Full transcript of the episode (it gives away every surprise)
Interactive experiment
Two unknown words
In a language you don’t know, one of these shapes is called “bouba,” the other “kiki.” Which one is “kiki”?
Two shapes: one rounded like a blob, the other bristling with spikes. The reader says which one is called “kiki.”
Sounds have shapes.
Like most people, in most languages: in 2022, a study across twenty-five languages found this association in about three people out of four.
Words That Make You See
Every language carves up the world in its own way, and each one changes a little of what we see.
For the Geneva linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the link between a word and what it refers to is arbitrary: nothing in the sound “dog” barks. That is true of most vocabulary.
But not always: round sounds suggest roundness, high sounds smallness, sharp sounds angles. Linguists call this sound symbolism.
Question for the reader
What is the most universal word in the world?
- “Mom”
- “OK”
- “Huh?” (correct answer)
- “Coca-Cola”
If you answer ““Mom””:
No: it’s “huh?”
If you answer ““Huh?””:
Yes: “huh?”
In 2013, Dutch linguists compared conversations in ten languages on five continents, from Dutch to Lao by way of Siwu, spoken in Ghana. Everywhere, to get someone to repeat themselves, people use almost the same little word: a short, rising syllable, with no hard consonant. They were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for it.
In Hopevale, in northern Australia, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr have no words for “left” and “right.” They say: “there’s an ant on your north leg,” “move over a bit to the east.”
As a result, they know at every moment where the cardinal directions are, in a windowless room as well as on the way back from a trip.
Try it yourself
- Without looking at your phone or out of the window, point toward north.
Are you sure?
- I’m sure
- More or less
- No idea
Check with the compass on your phone. A five-year-old Guugu Yimithirr child would do it without hesitating: their language makes them do it dozens of times a day.
It was in this very language that James Cook, in 1770, noted down the word gangurru: kangaroo. The story goes that the word means “I don’t understand.” It doesn’t: it is the name of a species of gray kangaroo.
Interactive experiment
The ink and the word
Color names, printed in ink of a different color. Click on the color of the INK, as fast as you can, ignoring the word.
The reader has to name the ink color of color words (“red” printed in blue, for example). Their response time when the word and the ink match is compared with their time when they contradict each other.
You can’t help reading.
Once you know how to read, words force themselves on the brain, whether you like it or not. John Ridley Stroop measured it in 1935.
And yet writing is only five thousand years old: far too recent for evolution to have prepared us for it. To read, the brain recycles a small region that used to recognize objects and faces. Stanislas Dehaene and Laurent Cohen nicknamed it the brain’s “letterbox.”
The Rosetta Stone, carved in 196 BC, carries the same decree in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. Thanks to it, Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822.
Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 4.0There are about seven thousand languages. Nearly half of them could disappear by the end of the century.
In 1992, in Turkey, Tevfik Esenç died, the last speaker of Ubykh, a language of the Caucasus with eighty consonants and only two or three vowels. Before he died, he spent years working with linguists, including the Frenchman Georges Dumézil, so that a record of it would remain.
When a language dies, a way of seeing the world goes out.
Names of plants and winds, songs, ways of counting and finding your way, that existed nowhere else.
Linguistic relativity. The idea that language influences thought. Its strong version, language as a prison, is false. Its weak version, language steering attention and memory, is well supported.
Words let us share what isn’t there: a danger, a memory, a god, a promise. A special kind of promise is about to let millions of strangers cooperate without ever meeting. It is in your pocket.
Sources
- Vilayanur Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard, “Synaesthesia: a window into perception, thought and language,” 2001; Aleksandra Ćwiek et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2022.
- Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1916.
- Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Torreira and Nick Enfield, “Is ‘Huh?’ a universal word?,” PLoS ONE, 2013.
- John Haviland, “Guugu Yimithirr cardinal directions,” Ethos, 1998; Stephen Levinson, Space in Language and Cognition, 2003; Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass, 2010.
- John Ridley Stroop, “Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions,” 1935.
- Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain, 2009.
- George Hewitt, research on Ubykh; Georges Dumézil and Tevfik Esenç, Documents anatoliens sur les langues et les traditions du Caucase.