lot of the learned vocabulary is of Latin origin is, of course, that during the Middle Ages, Latin was the language of scholars. So they used those words talking in Latin, writing in Latin. But then, of course, when languages like English became more important, then they just introduced them in English. And that's why we have all this vocabulary that ultimately comes from Latin. But when it's from French and sometimes also when it's a very old Latin word, then it's not necessarily difficult. For example, the word wine. The word wine is also from Latin, but it's a very old one. So it's less complicated.

Dominic: Yes, and it becomes more complicated when we have lots of Greek words, but it's Greek via Latin. It's Greek that came through Latin because I suppose the Romans themselves borrowed some of these Greek words. And then, they were then eventually borrowed into English. Yeah, so we get examples like tripod, right? Which is three feet in Greek, but it came through Latin, so it's not perfect. Maybe the German equivalent Dreifuß is much more Germanic, much more direct.

Christina: Yeah, and that's also what Leisi says, you know? So that's actually one of the other examples that he uses, or hippopotamus, hippopotamus as a borrowed word in English, a difficult word, but in German, it's Nilpferd, which is Nile horse, like from the River Nile.

Dominic: I learned this one. I learned this one recently playing a trivia game with some of my German friends. Yeah, but that's okay because we usually shorten it to hippo.

Christina: Exactly. Yeah. Happy hippo.

Dominic: Ah, yeah, or hungry, hungry hippos. Yeah, that's right.

Christina: And, yeah, I mean, like, all of this is, of course, very convincing and it looks like Leisi might be right. But so, when I wrote my thesis about that, there hadn't been any kind of systematic studies yet and so I thought, “Okay, it would be interesting to put that to the test.” And, well, you know that I usually like using corpus material. So in that case, what I did is I tried to look at the most frequent words in English and in German. So I got these from digital text collections where you just count how often the words occur. And I thought it would be a good idea to look at this most frequent vocabulary because on the one hand, I mean, learners and native speakers need to know that. So it's relevant. But on the other hand, I mean, how common a word is plays a role in so many different ways in the language that I thought, “Okay well, that way it's as comparable as it can get.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. And, you know, we've been talking a lot about this kind of Romance vocabulary being kind of higher level, but not exclusively, right? There's tons of French-derived, Latin-derived vocabulary that English speakers use in their everyday language. And, of course, it's existed in English for so long. I mean, 1066. If you're a linguist, then you gotta know 1066 because that is the year that everything changed, really. It doesn't even sound foreign anymore. It doesn't sound Latin or French. And maybe contrast this to German because I learned recently, because German also has kind of French-derived, Latin-derived vocabulary. Apparently, it's more marked as foreign in German?

Christina: Yeah, that's right. I mean, so a lot of these words, I mean, for example, let's take the word appendix, you know? I mean, if you are talking about that body part in English, I mean, that's the word that you use. But if I used Appendix as ‘appendix’ in German, it would sound as if I were a medical doctor, you know? Because we have the word Blinddarm, which is like blind... what's Darm? Like, where you kind of process the food…

Dominic: Your intestines?

Christina: Yeah.

Dominic: Oh, okay. Or your stomach, maybe?

Christina: No, not the stomach.

Dominic: Oh, the intestine then.

Christina: Yeah. So it's like the blind intestines, you know? And, yeah, so in German, it would be quite marked. And so for that reason, I think that's also possibly what made Leisi feel that probably the origin, the Romance origin of a large part of the English vocabulary would also have an effect there. And so I set out to test that. But first of all, I had to decide how I could operationalize this idea of “anti-social” that is not being part of a family of words. And then I thought, “Okay, well, on the one hand, if you look at a word, then you can try to split it up into meaningful parts.” What we just did before. So that would be a bit like looking for the parents. And on the other hand, you can also try if you can take that word and make it into a longer word so that it almost has like children. So, for example, if I have the word teacher, then I could have English teacher as a child. But of course, teach and -er as the parent.

Dominic: Yeah, I once heard it argued that, and I mean, I guess the line of reasoning makes sense, that if English has such a huge number of these antisocial words, right? And German has, well, comparatively fewer you would think, because German words are very famous for being comprised of other smaller words put together, like Armbanduhr and others, then you would think that maybe German would be the easier language to learn because a learner needs to learn a smaller number of words, right? But apparently that may not actually be the case in reality.

Christina: No, not necessarily, I would say, because you still need to remember which words are combined with each other to produce the form that is the kind of standard, you know? That it's, for example, Armbanduhr and not, I don't know, Armringuhr or, well, I don't know.

Dominic: Armuhrband, if you get the order wrong, you could get the order wrong.

Christina: Yeah, that's true. You could also have that. I mean, emphasizing the band more, but in German, like in English, it's the last part of a compound that expresses the idea. An Armbanduhr is a wristwatch, basically. Yeah. Yeah. So we're saying wristwatch. Isn't that a word that also exists in English?

Dominic: Yes, yeah, that's just the longer. Yeah, because as opposed to a pocket watch which nobody really carries anymore, they look so cool. I want one. They look so cool. But, yeah, but of course in German, it's more like a wrist clock. So it's a little bit more explicit in that way.

