How long can a language last before it's unrecognizable? - Dyirbal Glottochronology 2 of 2 

What's always fun about Icelandic is that we can read 1000 year old sagas and still understand the majority of it with relative ease. We're really damn good at preserving the language.

a big reason why Norwegian is so separated from Old Norse today (unlike Icelandic) is mostly due to outside influence: tradings with Germany (there is a *lot* of German influence in Norwegian), being ruled by Denmark, various border shiftings with Sweden, etc etc. Iceland, by comparison, has remained fairly isolated.

I think that written media, movies and politics can also slow language change. Greek student are taught Ancient Greek and much of modern Greek was also injected with ancient words. During my time in school I had to read old texts and understand them. I watch old movies, listen to songs sang over 100 years ago. Sometimes we imitate old accent and vocabulary for an effect. Our language is also codified by law which is super resistive to change. So schools are basically teaching 200 years old version of our language. This must be slowing the process of change.

I think written languages evolve much slower than no written ones due to the fact that they retain a certain degree of standardization.

my native language will probably be undergoing an evolution in the near future. I am a first nations in BC and we are trying to bring our language back. it will obviously not sound the same compared to when our elders speak/spoke it. it will probably be considered "modernised". but whatever. as long as we bring back some sort of version of our language, it's a lot better than no language at all. we were pretty lucky that a Dutch linguist came and learned how our language worked and gave us a written form. I've read a good quote from somewhere. "I want to know my language, so I can communicate with my ancestors after I die." something along those lines anyways.

I was in Yemen "where Arabic was invented" then I went to Malta. Its like a 1000 year travel in a language age

My native tongue, Tagalog, has changed so much in recent times. So much so that it had actually been hard work for me to read even a 1940s novel for school. The probable reason is colonization. Almost half of vulgar Tagalog vocabulary is Spanish in origin, while English loan words have come to replace many Tagalog nouns. In reaction to the influence of colonization, Tagalog was standardized in the 60s during which dated Old Tagalog diction was brought back to popularity to replace English and Spanish loan words. Globalization and media, however, has partially reversed the effects of these efforts with a new wave of rapid adaptation of English loan words.

What is interesting, though, is how dialects can preserve archaic vocabulary or even phonetic features. I'm from a small region in Bavaria (approximately the size of delaware) that has an unusual ammount of archaic words in its vocabulary. Even more fascinating is, that we still use diphthongs that died out with Middle High German at the end of the 14th century (For example we still say brouda instead of bruder like all other German variations).

this really reminds me of a dumb meme I saw once. Doctor: "Sir you've been in a coma for two years" Me: "Are memes still funny?" Doctor: "Yesn't"

As a icelander I don't think icelandic is a mistake Danish is

I think this prediction fails to account for standardization. Languages are changing more slowly now due to standardized grammar/spelling, and educational institutions that make sure everyone learns the same language. We can even see this in English, it's possible for us to read a 500 year old text like Shakespeare, but 1500s English speakers could not have read Beowulf in its original Old English, so I believe going forward it will take much longer for English to be unintelligible to us. Still an awesome video that gave me perspective.

In basque some tools' names are formed with the root "aitz" which means "stone, rock" like "aizkora" (axe), azkona (arrow), haitzurra (hoe), aiztoa (knife). So some say those words come from the stone age

There are people arguing the Uralic ("Finno-Ugric") language family is 9000 years old...and the proposed Dené-Yeniseian family would have a vintage of 13,000 years or more!

you better explain that proto-afro-asiatic ultra in depth! :D

Speaking of language changing, I as a Chinese, found Chinese pronunciation in 800AD very close to morden days, but pronunciation before 400AD is very hard to understand, if go earlier than 200BC it's not understandable. (grama and writing remained same so do not affect understanding) But strangely the poems and literatures highly depending on phonology back to 800BC still rhyme well today.

