There's a mistake in this video. "Earliest common ancestor of British and American English" should refer to PIE, right? You're looking for "latest common ancestor"
nope. even if there was a proto-world, that's still the LATEST common ancestor of all the languages spoken today, not the first language ever spoken. the earliest common ancestor would be some sort of chemical signaling between single celled organisms or something.
good thing that neither 'latest common ancestor' nor 'earliest common ancestor' mention the word 'language', or anything else to specify what we're looking for. hell, you could say that the earliest common ancestor of british and american english is the laws of physics.
No, it would be earliest because the latest common ancestor would be modern American and British English. The earliest common ancestor would be the dialect that surfaced when American English first became distinct from British English, it wouldn't be PIE or whatever.
@UCI0Wy5KWMVIxvYVIDoroBPg that's okay. There was time when I was bad at understanding anything that wasn't literal, and it was one of the reasons it was suspected I have Asperger's.
@@pasoska_kontrola no. Štokavian, Kajkavian and Čakavian are different language, but all the official Yugoslav "languages" are literally based on Štokavian. You could've at least make it based on different dialect! But you don't do that and still call them separate! Otherwise it's just another case of Yugoslav nations being too nationalistic.
I caught that too. I don't know Chinese, but I know that symbol on the right is the Japanese symbol for 'male'. Yeah, Japanese Kanji don't always have the same meaning as they do over in China, but that seemed like quite a change in meaning to me. For the record, the only example of this I know of is how the Japanese symbol for 'oni' is actually the Chinese symbol for 'ghost', even though China does have its own folkloric creatures called oni which accordingly have their own symbol, which isn't even used in Japan.
rather than edit and re upload all your past videos you could begin a new series revisiting old topics with better fact checking and try to introduce new spins on the ideas that you conveyed the first time. you could accomplish this over the next year or 2 years and at the end of it delete the old videos so that you have a more accurate library for posterity. This would allow you to alternate between new videos and revisited videos, increasing the longevity of your channel without increasing your workload.
I don't think you quite understand how RU-vid works. Once it's up, the only way to change it is to take the whole video down. I can change the title, the thumbnail, the description and the annotations, but not the video itself.
Xidnaf I don't think that is necessary. You are learning, making mistakes is 100% imperative in order to grow and learn and while you know way more about this than I do, we are learning together. I appreciate that you are so passionate about this that you upload a video so fast that you might forget to fact check some things. You're human and make mistakes, it's fine. Just make sure you keep correcting yourself and improving. That's all we can ask for.
As much as I hate to put work on your shoulders, I tend to agree with the people here. If you care about providing correct information, either pull down the wrong videos or go through those videos you messed up and correct them.
I'm here just because I'm an english learner and I just wanna train my listening (because you speak super fast) and learn something interesting while doing so. Keep it up 😂
Don't worry, everyone makes mistakes. Your video's are fun and interesting which is why I watch them. Besides me slightly misunderstanding the history of the Thai language is going to cause any massive problems in everyday life.
rzeka Me too :D I thought that anyone who has a little bit of interest with linguistics will know that English is a Germanic language with Romance influence :/
Yeah my french teacher is always reminding people in my class about it. Weirdly, it happens more with nous avons or vous avez than for anything else that requires a liaison
xidnaf, we all make mistakes but it's how we deal with our mistakes that define us. thanks for the straight up honest video, you can hold your head high.
well people make more mistakes the more often they upload :) that's why CGP grey almost never uploads.. he is a perfectionist and tries to get everything right... and then even he get's a few things wrong and it "kills him" :P
Latin has the words 'casa' and 'domus', both meaning house, but 'casa' was something more like a hut or a house of poor people and 'domus' was the type of house occupied by the upper classes. So Spanish, Italian and Portuguese got 'casa' from there.
Really? I would expect the opposite. Casa coming from castle or castile or castilian, the rich people, the kings and dukes. Doma as in domicile just meaning a place you live in.
Interesting point. I assumed English house and Spanish casa were related. But then, Hungarian has ház, which sounds so similar, that I assumed it must have been borrowed from German, but apparently, there is also a Finnish word it could be cognate with. But then there is Hungarian fiú, meaning boy, related to Finnish poika? And Romanian fiu, meaning son, from Latin filius. Coincidence? Confusing?
