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Spoons.

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Cardboard boxes.

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Toddler-size electric trains.

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Holiday ornaments.

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Bounce houses.

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Blankets.

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Baskets.

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Carpets.

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Tray tables.

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Smartphones.

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Pianos.

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Robes.

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Photographs.

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What do all of these things
have in common,

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aside from the fact they're photos
that I took in the last three months,

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and therefore, own the copyright to?

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(Laughter)

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They're all inventions

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that were created
with the benefit of language.

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None of these things
would have existed without language.

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Imagine creating any one of those things

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or, like, building
an entire building like this,

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without being able to use language

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or without benefiting from any knowledge
that was got by the use of language.

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Basically, language
is the most important thing

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in the entire world.

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All of our civilization rests upon it.

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And those who devote
their lives to studying it --

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both how language emerged,
how human languages differ,

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how they differ from
animal communication systems --

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are linguists.

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Formal linguistics is a relatively
young field, more or less.

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And it's uncovered a lot
of really important stuff.

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Like, for example, that human
communication systems

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differ crucially from animal
communication systems,

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that all languages are equally expressive,

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even if they do it in different ways.

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And yet, despite this,

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there are a lot of people
who just love to pop off about language

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like they have an equal
understanding of it as a linguist,

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because, of course, they speak a language.

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And if you speak a language,
that means you have just as much right

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to talk about its function
as anybody else.

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Imagine if you were talking to a surgeon,

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and you say, "Listen, buddy.

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I've had a heart for, like, 40 years now.

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I think I know a thing or two
about aortic valve replacements.

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I think my opinion
is just as valid as yours."

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And yet, that's exactly what happens.

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This is Neil deGrasse Tyson,
saying that in the film "Arrival,"

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he would have brought a cryptographer --

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somebody who can unscramble a message
in a language they already know --

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rather than a linguist,

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to communicate with the aliens,

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because what would a linguist --

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why would that be useful
in talking to somebody

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speaking a language we don't even know?

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Though, of course, the "Arrival" film
is not off the hook.

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I mean, come on --
listen, film. Hey, buddy:

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there are aliens that come down
to our planet in gigantic ships,

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and they want to do nothing
except for communicate with us,

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and you hire one linguist?

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(Laughter)

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What's the US government
on a budget or something?

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(Laughter)

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A lot of these things can be
chalked up to misunderstandings,

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both about what language is
and about the formal study of language,

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about linguistics.

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And I think there's something that
underlies a lot of these misunderstandings

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that can be summed up
by this delightful article in "Forbes,"

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about why high school students
shouldn't learn foreign languages.

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I'm going to pull out
some quotes from this,

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and I want you to see
if you can figure out

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what underlies some
of these opinions and ideas.

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"Americans rarely read the classics,
even in translation."

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So in other words, why bother
learning a foreign language

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when they're not even going to read
the classic in the original anyway?

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What's the point?

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"Studying foreign languages in school
is a waste of time,

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compared to other things
that you could be doing in school."

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"Europe has a lot of language groups
clustered in a relatively small space."

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So for Americans, ah, what's the point
of learning another language?

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You're not really going to get
a lot of bang for your buck out of that.

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This is my favorite,

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"A student in Birmingham
would have to travel

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about a thousand miles
to get to the Mexican border,

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and even then, there would be enough
people who speak English to get around."

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In other words, if you can
kind of wave your arms around,

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and you can get to where you're going,

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then there's really no point
in learning another language anyway.

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What underlies a lot of these attitudes
is the conceptual metaphor,

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language is a tool.

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And there's something that rings
very true about this metaphor.

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Language is kind of a tool

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in that, if you know the local language,
you can do more than if you didn't.

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But the implication is that
language is only a tool,

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and this is absolutely false.

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If language was a tool,
it would honestly be a pretty poor tool.

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And we would have abandoned it long ago
for something that was a lot better.

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Think about just any sentence.