I wonder how technology factors into the rate of language change. I have lived abroad for 13 years and I find that American English is not what is was when I left. For example, grammar choices that would be considered mistakes by traditional English teachers are made so often now that they seem to have been accepted. A few examples: - ignoring plural pronoun/noun+verb agreement when using "to be", more spoken than written - using "fewer" and "less" interchangeably, something I see printed VERY often - using comparatives, particularly "more", with single syllable adjectives, instead of adding "er", such as this is "more clear" During my years abroad, the smart phone put an internet connection (and a keyboard) into everyone's hands, and I'm curious if linguists are exploring how this might contribute speeding up the rate of language change.

I remember in high school English Literature Class reading the same sentence in Old English (Anglo-Saxon), 2 dialects of Middle English (the more French version of Chaucer and the Northern version of "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight"), Shakespeare's English, Jane Austen's English, and modern American English, and it was startling how much vocabulary and pronunciation had changed

Finished! I have lots of coursework these days, but I'll make time to start on the next one: a tale about an old tongue...

This topic truly is fascinating. I was reading 'Y Gododdin' and 'Diffaith Aelwyd Rheged' [Two 8th century Welsh poems] the other day and understood them almost entirely (There were only a few words that required looking up and the orthography was only a slight annoyance, apart from that, the aforementioned poems would, most probably, be easy for any Welsh speaker to read.) Being that I'm also an English speaker, I tried to read an Old English text, and understood next to naught [That being said, Old English was basically forced to adapt to the Norman-French speaking invaders... ]. anyway

Icelandic feels like reading an old ass script fit for the Viking age, because of the complex grammar and fewer words in common with Norwegian it's harder to learn but still relatively easy to understand simple sentences if you've been exposed to it as a Norwegian speaker :)

In conclusion: *Languages are memes.*

this channel feels like home (ToT). a sanctuary where people who recognize the importance of subject study gather. every comment that i read fascinates me and i feel like a book of adventures has been given to me. we are a dying kind whose interest, knowledge ans skills are widely disregarded and even looked down upon. some who watch this channel may not be as unlucky and may still have jobs that are relevant to their degree, but, although those people may not be under the impression i'm under, i'm certain that the amount of appreciation is just as great.

Swadish: languages all change at the same rate! Icelandic: I'm about to end this mans whole career

this makes me think of time traveling. the main problem i see now about going to the future or the past could be not understanding any language spoken on earth

Old English is almost unrecognizable to modern English speakers. That's about 1000 years ago maybe. About 500 years ago was Shakespeare, which modern people have trouble with. I think it's not changed a great deal in the last 200 years.

Well, Finnish people can still easily read Finnish from the 1500's, the only things that have changed are basically some letters being changed in words, like "c" being replaced by "k" or "z" with "s". Not only that but Finnish has also preserved many proto-german words with little to no change in the words themselves. for example "King" in proto-german was "Kuningaz", in modern Finnish "king" is "Kuningas"

0:31 I'm gonna name my next Gerbil Dyirbal- but no one will know how to spell it.

The way you explain things is so concise and accurate, keep up the good work!

No one suspects that the original observations of Dyirbal were simply in error? I keep expecting to hear that possibility raised. The reports of old-timey anthropologists abound in half-truths and misinterpretations.

'Language time time languaged time language linguist time.'- this video in a nutshell

I change channels frequently. This is one of the few ones i stayed for a long time. That must be saying something. Keep up the good work!

This is by far one of my favourite channels on RU-vid!! Love It!!

its so interesting to hear about languages from all over the world instead of just English, i love this channel good work

A lot of people act like Middle English is completely or mostly unintelligible to speakers of Modern English. To me, written Chaucerian English, at least, is about 90 percent comprehensible. I haven't really studied the language at all. All I've done is read the Miller's Tale in different modern translations, interlinear translations, and the original Middle English. Even my family members who have never seen Middle English in their lives report it as being mostly understandable when I present it to them.

I'll watch it in the morning. I've been waiting for this. By the way, I _love_ how you say all your sources in one google document. So useful!

A word of thanks for your videos, they’re so interesting and clear. A pleasure to watch!

