Restricts access to any archie documentary on the us armed groups, flagging it as potentially offensive. We hear from the films producer we have to fold the notification system in place for this particular documentary, and that is word. This is something ive heard of. I think anger in armenia as crowds demanded the prime minister, quits over a peace deal with azerbaijan, that they see as a trail with your headlines, ill be back in the hour with another look, stay with us is our to International Language is what makes us human unique, so whats behind one of our species . Most incredible inventions. And how is it changing with technology . Professor of computational linguistics, Computer Science and engineering at mit, robert byrd, vic, professor off computational linguistics, Computer Science and engineering at mit. Its really great to have you with us today professor. Well, going great, great to be here. Ok. So i mean, look at us, were like 7000000000 people and we speak 7000 languages. We need language for communication, but is language in that sense, kind of preventing communication rather the facilitating it. I mean, since every language is cost of some sort of a private club thats more or less close to outsiders, right . Right. Thats always been one conception of languages that collectively the people that speak a language even a varies a little bit from person to person. You can think of as a kind of cultural artifact that you created by the people that all speak that way. Of course, the way we want to study language might differ from that because language can be used for lots of things she can be use for communication about it cannot be used for miscommunication. As weve seen in the current election, not only just just here in the united states, but lots of other places too. So theres this aspect of language about whats knowledge of language thats inside your head, that you actually that every human being shares. But then theres also a separate nation about language, about how do you put it, what use do you put language . And those are 2 Different Things to different ways of looking at language. So if linguists can now think about the evolution of language, like what is language, or where is the language of all the ng . I mean, is it for them being divided into many different ones or will, would just all speak at rahman tongue one day, sooner rather than later. Right. When i say, i dont think i will arrive at some kind of limbo where theres just essentially one language used by everyone. I think there you have to distinguish between again 2 fundamental ways of looking at the evolution of language. One ways to think of you can think of the evolution of, well, what was the initial origin of language. You know how you said thousands of years ago. And then theres though the business about ad a language is change over generational time from one generation to the next. And that finer level, we see that languages do actually change. But it depends upon the number of people that are speaking them. And if theres a law and out of the group of people that speak a particular dialect or language, then by large that survives and thats subject to historical forces and other factors. So in fact, theres some, theres some places where people try to revive things like the scottish dialect or you reach. We actually revived some of the native american languages to an extent where even though they were lost, there was actually a project here in near where i am to revive one of them in the southern part of massachusetts. When i was least a little bit successful, Scientists Say that at least one language is dying out perfect per week. And that means that nearly half of the languages we speak will be gone within the next century, wiser. Devers, that are reducing so dramatically. Well, i think theres been speculation about that. I think a lot of that is to use it to the to the internet. And the fact that people use languages like english or other common languages in the view. And they tend to wash out these smaller dialects. And if you get down to a smaller size, then that language will just drop out. And if you dont have someone who speaks it to your kids, then you can lose it. And thats a concern thats a concern that a lot of the nerds we wish have. And there are, in fact, efforts by the societies of language, like the Linguistics Society of america has one and in canada and other places to actually try to preserve some of these more minor you know, minor languages where theres not a lot of people, not a lot of speakers for them, but youre right, that is something to be concerned about. Because once you lose that language, dance and less or some concerted effort to try to revive it, youll just like animal species or plan species, you might lose them forever. So thats a concern. Neural into nearing is already making it possible to send signals from the brain to external devices like robot islands. Many scientists are actually also saying that one day will i be able to communicate directly brain to brain without actually using speech or writing. Will we write the only language for that . Well, thats a terrific question because actually what that brings into focus is this difference between the external aspect of language, the fact that we can either speak it or appear sign language use here you can use manual gestures for example. So theres that aspect of language, but theres also an aspect of language that to do with its, its, its use inside your brain as a kind of inner thought. We all have the sense that were talking to ourselves. That might be more prevalent in some people than others, but i think when you begin to reflect on it a