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Here's a sentence that I'm sure I've said
in my life: "Yesterday I saw Kyn."

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I have a friend named Kyn.

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And when I say this sentence,
"Yesterday I saw Kyn,"

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do you think it's really the case

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that everything in my mind
is now implanted in your mind

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via this sentence?

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Hardly, because there's a lot
of other stuff going on.

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Like, when I say "yesterday,"

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I might think what the weather
was like yesterday because I was there.

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And if I'm remembering,

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I'll probably remember there was something
I forgot to mail, which I did.

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This was a preplanned joke,
but I really did forget to mail something.

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And so that means
I'm going to have to do it Monday,

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because that's when
I'm going to get back home.

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And of course, when I think of Monday,

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I'll think of "Manic Monday"
by the Bangles. It's a good song.

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And when I say the word "saw,"
I think of this phrase:

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"'I see!' said the blind man
as he picked up his hammer and saw."

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I always do.

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Anytime I hear the word "saw" or say it,
I always think of that,

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because my grandfather
always used to say it,

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so it makes me think of my grandfather.

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And we're back to "Manic Monday"
again, for some reason.

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And with Kyn, when I'm saying
something like, "Yesterday I saw Kyn,"

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I'll think of the circumstances
under which I saw him.

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And this happened to be that day.
Here he is with my cat.

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And of course, if I'm thinking of Kyn,

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I'll think he's going to
Long Beach State right now,

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and I'll remember that
my good friend John and my mother

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both graduated from Long Beach State,

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my cousin Katie is going to
Long Beach State right now.

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And it's "Manic Monday" again.

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But this is just a fraction
of what's going on in your head

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at any given time while you are speaking.

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And all we have to represent
the entire mess

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that is going on in our head, is this.

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I mean, that's all we got.

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(Laughter)

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Is it any wonder
that our system is so poor?

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So imagine, if I can give you an analogy,

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imagine if you wanted to know
what is it like to eat a cake,

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if instead of just eating the cake,

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you instead had to ingest
the ingredients of a cake,

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one by one,

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along with instructions

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about how these ingredients
can be combined to form a cake.

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You had to eat the instructions, too.

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(Laughter)

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If that was how we had to experience cake,

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we would never eat cake.

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And yet, language is
the only way -- the only way --

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that we can figure out
what is going on here, in our minds.

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This is our interiority,

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the thing that makes us human,

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the thing that makes us different
from other animals,

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is all inside here somewhere,

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and all we have to do to represent it
is our own languages.

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A language is our best way of showing
what's going on in our head.

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Imagine if I wanted to ask
a big question, like:

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"What is the nature of human
thought and emotion?"

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What you'd want to do

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is you'd want to examine
as many different languages

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as possible.

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One isn't just going to do it.

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To give you an example,

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here's a picture I took of little Roman,

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that I took with a 12-megapixel camera.

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Now, here's that same picture
with a lot fewer pixels.

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Obviously, neither
of these pictures is a real cat.

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But one gives you a lot better sense
of what a cat is than the other.

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Language is not merely a tool.

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It is our legacy,

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it's our way of conveying
what it means to be human.

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And of course, by "our" legacy,
I mean all humans everywhere.

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And losing even one language
makes that picture a lot less clear.

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So as a job for the past 10 years

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and also as recreation, just for fun,

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I create languages.

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These are called "conlangs,"

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short for "constructed languages."

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Now, presenting these facts back to back,

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that we're losing languages on our planet

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and that I create brand-new languages,

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you might think that there's
some nonsuperficial connection

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between these two.

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In fact, a lot of people have drawn a line
between those dots.

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This is a guy who got
all bent out of shape

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that there was a conlang
in James Cameron's "Avatar."

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He says,

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"But in the three years
it took James Cameron

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to get Avatar to the screen,
a language died."

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Probably a lot more than that, actually.

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"Na'vi, alas, won't fill the hole
where it used to be ..."

