What Even Is a Language? Xidnaf 2015-03-11 | Where do we draw the line between "language" and "dialect"?Click here for the video of Scots:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cENbkHS3mnYThings from this video I didn't make:Picture:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#mediaviewer/File:Africa_(orthographic_projection).svgIntro Song:youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Fakoutro Song:youtube.com/watch?v=Is4EOvK32vUOutro Song:youtube.com/watch?v=oCDbm5VWDwg
Skip Every Monday By Abusing Time Zones Xidnaf 2021-02-28 | hi :) if you want to follow me elsewhere, i have a secondary channel and a twitter.
Three Types of Forbidden Words Xidnaf 2017-09-11 | You can discuss this video on reddit: reddit.com/r/Xidnaf/comments/6zeu1k/three_types_of_forbidden_wordsIntro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=__JGjag8dRUPatreon: patreon.com/XidnafSome social media I use that has nothing to do with linguistics:xidnaf.tumblr.comtwitter.com/xid_of_youtube
How Nazis Stole the Word Aryan Xidnaf 2017-07-21 | Just like the swastika, it was originally from India.Become a Patron: patreon.com/XidnafDiscuss this video on reddit: reddit.com/r/Xidnaf/comments/6ol58k/how_nazis_stole_the_word_aryanResources:Intro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Website I used for research: http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/ww2era.htmPictures I used:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica#/media/File:Basilica_di_San_Pietro_(notte).jpgen.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_B_285_Bild-04413,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Einfahrt.jpgMy personal social media (none of which have anything to do with linguistics):Tumblr: xidnaf.tumblr.comTwitter: twitter.com/xid_of_youtube
Are Languages Getting Simpler? Xidnaf 2017-05-24 | Latin and Old English used to be so complicated. What happened?Discuss this video on reddit: reddit.com/r/Xidnaf/comments/6d3ir9/are_languages_getting_simplerPatreon: patreon.com/XidnafIntro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=leOdGbhhRlsSocial Media:These are rarely linguistics related, but in case anyone was curious:This is my twitter: twitter.com/xid_of_youtubeThis is my tumblr: xidnaf.tumblr.comThis is NOT my twitter: twitter.com/XidnafThis is NOT my instagram: instagram.com/xidnaf
The Difference Between “Kings” and “Emperors” | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2017-05-10 | "Because the Romans were weird" is the answer to a lot of questions about why our culture does this or that.SOME SMALL CORRECTIONS:1. Calling "Caesar" a "last name" is more questionable than I thought. It was a name that people inherited from their parents, but Roman naming was weird and not exactly analogous to the modern system.2. I implied that modern Russia was significantly more ethnically diverse than the HRE. I'm not so sure about that anymore. Measuring diversity is hard though, especially for thousand-year-old countries.I missed a couple of Patrons in the credits:PokemonTom09/Ruminations (pretend this one's bold)E3qualsz None (pretend this one's bold)RTT12To become a Patron:patreon.com/XidnafIntro-song:"Flight of the Breezies" by Kadenzayoutube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210
Is English a Tonal Language? Xidnaf 2017-04-30 | "Tone" doesn't make any sense when you think about it.NOTE 1: Sometimes people will talk about "secondary stress" or "secondary accent" or something like that. This is a thing, but what I'm talking about here is "primary accent," which is the most stressed syllable in the word. I know it might sound redundant to say that there's only ever one syllable with primary accent, but let me put it this way: there are never two syllables in a word that are tied for being most stressed. This way of thinking about stress/accent is different from the way I learned about it at first, and I think what's going on is that the way linguists talk about it is different from the way it's treated in English poetry, which is what people are taught in English classes.My Patreon: patreon.com/XidnafIntro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=IqiSIGJJehw
Nerd | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2017-02-14 | what is?Discuss this video on reddit:reddit.com/r/Xidnaf/comments/5u0exa/nerdIf you want to learn more, there were three main places I got information for this:- http://eldacur.com/~brons/NerdCorner/nerd.html- American nerd: the story of my people by Benjamin Nugent- Nerd Ecology by Anthony LioiThe XKCD comic I used:xkcd.com/747The image from DesignTAXI I used:http://designtaxi.com/news/351294/What-s-The-Difference-Between-Geeks-And-Nerdsintro song:youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210
Patreon Announcement Xidnaf 2017-01-21 | Posting this right after the mistakes compilation might not be the best idea, but whatever.Patreon: patreon.com/XidnafUpdate about my life: youtube.com/watch?v=niHN3JfLaXM
Proto-World and the Origin of Language Xidnaf 2017-01-11 | In which I take seven minutes to say "we don't know squat."I have yet to make that video about why animals can't talk. That or I did but forgot to update this bit in the description.Nativlang's video on reconstructions of Proto-World: youtube.com/watch?v=YS-QNKYYSTwIntro song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro song: youtube.com/watch?v=GckzLCaPEzk
China doesnt exist. | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2016-04-13 | Because click-bait-y titles have never come back to bite me.CGPGrey's video on Hong Kong and Macau:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piEayQ0T-qATestTube News' video on China and Taiwan:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6ejraWoqEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6ejraWoqEIntro-song:"Flight of the Breezies" by Kadenzayoutube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Special thanks to this Chinese-characters-to-Pinyin converter I used a lot when I made this video:http://www.purpleculture.net/chinese-pinyin-converter(blame them if any of the pinyin is wrong!!!)
