El lenguaje mucho más que una herramienta para comunicar pensamientos preexistentes, es una tecnología cognitiva que estructura la propia forma de pensar. Esta perspectiva desafía la noción de una experiencia humana universal rígida, demostrando que al aprender un nuevo idioma no solo adquirimos palabras, sino una nueva manera de habitar el mundo y procesar la realidad.
La conversación explora cómo los idiomas que hablamos moldean nuestra percepción de la realidad, nuestras emociones y nuestra identidad. A través de la investigación científica de Boroditsky y las vivencias políglotas de Noah, abordan cómo las estructuras lingüísticas influyen en la forma en que orientamos el espacio, percibimos el tiempo, asignamos responsabilidad sobre los eventos y moldeamos nuestra personalidad según la lengua que utilicemos.
La lengua como «sistema operativo» mental
Las estructuras de un idioma obligan a la mente a prestar atención a ciertos aspectos del entorno de manera automática (por ejemplo, el género gramatical, la dirección del tiempo o la intencionalidad).
Percepción del espacio y orientación (Pormpuraaw): Boroditsky destaca el caso de comunidades aborígenes australianas que no usan términos relativos como «izquierda» o «derecha», sino puntos cardinales absolutos («norte», «sur», «este», «oeste»). Esto les otorga una capacidad de orientación espacial superior a la de la mayoría de los humanos modernos.
Culpabilidad y memoria: La estructura de las frases influye en el juicio de valor. Mientras que en inglés es común atribuir la causa explícita a un agente («Él rompió el florero»), en idiomas como el español se suele usar el reflexivo/accidental («Se rompió el florero»). Experimentos demuestran que esto altera qué detalles recuerdan los testigos de un suceso.
Cambio de personalidad e identidad: Al cambiar de idioma, las personas no solo adaptan el léxico, sino también el tono, las normas culturales asociadas y el marco cognitivo, sintiéndose efectivamente «personas distintas» o manifestando facetas de su personalidad diferentes según la lengua que hablen.
TRANSCRIPCIÓN
— So you wait, you speak so you speak Russian?
— I speak Russian as…
— Why do you speak Russian?
— I grew up in Ukraine and Belarus.
— Huh! And so, wait, in Belarus, don’t they speak? Oh, I’m gonna expose myself. I’ve always thought it was like
— Bellarussian.
— Uh, both Russian and Bellar Russian are spoken in in Belarus. It was mostly Russian when I lived there.
— Did you Wait, so did you grow up speaking Russian?
— I grew up speaking Russian. Yeah.
— Ah. And then at what age did you start speaking English?
— When I was 12.
— Wow. I don’t pick it up at all. Normally I can hear when somebody has like
— 11 and a half.
— No, really I can when I genuinely
— I can normally pick up when somebody started speaking another like especially English at a much later because there’s like little small ticks that they’ll give away in the language or you’re like oh no that’s from that other language but you don’t have that at all.
— I went to spy school.
— You say that as could be very true
— could be completely true. you. We’ve just got to say as a disclaimer right now, A, that’s probably a joke and B, if it’s true, we had nothing to do with this. We didn’t know. Here’s a question. We did not know at all.
— What um language do you dream in?
— You know, uh, the language I dream in changes a lot depending on where I am. So, for example, I speak Spanish badly, but if I’m in a Spanish- speakaking environment, I start dreaming in Spanish, and all of that den in my head immediately switches into Spanish. And frustratingly, the den in my head is so much better Spanish than the Spanish I can speak out loud. Oh wow.
— Uh my French in my head accentless. Perfect. When I try to speak it out loud, totally different. But I think that the language you dream in can switch very very quickly. Even for languages that you don’t speak that well. At least that’s what happens for me.
— So I’ve I’ve always thought and this again is just me in my own amateur scientist world.
— Amateur.
— I’ve always thought you Thank you, Eugene. you’re very kind. Um,
— so that’s too high, by the way.
— Yeah. Yeah, it’s very high idiot.
— Yeah.
— So, I I’ve always thought that um the reason the languages you aren’t necessarily the most fluent in are fluent in your brain is because your brain actually does know those languages fluently, but the tongue can’t achieve them fluently. Cuz remember, language exists in two places. It exists in your mind and it exists in your mouth. So, sometimes you can you can hear perfectly. You can dream it perfectly and then when you speak it, your your your tongue is like, okay, let me let me think. Let me put it this way. Imagine yourself doing a backflip right now. Just imagine it.
— You know how many girls would have?
— I love that in your world. That’s you’ve kept like grade six standards for getting how we got here in the first place.
— Grade six standard.
— Oh man. So imagine yourself doing a back flip. Just literally try it now. Imagine yourself doing a back flip.
— You can right now. Do a black. Do it.
— It’s impossible.
— Imagine how many girls would lose if we No, what I’m saying is I always feel like language is the same. I think that there’s a lot of language that we we really do know in our heads without even realizing how much of it we know. Someone will speak something some So you’ll go like, «Oh, I don’t speak Spanish.» Well, but someone will speak Spanish and be like, «Wow, I I understand so much more than I thought.» Well, there’s comprehension and there’s production. And those are two different skills.
— Okay. Wait, wait. Break it down first. The production part.
— Production is being able to actually speak. So that’s the being able to do the backflip. Being able to dunk a basketball.
— I can understand when someone else dunks a basketball. I can’t myself dunk a basketball. That’s the production part.
— Okay. Got it. Whereas when language you have a lot of a lot more practice comprehension doing comprehension because people are speaking all around you than you do production actually speaking a language.
— So the reason that we feel like we understand a language a lot better than we can speak it is just an imbalance of practice. You have a lot more practice trying to understand it than you actually have producing.
— We hear it more than we speak it. Is English really the the easiest language to speak? I’ve always heard it referred to as the bastard tongue and they say it makes it the easiest language to learn. Why are you looking at me like that? Call it that. They call it the bastard tongue. They I’ve always heard English referred to as the bastard tongue because it has all these other languages in it.
— Mhm.
— And when you speak because it is such a bastard tongue, you
— it’s no longer they say
— you can speak you can speak it. You from what I understand you can speak English the worst and still be understood the best versus most other languages.
— You can butcher it.
— You can completely but get away with it.
— Yes. So that that is a good point because English speakers are used to hearing English spoken so many different ways because there are so many second language speakers of English.
— There other languages that no second language speakers even attempt. Right. So
— uh very few foreigners attempt to speak Albanian. And so Albanians, if you go there and you try to speak Albanian, they will look at you funny like, «What are you even trying to do?»
— Because they aren’t used to people speaking it badly
— because who Yeah. They’ve never heard someone speak it badly. You either speak Albanian
— or not. Whereas English you hear there’s so many second language speakers, many more second language speakers than first than native English speakers.
— You’ve heard it every which way. So your range of understanding has had to broaden. What you allow as possible hypothesis of what someone might say has to broaden.
— Okay? So
— that doesn’t mean it’s the easiest to learn. That just means that the ears that it’s falling on, especially people in urban areas. So we’re in New York, right? Here in New York, people have heard people speak English in all kinds of ways. There are certain parts of the country you can go to where you won’t get that same kind of uh grace because they just haven’t heard all the different accents and all of the different uh speeds at which uh the language can be.
— I like that. So here’s here’s the question I have for you then in the world we’re living in today.
— Mhm.
— Is it possible that we are all fighting with each other? I say all but I mean let’s just say people online whatever. Is it possible that we’re all fighting with each other just because we don’t understand each other? And I mean like language- wise as opposed to we actually disagree. Like I mean like half of the political fights happening online, you know, half of the arguments that people have with their family members, people have in romantic relationships.
— Could it be that a large number of those just come from us not speaking the same language to each other even though we think we are speaking the same language? I think sometimes misunderstandings happen because we’re using language to communicate and we believe language to be a real thing. So let me give you an example. Suppose we have a word like freedom. Now language convinces us wrongly that there is such a thing that is freedom that the word points to. And so if I say freedom and you also say freedom, we must be pointing to the same thing.
— Damn. But I could be pointing to a different idea than you are. And so
— you’re pointing at a potato.
— Exactly. But freedom is a very complex idea and it could mean many different things in many different contexts.
