65videosNativLang
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Playlists · 16
65videos
11videosWhat is language? - answering questions with linguistics & logic
NativLangPlaylist · 11 videos · 57 min
All 16 playlists
8:57Features English is missing - but most other languages have
2.42M viewsCommon features of the world's languages that English is missing.
4:24How Korea crafted a better alphabet - History of Writing Systems #11 (Featural Alphabet)
908K viewsHow Hangul was designed as a featural alphabet in 15th-century Korea.
5:59Hungarian explained - such long words, such an isolated language
2.17M viewsWhy Hungarian has long words and how it relates to other Uralic languages.
5:45Modding the Latin Alphabet: the odd history of G, J, U, W, Y
890K viewsHow the letters G, J, U, W and Y were added to the Latin alphabet.
47:25Thoth's Pill - an Animated History of Writing
1.26M viewsAn animated history of writing from tokens and cuneiform through hieroglyphs to alphabets, and why the alphabet was invented only once.
5:55Weird Phonemes - pronouncing the world's rarest sounds
1.79M viewsThe world's rarest speech sounds and how they're produced.
9:25What English does - but most languages can't
3.21M viewsGrammatical features English has that most languages lack.
9:33What Genghis Khan's Mongolian Sounded Like - and how we know
2.66M viewsWhat Middle Mongolian sounded like and the sources used to reconstruct it.
7:42What Montezuma's Aztec Sounded Like - and how we know
3.26M viewsHow linguists reconstruct the sound of Classical Nahuatl, Montezuma's Aztec language.
6:08Kanji Story - How Japan Overloaded Chinese Characters
1.46M viewsHow Japanese adapted Chinese characters, producing multiple readings (on'yomi and kun'yomi) for each kanji.
6:59Muslim Vikings and Magic Letters: the odd history of Runes pt 1
970K viewsThe history of runes: their origins, the futhark and odd episodes in their later use.
5:21Tower of Babel vs Linguistics - the quest for the first language
1.05M viewsWhy linguists can't reconstruct the first human language, and what the comparative method can and can't reach.
7:57What "Ancient" Chinese Sounded Like - and how we know
2.89M viewsHow linguists reconstruct Old and Middle Chinese pronunciation from rhyme dictionaries and loanwords.
11:02What Ancient Egyptian Sounded Like - and how we know
17.8M viewsHow Egyptologists reconstruct the sound of Ancient Egyptian from Coptic, transcriptions in other languages and comparative evidence.
7:46What Etruscan Sounded Like - and how we know
4.63M viewsWhat Etruscan sounded like and how a language with almost no bilingual texts was partly decoded.
5:59What Latin Sounded Like - and how we know
10.2M viewsHow we know what classical Latin sounded like: ancient grammarians, spelling mistakes, loanwords and Romance descendants.
6:34What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know
5.12M viewsReconstructing Shakespeare's Early Modern English pronunciation from rhymes, puns and spelling.
11:56Why French sounds so unlike other Romance languages
3.35M viewsWhy French sounds so different from Spanish and Italian: Frankish influence and sound changes.
10:07Why West Africa keeps inventing writing systems
931K viewsWhy West Africa has produced so many independently invented scripts, like Vai, N'Ko and Bamum.
8:32Why some speakers can't understand speakers who understand them - Asymmetric Intelligibility
1.3M viewsWhy mutual intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric (e.g. Portuguese and Spanish) and what causes it.
12:01African Romance: searching for traces of a lost Latin language
887K viewsA 12-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
6:08Aizuchi: Why it's impolite not to "chime in" in Japanese
408K viewsA 6-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
12:30Altaic: Rise and Fall of a Linguistic Hypothesis
535K viewsA 12-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
10:14Animals make "wild" syllables – Can Animals Grammar? #4
31.4K viewsA 10-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
5:10Are Programming Languages Really Languages? - with CompChomp
A 5-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
11:01Are animal signals ever like words? – Can Animals Grammar? #5
28.4K viewsA 11-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
11:53Aztec and Mayan are totally different languages. Sort of.
733K viewsA 12-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
9:17Bird and cetacean grammar, and series conclusion – Can Animals Grammar? #8
20.3K viewsA 9-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
5:31But are Mesoamerican glyphs still used today?
171K viewsA 6-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
4:31Byzantine Greek minuscule script - accent marks & breathings
11.1K viewsA 5-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
3:45Byzantine Greek minuscule script - basic ligatures
20.8K viewsA 4-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
5:20Byzantine Greek minuscule script - the alphabet & varied letter forms
19.4K viewsA 5-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
4:10Byzantine Greek minuscule script - unique ligatures
11.9K viewsA 4-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
4:29CAPS Unlock - the history behind uppercase & lowercase letters
400K viewsA 4-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
6:38Can animals grammar? – introduction to my animated series
56.9K viewsA 7-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
11:02Chinese in two timelines: linguistic vs dynastic
65.2K viewsA 11-minute video from NativLang's catalogue; the title names its topic.
Books that go with these videos
- The Language Instinct, Steven PinkerA lively case that language is part of human nature
- The Unfolding of Language, Guy DeutscherHow languages are born, change and grow complex
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