What Linguists Know That Other People Don’t.

Studying languages is a privilege. When you analyze language and everyday speech you
realize that there is an astonishing amount of wonder in this system that we take for granted.
Linguists questioned the obvious, which is language, and got answers that forever changed
mankind’s understanding of Language and human nature. In this article, you will see what
linguists know that is not so evident to other people. So let’s see what we’ve got.

We all speak one language.

One of the main discoveries of modern linguistics is that it made us aware that all the
languages we speak are similar in astonishing respects; they manifest the same pattern,
follow the same rules, they are learnt in exactly the same way, and that all the differences are
only superficial. So, in a sense we all speak the same language. This was captured by
Chomsky in an excellent metaphor in an excellent book of his titled Language and Mind in
which he says that if a Martian scientist, somebody with a different kind of intelligence, were
to study the world’s languages, he would conclude that they are all dialects of a single
language embodying a “universal grammar” reflecting a hardwired, genetically determined
linguistic module inherent in the human brain.

A studies of topologically different languages show that this is indeed the case. I will mention,
in passing, one of probably the main arguments used to prove this. Take a child that was
born in China, and have him raised in Saudi Arabia and he’ll grow up speaking Arabic. What
does that say to you? It says that a human child is hardwired to learn any language and that
all human languages, say Mandarin and Arabic in this case are fundamentally the same, if
they weren’t, the task of child to learn any language would be impossible. This has
massive implications, the greatest of which is that all the 7000 human languages have the
same source and that every language spoken today evolved from the same great-great…
great-grandmother tongue, the first language of homo sapiens. Another implication is that if a
Martian would fly past our planet, he would hear Japanese and Ojibwe like we hear British
and American English. This is an interesting line of thought, If you want to read more about
it, I got a good book you could read. It’s called Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An
Introduction. Find it [here].

Language change is natural.

People so soften combat language change and are feared by it. Linguists know that natural
language change is not bad for a language. Adopting loan words from other languages,
losing inflection, cases, genders, articles and formerly distinct sounds…This happens in all
languages and is nothing to worry about. For a linguist, it’s an interesting phenomenon, worth
analyzing. For some people it’s proof for the demise of language, the end of civilized culture
and the beginning of the dying of the proper language. But languages constantly change and
this is certainly not how languages die.

Too many people fear language change. Many people think that if we don’t attempt to
regulate the “correct” way of speaking — from spelling to pronunciation to word choice —
then we will all plunge into anarchy or some other misfortune. It’s a sham. Language
constantly evolves, and even those political/cultural elites who claim to use it “correctly” fail to
do so themselves; this is why you find split infinitives in written opinions of the U.S. Supreme
Court, for example. (And even those who fancy themselves guardians of The Correct Way of
Speaking can’t even agree on whether split infinitives are kosher). Societies rise and fall, but
not because too many people started to say “ain’t” when they should have said “isn’t.”

There are no bad grammars.

One of the things you know when you start studying languages is that you realize how stupid
is the claim that says there are bad grammars. Linguists know that all dialects, even those
considered “bad grammar” by many people, are as fully formed and rule-bound as any other
language. Someone who uses Appalachian dialect or African American Vernacular
English (to use two U.S. examples), is not simply ignorant of grammatical rules taught in
school, or speaking “sloppily.” They are following a different set of rules, which are consistent
within their own dialect. Sometimes the linguistic complexity of languages associated with
underprivileged societies and that we call bad grammars far exceeds that of modern and
privileged societies. William Labov in fact analyzed African American Vernacular English and
showed us that it is a beautiful language with a sophisticated structure and has many
features that Standard English lacks. Read more about this is Labov’s own book
titled Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. You can get it
[here].

There are monolingual linguists.

I don’t know how to stress this further. Being a linguist does not equal being a polyglot. While
it is true that linguists study all languages, this does not mean that they engage in learning
them. They only study them to test certain hypotheses related to how language works.
Linguists know that there are monolingual linguists, there are even linguists who advise
against learning languages. Seriously, people should stop using “linguist” and “polyglot” or
“language lover” synonymously. The surest way to annoy a linguist is to ask: “so how many
languages do you speak?” Read about what linguists do [here].

Language is fractal.
Linguists know that you really can’t fully describe any human language. It seems to be
impossible to produce enough rules to fully describe any natural language. You always find
that there are valid expressions that your rules forbid and invalid expressions that your rules
permit. (That’s what we mean when we say “all grammars leak.”) Of course you can create
new rules to cover those exceptions, but teams have spent decades at this without closing all
the holes–despite creating tens of thousands of rules. This is one reason linguists have
trouble taking grammar “prescriptivists” seriously; we know that no description of grammar
small enough to fit in a single volume can be anything more than a set of guidelines.

Fucking insertion is systematic:

linguists know that the process of infixing fucking to emphasize a word is
systematic. Fucking always goes before the primary stressed syllable in a word. Anything
else sounds wrong:

fan-fucking-tàstic, not fantà-fucking-stic

abso-fucking-lùtely, not ab-fucking-solùtely

hippo-fucking-pòtamus, not hi-fucking-ppopòtamus or hippopò-fucking-tomus.

Phila-fuckin-delphia and anything else is wrong.

Monoglots can become polyglots:

Linguists know that everybody who speaks one language can learn others, if they want to.
The mathematics behind linguistics (e.g. Automata Theory and Chomsky’s hierarchy of
languages), indicate that an astonishing amount of intelligence is required to become a
monoglot. The more we study computational linguistics and automata theory, the more we
understand this.
The simplest theoretical machine that could accurately parse a human language and map to
meanings, would be incredibly complex. Surprisingly, the amount of complexity one must add
in order to parse a second language is almost negligible. In other words, there is no real
difference in the intelligence necessary to become a monoglot or a polyglot.

Perceived differences in difficulty have more to do with learning as an adult vs. as a child
(during the critical period), and with enjoyment of learning and willingness to work.

I’m sure linguists know so much more than can be said in a blog post. Linguists changed our perceptions about
language, changed the way we regard minority languages, and most importantly linguists made us aware that no
language is inferior. Join the bandwagon to recognize the efforts of linguists by subscribing by email and sharing the
article. Thank you very much for reading. I will see you in my next article.