— Wow.
— And so just because we’re using the same words, we think we should be talking about the same thing, but often we’re not talking about the same thing at all. And even as you shift from context to context, what freedom means, what privacy means, those things will change. And you don’t notice that you’re now talking about a different thing because you’re using the same word. It creates the illusion. The word creates the illusion that it’s something real and solid that you’re talking about like a potato when in fact what you’re talking about is something abstract and amorphous.
— This is crazy. Do you remember I said this to you back in the day when Trump was still running and I said to I said this to Dave, not that you didn’t like know, but I remember saying to you at some point, I feel like and it was you and I in specifically. So, we we were working at the Daily Show at the time and um Dave and I were there and we’re chatting and then we both watched like a a rally or something of Donald Trump’s and then we said, «Man, this guy’s really making inroads with people.»
— And then some of the people we were working with were like, «Are you crazy? There’s no inroads being made here. He said the dumbest thing ever.» And then I was like, «Oh, I didn’t like I didn’t hear it like that. It just seemed like he didn’t use sort of like politiciany words to approach this topic.» But I think he did a good job of putting his case forward. And they were like, «Nope, nope, nope. That was a completely stupid thing. That was that was crazy.» And then I I said to Dave, we’re having the conversation. I said, «Ah, maybe it’s because we grew up in a world where like our parents didn’t have English as a first language that we grew up learning to hear what the person is meaning versus the words that they’re actually actually using.»
— You know what I mean? So when my mother used to say or my uncle rather would be like, «Put volume on the TV.» He’d be like, «Put volume. Put volume.» I knew what he meant. Mhm.
— You know what I mean? Like what do you mean?
— He meant increase the volume.
— Do you get what I’m saying? So like put volume. I wasn’t going to sit there and be like, «Oh, there’s no volume to be put here.» Uncle,
— you could have tried it.
— Yeah, my friend.
— But we don’t podcast. Yeah. But but but you get
— you learn to be cooperative listener and understander, right? You you want to
— thing being a cooperative listener.
— H Have you tried it?
— No. Oh, Eugene is a he’s the most cooperative cooperative listener you’ll ever come across.
— Do you do you ever think that then Okay, this is then what I wonder is like
— cooperative listener.
— Yeah.
— But how do you know when you’re being a cooperative listener or not? Like how do you what if you’re cooperating so much that you’re just now giving them a message that that they aren’t giving?
— Uh the only way to find out if there’s a miscommunication is to continue talking, right? So if I say uh pass the salt and I get salt and there’s more salt on my food,
— uh a moderate amount of success has been achieved. Now you may have had a very different idea of what salt is or what it’s for or why I asked for it. We could have had miscommunication on all kinds of levels, but the modest goal of me having more salt on my food has been achieved. But for anything more complex, you’re going to have to keep talking. You’re going to have to keep uh asking questions. You’re going to have to keep expanding. And so nothing is ever fully communicated in a sentence or a paragraph, right? It’s always lots and lots of conversations in families, in relationships, in political careers. All of these things just have to continuously be developed and examined and built. And there’s never there’s never an end to it because what you’re trying to do is build a very complex conceptual world with someone. You’re trying to build a set of ideas that probably haven’t existed before. Like in this conversation so far, we have all uttered sentences that no humans have ever uttered before,
— ever,
— ever. So we are building a complex conceptual world, a structure that can’t easily be replicated in any other context. And the only way to find out if we’re achieving understanding is to continue talking, right? to continue examining the parts of the structure and saying, «Is this what you meant? Is this what you meant? Can I go over here?» And someone might object and say, «Wait a second. That wasn’t possible in the world that I had in my mind. Why would you why would you think you could go over there?»
— Don’t go anywhere cuz we got more what now after this. Pretty much every brand offers rewards these days, but most of them, let’s be honest, they aren’t that rewarding. Well, starting now, Verizon’s doing rewards different rewards you’ll love all year round for every customer. They’re introducing Verizon Dollars, which gives you cash back every month just for being a customer. That’s it. Plus, you have the flexibility to use those glorious new dollars how you want. Shop with Verizon, get gift cards for the brands that you love or transfer them to our partner programs. They’re also introducing Verizon Shine, where now every Monday you can snag once-ina-lifetime experiences like NFL tickets across the globe, all-inclusive music festivals, and the chance to meet your favorite stars, plus daily drops, tickets, and pre-sale access all week. So, let’s recap. Cash back in your pocket every month with Verizon dollars and epic experiences from Verizon Shine every Monday, all year round. Now, those are some rewarding rewards only from Verizon. Enroll today at verizon.com. This message is brought to you by Apple Card, shaved ice by the beach, a trip to the state fair, and a throwback flick at the local drive-in. They’re more than just items to check off the summer bucket list. There are also opportunities to earn 2% daily cash back when you use your Apple Card with Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card now and use in minutes with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. So, what would you say is like the end the end? I mean I say goal but like what are you what are you trying to achieve with your work? Like what is what is the if if you if you could sort of fast forward and travel through time to a place where you have reached the ultimate conclusion and you’ve discovered it all. What is what is that discovery?
— Well I I am fascinated by human intelligence uh and how
— or lack thereof. Let’s say human intellect.
— I just wanted to see what would happen if she was going to be like, «You’re damn right those dumb asses.» No, she’s a professional. She’s like, «Let’s just say human intelligence
— for that department.»
— Uhhuh.
— So, humans have accomplished incredible things with their minds. We’re gifted with these brains that create symphonies and create mathematical systems and create these whole complex societies. We build them out of um really simple physical interactions with the world. So we get you know photons in our eyes, pressure in our ears. We can press against surfaces with our with our fingers. And from that from that physical set of components we build these incredibly complex abstract ideas. That is incredible. And I would like to understand how we do that. And the more we understand how humans build complex knowledge, the better we can actually make our own thinking, the more complex, more interesting, more abstract the thoughts we can make. Uh you could argue artificial intelligence is another uh example of that. It’s another kind of really complex intelligence that is building its own thinking now. And that that’s another set of questions you could ask. Okay, how is it constructing all these complex interesting abstract ideas? AI always confuses me because the argument about AI is people be like it’s not intelligence
— cuz all it is is a machine that figures out which word would generally come after the previous word
— based on likelihood.
— Yeah,
— that’s what your brain does.
— Yeah, that’s my problem. Then I go, but isn’t that what our brain is doing all the time?
— Mhm.
— That’s why we say um and ah and cuz we’re also like searching for the word and sometimes we’ll even say um you know um uh the word uh what’s the word for uh that’s so I’m so then I wonder if we will ever be able to know when AI is actually being intelligent or not because we know how it works but we don’t know how we work
— and then like what what if that’s all we are what if we are just large language models randomly predicting the next word in a sentence and and then we’ve always thought like we’re special but we’re not we’re just you know
— right I mean how do you know that I’m thinking right now at all uh as opposed to just producing the next most likely word in a sentence.
— You really sound like a spy, LRA. I’m not going to lie. Some of the things you say, I’m just like I feel like we’re going to look back on this interview and we’re going to go like she was a spy the whole time and and then they’re going to put us up. That’s the worst thing these days.
— I said that in my bio. You didn’t finish your bio.
— I don’t know if you think about I think about this all the time. I go
— You know how like people will put up clips when someone is like exposed for something?
— Yeah. They’ll go like the secret life of LRA Barditiski spy and what and they’ll put that and they’ll be like she was welcomed everywhere and then they’ll put us up. Hello LRA. Ah nice to have you and then like in that documentary or in the streets people like you welcomed her. Then you’re like I didn’t know
— I didn’t know I hadn’t watched this documentary cuz it hadn’t come out yet. I didn’t know that she was a spy and someone clips being like you a Russian spy.
— There you go. Speaking of watching
— great Russian accent.
— Speaking of watching things, way back when, you know, you have the TED talk. That’s the huge TED talk.
— Sorry to interrupt you. Can I just say this? Are you? Wait, wait, wait. No, no, I am. Can I tell you why?
— I wonder who the first person was.
— YOU ARE SORRY.
