Oh my. I stumbled across a mention of !Xóõ on Facebook and it blew my mind, so I decided to research a little out of curiosity. I’m so glad that you made this video. It was so informative and I’m particularly happy about the opportunity to hear some of it! You are a brilliant person, I really like your attitude towards languages and listening to you is entertaining, love the way you explain certain aspects. Definitely will stay here for longer, you’re such a nice person!
If you're not a religious Jew like me or you're not an Arabic speaker, of course you'll be confused. So much of what you said was incorrect. There is only one vowel in the alefbet (which is an alphabet, albeit an abjad alphabetical script, not sure why you said it's not an alphabet) that vowel is alef א. The letters ו, ע, י, ה are all consonants w (now v), ע is a voiced pharyngeal fricative that we religious Jews know and Arabic speakers know, י is a y (which can be used as a vowel or consonant just like English y), and ה is an h that is sometimes silent, usually to indicate the pronunciation of the last vowel or for grammar reasons. Sometimes the w becomes a U for obvious reasons, but when Jews say it as a V now, it can be confusing to understand why sometimes it's a U. Also, in biblical times and sometimes in Yemenite Hebrew, a word like הוא hu (means "he" in English) is pronounced originally as "hu'a" or "hwa" That's why we Yemenites read and speak Hebrew faster than Israelis, as we don't always need niqudoth vowelization because letters just make more sense for our pronunciation. ת is th like think in English תּ is dentalized t like in English ד is a th or can be called a dh like the th in English word that דּ is a d Basically, whenever you see a dagesh (dot) inside a letter, in linguistics, it represents unspirantization. This means the letter is pronounced in a plosive way, while the same letters without the dot are spirantized. In basic English, think of it like dot means the sound is more like an explosion while the letter without the dot is more slurred or trilled. I speak Hebrew with Yemenite pronunciation, very close to biblical pronunciation, because I'm a religious Jew. All Israelis understand everything I say for the most part. Though this is all just pronunciation, the same is true of secular Israelis and their limited understanding of Hebrew grammar (since secular modern Hebrew is simplified in grammar, has some mistakes, and they also forget the proper niqudoth vowelization for some words). All Israelis admit that religious Jews speak a higher more grammatically correct and formal form of Hebrew while saying secular Israelis' Hebrew gets worse and worse by every generation. The guy in this video makes some errors, like saying the letter צ is called tzadik, when it's actually called tzadi (even though Biblical and yemenite hebrew makes it a pharyngealized s, not a ts, like the letter sad ص in Arabic, which came from this Hebrew letter).
Finnish consonant gradation has gone through three phases: #1 consonant gradation doesn't exist. #2 consonant gradation (weakening) is activated when a syllable containing k, p or t ends in a consonant: pität->piðät, mentäk->menðäk. #3 Consonant gradation "grade" (weak or strong) is locked in place. Today, Finnish is in the third phase. For the most part, the "locked" grades follow the rules of phase 2, but consonants have been lost between two consonants without changing the grade.
10:49 Ł used to be pronounced more like the Russian hard l. The sound change is actually pretty recent. You can still listen to recordings from early 20th century of polish actors, singers, politicians, etc. using the old pronunciation. It was considered to be more fancy than the 'w' pronunciation and was taught in phonetics classes in acting schools even after the sound change happened. You can hear it in songs like "Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą" by Eugeniusz Bodo, or "Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy" by Hanka Ordonówna.
A major source for those interested in North American languages is Marianne Mithun's "The Languages of Native North America", Cambridge University Press, 1999.
This is a truly magnificent video, Shawn. Very well researched, very informative, full of infectious enthusiasm. I love your videos and admire the amount of work behind them. I promise, I'll never tread on your lawn. Never.
I have the exact same experience with english, only its my second language. It was fun being able to speak it decently when we started learning it in elementary school.
Малые языки не надо учить. На них зачатую нет ни культуры, ни литературы, ни кино. Если у Вас есть время лучше выучите латынь или санскрит, или древнегреческий.
Now I realised something regarding to hungarian language. We have the trace of dual pronouns too, just it is not in the official grammar. Because we say for I, you, he/she, we, you, they, that " én, te, ő, mi, ti, ők. Mi and ti is perfectly the same like mi ti in nganasan, but we use these as not dual, but on pl1 and pl2 level. BUT even today - even my father too, who was born in budapest, but his family came from the eastern border - some people sometimes say that MINK and TIK instead of MI and TI. Which is very similar to nganasan MING and TING. People dont know why is this. They just think that it is a strange dialect in some part of the country, and probably it came from that they say badly these words..... BUT THE ANSWER IS HERE.... IT IS NOT BAD. BUT THEY ARE WHO STILL RESERVE THE ORIGINAL GOOD GRAMMAR. It is amazing.
06:52 That's why after being asked the question so many times, I've decided that my best answer is 'I learn languages by enjoying them' - yes, I do many things, but they all come naturally a result of me enjoying the languages :)
13:51 I thought I was the only one who enjoys watching English TV with TL subs and hates dubs. But bad take on Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. The original is the only way and you should be ashamed
Sadly I can’t enjoy Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle in the original just yet, but I just know that the english dub of these two made me laugh so much I nearly suffocated
”Moldovan” is not a language, not even a dialect or subdialect. It's simply Romanian with a slight accent. Russians tried to assimilate them since 1812 by different means, and one was to invent a non-existing language filled with slavic words (Russian mostly). Did not stick.
About the Japanese, I’ve heard of prisoners of war taken from Sakhalin island back in he 40s but it’s just odd to see foreigners in such an isolated part of the world in general
Уважаемый, почти все слова нганасанского телевидения, на которых вы указали как русские слова, на самом деле английские, они пришли в русский из английского языка. Из того языка, на котором вы говорите. Чтобы искоренять англицизмы, надо что-то сделать с английским языком во всем мире.
As someone living in Luxembourg, it’s normal for people to know more than two languages. Before moving to Luxembourg, I only spoke Portuguese and English. Now, I’ve added French (reached B1 level in one year) and have just started learning German (with some Luxembourgish vocabulary).
