WEBVTT

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Hi.

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In the previous video we have seen
that these phonetic things like place

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of articulation, or
manner of articulation are not

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just nice ways to describe the way
in which people produce consonants.

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But they actually really
play a role in language,

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they play a role when children
acquire their language,

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they play a role when people
make speech errors, and

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they play a role in organizing the set
of consonants in an individual language.

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Such a set of consonants can typically be
organized in a nice rectangular table.

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And that's the rows and
columns corresponding to our place and

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manner of articulation.

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And I'm going to discuss these issues
more with my students Inge and Marten.

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>> So
my first question is about this table but

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then from the perspective
of language change.

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So we saw in the last module
that all languages change and

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that maybe we spoke something
very different 10,000 years ago.

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So if we spoke differently
10,000 years ago,

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did we also use different
sounds in a certain language?

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>> Yes, we can be quite sure about that.

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We can,
it's absolutely sure that we did because

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many aspects of language
change all the time.

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And consonants and actually also
vowels are definitely among them.

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So the particular way in which
consonants are produced or

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which consonants a language has
definitely changes over time.

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So 10,000 years ago,

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our forefathers definitely had
a different set of consonants.

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>> Okay, now that's something
that's strange, because you've

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also said earlier that there's no way that
we know how people spoke 10,000 years ago,

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because there's no record.

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Because language is fleeting so how do we
know that the consonants have changed?

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>> Yeah right, well, okay, so
here I admit we don't really know

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in a sense that of course
we don't have recordings of

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people speaking 10,000 years or
even 300 years ago.

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So we don't know how people spoke,
we just know that they must have spoken

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differently because languages
change all the time.

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And that cannot have been
different 10,000 years ago either.

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>> So what sort of evidence do we have for
that?

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>> So, we can figure out certain
things about how languages sounded.

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At that time, at some point,
10,000 years ago was too long ago.

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>> Mm-hm.
>> But some point in the past,

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we can figure it out.

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And there are several methodologies for
that.

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One is by language comparison,
so if you have other languages

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which are related to our language,
we can see what consonants they have.

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English is related to German and Dutch,

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English has a word night,
which has two consonants, an N and a T.

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But German and

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Dutch have a third consonant,
they say nacht, both of them say nacht.

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So there is this consonant chuh, there.

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Because it's two other languages, which
have that sound, that is an indication that

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maybe English had that sound as well,
at some point in its inventory.

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And fortunately in English we have
another kind of dimension for

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that, other kind of evidence for
that I should say, and it's spelling.

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The wonderful,

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beautiful thing about English is that
it has this very conservative spelling.

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Spelling didn't change or

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at least didn't change all that much in
the course of the past few centuries.

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But the sounds probably did.

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So how do we spell the English word,
night?

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Well, we spell it with G-H.

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There's G-H in the middle.

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A G-H in the middle exactly at
the point where these other

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languages have a chuh sound.

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And it's not very strange to
think that maybe G-H was a way to

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write a chuh kind of
sound in English as well.

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So by looking at the spelling, and
by comparing to other languages,

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we can discover that probably English
had at least one more consonant

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a few hundred years ago.

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>> Okay, so then we've established
that there is change, in fact?

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And we established how
we can investigate that,

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but what I still don't really
understand is why would that change?

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>> Yeah, right, yeah, it's,
that's an interesting question.

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It is a difficult question but
we do have an answer or

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at least a big part of
an answer to that question.

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And, it's important here to distinguish
between two kinds of factors.

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The first factor is an internal factor,
internal to the language.

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It's something which just
happens to a language

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if you leave it alone long enough.

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Certain things start changing,

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in particular also
pronunciation starts changing.

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We're going to talk much more
about this later on in this MOOC,

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in the fifth module I'm going to
explain more about how this happens and

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even why this happens,
but for now I can say

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one factor which probably plays
a role there is language acquisition.

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The fact the children have to learn
the language of their parents, and

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when they do so they don't typically make

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a completely perfect copy of
the language of their parents.

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They change it a little bit.

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But again, we're going to talk much
more about this in the fifth module

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of this MOOC.