— NO, I’M I PROMISE YOU I’M SORRY. I PROMISE YOU I’M SORRY. NO, BUT I promise you I’m sorry. But I was thinking this. I was doing I wonder who the first person was to say, speaking of. They just took a thing and then they were like, I want to go on my own tangent. And then they just because clearly they were not talking about what the other people were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So someone walked into a house somewhere and went, «My gosh, it’s cold out there. My boots are frozen to my ankles. I feel like I could die.» And then someone went, «SPEAKING OF ANKLES.»
— KNOW which one I hate?
— HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY THE FOOT AND THE ankle are always in the same vicinity? I just I was just thinking, sorry, I apologize. Yeah, speaking of it’s better. You know what I hate? By the way,
— and like by whose way? This.
— So, sorry Dave. Dave,
— speaking of Sorry, Dave.
— Gave him a taste of his medicine.
— He doesn’t like it.
— No,
— he’s like, «This is what you guys go through.»
— Speaking of speaking of watching things now, I don’t even know what the watch watching.
— That’s what we go through.
— I watched way back when when your when your TED talk went huge. I watched it and one of the things that um I found interesting was the the cookie people.
— Mhm.
— You could tell us their log line please.
— Uh so there are languages in the world that don’t use uh relative terms like left and right to organize space and instead everything is done in some kind of absolute space. So for example cardinal directions like north, south, east and west. Um, and uh, when I say everything, I mean everything. So, in some languages, you would say, «Oh, there’s an ant on your southwest leg.» And if you move the leg, uh, obviously it’s no longer your southwest leg, so now you have to recalculate. So, uh, imagine doing the hokeyp pokey uh, in a language like that. You know, you put your north leg in, you take your east leg out.
— You constant, you’re constantly recalculating. So in Kukayire the way you say hello is you say which way are you going and the answer should be something like um northn northwest in the far distance. How about you? Uh and so as you walk around you have to stay oriented. Uh even small children are oriented all the time.
— Do you want do you want me to ask you?
— What do you mean by that?
— Yeah.
— Um close your eyes and point southeast.
— You mean like right now?
— Right now?
— I mean
— it’s a it’s a visual podcast.
— I mean I can’t but I’ll try. Wait, let me think. Sohuh I’m I’m going to go there.
— Open up your eyes. So you went Well, I don’t know which way it is, but you guys haven’t helped me.
— I’m I’m going to go that way.
— South and I was like a little bit.
— Yeah.
— So there are places in the world where people have no trouble with this question. Even small children will be able
— because in order to speak the language, you have to be oriented
— all the time. Like you can’t even say we’re going to lunch. You have to say we’re northwesting to lunch. Every motion verb carries a direction.
— So question,
— forgive my ignorance here. Wait, wait, wait. You’ve just thrown us into a fantastic rabbit hole.
— Do they have like is this even indoors?
— Uh even indoors. Yes. Uh people uh who speak languages like this live in all kinds of different environments. Some live in forests, some live in deserts. There all kinds of physical environments. Some are flat, some are mountainous. Uh the only thing is they don’t tend to live in cities. Cities tend to be dominated by these uh massive languages that use left and right. But it’s about a third of the world’s languages that uh use absolute directions of some kind. Uh primarily not a third of the world’s speakers, but a third of the world’s languages. So they tend to be smaller languages.
— Damn. But it’s a completely different way of organizing yourself in the world. And uh one experience I had when I was spending time with the cooker is I started seeing myself from a bird’s eye view and I was like a little red dot that was traversing the landscape and then as I turned the little window that had opened up in my in my mind rotated in my mind but stayed locked on the landscape. And as soon as it did that automatically, I thought, «Oh, well, that makes it so much easier, now I have this automatically updating map.» And I kind of sheepishly confessed it to someone there. I said, «You know, this weird thing happened.» And they said, «Well, of course. How else would you do it? It’s obvious.» And then if you look at all the artwork from uh folks in that area, it’s all done from a bird’s eye view.
— No,
— they just that’s just how they see the world. They uh
— so
— they’ve figured out the whole system. This is a random this is a I mean this I’m just thinking of this now is you know crop circles
— and they have those you know those sometimes they’re birds not only crop circles those those those
— structures that you can only see from up above
— see from above so do you think that someone who grew up in that kind of language if they walked around it they cuz if we walked around I assume we would just be like we would have no idea that there was a bird if you were above. Do you think that they would have some semblance of wait a minute I just walked around a shape that is
— a bird?
— A bird?
— That’s a really great question. No one has done a study exactly like that. But uh people when speakers of those languages are taken to new environments, they continue to stay oriented really well and they continue to maintain a sense of where they are relative to all kinds of unseen locations. So you can take them to uh a new location out in the bush they’ve never been uh no visibility and say can you point to Melbourne or can you point to Sydney and they can do that and the only way to do that is to keep track of how far you’ve traveled and at what speed uh and to continue to maintain a geometry in your mind so never make
— that would be awesome
— kidnap victims put a hoodie over them drive like
— yeah and then when they take the hoodie off and then read this out to your family. Hey, I’m here at Northwest and they’ve taken me and you guys are south west of me, souththeast of me now. Come and get But here’s here’s the language that I’m most interested in. And and I’ve heard this question asked before, the one that Dave asked about
— what language do people dream in.
— And in most cases, I can’t answer that question because I don’t feel like there’s a language in my dreams.
— I feel like I just understand. I interact with someone and I’m like, «Yeah, it’s some form of telepathy. It’s what makes friends great friends. It’s the words that are not spoken between them. It’s actually what when they look at each other and go, I know you’re also hungry. I I was feeling hungry too. So I’m thinking when we recognize other languages, even recognize sign language and body language, do we recognize telepathy as a language, the fact that we understand without speaking?
— Uh well certainly it’s not fully telepathy in the sense that there’s still a body language component to it. There’s still a context around it. But all of that is part of communication, right? So even the way we move our bodies, the way uh the way we gesture, uh our facial expressions are all very rich channels of communication and they also differ between language groups. So what a gesture means for one group, one group of speakers is going to be something different for another group of speakers.
— H can we go back to the ktai?
— Kai. Yeah.
— So thank you by the way Dave, for bringing that up. What are the advantages to them perceiving the world like this? Like what what do they have that we don’t have just in general? Are they are there any benefits or is it just like like a certain swag of living?
— Well, uh any way that you think of space will have some advantages and some disadvantages? Right. So, uh, if you’re able to stay oriented, uh, better than we used to think humans could, uh, which is what the Kuktai and many other groups like them do, that’s an incredible human gift. And, uh, when I say better than we used to think humans could, what I mean is scientists generally study undergraduates at universities
— and we call those humans and then we say this is what humans can do and this is what humans can’t do. And so for decades, scientists would say, «Well, humans can’t orient very well.» Because we studied undergrads at North American universities.
— Oh, damn.
— And then we went to other locations and found humans who not only could do the thing that we thought was biologically impossible for human brains,
— but the little kids could do it. And it wasn’t even that hard to learn. And so to me that is an incredible example of the things that we think are possible are often just the things that we’re used to.
— Yeah.
— There the brain is capable of doing so much more. Uh and sometimes it’s not even that hard to get there. We just have to imagine and want to try. Right? Uh, and this is a case for me where this group of people have this incredible cognitive skill where as I’m describing it to you, you’re like, «Whoa, they do it all the time.» Like it’s
— Yeah, they do it all. But it’s not actually even that hard. Like if you wanted to uh learn how to do it, you could do it in a week and uh you would start to organize your whole life uh in that way. And then you would have a new cognitive skill. You would know where things are. you would have a a mental map of things in your house uh that are organized uh in northsoutheast west coordinates. Uh you would just have a different way of looking at looking at your whole physical space.
— Is there is there a language you’ve come across that’s more effective at conveying information than others? Like are there are there languages that are particularly good at like like could you say some languages are better at conveying an emotion and some languages are better at conveying in like hardcore data and information and then some languages are better conveying even like even humor or anger or does each language have that in them and all all languages are are equal?
— Languages have specialized vocabularies for different things. So some languages have more color words and so it’s easier to convey color distinctions in those languages. Other languages have more smell terms.
— More smell terms. A Which language?
— Well, well, WELL.
— SORRY. What I meant about this mischief? Sorry. You see what I meant? It was all fun and gave intellectual and English so much which other languages and then you see this is what I go through every day.
