Why language is humanity's greatest invention

Spoons.

Cardboard boxes.

Toddler-size electric trains.

Holiday ornaments.

Bounce houses.

Blankets.

Baskets.

Carpets.

Tray tables.

Smartphones.

Pianos.

Robes.

Photographs.

What do all of these things
have in common,

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

and therefore own the copyright to?

(Laughter)

They're all inventions

that were created
with the benefit of language.

None of these things
would have existed without language.

Imagine creating any one of those things

or, like building
an entire building like this,

without being able to use language

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

Basically, language
is the most important thing

in the entire world.

All of our civilization rests upon it.

And those who devote
their lives to studying it,

both how language emerged,
how human languages differ,

how they differ from
animal communication systems,

are linguists.

Formal linguistics
is a relatively young field,

you know, more or less.

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

Like, for example, that human
communication systems

differ crucially from animal
communication systems,

that all languages are equally expressive,

even if they do it in different ways.

And yet, despite this,

there are a lot of people

who just love to pop off about language

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

because, of course, they speak a language.

And if you speak a language,

that means you have just as right

to talk about its function
as anybody else.

Imagine if you were talking to a surgeon,

and you say, "Listen, buddy.

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

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

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

And yet, that's exactly what happens.

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

he would have brought a cryptographer,

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

rather than a linguist,

to communicate with the aliens,

because what would a linguist --

why would that be useful
in talking to somebody

speaking a language we don't even know?

Of course, the "Arrival" film
is not off the hook,

I mean, come on, listen, film, hey buddy,

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

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

and you hire one linguist?

(Laughter)

Was the US government
on a budget or something?

(Laughter)

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

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

about linguistics.

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

that can be summed up

by this delightful article in "Forbes"

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

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

and I want you to see if you can
figure out what underlies

some of these opinions and ideas.

"Americans rarely read the classics,

even in translation."

So in other words, why bother
learning a foreign language

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

What's the point?

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

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

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

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

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

This is my favorite,

"A student in Birmingham
would have to travel

about a thousand miles
to get to the Mexican border

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

In other words, if you can
wave you arms around,

and you can get to where you're going,

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

What underlies a lot of these attitudes

is the conceptual metaphor,

language is a tool.

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

Language is kind of a tool

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

But the implication is that
language is only a tool

and this is absolutely false.

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

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

Think about just any sentence.

Here's a sentence that I'm sure
I've said in my life,

"Yesterday I saw Kyn,"
I have a friend named Kyn.

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

do you think it's really the case

that everything in my mind
is now implanted in your mind

via this sentence?

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

Like, when I say "yesterday" I think
what the weather was like yesterday,

because I was there,

and if I'm remembering now,

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

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

And so I have to do it Monday,

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

And then, when I think of Monday,

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

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

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

I always do.

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

because my grandfather
always used to say it,

so it makes me think of him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

both graduated from Long Beach State,
my cousin Katie is going there right now.

And it's "Manic Monday" again.

But this is just a fraction

of what's going on in your head
at any given time while you are speaking.

And all we have to represent
the entire mess

that is going on in our head, is this.

I mean, that's all we got.

(Laughter)

Is it any wonder
that our system is so poor?

So imagine, if I can give you an analogy,

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

if instead of just eating the cake,

you instead had to ingest
the ingredients of a cake,

one by one,

along with instructions

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

You had to eat the instructions too.

(Laughter)

If that was how we had to experience cake,

we would never eat cake.

And yet, language is the only way,

the only way,

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

This is our interiority,

the thing that makes us human,

the thing that makes us different
from other animals,

is all inside here somewhere,

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

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

Imagine if I wanted to ask a big question,

like, what is the nature
of human thought and emotion?

What you'd want to do

is you'd want to examine
as many different languages

as possible.

One isn't just going to do it.

To give you an example,

here's a picture I took of little Roman,

that I took with a 12-megapixel camera.

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

Obviously, neither
of these pictures is a real cat.

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

Language is not merely a tool.

It is our legacy,

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

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

And losing even one language

makes that picture a lot less clear.

So as a job for the past 10 years,

and also as recreation, just for fun,

I create languages.

These are called conlangs,

short for constructed languages.