Christina: Yeah. And so, I mean, like, so when I looked at these relations, trying to kind of split up words into their parts or extending them into longer words, I mean, if one of the two is possible, then I would say a word is no longer lonely, you know, it's part of a family. But of course, if you think about, like, what to do when you split up words into parts, you have to think about what that means. So a bedroom, for example, is ‘a room which contains one or more beds in which people lie down to sleep.’ So that makes total sense. So you will say, “Okay, yeah, that's a clear case.” But of course, it's also possible to interpret it in a different way. So a bedroom could also be, like, the room that is filled by a bed, which is standing on the floor, you know, like ‘bed space’ in a certain way.

Dominic: Ah, yeah, a room of bed. The whole room is a bed. Oh, wouldn't that be nice? I wouldn't mind a proper bedroom.

Christina: But there are different ways how you could, of course, interpret it. And I mean, it's possible to use the two parts in a paraphrase of the meaning, like I just did. So to me, that was enough, but still, what we can see is that this kind of motivation or transparency is not the same thing as predictability, that you can say, “Okay, well, it has to mean exactly this.” And so I use the term motivatability to express that this is actually only potential. And then for the other direction, for this child direction, I just looked at dictionaries of increasing size to see if I could find longer words, which contained the target word.

Dominic: Okay, very nice. Oh, now you've got me thinking. Now you've got me thinking about bedrooms and other. In German, it's the sleep room.

Christina: Yeah. That's true. Exactly.

Dominic: I mean, I think any room can be a sleep room if you're determined, you know. So similarly, I always thought living room was funny because it implies that you don't live in the other rooms. I typically am living in every room in the house, but yeah, you know?

Christina: Yeah, me too. I hope everyone is alive in every room of the house.

Dominic: Yeah, I agree. Oh, this could be a great joke. Oh, what does a zombie's house have? It has like an unliving room or an undead room. Anyway, work in progress.

Christina: Oh my God. I love it.

Dominic: I need to workshop it. Work in progress.

Christina: You're so good, Dominic.

Dominic: Thank you.

Christina: But in any case, so if you kind of try to do that, if you try to split up words, well, then what happens is that on the one hand, you will find words that can't be split up anymore, like leaf. No way. And on the other, at the other end, you find words like bedroom, where it's kind of clear. But there are a lot of cases in between where you face some obstacles. And so what I did is I looked at all those words many, many times just to make sure that I was really happy with my analysis. And then I also checked what kind of obstacle there was. For example, there could be an obstacle regarding the form, like in the pronunciation. For example, the word preference, if I have a preference for something, well, I prefer it and then there's a suffix -ence. But prefer and preference, you can see a difference in the pronunciation.

Dominic: Right, so but in the case of preference, yeah, prefer plus -ence, but -ence as a suffix is not a word by itself, if you isolate it, unlike in the compounds, like a bedroom or a football. But I have a question with the completely opaque like leaf. Can you ever split apart a single-syllable word?

Christina: Oh, that's a good question.

Dominic: I wouldn't think so, right? There's not enough to work with there.

Christina: It's really difficult. I would say no. I mean, in a certain way, probably you could split up a plural, like feet into a foot plus plural. But then, of course, the question is whether you want to do that or not. But here, I don't.

Dominic: Yeah, I wouldn't. So I would generally assume most single-syllable words are completely opaque, probably.

Christina: Exactly. I mean, at least using the system that I used, you know, and that's why in the beginning of this list, you actually find that most of the words can't be split up into parts because they just consist of single syllables, because that's what we have in the English language. Very, very short words are the most frequent words. So those behave different from the rest. But what you just said, I mean, the -ence in the end. I mean, it's a suffix, so it can't stand on its own, but it still has a meaning. And this meaning can be seen systematically in different words. And so that's also kind of, that contributes to the motivatability of the word, even though it can’t stand on its own.

Dominic: Fascinating. What else did you find?

Christina: Well, I mean, like, you can also find obstacles in the spelling. So in guidance, if you split that up into guide and -ance. Then you will find that the silent E that you have in the spelling of guide is dropped in the suffixed form.

Dominic: Okay. Very nice.

Christina: And you can even combine that. So angry, I mean, angry is obviously related to anger. And there's also a suffix -y, or Y, that we find in many words. So I just made sure to kind of keep all these things apart so that in the end, I could also combine them with each other.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Well, the -y ending usually, it often makes it into an adjective, kind of. So, yeah, if something has anger, it is anger-y, which I assume, over time, principle of economy, was shortened to angry.

Christina: Yeah, that sounds absolutely plausible to me. And, I mean, there's also other types of obstacle, for example, regarding the meaning. If you think about the fact that you can discover something, I mean, there's dis- and cover. So it's the idea of kind of uncovering something in a metaphorical way. And so whenever you have such an element of, oh, well, it's not exactly that meaning, but you have to kind of transform it, then I also recognized that as a semantic obstacle.

Dominic: Okay, yeah. Okay.

Christina: And the fun thing is, you have to be very careful when you try to split up words because sometimes you have the impression that they can be divided, but it's not true. For example, the word understand. It's got nothing to do with under or stand.

Dominic: That's right. And you can't overstand something or anything like that. Yeah, I used to say, you know, you can be overwhelmed, you can be underwhelmed, but you can't be just whelmed.

Christina: Yeah, you're so right. Sometimes, I mean, the basis is missing. So, that's also something that I recognized as another category. So that you had a rest, like whelmed in that case, which just doesn't exist as a word in the language. Even though, I mean, whelmed wasn't part of my list, I would believe.

