The true story of 'true' - Gina Cooke 

I don't know why, but this guy's voice keeps me coming back, It's just relaxing listening to him speaking lol

Props to the animator. This is some good work there!

The animation was beautiful

One word for 'True' in Japanese is 本当 whose first character '本' is also the character for tree.

One of my favourite ted-ed videos of all time, more like this please :))

the tree will set you free

loved the storytelling, animation and narration.. it just gave me goosebumps at the end.. so that's true power of truth.

It'd be great to get a full series of these animated etymology videos - very enjoyable! :)

Seen many TED-ED and liked them a lot. But this one is simply fascinating! Great job

I could listen all day to this Addison Anderson man. Why is his voice so lullaby-like?

The animation, graphics, explanation, information, his voice, the slides, the background music is perfectly to the point... It's not only soothing my heart but also cherish my brain... Thanks a lot... Want more videos like this....

Just a few days ago it hit me that the English word 'true' and the Danish word for 'faith/to believe' (tro) were related. Seems I was sort of right. Interesting video!

every time i watch ted video is always end up with amazement. so inspiring and mind blowing. makes me want to know more about this world. thanks ted! :)

I learned something today.

Well my mind is blown. Had this nickname or username for 20 years. Maybe I truly am a tree druid.

One of the best videos from TED-Ed. Also, beautiful animation! Great! 👏🏻

Goosebumps after goosebumps... This is the best story told

I love the way this video was put together.

I love watching and listening to your videos ❤️

I was blown away by the video. It was very well made and the connections made was awesome! I guess you do learn something new everyday :)

Awesome animation. Whoever came up with this style is a great professional

Excellent video! Visually *and* verbally. Thank you.

This is why I love etymology =)

That was awesome.

Captivating

0:40 such awesome animation

Nice and relaxing story.Definitely true and faithful to reality.Real as a tree.

that was one of the most beautiful ted eds ever made

Great etymology. Thank you!

Beautiful. Thank you.

I LOVE this animation + the voice

One of the best videos of ted-ed

0:57 This doesn't say Chinese language it literally says "of China" which makes me thing the animator got that by typing "Chinese" into google translate

One of the best animation styles!!

Lovely tale well told!

3:06 that squirrel LOL!

The animation is so beautiful

It'd be cool if this video delved deeper into the connection of trees and truth in the Biblical sense. Great video!

So poetic

Wonderful. Mesmerised by the graphics. Yet for me it missed a central metaphor - that a tree only ever produces 'true to type' - for example you can always count on an apple tree to only ever produce apples.

that ending *deserves* a sub

I love the animations

beautiful!

Truth Be Told.

Words and language in particular are very interesting. How and what made us decide what words meant what?

Mind blowing.

This guy’s voice is so relaxing 😎 😌.

One of the most interesting words to me is "melancholy". It has such a vast story with many different odds and ends.

That was beautiful.

great work, keep it up!

Wonderful!

Thanks you, guys, for video!

That was absolutely brilliant.

I'm pretty sure the narrator's name wasn't Gina...

I'm inlove with the animation

That was so amazing does anyone knows a book a book witch talks about these kind of things?

magnificent truth !

loved it!

I love it when these videos get philosophical

Amazing

In Proto-Celtic the word for truth is wîrjâ and twig is wejâ and tree beljâ, this is so fascinating.

I loved the silence at the end when he spoke the last words. Without that load annoying ending note that blows your ear-drums halfway through the room. Just silence... Ahhhhhh...

real good analogy

Thanks!

This video is "truly" amazing. ;).

Perfect

AHMAZZINGGG!

Cool, I didn't know most of this!

This is super interesting.

I don’t understand how this doesn’t have more views

3:10, squirrel's like, "You talkin' bout me?"

Please make more etymology videos!

Damn, "true" is deep.