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A truly profound and poignant statement --

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if you don't think about it at all.

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(Laughter)

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But when I was here at Cal,

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I completed two majors.

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One of them was linguistics,
but the other one was English.

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And of course, the English major,
the study of English,

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is not actually the study
of the English language, as we know,

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it's the study of literature.

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Literature is just a wonderful thing,

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because basically, literature,
more broadly, is kind of like art;

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it falls under the rubric of art.

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And what we do with literature,

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authors create new,
entire beings and histories.

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And it's interesting to us to see

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what kind of depth and emotion
and just unique spirit

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authors can invest
into these fictional beings.

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So much so, that, I mean --
take a look at this.

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There's an entire series of books

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that are written
about fictional characters.

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Like, the entire book is just about one
fictional, fake human being.

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There's an entire book
on George F. Babbitt

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from Sinclair Lewis's "Babbitt,"

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and I guarantee you,
that book is longer than "Babbitt,"

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which is a short book.

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Does anybody even remember that one?

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It's pretty good, I actually think
it's better than "Main Street."

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That's my hot take.

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So we've never questioned the fact
that literature is interesting.

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But despite the fact,

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not even linguists are actually interested
in what created languages can tell us

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about the depth of the human spirit
just as an artistic endeavor.

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I'll give you a nice little example here.

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There was an article written about me

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in the California alumni
magazine a while back.

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And when they wrote this article,

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they wanted to get somebody
from the opposing side,

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which, in hindsight,
seems like a weird thing to do.

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You're just talking about a person,

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and you want to get somebody
from the opposing side of that person.

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(Laughter)

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Essentially, this is just
a puff piece, but whatever.

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So, they happened to get

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one of the most brilliant
linguists of our time,

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George Lakoff, who's a linguist
here at Berkeley.

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And his work has basically forever changed
the fields of linguistics

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and cognitive science.

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And when asked about my work
and about language creation in general,

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he said, "But there's a lot of things
to be done in the study of language.

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You should spend the time
on something real."

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Yeah.

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"Something real."
Does this remind you of anything?

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To use the very framework
that he himself invented,

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let me refer back
to this conceptual metaphor:

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language is a tool.

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And he appears to be laboring
under this conceptual metaphor;

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that is, language is useful
when it can be used for communication.

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Language is useless
when it can't be used for communication.

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It might make you wonder:
What do we do with dead languages?

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But anyway.

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So, because of this idea,

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it might seem like
the very height of absurdity

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to have a Duolingo course
on the High Valyrian language

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that I created for HBO's
"Game of Thrones."

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You might wonder what, exactly,
are 740,000 people learning?

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(Laughter)

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Well, let's take a look at it.

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What are they learning?

00:11:23.400 --> 00:11:25.760
What could they possibly be learning?

00:11:25.784 --> 00:11:28.583
Well, bearing in mind that
the other language for this --

00:11:28.607 --> 00:11:31.141
it's for people that speak English --

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English speakers are learning quite a bit.

00:11:33.244 --> 00:11:36.558
Here's a sentence that they will probably
never use for communication

00:11:36.582 --> 00:11:37.746
in their entire lives:

00:11:37.770 --> 00:11:39.336
"Vala ābre urnes."

00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:40.733
"The man sees the woman."

00:11:40.757 --> 00:11:42.647
The little middle line is the gloss,

00:11:42.671 --> 00:11:44.887
so it's word for word,
that's what it says.

00:11:44.911 --> 00:11:47.700
And they're actually learning
some very fascinating things,

00:11:47.724 --> 00:11:49.600
especially if they're English speakers.

00:11:49.624 --> 00:11:52.854
They're learning that a verb can come
at the very end of a sentence.

00:11:52.878 --> 00:11:55.846
Doesn't really do that in English
when you have two arguments.

00:11:55.870 --> 00:11:57.608
They're learning that sometimes

00:11:57.632 --> 00:12:01.490
a language doesn't have an equivalent
for the word "the" -- it's totally absent.