Dominic: Yeah. That's actually, I believe, naval vocabulary, by the way. Lots of naval vocabulary in English. But yeah, this kind of gets into one of my favorite subjects in English, which is lost positives. And not all these are lost positives. Like, well, I should explain what it is. A lost positive is where you have a negative word, something like ruthless or disgruntled or like incessant, disheveled. But you don't have, we don't have the opposite of that, right? We don't have ruthful, we don't have gruntled. We don't have cessant. We don't have sheveled. I think another one is innocent is a famous one. You can be innocent. The opposite of innocent is to be nocent. I think these words once existed in English, but gradually disappeared with time. But you could probably have cases, like example, like I said, like overstand or like, yeah, whelmed, where it probably never existed at all.

Christina: Yeah. And I mean, you can just kind of also make fun of it in completely nonsensical ways. If you think about the minimum, you know, in contrast to the maximum, you can also kind of split that up into mini mum, like a very small mother.

Dominic: Oh, yeah. Or a legend is a leg end. And yeah, earnest is an ear nest. Yeah, these are very nostalgic. I feel like when I was a child sitting in class, just staring at the book, looking for anything to entertain me, right? Because I was in school, I would look at the words and try to pick them apart into these false compounds. Yeah.

Christina: And I thought you were listening to the teacher, Dominic.

Dominic: Well, you know, I can multitask, so...

Christina: I know. I mean, you're extremely good at these things. I mean, I would say above average.

Dominic: That's good. Thank you.

Christina: Yeah, but, I mean, to come back to these rests that remain, I mean, in my list, for example, I mean, if we think about the word oral, like Leisi’s example, I mean, oral also contains the suffix -al, which we have in quite a lot of adjectives. And so for that reason, I would say, yeah, it's kind of partially motivable. So it's not standing completely on its own in the language, but we have a rest that we can't relate to an English word.

Dominic: That's exactly right. Yeah. If you were to ask me to pick apart oral, I'd say, well, oral is relating to the or, whatever that is. We don't have it.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, there is the word or, the conjunction, like and, or, but. But that's not it here.

Dominic: Yeah, not a word to mean ‘mouth.’

Christina: No, not a word to mean ‘mouth,’ which obviously in this case, I mean, it's the Latin word for mouth that is used as the basis here. But well, but even so, I mean, I would claim there is a link here. And I mean, all these different obstacles can also be combined with each other. So there are a few more smaller categories, but in the end, well, what is possible is to look at all of this in detail, but I want to spare you the details. Oh, and by the way, if anyone out there is interested, it's available online, so anyone interested can read the whole book for free.

Dominic: Excellent. Yeah, lots of fun to be had with trying to split words apart. And you can, sometimes it's a history lesson, like lukewarm. Who is luke? Maybe it should be what is luke? Yeah, I believe it’s derived from an old word that basically meant tepid, but of course, the word itself has completely fallen out of use.

Christina: Yeah, I mean like with yesterday, what is yester? I mean, it’s not a word that we use in present-day English, but it's a kind of day, you know? So it can be partly split up. And I think that's a very important part of the message. And I mean, if we look at all of this taken together, then we will actually find that English can be split up. English words can be split up into meaningful parts to a very large extent. So, almost 60% of the English words, 59 point something. I mean, German is just a tiny little bit better than that, 66 point something percent, you know? So, it's so similar that I wouldn't claim that the German language can be split up, like the words from German can be split up into meaningful parts all the time, whereas the English words are anti-social. I mean, at least for the vocabulary that I looked at and for the method that I used, this was the case. Now, of course, you could also say, “Oh, well, but it's a trick,” you know, because you also accept this kind of partial motivatability where you can have leftovers, like for the oral, but even there. I mean, if you just accept those cases which are perfectly motivatable, like bedroom, then you have about 18% for German and 13% for English, which is very close as well, you know? So, it's not a huge difference. So, I wouldn't say it's completely different languages in that respect.

Dominic: Yeah, which is, this is so fascinating because it goes against kind of the popular perception of the two languages in this particular regard, right? I would say a difference of 7% is decent, but not nearly as earth-shattering as people might expect. But there's a hitch, right? There's a hitch in that you're looking at a very wide range of words here. So, if you were to really just narrow it down to the super-high-frequency words, then it's a bit of a different story, isn't it?

Christina: Yeah, then it's a bit of a different story, but then I wouldn't find any motivatability for any of the two languages because we have those monosyllabic words, you know, like, uh, the, and, or, and the German equivalents. So I don't think it would greatly change the picture. And it's the same if we kind of try to see what happens if we go down in frequency. Then we will find that if we look at the less common words, then most of the time, you can split them up into parts, you know, because they're longer, because they're meaningful. And so, everything that I see in my results shows me that the two languages are more similar than they are different. And not just in the direction of splitting up words to find out if they have meaningful parts, but also trying to see if they can have children. So if we do that, we find that almost 99% of the English words and 96% of the German words have children. They can be expanded into longer words. And if we combine that with the question whether we can split them up into their parts, then we find that it's 99 point something percent both for German and for English. So practically no word has to stand alone.

