How languages evolve - Alex Gendler

Over the course of human history, thousands of languages have developed from what was once a much smaller number. How did we end up with so many? And how do we keep track of them all? Alex Gendler explains how linguists group languages into language families, demonstrating how these linguistic trees give us crucial insights into the past.

Lesson by Alex Gendler, animation by Igor Coric.

[HsinTsungChu]

When I say I want to study linguistics, people usually think that I am going to spend years learning multiple languages. When I tell them I want to do research on indigenous languages here in Taiwan in the future, they laugh at me and say "there are more than ten indigenous languages here, you can never master all of them!" Well, doing linguistic research is about using scientific methods to find out linguistic facts about a language or a group of languages. That means a linguist doesn't necessarily have to be a polyglot or study a language in order to do a research on it. Sometimes those people really get on my nerves...lol

[markephraim]

I love the illustration! they make interesting analogies. that red dragon with the multiple tongues is a cool one

[jeticebane]

can anyone explain why the word for "mother" starts with an "M" sound in so many totally different languages?

[TheThOdOrs]

The fun thing about Greece, is that, even though it's so tiny, and only home to 11.000.000 people, it is SO diverse, and people in regions of Greece speak so differently from one another! It's insane! As an Athenian-born, raised with standard Greek and nothing else, when I travel around, I quickly get baffled by all the dialects. Greek is a very well structured and enduring language, but more ofthen than not, when speaking to elders, I just have ask for clarification. And foreigners are baffled too... That one time I was speaking to a Cypriot in frond of some people, and they were amazed, because to them, it sounded like we were speaking completely different languages... Which I found amazing, given the fact that we mostly understand each other...

[KlaustoFausto]

People in my class think learning English is difficult, then I always say that learning English as a German guy is much less difficult than learning it as a Chinese. 
It's true, the simmilarities are surprisingly big

[dotdotdotdotdotdotdottod]

like and south korea are experiencing a language separation from being apart for two long

[ThereIsDignity]

"It may not be as foreign as you think." I love this quote.

[rickjones]

The old joke is that the difference between a language and a dialect is that a language has a flag and an army.

[bixylim]

3:24 there's a mistake. Balto-Slavic is NOT a superfamily, but a language group of the Indo-European language family!

[MasterGeekMX]

Here is an easy example:

English: Thanks
Swedish/Norwegian: Tack
German: Danke.

Or
Catalonian: Gracies
Italian: Gratzie
Spanish: Gracias

[dewshi]

Finnish is my first language and I'm studying Spanish; I was really surprised by the amount of similarities in grammar that they have for languages so far from each other.

[aldhieu.a.teodocio]

Malay: Selamat pagi (Good morning)
Indonesian: Selamat pagi (Good morning)
Filipino: Salamat pagi (Thank you stingray)
Salamat pogi (Thank you handsome)

[idrils]

That's a beautifully made video, full of interesting image choices and details (and i watch quite a few of the animation videos already). I came back to pause and rewind a few times to see better some great imagery in action. Congrats to the animator

[zeynepuyank]

Kudos to the ones who thought of and drew the analogies in this video. Amazed!

[dandan]

I think the "Chinese language" is misinterpreted by English speakers. I am a Chinese and I find the words "language" and "dialect" differ between English and Chinese because *these meanings of words were matched like a jigsaw by early bi-dialects to form a translation, and they may not be totally accurate.*

*- more below -*

In Chinese, "語言" means spoken language, "語" means speech or language and "言" means words spoken. "語文" means written language. "英"(ying) is the name we gave Britain. Therefore, "英語" and "英文" are not totally equal, meaning spoken English and written English.

"地方" means place, "方言" means dialect in English, or in literal Chinese, can be interpreted as "spoken language spoken by minorities or smaller places". Therefore, it's not the same system of the westerns as we have an universal written language and different spoken languages.

[nsklife]

Did you see the russian and ukrainian matroshkas frowning at each other?? 1:50

[vikingsailorboy]

AWESOME metaphorical visuals throughout the video.

[nicolasptrsn]

I got a BA in International Relations and a minor in French, which required me to take a Linguistics 101 class. It was probably my favorite class!

[christfer-johnmaglasang]

I'm currently taking language related course in college. This video is a mind opener. Thank you❤

[dreegy]

I can relate. When i am having french classes in school i can understand most of the words simply because they sound so similar to english. What a wonderful world