I think English itself a great example of how a language can change so much

I think that language contact is the main factor, frankly. The thing about the younger Dyirbal speakers was, they weren't even speaking Dyirbal as their main language. That's what leads to language attrition and language death: when you use another language more frequently than your native language. It's easy to observe this in emigrants, for example, Germans who emigrate to the US or Australia. Languages widely used as a second language are also notoriously prone to changing fast (if not as fast as languages like Dyirbal that are on their way out). It's probably because quirks introduced by second-language speakers gradually seep even into the language of first-language speakers. Icelandic was never spoken widely by anyone outside Iceland, immigrants came almost exclusively from Norway, and the language was largely isolated from other Scandinavian languages for a long time, especially in the crucial period when Norwegian, along with Swedish and Danish, came to radically simplify its grammar (along very similar lines as English, in fact). And this period was also the time when Low German was widely spoken as a second language in Scandinavia. It turns out that Low German has simplified its grammar in similar ways as English, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. (The same is also true for Dutch.) This is unlikely to be coincidental, given how deeply Low German has influenced the vocabularies of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, too. By about 1200, even 1300, all Scandinavian languages had a complex morphology comparable with Modern Icelandic (and to some extent, Modern German). By 1800, spoken Danish, Swedish and Norwegian had a grammar more like English, while Icelandic and Faroese preserved the older state.

Good work NativLang! An important topic, and you've covered it well.

I love all of your videos! They’ve made me really interested in linguistics. If you feel comfortable can you do a video explaining your journey with linguistics, and maybe some book recommendations?

Your language is a mistake, stop speaking it at once. We will be there in the coming weeks with a real language for you. Sorry about this minor setback, Iceland.

A standardized language will change very slowly. And keep in mind that we have modern means of communication like TV and internet that keep us in touch with the standard language.

The mellifluous melody that enters as our linguistic adventure nears it's end; I for one really enjoy.

Another fab vid. Love your animations on this one. Cooee from Wadu Wurrung country (south eastern Australia).

If languages change drastically when they’re near death, that would explain why Gaulish appeared to have changed drastically the last 200 years or so of its existence

Nice conclusion to great series!

This is honestly the best channel ever!

great stuff. Thank you for these videos, I find language fascinating and you are the leader in videos about the topic. Do you have any favorites I could check out?

I accidently ended my post. I grew up reading the king James bible. Like many protestants in their 60s. I can read Shakespeare quite easily.

in the philippines... we have 100+ dialects and only a small fraction uses the national language as their main, they usually speak it to understand people from other region. the problem is, each region is severely revising the national language at an alarming rate. the national language(tagalog) is already made up of 11+ languages to begin with and the land separation doesn't help too. 75% of the population also code switches because its easier to say it in english than the national language. i myself need to exert effort to read the national language, and some words i have never heard of, and most are just feels disgusting to use.

Can't wait for part 4!

I know for people who live on islands, geography affects language. In the islands of Chuuk for example, they all speak Chuukese but every island has there way of speaking it. I hear 3 main dialects but like i said each island in the 3 dialects has there way of speaking the language. For example, to say “please”, I’ve heard: Kose mochen Ose moshen Ohe morhen (Can also mean “you don’t want”)

Greek must be one of the slowest changing languages. you can sometimes pick a word or two out of each sentence from something like Homer, its used the same alphabet for at least 2400 years. but in english for the same degree of intelligibility you can't go much further back than the Tudors.

I have got alerts on for your channel, and just yours. (consider this me professing my love for you)

A story our host surely will recognize…In 19th Century Hawaiian seaports and plantations adults of various cultures working together - Hawaii, Guangdong & Guangxi, Japan, Okinawa, Philippine Tagalog & Ilokano, Korea, Portugal, US and England - worked out a practical *pidgin Hawaiian* with enough words to do the transactions of their labors and exchanges. Meanwhile their children, playing together, attending missionary schools, and exploring developed their own much more sophisticated and extensive CREOLE mingling the vocabulary of their parents with new words and grammar of their own creation. This is a wonderful reminder of the plasticity and pre-wired circuitry of the young human brain. But by the time Excited Linguists had learned of this phenomenon and came to Hawaii to study it, the children had matured past and begun their lives in the working world, and the memory of that unique language was already fading. Sorry, it's been decades since I chanced on that, so I don't have a link handy.

can't wait for these vids

I think the fact that nowadays language is written in grammar books and dictionaries and national education systems and such makes language less likely to change than it used to. Language rules are fixed and people learn the same form of the language. Nowadays people come more frequently in contact with people from the other side of their country, so they need one language form that is the same everywhere to be able to communicate with each other.