— Oh man, I’m sorry.
— What a delightful work environment.
— He’s so northeast west this guy.
— But there’s some things that may seem ineffable in one language. Like in English we don’t have a lot of smell terms and so people say, «Oh, well smell is ineffable.» But then you go to another language and they have tons of uh smell terms. So it turns out the ineffable can be effed depending on the language that you speak.
— So different languages will have specialized vocabularies for different uh different kinds of things. There’s not one language that is like yes it’s easy to communicate all the things in this language. There are trade-offs.
— Another question.
— The um the
— I want you to start making statements
— just to vary it up.
— Yeah. I just feel like as an audience member I’m just like all this guy comes you know when they’re like those people who just come with empty hands all they do is come here hands hands question question what about statements
— I’ve come with the mind of a student not the mind of a master cuz I’m here with a master
— that was that was a beautiful statement you see that was beautiful I’ve come with the mind of a student and not the mind of a master
— I’m in the presence
— that was a master that was wonderful
— but can you call can you call a female master and mistress Is that what it is?
— I don’t think that’s the evolution of the word.
— You can. You can’t. You can’t.
— I’m not sure.
— If someone is a master and they’re male, makes sense. What was the female
— female version of a master?
— Do you know off the topic?
— I don’t. No,
— I’m going to look this up.
— This next topic was brought to you by misogyny.
— No, I want to see. But this is something I want to see.
— Your question. You ask your question, Dave.
— Yes. They have an that is an additional cognitive skill
— like almost like we don’t have it. They’re not missing one be like what do we use? Do you know what I mean? They’re not missing one.
— Well, so using left and right uh is a different kind of
— Okay. So that’s our one is left and right.
— Yeah. So you have to learn the difference between left and right and you have to be able to apply left and right in lots of different orientations. So like it could be your left, my left. So I have to have to be able to do the mental rotation to say it’s on your left as opposed to on my left, right?
— Which is more simple than but
— it’s Yeah, it’s a different it’s it’s just a different skill, a different reference frame to think in.
— Can they do that?
— Um in many communities that have been tested, they can’t. Uh that’s not their that’s not their way of organizing space. And sometimes even um if they look at left right mirror images of something that’s decontextualized like a like a little figurine of a girl sitting under a tree or whatever and they see a mirror image they’ll say it’s the same uh because to them it’s not it it’s not placed in any physical context that they can recognize uh geographically. So they say it’s not it’s not meaningfully different. So, and that brings me to a speaking of it’s not a speaking of, but this another thing you had was, if I’m not mistaken, was some people don’t count distinctly. I’m because of their language.
— Some languages don’t have number words. Yeah.
— So, okay. Now, that one cuz I can get
— Wait, wait, wait. So, like the word one, two, three. Some languages don’t have
— some languages don’t have any exact number words. Some languages have number words up to about two or three or four and then after that it becomes few or many. Um some languages count in base 13 or base 87 instead of base 10. Um or base 27. Some count in a version of binary times 10.
— Yeah. So it’s the same.
— But that I get
— you count up to nine.
— Yeah.
— And 10. And then after that there’s 10 and one.
— 10 and one. 10 and 10 and 20. Okay.
— Two and three.
— But that’s more but the people who do the many
— Mhm.
— like I mean in the sense of they don’t have one, two, three.
— Mhm.
— They don’t.
— No, they just have relatively few relatively more. Yeah.
— Okay. So now in terms of from a language point of view, the thing I don’t know if the thing that they are observing, so they so I see five cats here.
— They’re not five cats. Obviously, I’m not losing it, you know, but I see five cats. They a person from that language, what happens? What are what do they see?
— They see some cats. Um, and I’ll tell you, uh, so very often people will ask questions like I asked this question when I first heard about this language. They said, «Well, but some some of these people have, you know, seven kids. How do they keep track of their kids?» And I was immediately told you must not have children because you don’t actually keep track of your children by counting them. Uh you don’t just need to achieve a certain number of short people. You know them as individuals, right? There needs to be Timmy and Bobby and so on.
— And so uh when people need to keep track of a certain number of things. So for example, you have your axe with a notch in the handle and the axe that has a red handle and the axe that your brother gave you, you know them as individuals. Um but then in other cases having the number is actually completely unimportant in the natural world. Like three fish doesn’t equal three fish because each fish is a different size and freshness and tastiness than every other fish. What’s important is how good of a meal you’re going to have. Three fish certainly doesn’t equal three tomatoes in any important sense. The exact numerosity only matters once you start using money.
— So then you need to have an abstract unit and you have to be able to count things. But up up until then having an exact like I have seven children that’s not the important you don’t want to have seven children you want to have your all of your children all of your axes and so on.
— But like the thing you’re saying about you also said a thing about uh some cultures have we have a forest and then they can’t comprehend a forest or something along those lines. They comprehend separate trees. Am I [clears throat]
— I don’t remember saying that. It’s well it’s almost to the same idea. What I’m trying to say is like
— I I get what you say. It’s it’s a question. So from
— Okay, I see three people here.
— Mhm.
— Some people just see a few people.
— Mhm.
— They never go three. It never occurs that they go three because that’s not part of like almost like [clears throat] you know I don’t want to say a baby but but if you haven’t if you don’t if your brain doesn’t do that then it doesn’t do that. Is that basically what you’re saying?
— Yeah. To get to get to the idea of three or especially once we get to slightly larger numbers like seven or nine uh what we normally do is count. And so you apply this list of words that you learned as a kid. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and so on. And you name all of the objects in uh in the array. So I’m going to name one two three name.
— Yes. And the last word that you say that’s the number of items. So they’re 1 2 3 four.
— Four people. That’s how I know.
— That’s a little skill that we learn as kids. Um, so once you have to get an exact number of anything above three or four, three you can kind of do visually, but like seven it gets harder. Uh, you start applying this little linguistic trick that you learned. But if you don’t have number words in your language and you never learn that linguistic trick, then you just say, «Okay, there are a few.» And you can approxim approximately say there are a few more here than there. But it’s not exact.
— It’s not exact. Yeah.
— Okay, great. So now, sorry to hog the mic, but actually I’m not sorry. The uh because you said don’t say sorry unless you are, which I’m not.
— The um the also with the time, you know, is it Arabic the one way
— or like letters right to left, right to left. This is just a simple question. Do you think that it it was like a querty kind of situation? You know, like you read right to left in one language, left to right in another language. Do you think it was like a kind of situation? You know,
— the keyboard is that somebody basically went to it and then everything went that way. Is it like that?
— Writing systems got developed in different directions based on the kinds of tools that people were using for writing. So, uh if you’re primarily writing by chiseling uh on stone, you have your dominant hand for holding the precise instrument and the other hand for for hammering. But if you’re uh going to be writing with ink, then you want to write in a way that doesn’t smudge the ink as you go.
— So you’ll end up with different writing directions based on how predominantly people were using you were doing the writing, what tools they were using.
— Okay.
— And then it just sticks around for centuries. Yeah.
— Okay. Then here’s my last one, so to speak. Hopefully not the last one, but
— but there’s another one, so to speak.
— You said
— you can just say the last few. Yeah. Doesn’t have to have a number attached to it.
— All folks, that’s good. That was good. That was good. It was Yes, it was. I was So, you all cuz I I did think about this one. You You said that blame is different in different cult in different like Spanish. You use Spanish and English. Could you explain to us if you still remember?
— Sure. So, um, in some languages, uh, like in English, it’s normal to put yourself as an agent of an event, even if it was something accidental. So, uh, if I knocked over this glass and it broke, it would be completely normal for me to say, I broke the glass, even if it was a complete complete accident. I can even say in English, I broke my arm. That’s the normal way to say it. Uh in other languages you would say uh the glass broke or the glass broke itself or to me it happened that the glass broke or my arm broke, the arm broke on me. All kinds of other constructions you can imagine. And so some languages distinguish much more strongly between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. And what we find is that English speakers are much more likely to look for the agent of uh an event even if um there isn’t one visible or even if it’s an accident they look for the agent they blame the agent more and they remember who the agent is compared to other languages or even just in English if you say if we watch the same event and I say she broke the glass as opposed to the glass broke you’re going to want to charge me more for the glass if I said she broke the It’s actually funny because in isulu means peace.