lot of your, your own internal communication is in fact inner thought in that sense. And thats not speech which seems to us like speech, but you can actually show that its not. And it looks like in that sense that language is a kind of inner mental tool that we use for pulling together many of our thoughts and ideas and making them coherent people. And then experiments about that to actually see that language. Internal language serves as a kind of sort of universal, you know, again like a lingua franca, a universal system for pulling together all the other things that are going on with your sensory and brain activity. So youre constantly gassing getting information about, you know, when youre looking at an object, you get, you know, what that color of the object is and where it is. So we know their particular areas in the brain that tell us what and where things are like the collar where it is. Theres a kind of geometrics on billing that we have. Its built into us. And it turns out you can actually show that its language that pulls those things together. So theres different components of your brain can talk to each other. So language in that sense is actually important internally. And i dont think thats going to be sort of criticized by these kinds of abilities, these kinds of neural beliefs that say, oh, by sending a little electrical signal like you that i make inside my brain. I can now turn the lights are off the lights. I dont think its going to be so easily replaced. But i still wonder with think without language, i mean toddlers are people who only speak sign language while at once. Do they thinking well at that again, its a really wonderful question. Because as far as we know, so language like sign language and the people that grow up, kids are grown ups, you know, only using sign language saying just the way ordinary people think. I mean, the way they might express themselves can vary. So very famous experiment that was done years ago by lyle and lightnin and barbara landau. They did the following day. They, if you ask an ordinary, if you blindfold like a normal child and you tell the child to look up, you know, go like this makes sense, right . If you take a blind child, ok and say you take a blind child and blindfold them and you say look up, they go up, they raise their, you start to probe with their fingers, which is what a blind child who did. And i said its very interesting. They were different mode ality different way of expressing the same thing. Theyre just 2 different way. But inside their heads, as far as gleitman and landau could make out, their thinking is just exactly the same. So we think what that means is that inside us, well we have our inner thoughts, our impact larry language like although its certainly true that theres other kinds of thinking, like liberal thinking, the things that i, you know, a painter or a titian might do that. You know, lie off to one side of what language strictly looks like as might. Those might all be connected up with language very tightly. But does the language i speak influence my thinking along, for instance, the english language like some more rigid ward order than russian. Right. Does that straight the way its done as well as the train is fine, as we know external part might bury. So russia might have them are, you know, more flexible word order or not. Their languages like this are famous australian language. Well, bery where the word order is completely free. So even freer than latin. So i, you know, i can juggle the words in almost any word or, and yet, it turns out the internal thought process sees that week as far as we can gauge, that looks invariant that looks like its the same from person to person. Nowadays, of course theres a lot of, theres little variation, theres some variation. Theres certainly personal individual variation. And we cant exactly tell that. But so far as we can make out, the internal part soft fixed, which is her when she wants to. And thats what you want. So its almost like, you know, when you know, in the u. S. , when they used to make all sorts of cars lined on a certain type, the engine and the inside robby, the same. And then they would just stick different fenders and Different Things on the outside to look a lot different. But sort of the inside machinery where ill be the same. Now not everyone who studies language shares that view, but thats certainly a view that i hold and other people look at this sort of inner structure of the way the language inner stations. Other experts over thinking friends are going to take a short break right now when were back. Well continue talking to robert baer effect professor of computation, knowing west texas Computer Science and engineering at mit. Talking about how language stay with us. Will snoop wolf where sleeves wu lovable was sure i can remember vegetable would have been applauded by. Did you get that when youre going to be game, we will see if it would seem to be somewhat put in your citys come home and used the 20th century. Was thinking of revolution, the Great Depression and world war. The 21st is the since a real mental illness, those are my words. Thats what surfaced some psychometrist to tell us. The only question we accepted as a fact. And were back with robert byrd professor of computational linguistics, Computer Science and engineering at mit. Talking about how language evolves. Fessor said that the more language a person speaks more languages, a person no knows. So many times hes a man. Is there a limit that i love that quote of him . Is there a limit in the human brain to how many languages one can speak . You know, we and thats again, a funny question to think about. We