Maybe a future video in Nilo-Saharan languages?

Gracias por hacer videos geniales. Well done!

This is a very interesting topic! I am not a linguist but I do speak Spanish and French fluently as well as a fair amount of German and some Italian. As a classical/opera type vocalist, I have also learned ecclesiastic Latin. I earned a B.A. degree in French after having lived for a year in France. I was very interested in continuing to speak French but France is across the ocean. I found Quebec to be far more accessible but of course, I immediately became aware of the great difference in dialect.Then, I had heard that some people in Louisiana still speak French, so I decided to explore that. It was difficult to find at first but when I did, I was amazed! There were people in the smaller communities who still actively spoke French. It does have a very distinct accent with many vowel shifts but the more I explore it, the more that I find it is about 95% the same as French spoken in France today.That is despite the US government's effort to basically eradicate it beginning in the 1920's. French was no longer taught in schools and school children were punished for speaking French at school. Nevertheless, speakers of Louisiana French performed a valuable service in World War II. The language was still spoken at home. They could speak it to the people in France and be understood but most importantly, they could deceive the enemy. The fact that French was discouraged however, meant that in many families, the parents did not speak it to their children. Radio and Television also contributed to the idea that English was the key to French heritage people becoming an integral part of modern American society. Yet, some people continued to speak it.They had no foundation in education. They learned to read and write in English and had no idea how to spell the words they used in French nor could they read much of anything written in French and understand it. Yet, they know words that date back to 15th and 16th Century France in some cases.So, the topic of this video becomes very interesting when all of these elements are considered. Basic words being preserved entirely aurally for as much as 500 years, for example. The people who brought the French language to Louisiana are a mix, to be sure from the Creoles who came directly from France, to the Acadians (popularly known as the Cajuns) who went through great turmoil to be resettled in Louisiana after having been exiled from Canada.Almost none of the people who settled in Louisiana had much, if any educational support for their language. It was taught in schools in the 19th Century and early 20th Century but these were rural people for the most part, not university scholars. Yet, the kind of vocabulary that still persists among some speakers is vast and truly amazing to identify! French in Louisiana was predicted to totally die out long before the turn of the 21st Century. Yet, nearly 20 years into the 21st Century, there are estimated to be about 100,000 speakers still left. In the late 1960's there was a movement in Louisiana to reverse the trend of eradication of French spoken in Louisiana, called The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL). It has made little progress. The damage has already been done. It was frankly, a rather clumsy effort. That being said, there are French immersion schools in Louisiana where children learn modern, Standard French. The students can sometimes speak to grand parents and great grand parents and still be mutually understood. They can sometimes learn the typical Louisiana French pronunciation and unique words from the elders. Some young children are actually quite enthusiastic about being able to speak the old dialect.Some have even grown up, learning Louisiana French as a second language but are proud speakers and promoters of it. Those who are musicians have had the greatest influence. They interpret the old Folk songs, sometimes in a very traditional way but often in a modern way. They sometimes also create new songs and melodies, borrowing from the old traditions but making their new presentations be appealing to a contemporary audience.There are now many websites devoted to the preservation and encouragement of Louisiana French. One of the most popular now on Facebook has 28,342 members! facebook.com/groups/cajunfrench/They discuss all types of issues but there are daily vocabulary offerings. What I very consistently noted from the time when I joined was that almost all of them were the very same as standard French spoken today in France. The members of the group from France concur. Only very rarely, is there a word or expression that is unique to Louisiana French.Some of the native speakers express dismay when they see how words are actually spelled in French and insist upon spelling words, "like they sound" (based upon their own experience of knowing only English phonology). But, we work it out and try to encourage them to accept the proper French spelling, for sooner or later, they will get it.It is an interesting group, to be sure and I would think that all of the pure linguists would be interested in the phenomenon: French is still French as spoken by at least 100,000 people in Louisiana as only a spoken dialect but one that with some patience, is still mutually comprehensible from people who live in France today.