Why People Make Their Own Languages Xidnaf 2016-02-15 | Lots of people talk about how people create artificial languages. I want to talk about why.See me help with Artifexian's conlang here: youtube.com/watch?v=3378FlHK4v0Intro song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro song: youtube.com/watch?v=aYROATT0Mk4Website for In the Land of Invented Languages, without which this video would have been much, much harder: http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.comFan made Xidnaf subreddit some one made: reddit.com/r/XidnafFan-made intro thingy: youtube.com/watch?v=tIy_w9D_R-k
Socialism vs Communism | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2015-09-09 | You guys wanted another Etymosemanticology episode, right? No? Well, too bad, because Bernie Sanders got me wondering what exactly "Socialism" even is and I wanted to talk about it.
The Linguistics of AAVE Xidnaf 2015-08-12 | It's about time I address linguistic prescriptivism.Links to things I didn't make that are in this video:Intro song: "Flight of the Breezies" by Kadenzayoutube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro song: "Mach Speed" by FlightRushyoutube.com/watch?v=5BW63OOPu7QMap of race in Chicago by Bill Rankinhttp://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodotsA cool video he made about it:youtube.com/watch?v=8pRcdMVkA3kMap of dialects of North American English:http://aschmann.net/AmEngPhoto of Los Angeles by Nserrano:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#/media/File:LA_Skyline_Mountains2.jpgPhoto of New York by Anthony Quintano:flickr.com/photos/quintanomedia/14825199293Photo of Chicago by J. Crocker:commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2010-02-19_16500x2000_chicago_skyline_panorama.jpgPhoto of a swamp in Mississippi by Gary Bridgman:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi#/media/File:Wolf-River-swamp-North-Mississippi.jpgAnonymous painting of slaves on a South-Carolina plantation:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Slave_dance_to_banjo,_1780s.jpgPicture of a slave ship:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_South_(clipper)#/media/File:HMS_Brisk_and_Emanuela.jpgScreen shots of websites used were from here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeriahttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bidialectalism
Untranslatability and Japanese Pragmatics Xidnaf 2015-06-25 | Are some things untranslatable?My video where I talk about my life and stuff:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W67yh3b3kQIntro song:youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro song:youtube.com/watch?v=SHiaTWcJYckBetter explanation of the wa/ga distinction:http://nihonshock.com/2010/02/particles-the-difference-between-wa-and-ga
Roman Romance | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2015-03-26 | I had initially planned on having this up on Valentine's Day. I am bad at deadlines.Intro Song:youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Pictures I used in this video that I didn't make:xkcd.com/55http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Rome#mediaviewer/File:Roma_dall%27aereo.JPGhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_skipping#mediaviewer/File:Stone_skimming_-Patagonia-9Mar2010.jpghttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vexilloid_of_the_Roman_Empire.svghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Colosseum_in_Rome%2C_Italy_-_April_2007.jpg
Update: Technical Difficulties Xidnaf 2015-02-11 | Just thought I'd let you know I'm not dead.Music: youtube.com/watch?v=dDgk2YMzGpY
Football | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2015-01-28 | DescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptiondescriptionIntro song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210