Dominic: Well, you know, you've reminded me, all this talk has reminded me of a phrase I probably heard one time in school, which is that “We need to ask pregnant questions.” A pregnant question is a question which gives birth to many answers, right? So it's a good question, a very good question, because it creates a good discussion. But yeah, it would make sense to me that kind of the Romance-derived words are the most motivatable because they're usually longer. And I just feel like the longer the word is, the more likely you'll be able to pick apart its constituent pieces.

Christina: Absolutely. I mean, you're so right. I mean, a longer word gives you more opportunities, just like the German compounds, which are so incredibly long at first sight,

Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, et cetera. But in the end, it's individual words. And so the longer a word is, the likelier you are to find meaning in its parts.

Dominic: Yes, exactly. Yes, I like that. In that example you were giving, it was a word so long, you didn't even want to bother finishing it. That's German, ladies and gentlemen.

Christina: Yeah, I'm not going to translate that because it's a nonsense word anyway.

Dominic: Yeah, exactly. Actually, that's what I found in my German learning is that the vast majority of high-frequency words every day aren't even the really long compounds. I really don't encounter them very often, to be honest.

Christina: No. Yeah. So that means, yeah, anyone whose native language is not German, so don't be scared off.

Dominic: Don't be scared off. That's right.

Christina: And just to come back to Leisi, I mean, he believed that the Romance origin might be responsible for, like, English words being more isolated within the language. Now, on the one hand, we saw this is not the case, but on the other hand, what I did is I checked where all those 5,000 words, from English, from German, where they come from by looking at historical dictionaries of the two languages. And I found that actually in English, the words that come from Latin are even more motivatable than those from German. So 63% of the Romance words in English are motivatable compared to 49% of the German words. And in German, it's more or less the other way around. So what you mentioned earlier, namely, that the words of Latin origin have a kind of more, let's say, more exotic feel, you know, that you notice them more. Well, probably that's also the reason why we have this feeling as speakers of German that that might be the case. But so in English, there's such a wealth of words that ultimately come from Latin that they form their own families. And so they're not alone. So we actually find a lot of relations between words in the language. And I was very happy to find this in my research.

Dominic: Yeah, very nice. Yeah, I tried to, with German, I was pleased to learn that there is some Latin/French derived vocabulary, a good deal of it. To a lesser extent than English, I think. Oftentimes there will be maybe a verb or a word where English opts for the French or Latin, whereas German has its own Germanic-derived alternative, as we discussed. But then often in German, these sort of French/Latin-derived verbs, they all have the same exact verb ending, which is -ieren. So like telefonieren, transportieren. All of them have that ending, which is great for learners. And it's also great for me because a lot of this kind of French-derived vocabulary is more or less shared, right? So if I know this kind of French/Romance word in English, then I just think of it in German and I just attach the -ieren ending. So one time I wanted to say, like, to conserve, but I didn't know how to say conserve in German. So I said konservieren. And yes, it exists.

Christina: Yay. Perfect. I mean, the alternative would have been erhalten. But I have to say, konservieren is so common in German. That's a fantastic strategy. So making use of those similarities between the languages, yeah, excellent, excellent strategy.

Dominic: Right. Yeah. You only run the risk of perhaps using a bit of a higher-level alternative when there would have been a simpler, maybe Germanic-derived word for that. But, hey, people will understand you, so it's okay.

Christina: Exactly. I think that’s even more important. Yeah, Dominic, you're a successful language learner, and you're developing your own tricks. That's fantastic. And of course, there are a lot of tricks that one can use.

Dominic: Yeah, and I strongly encourage it. I hope every language learner does. You know, languages become a lot less scary once you kind of figure out how to break these words down into their constituent parts. No linguistics degree necessary.

Christina: Definitely not. And I mean, even with my PhD thesis, I really made sure that I only split up the word into parts that anyone could recognize. So not necessarily with linguistic training. And I think the results are very encouraging because they show us that even the very, very frequent words, even those where you wouldn't expect it, can be split up into meaningful parts most of the time. So this is a very good strategy.

Dominic: Yeah, the library of prefixes and suffixes is pretty consistent. And once you learn what they mean, you can even start inventing your own new words.

Christina: That's absolutely true. And I mean, for example, if you have a word like misinterpretation, I mean, it may look scary at first, but if you look at it, I mean, mis- means, like, ‘incorrect,’ interpret, well, that's probably the basis that you already know. And then you have -ation in the end, which is the act of doing something. In this case, interpreting. So misinterpretation, well, can be remembered more easily by just recognizing that there are meaningful parts in it. Not all of them can stand on their own, but still, they're meaningful.

Dominic: Oh, yes, absolutely. A previous president of the United States, George W. Bush, was famous for the ways he employed the English language, and sometimes he would, probably not on purpose, but he would invent kind of new words on the fly. And a famous one is, he said, misunderestimate. “They misunderestimated me.”

Christina: I love it.

Dominic: I love it too. He meant to say they underestimated him, but, you know, misunderestimate, ‘to underestimate by mistake.’ Maybe it works.

Christina: It works and it means you shouldn't underestimate me, you know?

Dominic: That's right. That's exactly right.

Christina: Yeah. So, this idea of, okay, trying to find meaning in words is definitely a helpful strategy. It doesn't work always, but most of the time, it's a good idea. And, I mean, in some cases, you just need to be aware that you have to deal with some obstacles in the form. So life and live, I mean, there might be a change between an F and a V. And of course, it could also be that in the end, not all the parts are meaningful, you know, that some rest remains. But even so, you can try to, for example, see if it's a noun or an adjective by looking at the suffix in the end. And so that way, if you encounter a new word in the context, well, that can be helpful for understanding it and ultimately also for learning it.