00:12:01.514 --> 00:12:03.133
That's something language can do.

00:12:03.157 --> 00:12:06.942
They're learning that a long vowel
can actually be longer in duration,

00:12:06.966 --> 00:12:08.927
as opposed to different in quality,

00:12:08.951 --> 00:12:12.133
which is what our long vowels do;
they're actually the same length.

00:12:12.157 --> 00:12:15.657
They're learning that
there are these little inflections.

00:12:15.681 --> 00:12:16.836
Hmm? Hmm?

00:12:16.860 --> 00:12:20.172
There are inflections called "cases"
on the end of nouns --

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:20.196 --> 00:12:21.212
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:21.236 --> 00:12:24.537
that tell you who does what
to whom in a sentence.

00:12:24.561 --> 00:12:27.588
Even if you leave the order
of the words the same

00:12:27.612 --> 00:12:29.334
and switch the endings,

00:12:29.358 --> 00:12:32.350
it changes who does what to whom.

00:12:32.374 --> 00:12:38.138
What they're learning is that languages
do things, the same things, differently.

00:12:38.513 --> 00:12:40.845
And that learning languages can be fun.

00:12:41.997 --> 00:12:45.767
What they're learning is respect
for Language: capital "L" Language.

00:12:45.791 --> 00:12:49.974
And given the fact that 88 percent
of Americans only speak English at home,

00:12:49.998 --> 00:12:52.609
I don't think that's
necessarily a bad thing.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:52.633 --> 00:12:56.436
You know why languages die on our planet?

00:12:56.796 --> 00:13:02.018
It's not because government imposes
one language on a smaller group,

00:13:02.042 --> 00:13:04.556
or because an entire group
of speakers is wiped out.

00:13:04.580 --> 00:13:07.656
That certainly has happened in the past,
and it's happening now,

00:13:07.680 --> 00:13:09.705
but it's not the main reason.

00:13:10.268 --> 00:13:13.046
The main reason is that
a child is born to a family

00:13:13.070 --> 00:13:16.625
that speaks a language that
is not widely spoken in their community,

00:13:16.649 --> 00:13:18.656
and that child doesn't learn it.

00:13:18.680 --> 00:13:19.965
Why?

00:13:19.989 --> 00:13:24.291
Because that language is not valued
in their community.

00:13:24.315 --> 00:13:26.228
Because the language isn't useful.

00:13:26.252 --> 00:13:31.236
Because the child can't go and get a job
if they speak that language.

00:13:31.260 --> 00:13:35.291
Because if language is just a tool,

00:13:35.315 --> 00:13:37.692
then learning their native language

00:13:37.716 --> 00:13:39.961
is about as useful
as learning High Valyrian,

00:13:39.985 --> 00:13:41.449
so why bother?

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:43.387 --> 00:13:44.537
Now ...

00:13:46.514 --> 00:13:50.903
Maybe language study isn't going to lead
to a lot more linguistic fluency.

00:13:50.927 --> 00:13:53.177
But maybe that's not such a big deal.

00:13:53.855 --> 00:13:56.966
Maybe if more people
are studying more languages,

00:13:56.990 --> 00:13:59.608
it will lead to more linguistic tolerance

00:13:59.632 --> 00:14:01.520
and less linguistic imperialism.

00:14:01.949 --> 00:14:04.933
Maybe if we actually respect
language for what it is --

00:14:04.957 --> 00:14:09.849
literally, the greatest invention
in the history of humankind --

00:14:09.873 --> 00:14:11.079
then in the future,

00:14:11.103 --> 00:14:14.992
we can celebrate endangered languages
as living languages,

00:14:15.016 --> 00:14:16.683
as opposed to museum pieces.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:17.182 --> 00:14:18.968
(High Valyrian) Kirimvose.
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:18.992 --> 00:14:20.388
(Applause)