— Mhm.
— Right. And when you say I’m sorry, say so which means I’m asking for peace.
— So there’s no word that says I am sorry.
— So you asking for peace. So
— you’re just saying I wish for this conflict to be ended.
— Ended. Yes.
— Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m asking for peace to return.
— Yes. So I’m asking for peace.
— I also love it with I mean I guess it’s in a few languages but
— means I am held by hunger. Yeah. [clears throat]
— You don’t say I’m hungry. You are not hungry. Hunger is holding you.
— Like the hunger has you because you are not the person who is hungry.
— The hunger is like doing a thing to you.
— And so this this if the cultures are not like in a city with everybody together.
— Mhm.
— It really informs what is going on. Because now we in a multicultural society, you know, so we’re like, okay, we can go like you you can have that discussion about different languages. But if there’s only one language, then people are like, no, hunger is not a thing that what did you just say about hunger? Sorry.
— Yeah, I’m saying I’m saying you are not you you’re giving hunger its own agency in a way cuz cuz you are not hungry.
— So in the culture as a thing like almost like historically they’ll be like we gave hunger an agency.
— Yes. which now that I think of it is with um Are you buffering? Damn, that was crazy. I genuinely thought we were like watching a video there for a second.
— Did you see that?
— I saw it all.
— It was real life.
— Okay. Even Lero was like, «No, I don’t just because I got because I got to I got
— People are saying that I I’m all over the place.»
— Who are these people? So now what I try and do is I what I try and do is I try and form the initial sentence first because
— but while saying a sentence THAT WAS CRAZY YO I’M GLAD THERE WERE OTHER PEOPLE HERE
— HE WAS TALKING LIKE
— HE BUFFERED we were watching and then I I I THOUGHT I THOUGHT MY REAL LIFE INTERNET I I DON’T EVEN YOU YOU I WAS SO THROWN THERE
— THAT I WAS LIKE AM I THE ONLY PERSON WITNESSING THIS you were also completely still
— yes I was still you You didn’t move, Dave.
— Yes. You didn’t like You didn’t blink.
— My own move your body.
— My own way of living. My My own way of living is to just to talk. But then people are like, «You’re just saying wild things.» So now I’m like, «Okay.»
— Well, you wouldn’t say that to him though. You would say, «No, no, you didn’t say it.» But in general, no, just in general. So then I’m like, «Okay, if I’m just saying wild things all the time, maybe I should pause for one second and then think about
— Wait, wait. What’s the name of that culture again? The Gupta.» Was it?
— Gupta.
— The Gupta. Yes. Cooked tai.
— Yeah. Cooked tayor.
— The cooked tai.
— Coo tai.
— Cooked tayor.
— Cooked tayor.
— Yeah. Dave was like a teller at a bank and cooked. He was like 1 2 3 4 5.
— He it would have been better if he did. It would have been better if he did that.
— He didn’t even this cuz this is an international sign of there’s something that’s about to happen. His he chose no language of of like letting you know something is still going to happen. So, you know, normally people go like, you know, I was thinking about how um how um so this is the international sign for continue listening because something is still happening.
— You’re holding space,
— Dave. Thank you.
— His language that he chose was complete cuz I’m doing an utter silence and he it’s new. I’m gathering myself. I’m gathering my thoughts cuz sometimes my thoughts are too wild. So, I’m trying to make we didn’t know there was any gathering.
— Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Here’s here’s here’s the thought because you cuz I’m trying to say it in the here’s the thought. Okay. Okay. Say the thought. Okay.
— I’m gathered.
— Yes. We’re ready.
— IF I NO, NO. HERE. HERE. HERE. HERE WE GO. HERE YOU GO. HERE. HERE’S a question. Okay. Here. We’re listening.
— If I farted right now.
— Wow. After all of that. This is the gathered thought.
— Wait. Jesus. Lero. I’m so sorry. I can’t apologize enough. You did try. You did. You farted right now. Oh goodness. a question. There’s a question. Who would you blame?
— You You told us you farted.
— Well, uh different cultures would approach different.
— That’s what I’m saying.
— So now because this is what I’m saying because
— arguably sometimes I didn’t want to take it here, but arguably arguably sometimes when you fart, you are farting. Do you know what I mean? You’re going you we all have you fart. Have you farted before?
— You’ve actually done something very brilliant here.
— Yes. I see what you’ve done here. Yes. So sometimes we go I am actually farting. Cool.
— Yes. I am the fart. I am the passer of air throughout through my body. Yes.
— Yes. Then other times I’m not farting.
— Yeah. A fart has body farting.
— Yes. A fart has escaped.
— You know I’m being you know what I mean? My body is farting.
— You know that kind of thing. And another time sometimes my body
— has refused to stop farting.
— Do you know that kind of thing? You’re like, «Guys, I’ve» and we could flatten
— you. You would make a fantastic field linguist because you’re able to delineate all of these different ways of causal involvement.
— Yes, that’s what I mean.
— Yes. So, uh, some languages will make very different grammatical constructions for those different kinds of, uh, expulsions.
— Yes. So in certain languages, in certain languages for real, they would be like, uh, what is that smell? My body farted.
— Yes.
— Like literally, it wasn’t me. I am a gentleman. I would not fart in public. Well, I fought in front of you guys, but not in front of a lady. But and and then
— why are we so unlucky?
— Why? Why us? A selfish spirit escaped.
— A self-reflective part is the WORST KIND OF FUN. THE OWNER INSUFFERABLE FAT.
— YES.
— SO,
— let me let me give you an example.
— Here’s an example, Dave.
— Here’s a professional example. Yes.
— Let mem you know what?
— Professional example.
— The fart.
— No.
— You’re not going to fart right now.
— You know what, Dave?
— Please. We are so sorry.
— Let me give you an example. So, um, in English.
— Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. We need a moment. Sorry.
— Sorry.
— Let’s gather. Let’s also get a chance to gather ourselves.
— I’m so sorry.
— Uh we are so sorry. Yesterday we’re on form.
— This is This is perfect.
— Oh my goodness.
— So uh take uh Romeo drank the poison. Socrates drank the poison. Caesar drank the poison. In English, all of those are the same grammatical construction. You can say drank the poison. In all three cases, Socrates knows he’s drinking poison. He doesn’t want to be drinking poison. He’s been sentenced to
— the hemlock situation.
— Caesar doesn’t know he’s drinking poison. He thinks he’s drinking wine. Someone has poisoned his wine. Romeo wants to be drinking poison and believes he’s drinking poison. In English, those are three grammatically the same.
— There are some languages like devi where those would be three different constructions because one is valitional, one is unintentional, one is uh accidental and so on, right? And so speakers of those languages have to think, is this person intending to do it? Are they doing it valitionally? Are they doing it knowingly? And so you have to break down the the the event, whether it’s drinking poison or uh letting something escape your body uh in a particular way.
— You know what? It’s the same way uh in Isuzulu, a king doesn’t die, he bows.
— So they look at it as an involuntary action. A common man dies.
— Oh wow.
— Right. So which means a person has died
— but which means a king has bowed.
— Wow.