Dominic: I think a lot of this highlights that whenever you're learning a language, cognates are your best friend. Cognates are words that are, well, more or less shared across different languages, which derive from the same root, basically. Now, sometimes there are false cognates. They're called false friends, which is a really cool name, right? Where it looks like a cognate and maybe it was at one point, but it's developed different meanings in the respective languages. And so if you use it, you might end up not saying what you mean to say. But definitely capitalize on cognates as much as you possibly can. And, yeah, especially among the European languages, there are many of them, particularly those deriving from Latin.

Christina: Definitely. I mean, if you think about English, president, minister, invite, I mean, in French, it's président, ministre, inviter. In Spanish, it's presidente, ministro, invitar. Very similar, you know?

Dominic: Exactly. Yeah, no, I was stunned by that when learning French.

Christina: And I mean, if you look at English and German, I mean, you will find that the very common words are so similar. I mean, we have brother, Bruder. We have mother, Mutter. We have hand and Hand, and milk and Milch. There are so many similarities. I mean, it's a very good idea to just kind of have an open mind for the similarities, either in the pronunciation or in the spelling, and that can be so helpful.

Dominic: That's exactly right. Yeah, that was something that really struck me because when looking at the language family tree, English and German are part of the same language family, and you can really see that DNA in the everyday language. You see that in kind of the simple daily language, kind of English and German, kind of have this very evident link. But then when you get into a bit of the fancier language, the link to French becomes more clear.

Christina: Definitely. And what is very interesting, by the way, as a linguist, there's another kind of trick that I recently found out, because English and German developed in different directions between the 6th and 8th centuries in the High German sound shift. And that means that now sometimes there are words which you may not immediately recognize as belonging together. But as soon as you are aware of this principle, you can discover that actually there are words that are equivalents. So, for example, the word thing and the word Ding, you notice that TH corresponds to a D, but not just here. It's the same in thorn and Dorn, for example, which means the same thing. So, actually, in English, where you have a TH, either a /θ/ or a /ð/, this corresponds to a D, a D, in German. And so if you find the word Distel, well, then if you know that, you can replace the D with a TH, and then you get thistle.

Dominic: Yes. Or Wasser and water, where the T has been replaced by a double S. There's actually, there's a video on YouTube by RobWords where he actually breaks down this shift and he teaches the viewers how to undo it so that maybe English speakers can look at German, English speakers with no knowledge of German, can look at German, undo these sound changes, and find that maybe they understand more German than they think.

Christina: Oh, that's fantastic. I wasn't aware of that video, but that's exactly what I meant here. I mean, it's the same for the P and the PF, for example, where you have pan and Pfanne, for example. So cool. I mean, you know, I'm a huge fan of Rob Watts.

Dominic: Yeah, me too. Me too.

Christina: Shout out. I'm sure it's a cool video.

Dominic: Yeah, whenever we're learning languages, some of these tricks we might use to try to memorize things, they're called mnemonics, which is not pronounced the way it's spelled. It starts with a silent M. I'm sure it's there for a reason, like many silent letters, they're usually there for a reason. Sometimes they're there for no reason if some smart fellow from the past inserted it there to kind of make it resemble Latin. But yeah, mnemonics are these really handy tools, kind of these, whether it's kind of like a story or a song or a phrase that you might use to remember a piece of information.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. I find them very helpful too. Yeah, and I mean, there are mnemonics for all kinds of things. For example, for spelling. When you find it difficult to remember when you should spell here with ERE or with EAR, well, just remember, “You hear with your ear,” and ear is spelled EAR. So when it's about hearing, then it's EAR. And well, when it's like here or there, then it's ERE.

Dominic: Yeah. Similarly, this one is U.S.-specific, but in memorizing how to spell principal, as in the headmaster of a school, I learned this very recently that the British call it a headmaster, which to me sounds really delightfully antiquated and archaic. It's very reminiscent of Hogwarts. Yeah, whether you're talking about the headmaster in a school, or whether you're talking about a principle in terms of, like, a value that a person has or something like that, like a moral principle, they would say, “The principal is your pal,” because principal, the headmaster of a school, ends in -pal. Of course, I always thought that was funny, because is the principal really my pal? Well, I hope so. In the best case, I hope so.

Christina: Yeah, and I mean, there's also, for example, mnemonics for learning vocabulary, like AM and PM are notoriously difficult, which is which, which is in the morning, which is in the afternoon. And, I mean, if you think about the ordering of the alphabet, A becomes before P. So that really helps you to remember that AM is before noon.

Dominic: Oh, very nice. Hard for me with that one because I think just through rote memorization, I never had an issue with that one, but I could definitely understand, especially because I think in Europe and much of the world, they use the 24-hour clock. So that makes sense to me.

Christina: It's so difficult for us. And I mean, if you think about vocabulary in general, I mean, yeah, for vocabulary, there are no general rules like for spelling or for grammar. And there very often it makes sense to kind of think of a little rhyme or story individually. For example, the word funnel. If I, as a German, want to learn what a funnel is, so in German it's Trichter, I can remember that a funnel is like a tunnel through which something will go. And that can help. Or alternatively, Dominic, for you as an English learner of German, if you wanted to learn the German word for caterpillar, Raupe, you could associate it with a rope and you could imagine a stretched-out caterpillar that looks like a rope, and this could help you.