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>> Okay, so
this was internal change, right?

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But what about the external change then?

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>> Yeah, right, so
what do you think external means?

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>> Yeah, it reminds me of the fact that
languages sometimes borrow words so

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they come from other languages.

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>> Exactly.
That's exactly what it means,

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is that's exactly another, the,
the other important factor.

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Languages are in contact with each other.

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I said if we leave a language alone
long enough that sometimes happens.

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So language might be
spoken on an island and

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not, there might not be a lot
of contact with other languages.

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But through the history of mankind

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people typically have known other people
speaking other kinds of languages.

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And they might have borrowed words.

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And integrated them into their language.

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And interesting thing here is that this
has happened to English as well and

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actually it has involved the same chuh
sound we were talking about just before.

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Because sometimes English
speakers want to speak German or

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at least they want to say
certain German words or

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they want to say certain German names,
like you might be a music lover, and

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you might want to speak about the famous
German composer Johann Sebastian Ba-.

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And then there is something there
which you have to pronounce.

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A German would say Bach.

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But English doesn't have
this chuh sound anymore.

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>> So I guess an English person would then
use the consonant from the consonant table

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that is closest to this sound?

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So this, that would be.

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>> That would be a K, right, yeah.

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So and actually that's, notice that this
is actually a new piece of evidence,

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an interesting new piece of evidence for

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exactly the existence of these features,
for the fact that these dimensions,

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phonetic dimensions,
play a role in the language system.

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People have to say a sound and
they take the one which is closest.

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What does closest mean?

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Well, it means closest in the table.

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What does that mean?

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Well, it means it's the sound where
you have to change the fewest of these

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parameters, in this particular case,
you have to say chuh, but

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you don't have it,
you don't have it in your system.

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You take something which is really close.

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Well, a chuh you'll make at
the velar place of articulation,

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you'll make it in the back of your mouth.

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Just like the kuh,
the only difference between a chuh and

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a kuh is the manner of articulation,
the particular way which

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the airstream is modified so kuh is
an explosion chuh is like frication.

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You make a little bit of noise by making
some obstruction in the same place of

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your mouth.

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So what people do is they,
they somehow they can

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calculate what is the closest what is
the most similar sound, and they do so

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according to our
phonetically-defined features.

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>> Okay so, this reminds me of Hawaiian,

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which we talked about
in the previous video.

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Because Hawaiian has only a very
small set of consonants, right?

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>> Right.
>> So that would be very interesting,

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if they borrow words.

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They would have to be adjusted.

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>> Yeah, that's, that's, that's right.

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So they, they, they have to take
the consonant which is closest, but

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actually they have very few consonants,
so the thing

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which is closest might be actually
quite far away sometimes for them.

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There's a famous example.

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Hawaii obviously is a part
of the United States.

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So they borrow a lot in Hawaii.

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And they borrow a lot of English words
with their little consonant set.

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Well they don't have a T,
we have seen they don't have a separate T.

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Their T is actually pronounced like a K.

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Actually, also their S is
sometimes pronounced like a K.

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So, it's, it's quite well known that
Hawaiian word for Christmas is Kalikimaka.

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Well, that is almost unrecognizable for

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us as Christmas but
Kaliki is Chri- right?

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So, the K is there, the R of Christmas
is changed into an L, Kali.

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And then ki, so this ki,
that's the st of Chri-st-mas, right?

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So st all together is turned into a k.

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So these changes might
be actually quite big

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in an individual language if
they don't have a lot of choice.

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But still, you can calculate
that this is still the closest

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sound in their particular system.

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>> Mm-hm, okay.

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>> I'm quite sure that your language
has borrowed words from some other

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language as well.

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If you don't speak English it definitely
has borrowed words from English.

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If you do speak English, well English has
borrowed words all over the place for

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instance from French, or from German.

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What do you do with sounds
in those other languages

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in your language when
you borrow those words?

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This is something I invite you
to discuss on our forum, and

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in the next video we're going to
do some field work, we're going to

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look into the consonant systems of
the languages of our informants.