— So you’re right. It just it’s the same action or same result but viewed from a different lens and obviously described a different way
— because the king is not seen as wanting to leave his people. He just bows. So now what this makes me wonder is oh and by the way to answer your question mistress is the original female of master but then it wasn’t used because over time it started to denote negative but it is in fact mistress. If I had a head um don’t press anything. We’ve got more what now after this. You know, back to school season has a way of making every day feel like a race against time. And it’s funny how back to school doesn’t just affect the kids. It changes everyone’s rhythm. Traffic gets worse, calendars fill up, dinners happen later, and suddenly anything that saves you a little time feels like a gift. Whether it’s getting breakfast together, packing lunches, or figuring out dinner after a busy day, Whole Foods Market will make your life a little easier. At Whole Foods Market, you can stock up on fast and easy breakfast favorites like frozen waffles or quick egg bites. Fill lunch boxes with organic produce or essentials like cheese sticks and bagged mandarins. Or grab prepared meals for busy evenings. Whatever you need, they’ve got plenty of convenient options. And because it’s Whole Foods Market, you know what you’re getting is up to the highest quality standards. In fact, they ban more than 300 food ingredients store-wide, meaning no hydrogenated fats, no high fructose corn syrup in the baked treats, and a great selection of allergen-friendly options for the whole family. If you’re really short on time, Prime members can shop at wfm.com and get their first delivery order over $25 delivered free. Terms apply. Shop back to school must haves at Whole Foods Markets, in store or online. So this makes this makes me wonder then does our language influence our society’s ability to forgive or blame or like is is it is it actually hardwired into the language itself? Because if one culture doesn’t think that you killed somebody
— or you like like [clears throat] in some languages it feels like there’s almost super agency. I have done everything. I crashed my car and I killed your family and I broke my ribs in this accident and I went to the hospital and I had surgery and I healed and I went home. I am the master of my entire destiny in this in this world. Right? And then there would be another culture by your example where
— you want to sh responsibility in which case you say
— yes yes but but then there would be some cultures where somebody would go while driving my car was in an accident. Those people’s lives ended because of the accident that occurred.
— I was taken to a hospital. surgery was performed upon me because my rib had decided that it was broken etc etc.
— So here’s a a question I often ask my students. I say um suppose uh something uh terrible happens to a person. Um how do we achieve justice? Uh suppose we find the person who did the terrible thing and we punish them appropriately. Has justice been done?
— And American students say yes. That is what justice is. You find the person who did wrong and you punish them,
— right?
— And then I say, «Well, what about restitution for the victim? Maybe what we should worry instead about is offering appropriate restitution for the victim.»
— And they sort of secondarily say, «Yeah, yeah, maybe that’s also something to think about.» And I say, well, what about um coming up with some kind of restorative justice where both parties can now live peacefully together and finding some way for them to continue to coexist in society. And that’s even further from the normal American model, right? But there are models like this, models of justice like this that exist around the world where people think the primary mode or the primary role for justice is not just to punish the person who did wrong or not just to restitute the victim but maybe also to achieve some kind of peace between the parties. And uh of course that’s not the most native model [clears throat] for American English speakers.
— Yeah. And that’s what I was about to ask you. Is is is a lot of that contained in the language itself? Uh it’s hard to know for sure because of course justice systems evolve in very complex ways but in small experiments you can see that people have different desire to punish agents depending on the language that they speak.
— So now let’s let’s extend that to interpersonal communications. If you grow up speaking a language or you just you speak a language that doesn’t necessarily automatically assign guilt,
— does that then affect your ability to connect people to an action that has been done to you or an action that has occurred because of the other person? Like that does does that separation actually happen between people on an interpersonal level? You know, so so some languages may be like, «Oh, Eugene, you left me.»
— Mhm. And then in another language it might be you were gone you were gone from this space but you didn’t leave me because you can’t leave me
— but you you went from this space and now I am without you but you didn’t leave me. Like do you find when you’re when you’re studying this that it changes how people are actually able to connect with each other in an interpersonal setting?
— Well, people have different models of what causes things in general. Right. So some people believe in fate. So they’re very fatalistic cultures where the universe controls all of our actions. And so it’s not you deciding to leave. It’s just that’s what fate foretold. It was written uh in uh in the great book of the universe. It was written that you would leave and then at some point you would come back and so on. And so where causality and agency comes from will differ from culture to culture. Exactly. pinning down that to uh a feature of language is uh challenging uh because there’s so many things that create our model of causality.
— But but when we look at those okay let’s say we don’t look at it as co causality or not
— do we find or has anyone even looked at whether or not some languages are more or the people who speak certain languages are more or less forgiving than other people who speak other languages. in uh in small experiments, you can find differences in how much people blame and want to blame and punish an agent uh in the case of an accident. So when it’s something that is an unintentional action, uh English speakers are more likely to want to blame and punish and remember more who did it. Yeah. Damn, that’s a big one to think that like because your language has told you blame has to be assigned, you then assume that blame is necessary.
— Well, let me give you even a small example. If you uh show a video of a ball rolling onto the screen and it knocks into a vase and the vase falls, you ask English speakers to describe it, they’ll say someone rolled a ball into a vase. There’s no someone on the screen at all.
— They will automatically assume.
— Yeah. speakers of other languages will say a ball rolled into a vase or a ball knocked over a vase, right? And so there’s something about English that has trained us that most things happen because of human agency except you know acts of God, weather and so on. Uh but there it’s the normal way of saying it. So it becomes a habit of mind. And so you look at a video where there is no agent present but you still infer one. You say, «Well, some numb skull knocked knocked the vase over with a ball. Yeah. It’s like um I’ve seen when there’s a car accident of two different races or two different cultures.»
— Yeah.
— Some cultures will be like, «What an idiot. What did you do to my car?» And some people be like, «Are you okay?»
— Mhm.
— Just because that’s the first thing you’re supposed to be
— Yeah. Yeah. You assign blame before you can show care,
— right? Some people think like that based on how they grew up, what language they speak, and what they hold valuable. And when you were speaking about the people who look at life in directional form, I couldn’t help but think and those who can’t count higher to assign a certain number of value to things, I was thinking to myself, they must be deeply um I don’t want to say religious but spiritual people because I think they are very much more present than we are because once we assign a number to things, they can be infinite things that we don’t use and we don’t know where they are but we still hold dear. But for them, knowing what that thing is and what it looks like is much more important than knowing how many they are, right?
— Um, I I think there are many different cosmologies that can coexist with a number system or a a directional system. And one of the things that we see around the world, so there are 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And um, some historical linguists say there could have been 500,000 languages in the past.
— Uh, it’s just a huge
— It is now, I guess, cuz they made it. Yeah. So, Dothraki it would be in right because someone’s made it
— there. There are few. Yeah. You you could some linguists wouldn’t include it because it’s not a naturally occurring language. But you could you could invent any number of new languages. And
— how would they define naturally occurring though? Cuz
— something that God developed in a natural process of humans wanting to communicate with one another.
— No. And I don’t mean this to be facious, but I’m like how do they know that all of them were created? What if somewhere along the line someone made a language for this type of purpose and then it just people started speaking it? Do do you get what I’m saying?
— Yeah. Yeah. And there are some languages like that that have like a register that is uh for example a special secret register that you only speak uh under certain circumstances that were [clears throat] specifically for that. Yes. like during periods of mourning or there’s a language where only women uh speak this version of this language under these particular circumstances.
— Wow.
— So there there are things like that in in the real world
— cuz I’ve always wondered why in law or in medicine the more complicated terms are in Latin. You like you could have just said this in English.
— IPSO factor.
— But there are natural languages being invented right now. uh uh many of them are sign languages. So there are people around the world who are born deaf and deafness is hereditary. And so if you’re born in a really remote community where there isn’t already a deaf school or some kind of deaf education, you will just encounter some other deaf people and want to communicate with them. And so all of these different sign languages are emerging. And so some of the most fascinating work on language development is looking at the development of sign languages around the world in these tiny little communities where you can see the first generation of a language, the second generation, the third generation.
— That’s really fascinating
— because we can’t do that for spoken languages. It’s way gone in the past. But for these sign languages, we
— we get to see how it began and the birth of the language and
— and you see how languages start to regularize and how they make their decisions about which way they’re going to go. And it’s it’s super fascinating work.
— Damn. Do you think that there could be like almost like a if you got the best of each language
— like for the justice system
— it seems like the one is better than the other. You know the English one is
— more punitive and worse than the other one which is more
— nuanced and takes more into consideration. Do you think that they could be like a like when AI wipes out like 300 when AI starts wiping the people out and comes with a new one new language joke obviously but do you think that they in a thought experiment could be like a best of which is the best of like each language you know and put together and then this language this language would then solve all the problems we have because it would have all the
— the new AI language you mean
— well
— super language
— the the super language would cuz contained within language are solutions to problems
— so within it this language super language would then if you had that super language it the problems would just almost like evaporate because you just know how to deal with it possibly
— from from how Dave described I don’t want the super language
— being being eastern I can’t imagine a world without problems. Uh that’s a you lost you lost me there. Um but I I think that uh rather than try trying to say that one language is better than another uh you could say well what if we combine uh both ways right so sometimes it’s nice to have um more precise terms where you say okay I want to call this color light blue and I want to call this color dark blue and I want to have names for all of the different shades of blue
— turquoise. Other times you just want to say blue and move on with it. Uh and there are going to be lots of times where you’re not sure. So uh let me give you an example with um arms and hands in Russian. So in Russian and lots of other languages there’s not a distinction between hand and arm. It’s this whole appendage is called by one word rlat. Now often when I talk to English speakers they say but that’s impossible. Russian speakers must know which one they’re referring to either the hand or the arm. And what I point out is that almost everything you do with the hand, the arm is also involved. And almost everything you do with the arm, the hand when you go to shake hands, you’re not just using your hand, you’re using your arm.