Is there an academic research area focused solely on finding the word roots? I find the business extremely interesting :))

1:50: Trust, Betroth and truce are not further up the family tree, but further down. 'true' < Protogermanic truuu-a- 'loyal, faithful' is the direct stem of the e-root. 2:15 'Tree' and 'true' are not the same word in Old English lexicon and of course not in the mind of of its speakers. The common basis of these words is much more deeper in the past: at least 6000 years. 2:29 The problem with the steadiness of trees metaphor is that there is nothing so unsteady as the Indo-European tree words as a result of the expansion of IE into areas with previously unknown trees. That's why trees are more like vague treenesses in the European IE languages. The truth can't be associated with the the uprightness of an oak, because the common root was thousands of years before the first IE speaker ever saw an oak. This is the reason why Greek and Latin use beech for oaks. The beeches, German Buche, were seen by IE speaker for the first time on German soil. 2:42 Trees as the oldest living organisms on this planet: This has nothing to do with the history of these words. It is an ad hoc explanation. I don't really understand what connection the video really wants to make, but it seems to me that 'true' was named after the steadiness and consistency of long-living trees. This ist Osthoff (Parerga I) from 1901. Today, we know that it goes the other way round: 'Tree' comes from 'true' (or better German 'treu' = faithful, loyal), because the tree-branch of that root is an h2-derivation of the common root. It didn't denote trees as plants but simply the hardness of wood as a material.

Marvelous. Truly :P

mysteries in vernacular indeed

THIS IS SO FREAKING COOL

In Medieval literature trees and long amounts of time are both martial images. It’s interesting that in our language the same connections exist but under different origins. Perhaps there is such a thing as universal imagery or even a universal language which once existed before branching off into the languages of today?

Hi Addison Anderson ^_^ You are great narrator...

True is a cognate of the German word "treu", meaning faithful or loyal. Faithful to reality literally translates to "realitätsgetreu" or "wirklichkeitsgetreu" but these terms are mostly used to describe naturalistic paintings, sculptures, miniature models and the like. I assume the relevant meaning here was rather "wahrheitsgetreu" (faithful to [the] truth), which is obviously more or less just a fancy way of saying "wahr" (true). Circle closed! So is a true friend the same as "ein treuer Freund"? Yes and no. The accurate translation of a true friend is "ein wahrer Freund" whilst "ein treuer Freund" is a loyal friend -- but since an illoyal friend isn't really a true friend, this distinguation is rather redundant. Of course loyalty should be kept within reasonable borders. As a German I'm aware of the problem caused by unlimited loyalty (in German: "grenzenlose Loyalität" or "unerschütterliche Treue"), with "unerschütterlich" actually meaning unshakeable or steadfast, leading back to the property of that massive tree that made up the root of the word true. In the same way that regal and royal are more or less the same, one coming directly from Latin, the other one taking the detour through French, legal and loyal are also cognates of one another, although their meanings have diverged significantly. The German word for legal is "gesetzestreu" (faithful to the law), a word of course that nobody in Germany ever uses... or do they?

That was sooooo TRUE

It's beautifully true

Amen 😭

I kind of hoped this would debunk what most people think it means for something to be true. But it was entertaining nevertheless, and it was alluded to I guess.

in greek the oak is "drys" I wonder if this connects somehow to the word tree or the Druids because the resemblance is strikening

wow

Isn't this the point of the "Mysteries of the Vernacular" series? Just wondering why they made this a separate video.

What is the name of the profession that studies this kind of stuff? I'm interested in this same topic but in french language

Lovely :) no mention of Buddha and the Bodhi tree though?

Yessssss

The Chinese characters that are shown on 0:58 are simplified Chinese, which are definitely not the most 'historical' type among all Chinese written systems. It is a system that was popularised by the Communist in the 1950s to encourage literacy, as traditional Chinese was considered too difficult to master for general public. Hence it would be more accurate to use traditional Chinese in your video to represent the long history of Chinese

Why does the outro have no audio? Am I the only one noticing it? Tree or Falls?

It was good up to about 2:40, when the connection to "tree" was mentioned. After that it was just rambling on about trees.

This made me think of Weirwoods in A Song of Ice and Fire

True...

"A single word can tell a story" Ted-ED the true story of 'true' - Gina Cooke Tell me about it, I'm learning Japanese and a lot of Kanji have radicals (parts of the drawing) which can have meaning within the written word itself and combine with other kanji to mean a multitude of things. You can infer a lot of origins of kanji within the meaning word itself.

Cool

Brad purnell is a genius. So are trees

True