There's a mistake in this video. "Earliest common ancestor of British and American English" should refer to PIE, right? You're looking for "latest common ancestor"
nope. even if there was a proto-world, that's still the LATEST common ancestor of all the languages spoken today, not the first language ever spoken. the earliest common ancestor would be some sort of chemical signaling between single celled organisms or something.
good thing that neither 'latest common ancestor' nor 'earliest common ancestor' mention the word 'language', or anything else to specify what we're looking for. hell, you could say that the earliest common ancestor of british and american english is the laws of physics.
No, it would be earliest because the latest common ancestor would be modern American and British English. The earliest common ancestor would be the dialect that surfaced when American English first became distinct from British English, it wouldn't be PIE or whatever.
@@pasoska_kontrola no. Štokavian, Kajkavian and Čakavian are different language, but all the official Yugoslav "languages" are literally based on Štokavian. You could've at least make it based on different dialect! But you don't do that and still call them separate! Otherwise it's just another case of Yugoslav nations being too nationalistic.
@UCI0Wy5KWMVIxvYVIDoroBPg that's okay. There was time when I was bad at understanding anything that wasn't literal, and it was one of the reasons it was suspected I have Asperger's.
I caught that too. I don't know Chinese, but I know that symbol on the right is the Japanese symbol for 'male'. Yeah, Japanese Kanji don't always have the same meaning as they do over in China, but that seemed like quite a change in meaning to me. For the record, the only example of this I know of is how the Japanese symbol for 'oni' is actually the Chinese symbol for 'ghost', even though China does have its own folkloric creatures called oni which accordingly have their own symbol, which isn't even used in Japan.
rather than edit and re upload all your past videos you could begin a new series revisiting old topics with better fact checking and try to introduce new spins on the ideas that you conveyed the first time. you could accomplish this over the next year or 2 years and at the end of it delete the old videos so that you have a more accurate library for posterity. This would allow you to alternate between new videos and revisited videos, increasing the longevity of your channel without increasing your workload.
I don't think you quite understand how CZcams works. Once it's up, the only way to change it is to take the whole video down. I can change the title, the thumbnail, the description and the annotations, but not the video itself.
Xidnaf I don't think that is necessary. You are learning, making mistakes is 100% imperative in order to grow and learn and while you know way more about this than I do, we are learning together. I appreciate that you are so passionate about this that you upload a video so fast that you might forget to fact check some things. You're human and make mistakes, it's fine. Just make sure you keep correcting yourself and improving. That's all we can ask for.
As much as I hate to put work on your shoulders, I tend to agree with the people here. If you care about providing correct information, either pull down the wrong videos or go through those videos you messed up and correct them.
rzeka Me too :D I thought that anyone who has a little bit of interest with linguistics will know that English is a Germanic language with Romance influence :/
Yeah my french teacher is always reminding people in my class about it. Weirdly, it happens more with nous avons or vous avez than for anything else that requires a liaison
I'm here just because I'm an english learner and I just wanna train my listening (because you speak super fast) and learn something interesting while doing so. Keep it up 😂
Latin has the words 'casa' and 'domus', both meaning house, but 'casa' was something more like a hut or a house of poor people and 'domus' was the type of house occupied by the upper classes. So Spanish, Italian and Portuguese got 'casa' from there.
Really? I would expect the opposite. Casa coming from castle or castile or castilian, the rich people, the kings and dukes. Doma as in domicile just meaning a place you live in.
Interesting point. I assumed English house and Spanish casa were related. But then, Hungarian has ház, which sounds so similar, that I assumed it must have been borrowed from German, but apparently, there is also a Finnish word it could be cognate with. But then there is Hungarian fiú, meaning boy, related to Finnish poika? And Romanian fiu, meaning son, from Latin filius. Coincidence? Confusing?
Don't worry, everyone makes mistakes. Your video's are fun and interesting which is why I watch them. Besides me slightly misunderstanding the history of the Thai language is going to cause any massive problems in everyday life.
xidnaf, we all make mistakes but it's how we deal with our mistakes that define us. thanks for the straight up honest video, you can hold your head high.
well people make more mistakes the more often they upload :) that's why CGP grey almost never uploads.. he is a perfectionist and tries to get everything right... and then even he get's a few things wrong and it "kills him" :P
Dude, I once had to do a presentation in eighth grade about my favorite President. I was a smart kid, but didn't know who to do it on. My dad suggested Reagan. I, a gay thirteen year old, told the world, well twenty other thirteen year olds that my favorite President was a man who destroyed unions, and ignored, thereby exacerbating the AIDS crisis. Later on I went to college for international affairs, and got in a full on screaming match with a guy in class because he rightly pointed out that the war my dad fought in was completely amoral. You're going to make mistakes. Learning isn't always pleasant, which is why a lot of people choose not to. You're inspiring a ton of people to get into linguistics. Sometimes you'll be wrong. That's okay. You could have a PhD in linguistics, and someone will nitpick a sentence in your paper to discredit you. Keep your head up. I don't know you at all, but I love your videos, and am weirdly proud of you for this one. Keep it up!
ibx2cat just did the same with his geography series and I loved that he did it, yours even more since these mistakes are sometimes hysterical haha! Xidnaf, I'm sure most of us are mere hobby linguists as well. That's why we come and watch your videos. If somebody happens to use your channel for legitimite academic research, that's on him. We still learned a bunch. *And so did you.* And you stood up for it, you didn't look for excuses and made this video. You stayed true to yourself and even if you gain heaps of subscribers in the future, I doubt very much you'd sell out, since you seem to be genuinely passionate about your channel :) Oh, and about the vocalized thing: In German a vowel is called Vokal. Naming a consonant that becomes a vowel vocalized feels very natural to me at least! ;D
I think people who watch this type of educational content in their free time are naturally skeptical, and you're doing everything right in terms of highlighting and apologising. Maybe link this video in the description for all of the videos with serious errors if you want to do more. I also think you have low self esteem, I do as well. People like your content, I would be very upset if you quit youtube because you spent too much time thinking about your failures
I pointed out a minor presentation error on another language channel and he totally lost it, insulting me and talking about how much time he puts into the videos etc. Would you rather be that guy, or too apologetic? Who do you think will do better over time, someone who throws a wobbly whenever they get criticism, or someone who corrects and builds?