What Even Is a Word? Xidnaf 2015-01-21 | Words confuse me. Like, even more than syllables.What even is a language:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP-PV9ryXM4The paper (book? pdf thingy) I mention in the video:http://library.alaska.gov/hist/hist_docs/docs/anlm/05265040.pdfStuff in this video I didn't make:Intro song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro song: youtube.com/watch?v=3Be7fy1dx14Pictures:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit#mediaviewer/File:Qamutik_1_1999-04-01.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiing#mediaviewer/File:Skier-carving-a-turn.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo%E2%80%93Aleut_languages#mediaviewer/File:Eskimo-Aleut_langs.pngPlaces I got information:The International Encyclopedia of Linguisticshttps://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.htmlA Grammatical Sketch of Siberian Yupik Eskimo by Steven Jacobson, which can be found here: http://library.alaska.gov/hist/hist_docs/docs/anlm/05265040.pdf
Ass vs Arse | Etymosemanticology Xidnaf 2015-01-13 | Butts!I know you guys voted for Wednesday, but I'm giving this one to you a day early because I'm about to spend like 24 hours on a train.Pictures in this video I didn't make myself:http://www.flickr.com/photos/24662369@N07/4545192059http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anglo.Saxon.migration.5th.cen.jpg
What Even Is a Syllable? (correction in the description) Xidnaf 2015-01-07 | CORRECTION: I'm no longer sure whether syllables can or can't span multiple words. It might depend on the language.Next video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3eDf4p0r0Intro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210Outro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=559hgfsA60Q
Brief Anouncement: Hiatus Over Xidnaf 2015-01-01 | I'm Back!Check out the song in my new intro here: youtube.com/watch?v=AWXvSBHB210
Brief Anouncement: Hiatus Xidnaf 2014-08-17 | Last video for a while.And to all those asking what I'm studying: Linguistics, of course! :D Also, computer science. Hopefully I might be double majoring? Or something, they have this combined major program thingamajig . . . I don't know :P
The IPA and the IPA That Created It Xidnaf 2014-08-13 | Whoda thought a video about IPA would be my silliest, most comedic video yet!?Man, the audio in this video isn't very good. It keeps shifting around as I get closer and further away from my laptop. I should probably get a real microphone.Also, see that equation at 7:37?t = the amount of time you spend trying to learn linguistics without learning IPAk(t) = total knowledge acquired as a function of tIt's been a while since I've studied calculus, so I'm not sure if that makes any sense.Intro song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro song: youtube.com/watch?v=7rqwRVdqB6c
Languages of the Jewish People Xidnaf 2014-07-30 | I spun off the first part and it's still my longest video yet.Next video can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00pHrQo-0R4Corrections:- "Moldovan" isn't a Slavic language. It's arguably not even a language at all.- Mizrahi Jews are just from the parts of the middle east that are in Asia, east if Israel. So, not northern Africa.In case it wasn't clear, I cosplayed Fancy Pants at the 2014 Bronycon.Intro song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro song: youtube.com/watch?v=ohoWIDFvnZI
Ancient Languages of the Middle East Xidnaf 2014-07-21 | CORRECTION: They were called "Israelites," not "Israelis." Israeli refers to the modern country, while Israelite refers to the ancient ethnic group.Next video can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHePoR0mRTYIntro song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro song: youtube.com/watch?v=M3i_rLnHGdg
Pronunciation of Xidnaf [possible seizure trigger at the end?] Xidnaf 2014-06-30 | If SOMEONE doesn't sue me over this video, it'll be a miracle. I wish I'd thought about causing seizures before I published this video.This video is a blatant ripoff of PBS Idea Channel. They are amazing. Go watch all of their videos right now:youtube.com/channel/UC3LqW4ijMoENQ2Wv17ZrFJA"OK, so if I'm ripping of PBS Idea Channel I'm going to need a chip-tune-y sounding song and a bunch of album covers for the background. Lets do this!"*ponifies everything*". . .wow, I really don't listen to anything at all besides pony music"Background music: youtube.com/watch?v=iOSUP9ikEPc