— When you do arm wrestling, you’re not just using your arm, you’re also using your hand, right? So almost anything you can think of that in involves one that you would call a hand action or an arm action in English actually also involves
— both. So it’s an artificial distinction that English has made. And once you make that distinction, you believe that it must be true and it must be that you really mean one or the other. So what would be the best solution? Well, why not just have both? You can have a superordinate term that includes the entire appendage and then you can have whatever other smaller categories you want, right? So I would always choose an option that allows that kind of flexibility that allows you to be as specific as you want and also as general as you want. uh because different situations call for different things. As an aside, isn’t it quite amazing that Russians did not over like you know Russian is old thousands of years or you know come someone say that what about my check at my guns do you know that kind of like look at my guns what
— well there are words for you know the palm and the wrist and the fingers and oh and the guns of course yeah but just not
— just not specifically this distinction between the hand and the arm. This is all
— I think we’re making progress here to guns.
— No, we really have improved. I mean, we we’ve made we’ve made leaps forward. Leaps leaps and bounds forwards.
— Could we? Now, I’m wondering though if if it’s not the fact that a language cannot be perfect. It’s the fact that like
— it shouldn’t be perfect.
— Yeah. But I was also going to say that the human brain cannot because I I don’t know anyone who knows every word in the dictionary. Mhm.
— I I would argue that we have all these specific things to your point. It is infinitely, you know, as big or as small as we need it to be. So if you if you go to, you know, a doctor who needs to operate on your hand, they’re not just going to be like the finger part of his arm is broken. They’ll go into like the specific bones. They’ll they’ll really break it down.
— So they do have that intricate knowledge.
— Yeah.
— And then a child can say, «My arm is sore.» And you don’t need to be like, «Which part of your arm?» Right. So could it just be then that we we have it all but our brains either can’t or don’t feel that it’s necessary for us to know all of the words then I’m saying is could it be that the super language already exists
— because it’s continuously expanding and has been expanded and has do you get what I’m saying
— someone has really zoomed in someone has completely zoomed out but we just could never or would never need to possibly
— have a super language. Yeah. Does that make sense?
— 100%. It’s like memories I’m sure right
— I think any any human language is the product of thousands of years of work right and languages have expanded and have contracted uh so the history of English is a is a history of constantly adopting and borrowing things from lots and lots of other languages and dropping parts and getting new parts in and so on
— so all all languages are living things but languages are just tools for communication and for thought none of them capture the entire entire world perfectly. None of them capture what
— all the possible thoughts we could want to think
— uh perfectly. And that’s why we have such bitter debates about language because uh all of us at some point feel like the language we speak is not perfectly capturing the reality as we see it or the reality that we want to live in. and we say, well, why should I have to use gender pronouns, for example, or why should I have to use this word instead of that word? And that’s where we start to negotiate with other speakers of the same language because we want the language to reflect the way that we think. But there is no language. There’s no one language that perfectly captures already all the thoughts that you could possibly want to think.
— Yeah. I sometimes think of language as like how you said sometimes words can encapsulate how we feel.
— Like sometimes when I look at something and I’m like that looks nice and I take out my phone take a picture and then I’m like the picture almost looks like the thing that I saw.
— Mhm.
— Right. The eye
— has something that the camera does not have.
— Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
— Yeah. So I get that with language. Sometimes you just want to say something but it doesn’t match the thing.
— It’s like you’re having that mini choking
— in between.
— Yes. But your thoughts are like it’s happening in rapid speed and your throat is like
— yeah the slavery
— like the like the word like like it’s not even a word just like is a better description for what you might be experiencing sometimes with with a taste than any word that someone could write to you.
— You know what I mean?
— But I can’t get the the thought of Dave’s thought.
— Can we speak to HR?
— Speaking of Dave,
— like what words can make it to the episode and what? Speaking of Dave, are there languages that are that have a default setting with like the one you’re saying about where you say that the the world is just like happening to you,
— you know, the negative thing is that you’re a victim of the world, you know, and then another language gives you the idea that you don’t have to have the world happening to you. You can also happen to the world.
— That’s Buddhism. Yeah. But do you think that that that it’s almost like do you think that that when you’re in a language there’s a a underlying placement between you and the environment that you don’t even notice.
— Uh I that definitely is the case but you can also think of that happening even within a language. So a lot of work that uh psychotherapists do with their clients for example is to allow them to release agency for things that it seems unhealthy for them to think that they’re really causing and then uh to take agency for things that uh they can actually do and have some kind of causal power over to learn to say I can do this uh and to learn to say this happened to me as opposed to I caused uh all of these terrible things. So even within a language you can choose to use the language one way or the other to place yourself as an agent which is not always good right or place yourself as a passive observer or uh absolve yourself of responsibility which could also be uh very psychologically healthy sometimes
— in simple terms
— but that idea must be in the language
— uh there has to be some way of expressing it. Yeah. And there might be new ways that we have not yet invented that cuz people in things that you know someone will be like oh there’s the this thing and then we’ll be like that solves all of our problems which we didn’t have before. So basically what I’m saying is that as as infinite as language seems currently it still is finite because we haven’t like invented everything in language yet.
— Oh yeah. There’s an infinite infinite opportunity for creating more new languages. languages are all evolving and changing all the time. And that’s uh a lot of the a lot of the conflict that we uh uh encounter in political debates is that people want to fight about what the new way of talking is going to be like. But in in every field of science, in every field of expertise, people are developing ways of talking alongside ways of thinking. If you look at scientist notebooks, they’re developing ways of describing the thing that they’re trying to think about for the very first time uh at the same time as they’re trying to think about it for the first time.
— Damn, I didn’t think about that.
— So like Isaac Newton kept impeccable notes. And if you look at his notes when he’s formulating the idea of force or gravity, those aren’t ideas that existed, right? So he’s just thinking through what this new invisible thing is that he’s thinking about.
— Thought of that. You see, he writes things down and crosses them out and he’s like, «Impotice, energy, no, no, no.» And he goes back and and writes it over and over and over again and over pages he develops a way to talk about it at the same time as he’s developing a way of thinking about it. So, we’re all we’re always doing that in language. Obviously, Newton was doing it in a slightly elevated way. if you don’t mind me asking for for yourself when you’re engaging with people, you know, on a personal level, do you do you think you have a like a higher level of being able to achieve this? Are you so if somebody’s trying to argue with you for instance, do you see beyond where most people would end naturally? Does does your
— Of course.
— No, no, no. I wonder if like your training No, really. Basically, Trevor is trying to figure out if whenever you argue with people, do you think I’m better than you?
— No, I’m not thinking that. She knows she’s better than them. That’s not the question.
— I’m asking more like in the same way a boxer for instance.
— If you tried to punch a boxer,
— your punch is coming at them a lot slower than most people are perceiving a punch. Most people are surprised by a punch.
— A boxer, if you try as just an amateur to punch them,
— expecting a punch. Yeah.
— They’re just like, «Well, that was very slow and adorable.» Right. I wonder if like you experience that as somebody who spends so much time working with language and communicating all that when you’re speaking to somebody, do you also find that for yourself if they’re even like trying to argue with you? Well, I I am a lot more aware of how much of the disagreement is coming from language itself and and so then I have to hold myself back from giving a lecture and lexical semantics and saying, you know, this is how words mean and it’s not the way that you think words mean and this is but it’s not actually helpful in creating better friendships. So, I don’t I don’t recommend.