Dominic: Yes, exactly. I love these types of little tricks. And there's no shame in using them, by the way. Like I've heard some learners, like, kind of intuitively come up with them, but they don't want to say that they use them. There is no shame. These things are the best and most efficient way to learn in my opinion. I made heavy use of mnemonics when studying Japanese. There’s a very famous book called Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig, which uses the Heisig method. And the Heisig method is mnemonics. It's heavy use of mnemonics. What they do is, actually, you learn the meaning of the Japanese characters, of the Chinese characters, in English first. So you can say the meaning of it in English before you know how to say it in Japanese. But actually that ends up really giving you a really strong basis. And similarly to these antisocial words, motivatability. You know, you might look at the Chinese characters, and if you assume every Chinese character is anti-social, then, oh my God, how could a human possibly memorize them all? Right? But actually, they're not. Actually, they're motivatable in the same way that they have these constituent pieces. The word, they're called radicals, but they have these constituent pieces, and usually each constituent piece has a specific meaning. And when combined and put together, it creates a new meaning. And so based on these constituent parts, you can create little mnemonics in your head.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And as you said, I mean, in learning languages, in remembering vocabulary, grammar, et cetera, everything is permitted, everything that helps you remember. And very often it's the crazy stuff that will help you remember. I mean, I'm a native speaker of German, so it's easy for me to know the gender that words have, but learners find that very hard. And I recently read a very interesting trick, so I don't know if that might work for you as well, Dominic. But if you think about the kind of standard traditional colors like blue for male and red for female, and then something neutral, so they suggested that if you learn a new word, like, for example, dog, which is masculine, then der Hund, you could imagine a blue dog. You could imagine a red cat because it's die Katze, female, or a yellow chicken because it's das Huhn and neutral.

Dominic: Yeah. Actually, my language learning app does that when the word is masculine or feminine. It gives it a blue shade or kind of a pink shade.

Christina: So cool. I didn't know about that. So cool. I love that. But of course, I mean, also for English, there are a lot of mnemonics. I mean, many of them are in German. So probably since this podcast is in English, it's better to restrict myself to something which I can also say in English. But even there, there are some very helpful ones. For example, “if and would is no good.” So if you have an “if” clause, you shouldn't use “would” in the “if” clause. It's a common mistake. Or another one, I mean, it's also very difficult to know when to use the simple past and when to use the present perfect. And there are a few words that can help you. And so you could remember, “Yesterday, ago, and last require using the simple past, but never, ever, since, and for open present perfect’s door.”

Dominic: Fascinating. Yeah. These definitely are for English learners because I'm not familiar with any of these.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, like, these are not so famous. I mean, a very, very famous one in German is, “He, she, it, das S muss mit,” which is “He, she, it, you need to take an S along,” which reminds you to use a third person singular S. And there's a lot of these. And I have to say, I love them and I collect them. So I would love to have more of these. So if anyone out there would like to submit some, that would be fantastic.

Dominic: Yes, please do. We love this idea of crowdsourcing linguistic knowledge. It's always amazing what some people know or can come up with. So please drop us a comment wherever you can or send us an email at linguisticsBTS [at] yahoo.com. We'd be really happy to hear from you all.

Christina: Oh yeah, that would be so cool.

Dominic: I too enjoy enlarging my linguistic repertoire.

Christina: Yeah, sounds like it.

Dominic: Well, I don't know if there's a mnemonic for ending an episode, but if there is, I'll try to remember it. Christina, I think we're out of time.

Christina: That's true. I think we ought to stop. So stay curious, everyone out there. Have fun with language.

Dominic: And join us next time on Linguistics Behind the Scenes.

Episode 15: Do you say thank you to a robot?

Christina: Hello, everyone out there. Welcome back to our podcast.

Dominic: Yes, hi, Christina, and you know, Christina, in this age of advanced AI models and such, how can I be sure you're real? How do I know I'm not just talking to a chatbot right now?

Christina: Hmm, good question. I mean, you can see me. You can hear me. I suppose you recognize my voice. But then, of course, that could be faked, though I suppose at the moment, that would still be quite difficult with such short delay in me responding. So I suppose you could trust your senses still.

Dominic: Yeah, I certainly hope so. Yeah, certainly this is a very hot topic and for good reason; these two technologies are developing very quickly. But, you know, at the core of these text AI models is language.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, language is such a wonderful thing. I mean, we don't just use language to communicate among each other, but also to think. And, well, that's why we also talk about artificial intelligence. Because in the end, it looks like it's thinking, but then it isn't. It's predicting text.

Dominic: Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's very good at what it does. Some of these newer models are really, really impressive. And there's a lot of linguistics that goes into a lot of this. We previously spoke about on our episode about memorializing Holocaust survivors and digital testimonies. We spoke about a chatbot that was made with Abba Naor, but that was of a very different nature.

Christina: Yeah, that's true. I mean, the chatbot that we produced, well, that chatbot, that is basically a match between the questions that the users ask, and then the corresponding video that has the answer. So, yeah, there is some AI in the background that kind of does this matching. But nonetheless, I mean, the responses themselves are pre-recorded videos, and that's important here. But if we think about a real chatbot, of course, we expect the AI to have an actual conversation with us. And I mean, it's amazing what AI can do. So this question of, is it intelligent or not? I mean, it's a matter of definition, you know, what intelligence is, after all, but it's really impressive these days.

