Odds of Resembles between Languages / False Cognates
The first rule is, you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool.
--Richard Feynman
On sci.lang we are often presented with lists of resemblances between far-flung languages (e.g. Basque and Ainu, Welsh and Mandan, Hebrew and Quechua, Hebrew and every other language, Basque and every other language), along with the claim that such resemblances "couldn't be due to chance", or are "too many" to be due to chance.
Linguists dismiss these lists, for several reasons. Often a good deal of work has gone into them, but little linguistic knowledge. Borrowings and native compounding are not taken into account; the semantic equivalences proffered are quirky; and there is no attempt to find systematic sound correspondences. And linguists know that chance correspondences do happen.
All this is patiently explained, but it doesn't always convince those with no linguistic training-- especially the last point. Human beings have been designed by evolution to be good pattern matchers, and to trust the patterns they find; as a corollary their intuition about probability is abysmal. Lotteries and Las Vegas wouldn't function if it weren't so.
Odds of Resemblance between languages
David Oakey
posted by David Oakey @ 3:43 PM
2 Comments:
Hello David,
My first time visiting your blog. My problem with the author's simple but linguistically informed statistical model is it lacks a sense of humor! Where is the Punology? Where is the word play?
If I say to David Oakey: "Ari the Cat," he may remember my sense of word humor and realize that I mean "thank you" in something I call "Japaspanglish." (Arigato means "Thank You" in Japanese and "Gato" means "Cat" in Spanish. Translated into English you get "Ari-the-Cat"). And in Pop-Culture Japaspanglish, "Homer-Stooges Ari the Cat" means "Thank You Very Much" ("Do" "Moe" "Ari" Gato"). However, "Englaspanese" has proven to be more difficult, since not a single Spanish speaker has been able to figure out "PlowNeko" means "thank you." Maybe I need to go to Chile where Japanese immigrants assimilated into the culture decades ago. Do some stores in Chile have little statues of Gatos holding their paw up as you enter the door? My mom has one of those Japanses good luck statues by her front door. I named it "Ari."
Now let's get serious (though I'm not sure why). The idea that languages evolved in an orderly and predictable fashion that allows us to make comparisons and draw conclusions thousands of years later flys in the face of the evidence of what occurs within our own language on a daily basis. We not only beg, borrow, and steal words from other cultures, we smash our own words together and bend them and break them apart to create new meanings. We are notorious copycats, yet like a recorded or rebroadcast signal, there is always distortion and we can't seem to resist adding our "signature" to make it our own. Within as little as one generation words and phrases will completely die out and others will be created, adopted and redefined. Language is like life itself; constantly growing and changing and dying and being reborn.
Just visit www.urbandictionary.com. If you think you have a good handle on today's English language, you are probably wrong. (You can start by throwing out your definition of "today's English language.")
We speak the language of our peer group, the language of our generation, the language of our education, the language of our societal "comfort circle." If we stray outside of that, we are probably lost, like a man in a business suit who mistakenly walks into a biker bar.
Adults over a certain age understand that language is also very generational. Just ask any parent of a teenager. Isn't it funny how one minute you think you are hip and with it and the next minute an adolescent knocks you into the adult reality that there is indeed a generation gap and you have no clue what they are talking about? I often, but not always, have managed to stay ahead of this generation gap due to my life-long interest in cutting edge music. Let me explain.
My interest in language was sparked by the fact I was a closet teenage radio nerd. The science of radio waves led me to the hobby of radio Dxing (look it up) which led me to discover radio stations that played non-mainstream music (I've never been a top-40 kind of guy). In 1983 I discovered that XETRA-FM, a 100,000 watt station in Tijuana had started broadcasting in English from studios in San Diego, calling itself "91-X." This was the alternative to the alternative, which at that time was KROQ in Pasadena. At school, most of my classmates thought the punk rockers were wierd. But the punkers and I had a nodding relationship - we understood each other by way of music. On 91-X, punk and new wave were mixed together, so I knew about bands like Black Flag and the Dickies. The punkers had their own look and even their own language. That was the 80s.
In the 90s I knew what Goth was and understood it. Even listened to some of it (well, OK, sometimes I had to change the station, but I tried to take most of it in. Not as bad as being forced to listen to some Rap or some Country!) The Goths had thier own look and even their own language.
A couple months back I was driving with a friend shortly after a nearby high school had let out. We passed a group of teens dressed in black, tight fiting clothes, black dyed hair hanging over their eyes, dark eye makeup and so on. My friend commented "look at the Goths." I responded "those aren't Goths. Those are EMO kids." I got a blank stare from my friend. "What's an EMO?" Hmmm. "You obviously don't listen to Indie 103.1 or X-103.9 do you? I said. (I didn't bother to mention that I also listen to Internet radio from the UK and spend more time than I should on YouTube.com.)
I tried to explain to my friend that EMO is slang for "emotional" meant to describe a type of moody adolscent who thinks life is dark and depressing, full of angst, nobody understands me, and so on. Mostly it is suburban white kids, and mostly it is being nonconformist and more about listening to what is abptly termed "screamo" music and belonging to an adolescent click. Does this sound familiar?
The 80s had punk rockers. The 90s had Goths. The 2000s have EMOs (search EMO on myspace or YouTube and you'll get loads of hits). But don't get them mixed up or you'll insult them because there are still some Punkers and still some Goths. The EMOs have their own look and even their own language. There's even a parody song about them called "Emo Kid."
Language, like fashion, music, and adolescent clicks, is generational, because each generation redefines it. It happens all around us every day, even if we aren't paying any attention. And thanks to the World Wide Web, Internet, Usenet, Undernet all languages can contaminate each other much faster than in the past. Well, you know, there are EMO kids in Japan too. I wonder if they have EMO Gatos? Emo Gato, heh! Oh, to that I say "very much de nadouitashimashite!"
Mike Britt
Mentone Beach, CA
Webmaster, www.crownfirecoach.org
Welcome to my blog, Mike. The blog postings go back to July. Check out the one about Aaron Burr.
I wonder if there was less language mixing in the past due to less travel. I agree that it seems that youth will try to make their own slang, which would cause some language drift.
I thought it was not controversial that languages change less now that we have old movies and writing to slow down language drift, but I'd heard about a year ago that that is a disputed claim.
David
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