Dude, I once had to do a presentation in eighth grade about my favorite President. I was a smart kid, but didn't know who to do it on. My dad suggested Reagan. I, a gay thirteen year old, told the world, well twenty other thirteen year olds that my favorite President was a man who destroyed unions, and ignored, thereby exacerbating the AIDS crisis. Later on I went to college for international affairs, and got in a full on screaming match with a guy in class because he rightly pointed out that the war my dad fought in was completely amoral. You're going to make mistakes. Learning isn't always pleasant, which is why a lot of people choose not to. You're inspiring a ton of people to get into linguistics. Sometimes you'll be wrong. That's okay. You could have a PhD in linguistics, and someone will nitpick a sentence in your paper to discredit you. Keep your head up. I don't know you at all, but I love your videos, and am weirdly proud of you for this one. Keep it up!
I've never watched this guy beyond his video about china not existing and this one. I just love how his crudely drawn face can show an emotion I don't have a word for bu accurately portrays how he feels about the mistakes, it's fantastic.
I think people who watch this type of educational content in their free time are naturally skeptical, and you're doing everything right in terms of highlighting and apologising. Maybe link this video in the description for all of the videos with serious errors if you want to do more. I also think you have low self esteem, I do as well. People like your content, I would be very upset if you quit youtube because you spent too much time thinking about your failures
I pointed out a minor presentation error on another language channel and he totally lost it, insulting me and talking about how much time he puts into the videos etc. Would you rather be that guy, or too apologetic? Who do you think will do better over time, someone who throws a wobbly whenever they get criticism, or someone who corrects and builds?
Look CGP grey has the same issues, every artist and creator face criticism. I think it's a postitive good thing, even if most humans are not equipped to handle this we have this community that can be of help and support.
ibx2cat just did the same with his geography series and I loved that he did it, yours even more since these mistakes are sometimes hysterical haha! Xidnaf, I'm sure most of us are mere hobby linguists as well. That's why we come and watch your videos. If somebody happens to use your channel for legitimite academic research, that's on him. We still learned a bunch. *And so did you.* And you stood up for it, you didn't look for excuses and made this video. You stayed true to yourself and even if you gain heaps of subscribers in the future, I doubt very much you'd sell out, since you seem to be genuinely passionate about your channel :) Oh, and about the vocalized thing: In German a vowel is called Vokal. Naming a consonant that becomes a vowel vocalized feels very natural to me at least! ;D
I'm impressed. That video took a lot of courage to make. I've been subscribed to your channel for a while and I know you're not the only one that makes mistakes but it's the first time I see someone so thoroughly revisit and own up to their mistakes. Kudos. Your frank humility humbles me. Keep your videos coming!
omg I LOVE number 4! Moreover, I'd have thought exactly the same thing if I were in your shoes! 😜 But seeing it on context, with people's responses is priceless 😄
The fact that Xidnaf would want to make a video like this makes me like his channel even more. Edit: Would it be so much work to redo the voiceover for the video on Thai with the vocalized problem?
Replacing audio is a bit difficult, I have tried to do this myself and it's very frustrating T_T But yes, it's possible.. Perhaps the best way of doing it would be to use dubbing techniques to just overwrite the parts that are wrong... well that's basically what you suggested xD
It's really awesome you haven't taken the videos down. I wish I could own my mistakes half that well. And regarding the thai-video, I think the sentiment is still pretty much right even if it isn't exactly as you said. I remember how that video helped me see the bright side of english ortography for example.
However many mistakes you've made, you still helped me FINALLY decide what to do with my life: I applied for Japanese to start next year so I can start 'developing' my absolute love for languages and origins while studying something that'll be able to get me a job that I'll love in the future. Always love your content, keep it up!
Awww, Xidnaf. I love your honesty and humility. I appreciate you making this video, and will always continue to watch your videos. Just make sure to fact-check from now on. I can't be spewing lies and citing Xidnaf in my linguistic papers, ya hear?
I so happy that you're making videos again, you made me really enjoy linguistics and made me want to learn new languages. thanks to you I am currently learning Japanese, Spanish and a little German on the side. Anyways thank you for your contribution to this site I'm sure you've had a lasting impact on many people's lives.