had some sort of natural experiment that we were lucky enough to actually look at people who know many different languages and it doesnt say much as any real bound. There probably is because theres some limit on the number of words you can actually serve to keep separate and compartmentalize. But theres a very famous example of linguists who passed away about 15. Well i guess about 20 years ago now, who was there mit in . His name is ken arrow and he was a person who never lost the ability to learn language. That is what we know is that around schubert, any and sometime at some extent after that, theres something that goes on in the brain. You remember . You probably remember puberty at the time of the brain either matures or an itch, or is depending on your point of view as to whether youre a parent or not. But we know that there are certain things that happen so that the brain actually becomes less plastic. And you, sir, you lose this ability to learn language as if its your native language. But there are a few people. There are very rare cases where that doesnt happen. And one of these people was kenny here. And he realized this 1st when he grew up in arizona, in the united states, actually new mexico is parents sent them to a cowboy camp for the summer one summer. And his roommate, i was a navajo kid and can hail learned navajo within a few weeks. And its a tremendously difficult language to understand, to learn. You may be familiar with the fact that the navajo language was used during world war 2. Yeah, japanese as a current that they couldnt break it, but it was easy present here. And yet he gets back to school. He is about 12 or 13 at the time. He learned polish russian, german, french boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And his french teacher said, doesnt that just make you more confused . And he said now it just keeps getting easier and easier. And, and i was actually in was lucky enough to see this in person because i actually, this is about 25 years ago. Just want down the stairs and there is a flight of stairs about 7 flights of stairs in at m. I. T. And he was just met miskito, native American Indian and from nicaragua just started talking to him. And by the time he got down to the bottom of the stairs here, centrally was fluent and that language in the sense that he could speak it perfectly. Can someone explain . I am not, i dont know. We dont understand this process. We dont understand how he was able to do this so well, but it was if he was actually just started, you know child, they can just try. And so were just, yeah, i mean were talking really about prodigies are like out of the ordinary thing. Thats really late there. He really relevant for the milling record. Right. But another part of us is that like a limit to how many languages one can really speak. I dont think so in the sense that we know of even from people who arent. So bonce like that, like ken hell was that if you grow up in a bind when war trilingual hassel, theres people who have no problem, but the kids have no problem with that. In fact, it seems that it crawl we can tell it actually improves their cognitive ability and their vocabulary under their general intellectual functioning. So its, i dont think there really is that kind of limit. Were very classic, but its never actually been i dont think systematically tested. And that regard, i think we dont understand all the prodigies. There are lots of other prodigies, but sometimes they have other kinds of mental impairments. So we dont know whats going on there. So i think it remains an open question by think by and large it seems that you can learn fair number of languages when youre a kid and we just dont know what that down there is for ordinary people. I just dont know it, do you think learning languages can be like an antidote to the brain maladies of apes . Like i mean theres learning a language or speaking actually multiple ones make human brains more resilient, elastic, or other. There are actually some results on that. And it does seem that if you actually, even later in life, you can start learning a 2nd language, your 3rd one down actually does help with plasticity and resilience against memory loss. But again, the, the areas with alzheimers and memory loss in language is a fairly new one. We have a couple people mit one of them and some professor shes been playing, whos working on that. And you can actually look at memory loss in language as a kind of guide to whats going on with all timers. And shes found that people actually do better. So thats at least some evidence to suggest that it is a help which i find very hard. I think for actually so some languages like italian or french have a melodic reputation reich. Others like german, are viewed as more harsh to what extent this sound of the language influences cultural stereotypes about those who speak it. And theres a funny story about that, which is that you can actually pick that up as early as newborn. So one of my acquaintances, Angela Fred Ricci did these experiments at the marx plant, where what she did was taper corey cries of newborn babies and births. And german babies would cry in a pattern like saying, well, and french babies would say it rather than this. So that was it. That actually followed the rhythmic pattern. And, you know, there is my so, you know, so where did they get that . And it turns out she looked into it and of course what was happening was that the babies could actually hear their mothers speech in the room. Right . Because they were in the lower frequencies. Actually you transmitted enough through into the uterus that the newborns actually have picked up on that already. So