Icelandic Is so young that we can read the old Norse and understanding most of it.

You should've allowed for the presence of writing. Because of higher rates of literacy, I think English and most other widely spoken languages will retain quite a bit of intelligibility far into the future. Thair mite be sum speling reformz over the yeerz tu maik spling akchuli line up with pronunsiayshun, but Inglish wil stil be recognizabul tu most peepul. Unforchunitli meni mynoriti langwijez laik Dyirbul wil dye aut under presher frum larjer wunz (including Frisian, Inglish's closest relativ).

1st video I see, loved it, I subscribed!

2:25 not necessarily. In France, English words for IT terms common, whereas in Quebec they invent French words for those terms. Maybe they become overprotective. Also in Islandic there are only a few foreign words, I think they try to protect their language

What about creolization or pidginization or even adstrate influences? There's some strong evidence that this is the most important accelerator of language change: that expansive, interactive, "cosmopolitan" languages change a lot faster than isolated ones like Icelandic. For instace Latin evolved fast in the period between Roman Italian expansion and the Middle Ages but then Romances sorta froze (if you speak Spanish you can perfectly read La Celestina, which was written 518 years ago and understand everything, except maybe some cultural clues, but no problem with the language at all, but it becomes harder when you try the Cantar del Mio Cid, from the 12th century). What about the influence of print (never mind radio and TV and the Internet) on this process of language evolutionary freeze? Even in those languages where pronunciation has continued evolving (English, French) it has managed to freeze the written language, so Shakespeare probably pronounced things quite differently than modern English speakers but he certainly wrote them the same way (or almost so).

Dutch from a thousand years ago (and more) is still very recognisable to me anno 2017.

Oh, I didn’t see part 1! I’ll watch it after

Hi :) thank you for the work you put into each video. I've been binge watching and they're informative as well as fun. I have (a) language related question(s) for you: my mother tongue is Hindi, and it uses the same punctuation system as western languages. Why is this? What punctuation systems (?!",:; etc.) were used for older Indian languages? When did the punctuation symbols we use now start and how did they evolve? When did they spread into Hindi or any other language to which they may not be native? I've wondered about this for about 15 years now but haven't been able to come up with too many ideas over the years.

Ive come to notice that my language, german, is a pretty consistent language; With a little thinking, a modern german speaker could understand middle high erman from c.a. 1000 years ago just fine. The word order changed a little, for example, back then, it was more like the english order of words, but most words sentences would have such a similar pronounciation that understanding them would be no problem. Compare that to english which changed drastically. Just LOOK at old and middle english! I mean woah.

7th century BC Hellenic are still recognizeable and quite understandable by modern Hellenes. Words even from Myceanean times are recognizable like "γυναικα" (=woman) , "αετος" (=year), "αρμα" (=chariot) and many others are still used !

Reminds me of this time I was working at an auto repair place in Alaska. This tourist comes in, he's crossing the continent and needs a flat fixed. No problem, right? Thing is the dude is from the Bahamas, but I'm from Alaska. Here we are talking at each other. Both of us KNOW the other man is speaking English. It's clearly English, absolutely English, but we cannot understand a damn word the other says. It got very frustrating very fast, eventually ending up with him writing out what he wanted because, obviously, the written language is the same. He left probably thinking it was hte worst service he'd had yet, and i kinda don't blame him (it was my third day on the job, so there's that.) But I can't shake the feeling that communication would have actually been easier if he were speaking some entirely different language, instead of the two of us endlessly repeating ourselves to try to get the other guy to understand "our" English.

Can you please do a video on "how different English evolved through time"? I'm curious about it

I knew that Icelandic would be mentioned.

Spoken English seems to be changing, in many places differently. (That's not supposed to happen, languages change at their "centres"; at least English did for a long time.) My children, who speak the "general" New Zealand accent, have some difficulty understanding US English on television shows and movies; they will turn on subtitles if they can. That accent, which is somewhat different to my own, has had several mergers and other changes in my lifetime which I've noticed as they've become widespread.