For your error n° 2, syllables spawning over two words exists in French (you mostly see this in poetry where you have to count syllables) And I think you can keep it all uploaded, they're interesting, they're good to show progress and understanding, and if really, just put the details/errors/corrections in the description :) I'm very happy to see you back and forth, and to be honest as an ESL teacher at uni, I sometimes show the football video or the ass video to students for a laugh and a discussion :)
Your videos are fine, Xidnaf. You have made some of my favorite videos. Making mistakes is how you learn and improve! Don't forget to keep on being awesome!
This piece is excellent. Not only is it a correction of past errors, it also adds to the wealth of linguistic information you present. I wouldn't bother listening to anything about linguistics, if your channel didn't exist. You're doing a great job. I would not remove any of the past videos.
In most languages that come from vulgar Latin you see the C being pronounced with a soft sound as in suh before e and i, and c with a kuh or hard sound before a,u, o, i.e. Spanish, you also see it with G, the same rules apply. So, I don't think it was the French starting to pronounce it that way since most Romance languages follow this rule.
Yes. What happened is that before I and E the hard C /k/ and G /g/ (like in “cat” and “game”) bacame palatalized /kʲ/ and /ɡʲ/ and then palatal, so basically their sounds became CH /tʃ/ and J /dʒ/ (like in “choose” and “joke”). In Italian and Romanian they're still pronounced that way, in other romance languages the sounds diverged. In French the CH /tʃ/ became TS /ts/ and then /s/ (that's why in French and Old French borrowings “ce” and “ci” are pronounced like “se” and “si”) and the J /dʒ/ became ZH /ʒ/ (like the “s” in “pleasure”), but in English they went back to be pronounced J /dʒ/ (we say “age” /eɪdʒ/ and not /eɪʒ/). In Spanish the S /s/ became /s̺/, while the CH /ts/, then /s̪/, then in some dialects /s̪/ and /s̺/ became both /s/ and in other dialects /s̺/ kept beinɡ /s̺/ and /s̪/ became TH /θ/ (as the TH in “think”). In Spanish the J /dʒ/ became ZH /ʒ/ and then SH /ʃ/ and then /x/ and in some dialects H /h/ (that's why the h-like sound in Spanish is written with J or G before E and I… because in many cases it comes from the sound that the “j” does in English).
VSauce title "This is not yellow" has one up on you, because Michael there is TECHNICALLY right. The color he shows isn't yellow, but a mix of green light and red light
No. I feel strongly about this. The word "yellow" does not refer to electromagnetic waves of a particular range of frequencies. It refers to stuff that looks yellow.
I agree, if we go down the route of what "is" yellow and what "looks like" yellow, then we might as well start using E-Prime and completely stop using the verb "to be", and nobody wants that :D We say something "is" a certain thing or a certain way as shorthand for what we perceive because in most cases, for all practical intents and purposes, it applies.
+Xidnaf "The word "yellow" does not refer to electromagnetic waves of a particular range of frequencies." By definition, every colour you see is the result of a certain frequency of photons that your eyes receive. The claim "it looks yellow" is rather dubious because human eyes don't work in an absolute way (what is seen as yellow for you is not yellow for some other creature) and colour blindness is a thing. Matching conventional colour names to certain frequencies help us define things in a rather efficient and functional way. If the light frequency definition of yellow didn't exist, there would be no legitimate arbiter of what "looks yellow" other than each person's intuition and personal eyesight, both greatly unreliable tools.
> If the light frequency definition of yellow didn't exist, there would be no legitimate arbiter of what "looks yellow" other than each person's intuition and personal eyesight, both greatly unreliable tools. Color terms are primarily intended for everyday speech, where we don't care about frequencies and wavelengths of light but do care about what things look like to a typical human (and where precision is not usually important); therefore, it makes sense to define colors in terms of what things look like. If you want to be precise about electromagnetic frequencies, then you can use numbers; or you could define color terms precisely _within the context_, but if you do the latter, then those precise definitions only hold within the context where it's relevant, and to everyone else color terms will still refer to how things look.