Proto-Indo-European Culture Xidnaf 2014-06-24 | Reconstructing culture based on a reconstructed language.Click here for the next video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltYnG-V18DkThe pictures for this video were SO MUCH FUN to make, you guys! I used to make all my pictures with the trackpad on my laptop, but I got a tablet about a week ago and I used it to make the pictures for this video, which is great, because I'm basically drawing the lives of the Proto-Indo-Europeans! SO much fun. That picture with the two drunk ones is my masterpiece. I don't think I'm going to be able to best that one in my lifetime.Intro song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro song: youtube.com/watch?v=0zJk57IpHrs
Grimms Law Xidnaf 2014-06-02 | Correction: two of the five examples at 7:10 don't actually come from Grimm's law: House/casa and cat/gato.Click here for the next video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErXa5PyHj4IIntro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro Song: This one was taken off of Youtube for some reason :(
Catching Cots Xidnaf 2014-03-24 | CORRECTION: No one really thinks that eventually the Cot-Caught merger will spread to all of the US. There are some dialects where the vowels have drifted really far apart rather than merging together.If you're curious how they sound unmerged, check this video out: youtube.com/watch?v=RB3NHCJDq7MNext video, the one on Grimm's Law:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnjfHu9eJLMIntro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=yFYSYGLx-RM
Worlds Most Complicated Writing System (corrections in the description) Xidnaf 2014-02-24 | CORRECTIONS:1: The Thai writing system has actually changed way more than I thought. I still think this is a good overview of why it's as complicated as it is, but Thai people can't actually still read stuff that's super old. Please disregard that lengthy, passionate speech at the end about how their writing system connects them to their ancient past.2: Like I said, there are plenty of writing systems I didn't know about, and NativLang makes a very good case that the Tibetan writing system is actually the most complicated: youtube.com/watch?v=btn0-Vce5ug3: "Vocalized" is not what I ment. The word I should have used is "voiced." "Vocalized" means something different.Next video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaYZljTlCUoIntro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=voj9MhBUaTI
Worlds Easiest Writing System: Origin of Hangul (corrections in the description) Xidnaf 2014-01-27 | CORRECTIONS:1: I got Yin and Yang mixed up. Yin is associated with females and darkness and the rest, and Yang is associated with males and light and the rest.2: Sejong wasn't an "emperor." "King" would be more accurate. The exact difference between those two ideas is a little unclear, but still, no one calls him an emperor and I shouldn't have either.Next video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKVtpCByEy4Learn Korean in 15 Minutes: http://9gag.com/gag/3968335There are some differences between what I say in the video and what this comic teaches, mostly because of the changes that have taken place in the krorean language. I mostly discuss how Hangul related to Korean when it was first invented, while the comic only talks about modern Korean.Intro Song: youtube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6DXhiBL27UThank you so much to 김성 for volunteering to translate this into Korean!
Types of Writing Systems (correction in the description) Xidnaf 2014-01-13 | CORRECTION: It's actually sort of unclear whether or not there are polysyllabic Chinese words represented by one character. The real reason Chinese is considered a logography is that they have a whole lot of homophones, and those homophones are always distinguished with different characters. This means that Chinese can't be a syllabary because it has lots of syllables represented by different characters depending on the meaning in that context.The next video can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K53oCDZPPiw. . . does anyone else think my intonation sounds weird in this video? I almost re-recorded the whole thing. Anyway, I'll try to make it sound more natural in later videos.Into song: "Pink Clouds and Sticky Rain" by Cloud Novayoutube.com/watch?v=BR7IOOLAiRoOutro song: Wonderbolt by dBPony feat. PrinceWhatevererhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-izLkasbzG0
Linguistic History of ASL Xidnaf 2013-08-17 | American Sign Language, or ASL, wasn't created, but it also didn't spring out of nowhere. Find out here how this language came about.