Dominic: Yeah. And the Abba Naor project was still really cool, by the way. I mean, a really cool idea that, you know, you're using intelligence in the background to process the questions, and you had a bunch of pre-recorded responses from Abba Naor, and then it would match it up with the one that most closely matches the question that the user asked. That is really, really cool. But even so, the answers were real. They were real pre-recorded videos, answers from a real person. So to call it a chatbot isn't strictly accurate in the strictest sense.

Christina: No, you're right. It's not really a chatbot in the strictest sense, but I just find it easier to say “video chatbot” than “interactive digital testimony,” which is a lot longer.

Dominic: That's true. Kind of how else would you really describe it in a way that kind of, yeah, captures it succinctly? Yeah, I agree. But today we're going to actually talk about, well, real chatbots, chatbots that are, yeah, completely artificial intelligence, where the responses are generated by a computer.

Christina: Yeah, that's true, because, well, I have a new publication. We have a new publication. So there's a whole group of researchers that I'm part of. And, well, we have been dealing with artificial intelligence, with a chatbot, but of a very special type. But of course, it's a good idea to start by looking at chatbots in general.

Dominic: Yeah, this is a really exciting topic. In some ways, it's the topic everyone wants to talk about right now. Or at least I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. So artificial intelligence and technology in general are very, very, very, very, very hot topics because, you know, to a large degree, they actually develop those technologies in the San Francisco Bay Area. But nevertheless, I am fascinated by the crossroads between this linguistic research and AI because, I mean, I would just think, I mean, I would think this is so foundational. These AI chatbots are tuned to talk like people, and the art of talking, the art of language, the art of sounding like a person, this is totally within the realm of linguistics.

Christina: It is totally within the realm of linguistics. Yeah, because of course, everything that has got to do with language is somehow related to linguistics or can be studied by linguists. And I have to say, of course, if you think about the evolution of humans and of language, I mean, in the past several thousand years at least, I mean, whenever someone talked using language, it was a human. So we're kind of used to having a human in front of us when we get a message that is formulated in verbal language. But now it could also be produced by a machine that generates new texts that have never been produced before. So something that was just possible by humans in the past.

Dominic: Oh, absolutely. And Christina, I'm really happy you mentioned that because I think, you know, if we're going to talk here about human-robot, human-machine, human-computer communication, then I think we should start at the beginning. And one of the foundational tests for this is called the Turing Test, and it's named after a British computer scientist named Alan Turing, an extremely important individual; some call him the father of computer science. He was instrumental in cracking the German Enigma Code during World War II, which was, like, one of the most advanced cryptographies at the time. And he used a computer to do it in the 1940s, which is tremendous. There's a very good movie about him called The Imitation Game. It's a movie. It's dramatized, it's fictionalized, but it stars Benedict Cumberbatch, and I think it's pretty darn good. But there's this thing called the Turing Test. Do you know about it?

Christina: Yeah, I do. Would you like to explain it for our listeners?

Dominic: Sure thing. The Turing Test is super simple. It's that when you're talking to a machine or, well, let's say a chatbot, can you tell that you're talking to a computer? Or do you think, do you feel like you're really talking to a real person? Can you tell? In the past, with early chatbots, it was pretty darn obvious, right?

Christina: Yeah. I mean, relatively obvious, even though, well, they also did a pretty good job. I mean, there's a very, very early chatbot, like, one of the most important ones, which is called ELIZA. That was developed in the 1960s. So quite a while ago. And ELIZA is called ELIZA because it's named after Eliza Doolittle. Do you know My Fair Lady, the film with Audrey Hepburn?

Dominic: Ah, yes. This is, like, in linguistics, this is like required viewing, I think, right? Like, yeah.

Christina: It is, yeah. One of the few films which deal with linguistics, but I mean, there’s this linguistics professor who teaches a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, how to talk. And, I mean, it's actually based on a musical, and that musical is based on a play, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. And I mean, the name of Pygmalion comes from the god that created, yeah, a woman and then fell in love with his creation. And so, well, yeah, and so in that sense, there is this artificial woman, so to speak, ELIZA, and ELIZA has a strategy when she communicates, which is like the kind of psychologist that you would stereotypically imagine. For example, if you said something like, “Men are all alike.” And then I would probably say something like, “In what way?” And then you say something like whatever you say, and then I can say, “Okay, can you think of a specific example?” And, “Yeah, well, my parents made me come here.” “Ah, your parents made you come here.”

Dominic: Yeah, you do sound like a therapist. Or a psychologist. That is true.

Christina: Yeah, exactly, like a therapist. Yeah. And so the idea here is that you, well, I mean, ELIZA didn't know anything about the world. I mean, now we can say that the chatbots that we have that simulate conversation, I mean, they have the whole knowledge of the internet. That's why they're so incredibly good at providing us with knowledge. But, I mean, ELIZA didn't have that. ELIZA was just able to transform the sentences that were given to her. And so if someone said, “Well, I'm so depressed much of the time,” then ELIZA could say, “I am sorry to hear that you are depressed,” you know? So as soon as you notice there's a negative word, you could say, “I am sorry to hear” whatever. And in those cases where people possibly would say something that didn't have a very clear rule of transformation of the sentence, ELIZA could say something like, “That's very interesting,” or “I see,” or “Please go on.”