that actually in a sense, prepares them for acquiring language that theyre going to be born into, which is a kind of funny thing. But then theres this funny part that it actually followed the rhythmic patterns of french and english and versus german final language issues looking at so biological evolution since the late the forming of language and culture to language and culture in biology, collision as well. I mean, ive heard this idea that the french have sun special throat architecture that allows them to pronounce this rust the does this idea held underwater and not clear whether theres sea, when you actually look at the cases with french. Its not clear that theres been enough time that biologically to have influence what the structure of your throat is and whether thats had an effect. So let me turn to another example. Thats actually, i think a little less well known. Because there was work published on this about a year and a half 2 years ago, where they looked at the people in a sense its quite sun in africa. They are able to make these so called click noises, which are actually very rare in the roche languages. Hear noises you make with you like that. Yes, exactly. Like, doesnt like that. Now thats very interesting for the following reason. Softness. Again, a dutch linguist, another friend of mine, renie, i, brecks whos at the university of you tracked. Looked into this in some detail. And theres 2 interesting for facts about the quote sun. One of them is that they emerged very early in Subsaharan Africa almost about 140000 years ago as a kind of genetically isolated group. And when you can show theyre genetically isolated, we can do this from the genome studies now. So thats one thing. And the 2nd thing is that this click sound, in fact, does require a certain structure to get to the roof of your mouth. That makes it easier to make those sounds and others and that click language and you can show aside from some, you know, theres some few cases where the people borrowed the plates. Some adjacent groups and others. So, but really was able to show that theres a release or like noise that you can ignore. Those complaining ridges are just associated with the quayside. So his hypothesis is, in that case, there is enough time for this kind of effect to build up on the roof here, match to may, to make it adapted to this, making a click sounds so he thinks that it so there is some evidence, at least in this one case where that can happen to maybe not the french because its too late. And theres too many cheeses in france anyway. So you know, but in the case of this chance or so youre in a Language Group made. I think there actually isnt least some suggestion or evidence for this. You know, theres lots of evidence that people try to communicate by means of pictures before writing was invented, right . I mean, look at cave art. Now we communicate with them. Oh gee. And peter is more than words, i mean, it saves you time, it combines meanings and emotions. So in the relinquish at least, are we going to make words redundant and go back to basics, communicating with images rather than syntactic structures . Well, i think that language still has a, has a big edge because with language, one of the things we can do that makes it so special is we can talk about things. Theyre not just in the here. And now. Right . So that on the, you know, im happy and so on in the air now, but i can add, i can make the sentences as complicated as i want with their structure. So i can Say Something like, i believe that mary thinks the bill said john, lasts. You know, yesterday thats hard to imagine. As you see that he has a structure to it that looks like it. Now branches down and he, and he cant just a linear sequence of a motifs because it doesnt have that same ability to, you know, it can actually a little world, you know, the world where, you know, john left yesterday. I cant, you know, wrap it up and put it inside another of mochi. And take that bayer emoji wrap that inside another one. He doesnt want to do that. You know, you dont let you do that. So thats a theme o. G. s are you know, in a way of stripping language of some of its enormous expressive power. But i think you still need to talk about a world that you can create which professor has been such a pleasure talking to you. I would carry on and on and on, but we have for this particular program, we hope well get to do this again. Ok, so good luck with everything is great fun. Thank you very well where you are. Absolutely. So well see you hopefully sometime soon, take care to during the vietnam war, u. S. Forces it was a secret war. And for years the American People did not know how so much of it is officially the most heavily bombed country per capita in all human history. Millions of unexploded bombs still in danger lives in this Small Agricultural country. Even today, kids in los full victims of bombs dropped decades ago. Is the u. S. Making amends for the tragedy and loss to the people need in that little land of mines. Which if you look for to see whether what were saying is actually playing out in the real world and sort of thing to look at would be the u. S. Dollar versus the chinese or a big ok. Thats the main 4 x. There. Thats going to tell you whats happening in the global economy. If this debt is going to trigger all this money printing, the dollar will start to drift lower. And its already, you know, looking very weak. And i think the last 4 years under theyve been able to propped up to a large degree. But i think maggie going to see a serious decline. The dollar chinese currency start to really outperform the dollar
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