One of the best videos :)

Last years, in Brazil, The language has changed a lot. New slangs, regional words and expressions were created around the country. Mostly of them got adopted by the young population.

I enjoyed this.

6:06 we still have words like father in most indo European languages that are almost unchanged after 5000years

If I had seen the word Dyirbal written down, I'd have not pronounced it Gerbil.

Great program

I looooooove native Australian art

There's an uncanny similarity between the factors affecting the evolution of language and the evolution of living things... (ie. the conditions of the hardy weinberg principle)

The 5000 thing pricked my ears. I seem to hear that number a lot not just langauges but when hearing of ages of civilisations. It actually seems to correspond with a world wide flood, then soon all languages splitting from the tower or babel a short while after.

What about some languages like Hebrew? Many scholars say that say that someone fluent in hebrew today could hold a conversation with someone speaking Hebrew 3,000 years ago.

It would be cool to see a video about Afro-Asiatic languages :D I never thought a family of languages could be as old as 9000+ years and still he recognized as that family in particular.

Perhaps you can help. My friend and I were discussing a similar subject and were trying to figure out just when did American English become distinct from European English. At what point did it become verbally obvious that someone was from the United States?

One look at Tsakonika proves that languages can "gain distance" on each other very slowly. It split off from Greek a LONG time ago but still shares so much in common with it that it's almost still a dialect.

I love this channel.

I don't know if anyone watches THE 100 series here, but it has always bothered me, how english could change into grounder language in only 97 years. And also, why warriors kept english? And also, how could they COMPLETELY forget technology: I mean it was only 97 years. Someone, whose parents have seen pramfaya (when everything went boom) is surely alive. And also, how the hell could people who survived atom bombs (!) believe that Becca Pramheda is some goddess? Any ideas? Maybe NativLang should make a video of grounder language, I would LOVE that!

It boggles my mind how simliar this process is to evolution.

Hey your videos are awesome - what about one highlighting differences/similarities between the Indos and the Europeans of that language family, or a history of when they worked it out. How much were ancient people aware of the similarities of their languages?

Languages change the fastest when they cross cultural borders (like the Roman invading all Europe) and then come back hitting you in the face, like a boomerang. When I visited England, driving west from Brighton to Plymouth then east, from Bristol to London, I was shocked to discover such a diversity of accents, and probably vocabulary. It is like if the radio/tv never influenced these people. Or maybe it did, since we could at least be understood using a mix of french and fake london/queen of England accent.

What about technology? What stabilizing or destabilizing effects did the printing press (increases of literacy rates, and spelling and pronunciation standardization) or even today's internet have on the rate of language change?

Japanese changes so fast, you wouldn't understand 100 years old Japanese.

Can you make a video about its different letters and how affixes and suffixes can make the word about 70 letters long? Thanks!

I speak several languages, and so does one of my brothers. When we chat, our languages intermingle to impart a point of view in the more exacting words.. As you'd suspect, there are words to which there are no accurate translations in any particular language. Thus, we must borrow from other languages. There are other factors which also influence these changes. Scientific and technical terms, for instance, will also slither their way into our common vocabulary. In perhaps a couple of hundred years, maybe less, what is written here may be difficult to understand, unless one's an expert in "old English", circa 2017.

Video about Quechua? or Andean Languages general? please NativLang guy

so basically your'e saying, it will take a very long time? recently i saw a picture of a greek plaque about 3-4000 years old ... i could actually recognise some of the words! but i wonder what it sounded like?

Love this channel! Could you please do a video about hungarian and hungarian runes (ancient hungarian) and why some villages there use runes only on signs along roads? Best regards from a swede who’s half hungarian half swedish that want to reconnect with their heritage on both sides through runes!

Hey NativLang, I wanted to have you look at the change in the Lakota language, theres a book by a man named George Sword. He was a original tipi lakota, he grew up in the same time span as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. In the book of his, he states that how in 1890's, Lakota was already changing into something even he got worried about. He would talk to younger people in the language and they would say, " You talk funny.", or "You talk like an old man!". He noted that certain words he knew were shortened. Nowadays there is a thing as New Lakota and Old Lakota. I have an extra book if you want it too look into basic Lakota.