Dominic: Yeah. Okay, that is cool. In many ways. Yeah, this was a chatbot developed in the 1960s at MIT. Very impressive that they could even do something like that in the ‘60s. And thank you for explaining the meaning behind the name. That name is so clever. I wonder, those researchers must have been very happy with themselves because that is very clever – there is a very deep meaning behind that.

Christina: Yeah, and I think they were also very happy with the effect that the chatbot had, because when they tested the chatbot, I mean, actually the participants in the study, sometimes they asked the researchers to leave the room because they said, “Well, we're having a private conversation here.” So even though it was a very, very simple chatbot that just took sentences and sometimes converted a statement into a question and things like that, people felt they were actually having a conversation with it. And so it kind of felt real and they kind of established an emotional relation with it. And that's the interesting thing. So that's even possible with very simple means. Now, just imagine, I mean, what's possible today with AI, of course, and that's a very different situation. So it's very human-like for us in that sense, because here we have something producing language, well, so traditionally we would think it's a human.

Dominic: Yes. And to connect this, you know, with MIT and going forward, you know, Stephen Hawking, who, does he need an introduction? Probably not, but he’s one of the most significant theoretical physicists, significant scientists of all time, at least in recent times. And, you know, quite famously, he suffered from ALS. And so he actually lost the ability to speak. You know, he was a British scientist, but growing up, I didn't completely know he was British because he doesn't speak with a British accent. He spoke with his iconic text-to-speech voice, which was developed by MIT researchers back in the 1980s running on an Apple II, which is an old computer. But he, you know, he was asked why, over the decades, why he didn't want to upgrade his text-to-speech voice to something more modern and more natural-sounding. The modern ones, especially today, sound very naturalistic. And I think he said that voice became so iconic. It became so synonymous with him as a person. It almost in a way became his new voice. And like, yeah, when I hear that text-to-speech voice now, I just think that's Stephen Hawking's voice.

Christina: I entirely agree. Absolutely. I mean, it was so closely connected to him, at least, I mean, in the later stages of his life. There's also a beautiful film about his life in general where you can also experience him as a young person.

Dominic: The Theory of Everything?

Christina: Yeah, I think so.

Dominic: Starring Eddie Redmayne, I believe, as Stephen Hawking.

Christina: Oh yes. Oh, so good. I love this actor.

Dominic: Another good one. Very good to mention that in the company of The Imitation Game. I think those movies go well together. Just watch both of them.

Christina: Plenty of good tips to watch films here.

Dominic: Plenty of good tips. Yeah. So we're moving through. We started in the ‘40s, to the ‘60s, to the ‘80s, and we're moving forward now through time. Getting to the 2000s, I actually used some of the online chatbots in the 2000s and they were fun, but they just provided some light amusement because it was very easy to break them.

Christina: Yeah? In what way? What did you do?

Dominic: Well, asking it questions about itself, you know, they weren't always programmed to know that they're a computer, so you would say, “You're a computer.” And it would say, “What are you talking about? You're crazy. I'm a woman. I’m 27 years old and my name is Samantha. I'm not a computer.” And so that was funny. Or it wouldn't necessarily remember things it said earlier in the conversation, so it would contradict itself. I would say, “What are you doing right now?” And it would say, “Right now, I'm looking out the window and enjoying a cool summer breeze.” And then five minutes later, “Okay, what are you doing right now?” “Oh, well, right now I'm at an ice hockey match watching the players.” And it's like, okay, well, clearly there's a mistake here. Yeah, it's not remembering. And this is an area again, where modern chatbots excel. They are specifically designed with memory, with the ability to remember what was said in the conversation and continue based on that.

Christina: I mean, at least the latest editions. Yeah, the latest versions. I think memory is vital in having conversations that are human-like. Yeah.

Dominic: I totally agree. And so coming into the present now in the 2020s, you know, ChatGPT is probably the single most famous and maybe most important, most transformational. So ChatGPT became available to the public in 2022, I believe, which was, you know, only a few years ago, but already it feels like we've had these AI models for a long time. It already feels normal to us. So it's crazy how quickly this space has developed. And these new chatbots are nothing short of tremendously impressive.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, Dominic, it's funny. That you just called it transformative because of course, ChatGPT has got transform in its name. It's a generative pre-trained transformer. That's why we have that very strange name for that chatbot.

Dominic: Yes, exactly. It's a key part of how the technology works. I'm not a computer scientist. I won't claim to be one, but I try to be literate, at least in understanding these concepts broadly. And yes, that's a key part of what makes these new models so much more powerful than what came before.

Christina: Yeah, that's true. And I mean, this idea of generative, I mean, that's what we just discussed before, namely, that the model can generate or create new content, like text, and pre-trained means it's been trained, obviously, before the situation in which the user uses the chatbot. And, I mean, transformer is a very specific type of, yeah, AI architecture, which is particularly good at understanding, yeah, context and relationships and languages, things like that. So, this is what makes it so powerful and well, it's got that in its name. And that's why we often say ChatGPT. Oh, by the way, people sometimes, I mean, they try to find funny names for their chatbots, like “Chad GPT,” for example.