Now, presenting these facts back to back,

that we're losing languages on our planet,

and that I create brand new languages,

you might think that there's some

nonsuperficial connection
between these two.

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

This is a guy who got
all bent out of shape

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

He says,

"But in the three years
it took James Cameron

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

Probably a lot more than that, actually.

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

A truly profound and poignant statement,

if you don't think about it at all.

But when I was here at Cal,

I completed two majors.

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

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

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

it's the study of literature.

Literature is just a wonderful thing,

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

it falls under the rubric of art.

And what we do with literature,

authors create new,
entire beings and histories.

And it's interesting to us

to see what kind of depth and emotion

and just unique spirit

authors can invest
into these fictional beings.

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

There's an entire series of books

that are written
about fictional characters,

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

There's an entire book
on George F. Babbitt,

from Sinclair Lewis' "Babbitt,"

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

which is a short book.

Does anybody even remember that one?

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

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

But despite the fact,

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

about the depth of the human spirit,

just as an artistic endeavor.

I'll give you a nice little example here.

There was an article written about me

in the "California Alumni"
magazine a while back.

And when they wrote this article,

they wanted to get
somebody from the opposing side,

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

You're just talking about a person

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

(Laughter)

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

So, they happened to get

one of the most brilliant
linguists of our time,

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

And his work has basically forever changed

the fields of linguistics
and cognitive science.

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

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

You should spend the time
on something real."

Yeah.

"Something real," does this
remind you of anything?

To use the very framework
that he himself invented

Let me refer back
to this conceptual metaphor,

language is a tool,

it appears to be laboring
under this conceptual metaphor.

That is, language is useful

when it can be used for communication.

Language is useless

when it can't be used for communication.

It might make you wonder
what do we do with dead languages.

So, because of this idea,

it might seem like
the very height of absurdity

to have a Duolingo course

on the High Valyrian language

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

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

(Laughter)

Let's take a look at it.

What are they learning?

What could they possibly be learning?

Well, bearing in mind that
the other language for this,

it's for people that speak English,

English speakers are learning quite a bit.

Here's a sentence that
they will probably never use

for communication in their entire lives.

Vala ābre urnes.

"The man sees the woman,"

and the little middle line
is the [unclear],

so it's word for word,
that's what it says.

And they are actually learning
some very fascinating things,

especially if they're English speakers.

They're learning that a verb
can come at the very end of a sentence.

Doesn't really do that in English
when you have two arguments.

They're learning that sometimes,

a language doesn't have an equivalent
for the word "the," it's totally absent.

That's something language can do.

They're learning that a long vowel
can actually be longer in duration,

as opposed to different in quality,

which is what our long vowels do,
they're actually the same length.

They're learning that
there are these little inflections.

There are inflections called cases
on the [unclear] nouns

(Laughter)

that tell you who does what
to whom in a sentence.

Even if you leave the order
of the words the same,

and switch the endings,

it changes who does what to whom.

What they're learning is that languages

do things, the same things, differently.

And that learning languages can be fun.

What they're learning is respect
for language, capital L language.

And given the fact that 88 percent
of Americans only speak English at home,

I don't think that's
necessarily a bad thing.

You know why languages die on our planet?

It's not because government imposes

one language on a smaller group.

Or because an entire group
of speakers is wiped out.

That certainly has happened in the past,

and it's happening now.

But it's not the main reason.

The main reason is that
a child is born to a family

that speaks a language that
is not widely spoken in their community

and that child doesn't learn it.

Why?

Because that language is not valued
in their community.

Because the language isn't useful.

Because the child can't go and get a job
if they speak that language.

Because if language is just a tool,

then learning their native language

is about as useful
as learning High Valyrian,

so why bother?

Now ...

Maybe language study isn't going to lead
to a lot more linguistic fluency.

But maybe that's not such a big deal.

Maybe if more people
are studying more languages,

it will lead to more linguistic tolerance

and less linguistic imperialism.

Maybe if we actually respect
language for what it is,

literally the greatest invention
in the history of humankind,

then in the future,

we can celebrate endangered languages
as living languages,

as opposed museum pieces.

Kirimvose. Thank you.

(Applause)