Fantastic Features We Don't Have In The English Language
6,950,540
Published 2013-05-31
Also, I've learned from last week: no irritating piano music this time!
UNESCO list of endangered languages: www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/
All Comments (21)
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“I’m east-handed, when I’m facing north”
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“No, dum-dum, your OTHER North!”
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I'm learning Swedish and I discovered that it has 2 words for yes. 'Ja' and 'jo'. 'Ja' is used as we use yes, but 'jo' is used when someone asks a negative question like "Aren't you coming?" and you'd say "Jo" or "nej" so there's no confusion whether you mean "Yes, I'm not coming" or "No, I'm not coming".
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Being bilingual in English and Cantonese, it is much easier to chat with other bilinguals using a mixture. Actually, once you start, it is extremely difficult to revert back to one language or the other without contamination, unless a monolingual third person joins the conversation.
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- Have you ever heard about that band? - Which band? - Absolute Direction
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"As a language speaker" omg me too
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"Call me an ambulance!" "Ok, you're an ambulance" "Noooo, call an ambulance, and get them to come."
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I personally don't use it when typing, but in Spanish you have to start every interrogative question with ¿ This helps out a lot when reading a text and having questions that are super long.
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"We're lost! what do we do?" Don't worry I'll use my special technique. Absolute Direction
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about inclusivity - there's soviet joke about some party official who during his speech makes an optimistic prediction: "In year 2000 we will live much better". One of his listeners, an ordinary worker, replies "I get it, what about us?"
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Hawai'ian; Apart from only having 13 letters there are two words. Mauka for toward the mountains, inland (away from the ocean) and Makai for toward the ocean. On the islands these are important directions and commonly used by everyone. English also gives us the windward and leeward sides of the island.
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i love languages and this was a super fascinating video, but it’s a crime no one is talking about tom using the one direction font for absolute direction
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"We've just won the lottery, but you haven't" has the same energy as "Call an ambulance! But not for me"
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I love how I can watch a tom scott video and never know if it’s from 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago
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I’d love it if more languages had "Oui", "Si", "Non" so it doesn’t get confusing when someone asks a negative question. - Don't you know them? - Si, I know them. I think this isn’t much of a problem in English but in Czech we get really weird situations because we have no idea what people mean when they plainly answer "yes" or "no" to negative questions.
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In indonesia, the word for the inclusive we is "kita", and the exclusive we is "kami". The funny thing is, some indonesians just use "kita", be it inclusive or exclusive. Example: "we broke up" in indonesia is "kita putus" for inclusive, and "kami putus" for exclusive. And sometimes, indonesians use "kita putus" when the listener is not the speaker's lover.
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It drives me crazy that in English there is no determination with, say, "brother/sister-in-law". It could mean your spouse's sibling or the spouse of your own sibling.
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Imagine this happening; "Hey! We won the lottery But you haven't" Then suddenly miss your south kidney
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I wish English had at least two ways of saying "love". In Spanish, querer and amar can both mean to love, but querer is used specially for friends and amar is used specially for a s/o. I rarely say "I love you" because I always thought of it as a romantic thing.
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I really like the Japanese feature of a different 'there' if it's close to the listener or far away. Like これ 'kore' is here, close to speaker それ 'sore' is there, close to listener, あれ 'are' is over there, close to neither of them.