+chrideedee To bring up Vsauce: If you rely solely on the fact it "looks yellow", how do you know that what you and other have agreed upon about what yellow is doesn't fluctuate even slightly between the participants? You could spend your entire life with an idea of what is yellow, but being fundamentally different than what someone else could see. After all, every day speech doesn't have to invoke photon frequencies and wavelengths, but that doesn't nullify the facts of it. This is more within the conundrum of philosophy rather than physics (colour being what it looks like or what it is fundamentally consisted of), but my take is that yellow has a definition, so imitation of yellow sure as hell looks yellow, but it's not quite the colour yellow. Step inside a dark room with no lights and what looked like yellow will be pitch black within seconds (unless it's actual light bulbs we are talking about).
I'm a (very) amateur linguist myself, so this video speaks to me. Don't be too hard on yourself Xidnaf! (Even though I do find your self-deprecating animations cute and hilarious)
Not sure why, but this video really endeared me to your channel. I already have a budding interest in linguistics, but an honest and frank sense of self-correction can go a long way to earning trust. Makes me want to double-check my own borrowed facts. love ya Xidnaf! Keep learning and being human :)
It shows character that you spent time to make a video just explaining when and why you were wrong in videos from up to 4 years ago. As for the videos themselves, maybe add "Watch my 'Corrections' video " to the videos' titles or the descriptions?
I really admire your honesty. Keep them up!!! I love your content and I've learnt a lot with it, including with your mistakes. Thanks for making those videos
"A gentleman upon realizing he has made a mistake strives to correct it". I still like your vids dude. Also, necroposting and you may already know this by now, but there is some debate on whether or not Old Chinese (Shang-Qin/Han) used characters that represented polysyllabic words, what they most certainly DID have were contractions, like 盍 for 何不 "Why not", 焉 for 於之 "at/on/in that/this place" and finally my favorite 旃 which is a rarely seen contraction for 之焉(as in the above) which means it's a contraction of 之於之. The meaning is highly context based but *very* roughly equates to "(action done to)[object] at/on/in that/this place". ALSO, to make this even more complicated, current comparative linguistic research suggests Old Chinese had suffixes/prefixes (reconstructed via comparison to other Sino-Tibetan languages that recorded them, as they are not reflected in the characters themseves), the suffix'd word would then sometimes, but not always, be recorded with a different character, and I could go on but I feel another PTSD attack from learning Classical Chinese coming on. Cheers!
This is really good Xidnaf, it's great that you haven't let your mistakes discourage your from continuing to do your awesome work. I really like your channel a lot and you are a very entertaining person to learn from. I think it would be nice if you took down the old videos and re-uploaded some updated versions, but I understand that that will be very time consuming, and this format has been entertaining to watch. Maybe keep on the way you have been, improving all the time, and just upload another corrections video when you find the mistakes have piled up. Either way, I really appreciate everything you are doing here!!
If it was me, I would leave most of them with just annotations. For the top few with truly grievous errors, I'd redo them and reupload. Glad you're back uploading anyway, love your stuff!
Omg I'm early! Hi xid! It's me from 3 years ago on youtube inbox •~• Oh god these mistakes...It's fine, as long as you learn from them, I mean. They're not that bad, but if you went on r/linguistics or r/conlangs and started saying this stuff, you would get cyberbullied tbh. Trust me, I learned my lesson. I said that there was only 3 alphabets in the world once....hell broke loose. Btw, I saw took that Casa/House thing very seriously XD
Haha Xindaf, my man! You're doing great, being so honest and all. For starters you can just put annotations to all the videos correcting the mistakes or just pointing out that there are some, and / or link to this video to all of them at the and (as an annotation or just in the description). Secondly, you can make it easier and share some of the work. Make a team, issue assignments, I'm sure there are people who are fans that would love to work with you (me included :D) into making this a thing. In my account you're far better when it comes to getting to a point and humor then the competition.
Man, does it feel weird to get recommended a video about Steam Hams, and then accidentally clicking the channel and getting a super interesting, even wholesome video like this that I'd have never found out otherwise. Hope you make these again.