The Language of the Founding Fathers (not very accurate) Xidnaf 2013-07-04 | I didn't know what I was doing when I made this video. It's still a sort-of-close approximation, but what I'm doing here isn't very accurate at all.When I talk in my reconstruction of the most recent common ancestor of Received Pronunciation and General American English, here are the differences between my own dialect (which is pretty close to GAE) and what I tried to do in the video: - I tried to un-merge the vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ (as in the father-bother merger). - I tried to stop flapping "t"s and "d"s in contexts like the word "better". - I tried to stop tensing /æ/. - I tried to un-merge the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ (as in the cot-caught merger). - I tried to un-merge /hw/ and /w/ (as in the whine-wine merger). - I tried to un-tense final /i/ back into /ɪ/ in some words (as in happy-tensing). - I tried to stop dropping /j/ in some initial consonant clusters (as in yod-dropping).Here are the differences between what I did in the reconstructed-1700s-accent and Received Pronunciation: - It's not a rhotic-accent, so I still pronounced "r"s in a lot of contexts where they're absent form Received Pronunciation. - I didn't split change /æ/ inconsistently to /ɑː/ (as in the trap-bath split). - I tried to un-merge /hw/ and /w/ (as in the whine-wine merger). - I tried to un-tense final /i/ back into /ɪ/ in some words (as in happy-tensing). - I tried to stop dropping /j/ in some initial consonant clusters (as in yod-dropping).
English is a Semitic Language (old video, please just watch something else) Xidnaf 2013-01-19 | A while back, Vsauce did a video with a bright yellow thumbnail titled "this is not yellow." His point was that the pixels on a screen only ever actually produce red, green and blue light, and that there were no beams of light coming from that thumbnail that would have, alone, been perceived as "yellow." He was wrong, of course, in saying that the thumbnail wasn't yellow, but only because he was defining "yellow" differently from how we normally use the word, and he was using that misuse of terminology to teach people about the nature of color.This video was my attempt to do something similar. Of course English isn't semitic. I knew that when I made this video. That was the point, I wanted to have a provocative title which was blatantly wrong. For the sake of teaching people about the origin of different scripts, I decided to define a "language" as everything encompassed in the written form of a language including the script (which isn't how we normally use the word, nor should it be) and define language inheritance around the language's script (which REALLY isn't how we normally use those words, nor should it be). At the end I get into why this isn't actually even a viable way to think about it for a number of reasons.In hindsight, none of this was very clear at all in this video, so I apologize for that. I was still pretty new at making videos when I made this, and a lot of stuff about it really embarrasses me, including how unclear I was about what I ment. However, I've decided to keep it up on my channel for historical purposes. I want people to be able to see all of my work, even the stuff that makes me cringe when I go back and watch it myself.
English Ethno-Linguistics Xidnaf 2012-11-23 | English isn't special. I just thought it was because when I made this video I happened to know a bit more about English. jregkjsbgbjksgjkb
A History of English Letters Xidnaf 2012-11-10 | Correction: we pronounce the letter "c" with an "s" sound sometimes because of a sound change that happened a long time ago in old French. Not English.
How to Speak Proto-Indo-European (corrections in the description) Xidnaf 2012-10-28 | CORRECTIONS:1: What I'm doing for the "x" sound isn't very accurate at all. It should sound softer.2: We don't actually know whether PIE long and short vowels differed ONLY in length. They might have also been pronounced a little bit differently.3: "vocalized" is not the word I mean here. The word for it is "voiced."4: Voiced aspirated plosives aren't actually produced with an unvoiced interval, they're produced with a "breathy voiced" interval. What I mean by "breathy voiced" is a little complicated, but the point is it's technically neither voiced nor unvoiced.More accurate PIE sample starts at 8:54.This video teaches you how to recite a short story in Proto-Indo-European. For more on learning Proto-Indo-European, check out these guys: http://dnghu.org
Spoken Sample of Proto-Indo-European (not very accurate) Xidnaf 2012-08-10 | Click here for a significantly more accurate version, as well as a tutorial on how to do it yourself:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jlcV7DYL3oThis is a short story called "The King and the God" spoken in what linguists think Proto-Indo-European might have been like.There are no native speakers left in the world, and there is no written record of it, but linguists have reconstructed it by comparing all of the languages that evolved from it. They don't all agree on what it was like, but this is close to the general consensus.I didn't write the story, nor did I reconstruct Proto--Indo-European. I just found the story online, noticed there weren't any audio samples of reconstructed PIE and did my best to pronounce what I found so other people could hear what it might have sounded like.The pictures are just stuff having to do with the Proto-Indo-Europeans. There's pictures of pottery they left behind, as well as pictures of modern-day steppe dwelling people who might have lived and looked like them.Lol, the "interactive transcript" is struggling desperately to figure out what I'm saying!