— It’s no way to live. Yeah, but I mean Yeah, but I wonder like
— cuz cuz I I I know a lot of people I know a lot of people struggle with this like interpersonally is someone someone will go they’ll say like you know it just happens between people they’ll be like you blah blah blah you ignored me is a great one for instance let’s say someone goes you ignored me
— you ignored by something in the world
— no you felt someone calling you and rings twice
— or you you you felt ignored or you did not feel attention was paid to to you even is even like different to being ignored and then like so that I was wondering like if you then but now what you you’ve basically said to me is you don’t then say to them ah no your use of language isn’t necessarily what do you so in that situation do you just say like sorry and then you act like you don’t know the answer
— um well um I haven’t
— exactly what you
— I haven’t found it useful to bring out my laptop and start giving them a lecture on how words mean um that that has not been the best way to make friends.
— So what do you do then?
— Um
— do you know the answer though? But often you can say, you know, there are many different ways to frame this situation and here are all the ways that I can think of and hear all the and the the more you the more you open up the channels of communication and the more you allow people to see all of the different uh perspectives, sometimes the light bulb does go off and they say, «Hey, wait a second. I was only thinking about it from this perspective. But now I also do see that there are these other ways of thinking about it. And for me personally, like let’s say I’m upset about something. If I suddenly see another perspective to think about it from that allows me to not be upset, I’m so thankful. It just releases me from whatever that frustration is where I’m like, «Oh, that person didn’t mean that or that
— there’s a possibility that this wasn’t how I saw it. situation is not a big deal actually. And
— if you can give that gift to someone then great if they’re able to receive it that way. Not if you’re just deny denying their reality or their feelings.
— Okay. Okay. And then is there a is there a language that you find you enjoy being angry in the most? Like what is your most effective angry language question?
— You know, any language that you’re good in is going to be the best language.
— No, but that’s what I’m asking you. Which one is like if you go I like I’m angry this is the language I’m going in.
— I’m I I’m most fluent in English. So English I can really c make a surgical strike in English. Uh but I have had experiences where I was frustrated in Spanish and I felt like I was being treated like a child but I also could only speak like a child at the same time. So it’s extra frustrating when you’re like no I speak good. I good swimmer. You can’t swim. So it just makes you more and more angry. So I would recommend expressing anger in a language that you’re particularly adept in. But then you can make exactly the
— huh
— you know from from this conversation especially from the question that you asked about
— what happens when you’re engaging with people that you know far more better than
— Mhm.
— is from what I’m getting from you is it is actually a bigger adventure walking into those misunderstandings because you get to learn so much about yourself and the person and how you’re describing about the direction that psychotherapy is taking and I actually love it. It can be encapsulated into two phrases. You can control what you can control and do what you can do. So it’s do you, boo, and it is what it is.
— Basically, if every psychotherapist would tell their patients that, I think we’d have a better world out there cuz it is what it is and do you, boo.
— If I paid for therapy and I said that
— and my therapist said to me,
— uh, it is what it is and do you, boo. That’s all we’ve got time for. Uh, I’ll see you next week. I’d be like, there will be no next week.
— Yeah. If the pilot If the pilot says,
— «We’re going to be experiencing turbulence at about 30,000 ft.» You’re like, «It is what it is, man.» And he’s like, «I’m going to take a slight left turn in like
— Do you, boo? Hold on. What got you into this language, the love of language and brain?» Um well partially it was the experience of moving from a Russian speaking environment to an English speaking environment of course uh you I went from a world where one set of things were true to a world where exactly the opposite set of things were true right so moving from the Soviet Union to America all of a sudden I was in a completely different conceptual universe but also I was just a very argumentative kid and um I started noticing thing as a teenager that so many of the arguments I would get into really uh were pinned on how people were using words that one person was you we were using the same words but we meant different things by them and then I thought if we study language we might be able to get to the underlying truth it turned out to be that the more you study language the more you realize language doesn’t reflect an underlying truth it’s just a tool for communication it’s a tool for thought It’s useful. Um, but it allows you to understand how humans actually became as smart and sophisticated as we are.
— Yeah.
— And then Okay. And it’s almost like what do you hope to give us? I mean that’s a you know like
— that’s a big assumption that no like what what was there going like who the hell are you?
— No. Who the hell are you?
—
— like I’m giving what do I want to give him?
— You guys are lucky that I even showed up. No, it’s our takeaway that our our engagement that there’s this thing that sits in the middle language and we should look at that almost like you said with look at that before we get to the person. Like there might be this invisible sort of like thing that’s determining how we think but we are unaware that it is determining how we think. So it’s not all them and it maybe not all us. It might be this middle thing
— that would make life very complicated. So definitely that the more aware you are of how much you’re being shaped by how much you’re being funneled into certain ways of thinking by your language by your culture by your experience that once once you become aware of it you’re free to then look out of the trench and see are there other ways of thinking about it that I might enjoy that might be helpful to me but also often when we’re talking about these examples where these other people elsewhere think differently it can kind of seem exotic like oh these other exot otic people elsewhere they they think in these funny ways when in fact all of us are being influenced by the languages that we speak right so it’s an opportunity to turn the mirror on yourself and say why is it that I think the thoughts that I think are those the thoughts that I necessarily need to think could I think differently what are the opportunities for me to go beyond the ways that I think now because all of our brains are capable of so much more than the simple routines that we put them through every day and so the more aware we become of the things that have trained us, the more we can actually use them as powerful tools to create the kinds of thoughts that we want to build.
— Thank you.
— Damn.
— You know, this is a very serious question. Since you walked into the studio, I was wondering to myself, the dress.
— Mhm.
— Wool or Kashmir?
— Wool.
— It’s fantastic.
— Thank you. It’s uh it’s from the 40s.
— No way. Vintage. Yeah. Somehow has survived this whole time.
— You thrifted it or was it
— Yeah.
— No way. Looks fantastic.
— Thank you.
— Yeah. It’s got great energy to
— Thank you. Thank you for noticing it.
— Yeah, absolutely.
— That’s what I also noticed. But I thought we’re not allowed to say that, but I mean, you didn’t notice You just heard about Kashmir for the first time. Now Dave was literally there like cash like Kashmir outside cashmir. Cash me where? This has been great. Thank you.
— Thank you so much for that.
— As as a as a room of of bilingual, by the way, do you just say bilingual if the person can speak more or do you just multilingual?
— Oh, you’ll just go multi and then beyond that. You don’t we don’t use the numbers. So, as a room of multilingual,
— you could say quadrilingual.
— No, no, we don’t need to. We don’t need to. No, no, no, no. It’s not necessary. As a as a room of few lingual,
— we appreciate you.
— Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I look I mean I I love it selfishly because it it helps me understand like how my brain processes this stuff.
— But to sort of what Dave was alluding to and then Eugene as well is like it’s just it’s interesting to realize
— that we are all I like that you said we’re at the mercy of the tool that we’re using thinking that we’re use we expressing ourselves when we’re actually being used
— using a tool to express ourselves. So if you only given a hammer and then I go like express yourself with it,
— you might break a few things cuz it’s the only tool you have to express yourself and you may never think that the hammer is the reason.
— Yes.
— And so if we only have the words that we have,
— we may struggle to understand why the world is reacting to us the way it is or why we are impacting the world the way we are. But it’s just because of the tool that we have access to.
— Yeah. My English teacher used to say, «Vocular is your vocabulary is like clothes in a suitcase and sometimes you pack the wrong clothes.»
— Damn,
— what a great quote.
— That’s a fantastic quote. What did you get in English? What was your grade?
— Hey, hey, hey, baba. Hey, you could have left it a great.
— No, that was great, Eugene. Thank you so much for that. LRA, thank you again for joining us.
— Thank you so much.
— Really wonderful. I appreciate it.
— Really fun. So fun.
—
— Thank you so much for watching the episode. If you enjoyed it, pass it on to a friend. If you didn’t enjoy it, pass it on to your friend still. Let them suffer for a change. And don’t forget to engage with us in the comments. Uh if you want to suggest a guest, maybe there’s questions you want. Maybe there’s ideas that you have. You can chat to us. We will read through the comments and we’ll get into it. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for hanging out with us on What Now. And remember, we do this for you. So we would like to hear from you. Till next time. Thank you.