Wow, this was a really entertaining and thorough way of addressing corrections! It made me laugh and made me think. When I make a serious mistake in a video that can't be fixed with just annotations, I'll generally try to upload a new updated version. But what to do about the incorrect upload? - If I noticed the mistake quickly (like, within 2 weeks) then I'll delete the old upload. - But if I notice, like, a year later, I'll sometimes re-upload a new version, and cover the original upload with an ENORMOUS annotation linking everyone to the new version, as well as at the top of the description. And hopefully the new version will eventually get more popular than the incorrect one. Of course, it just kinda depends on what you want to do. Either way, well done for making a fun and comprehensive corrections video. The New York Times should do these. :)
I'm so happy that your doing video again. even if you make mistakes, your videos are still very interesting and you made me love linguistic and stuffs, so I'm grateful for that
I found your channel like 2 weeks ago and i wasn't sure will u ever upload, but u did!!! Aghh I love this channel :) Also I'm really happy that you corrected yourself, I was almost thinking that my whole life was a lie and Estonian is actually indo-european
Unlist all questionable videos and put them in a playlist entitled something like "Classic Xidnaf". Then redo them. That will obviously take HUGE amounts of work, but you need to have your channel be presentable. If anyone wishes to see your older videos, they can look in the playlist, but they won't appear to any newcomers, who will only see your improved content at first. This is the approach Lockstin/Gnoggin used when he rebranded his channel, and I think it would work quite well for you as well. Best of luck! Edited for grammar
3:42 sorry to correct you again, but Uralic languages are still spoken in the northernmost parts of European Russia. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Linguistic_map_of_the_Uralic_languages_%28en%29.png
So glad to see you back! I think it's fantastic that you're willing to hold yourself accountable in this way. I see no reason to take the videos down. I do like the idea that others have voiced of revisiting some of the older topics in new videos with revised information. I love your channel!
Hey I have an idea for correcting mistakes! At the end of each video (form now on) you can add a little message saying "check the descriptions for any corrections!" so if you say something wrong in the video, you can just make sure to correct yourself in the description, and in a pinned comment! As for the old videos, I guess you can just add the corrections to the descriptions and in a pinned comment and just kinda hope people read it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hope this helps!
I'd say to leave the videos up, but put corrections in the description. I also think there's a way to sticky comments to the top of the comment area so that people can see that you have made corrections when they scroll down to comment.
Love you to come up with this bro. Not many around my area do this kind of thing. And, no, Thai people can hardly understand ancient Thai writing. For me, it is complex and remain so solely by conservatism. There are some changes in spelling these days. Like, the word "Mai?" which can be spelled using a Mai Malai or Maimuan or Mai Hun-aghad but the official version is Mai Malai one. Some young people spell it using the last option, and it pisses a lot of people off badly.
I hope we can all agree how brave you are for posting this. It could be another project editing and cleaning up the old ones. Maybe citing sources could be a thing.
I'm glad you made this video. Its not often that you see youtubers admiting to or making an entertaining video of their mistakes. Really shows the integrity of this channel.
First, I love self-deprecating humor, and you pull it off wonderfully here. Second, it I were the one doing this, I would probably unlist the old videos and re-do them. But I am a stickler for always being as perfect as possible and always hate everything I make because it's never possible to be perfect, so take that with a grain of salt. Third, you were the one that started me down the rabbit hole of linguistics and also realizing that I have every merger listed for General American. I've been really concentrating lately on bringing the letter t back into my vocabulary.
I'm really glad you made this video. I respect that you can own up to your mistakes and do your best to correct them. Personally I think you should leave the videos up that just have minor/moderate errors, but the ones that have major flaws that undermine the whole message should be made unlisted. They could be edited and re uploaded if the core message could be better conveyed that way. Keep up the great work dude, love the vids even if they aren't perfect 👍
I think if you made a mistake through not researching something properly (or at all), you should take the video down and make it again, (and better!). If it was a smaller mistake, like a mispronunciation or something like an Israelite/Israeli error, mixing up Yin/Yang, annotations and a note in the description of the video should suffice.
6:00 honestly this explains why I don't have the Cot-Caught merger whilst my mother does. I originally thought that once merge, vowels can't unmerge, but no, they can. Especially since I'm from the PNW.