Look CGP grey has the same issues, every artist and creator face criticism. I think it's a postitive good thing, even if most humans are not equipped to handle this we have this community that can be of help and support.
For your error n° 2, syllables spawning over two words exists in French (you mostly see this in poetry where you have to count syllables) And I think you can keep it all uploaded, they're interesting, they're good to show progress and understanding, and if really, just put the details/errors/corrections in the description :) I'm very happy to see you back and forth, and to be honest as an ESL teacher at uni, I sometimes show the football video or the ass video to students for a laugh and a discussion :)
I'm impressed. That video took a lot of courage to make. I've been subscribed to your channel for a while and I know you're not the only one that makes mistakes but it's the first time I see someone so thoroughly revisit and own up to their mistakes. Kudos. Your frank humility humbles me. Keep your videos coming!
It's really awesome you haven't taken the videos down. I wish I could own my mistakes half that well. And regarding the thai-video, I think the sentiment is still pretty much right even if it isn't exactly as you said. I remember how that video helped me see the bright side of english ortography for example.
I've never watched this guy beyond his video about china not existing and this one. I just love how his crudely drawn face can show an emotion I don't have a word for bu accurately portrays how he feels about the mistakes, it's fantastic.
The fact that Xidnaf would want to make a video like this makes me like his channel even more. Edit: Would it be so much work to redo the voiceover for the video on Thai with the vocalized problem?
Replacing audio is a bit difficult, I have tried to do this myself and it's very frustrating T_T But yes, it's possible.. Perhaps the best way of doing it would be to use dubbing techniques to just overwrite the parts that are wrong... well that's basically what you suggested xD
"A gentleman upon realizing he has made a mistake strives to correct it". I still like your vids dude. Also, necroposting and you may already know this by now, but there is some debate on whether or not Old Chinese (Shang-Qin/Han) used characters that represented polysyllabic words, what they most certainly DID have were contractions, like 盍 for 何不 "Why not", 焉 for 於之 "at/on/in that/this place" and finally my favorite 旃 which is a rarely seen contraction for 之焉(as in the above) which means it's a contraction of 之於之. The meaning is highly context based but *very* roughly equates to "(action done to)[object] at/on/in that/this place". ALSO, to make this even more complicated, current comparative linguistic research suggests Old Chinese had suffixes/prefixes (reconstructed via comparison to other Sino-Tibetan languages that recorded them, as they are not reflected in the characters themseves), the suffix'd word would then sometimes, but not always, be recorded with a different character, and I could go on but I feel another PTSD attack from learning Classical Chinese coming on. Cheers!
omg I LOVE number 4! Moreover, I'd have thought exactly the same thing if I were in your shoes! 😜 But seeing it on context, with people's responses is priceless 😄
Not sure why, but this video really endeared me to your channel. I already have a budding interest in linguistics, but an honest and frank sense of self-correction can go a long way to earning trust. Makes me want to double-check my own borrowed facts. love ya Xidnaf! Keep learning and being human :)
I'm a (very) amateur linguist myself, so this video speaks to me. Don't be too hard on yourself Xidnaf! (Even though I do find your self-deprecating animations cute and hilarious)
However many mistakes you've made, you still helped me FINALLY decide what to do with my life: I applied for Japanese to start next year so I can start 'developing' my absolute love for languages and origins while studying something that'll be able to get me a job that I'll love in the future. Always love your content, keep it up!
It shows character that you spent time to make a video just explaining when and why you were wrong in videos from up to 4 years ago. As for the videos themselves, maybe add "Watch my 'Corrections' video " to the videos' titles or the descriptions?
Awww, Xidnaf. I love your honesty and humility. I appreciate you making this video, and will always continue to watch your videos. Just make sure to fact-check from now on. I can't be spewing lies and citing Xidnaf in my linguistic papers, ya hear?
In most languages that come from vulgar Latin you see the C being pronounced with a soft sound as in suh before e and i, and c with a kuh or hard sound before a,u, o, i.e. Spanish, you also see it with G, the same rules apply. So, I don't think it was the French starting to pronounce it that way since most Romance languages follow this rule.
Yes. What happened is that before I and E the hard C /k/ and G /g/ (like in “cat” and “game”) bacame palatalized /kʲ/ and /ɡʲ/ and then palatal, so basically their sounds became CH /tʃ/ and J /dʒ/ (like in “choose” and “joke”). In Italian and Romanian they're still pronounced that way, in other romance languages the sounds diverged. In French the CH /tʃ/ became TS /ts/ and then /s/ (that's why in French and Old French borrowings “ce” and “ci” are pronounced like “se” and “si”) and the J /dʒ/ became ZH /ʒ/ (like the “s” in “pleasure”), but in English they went back to be pronounced J /dʒ/ (we say “age” /eɪdʒ/ and not /eɪʒ/). In Spanish the S /s/ became /s̺/, while the CH /ts/, then /s̪/, then in some dialects /s̪/ and /s̺/ became both /s/ and in other dialects /s̺/ kept beinɡ /s̺/ and /s̪/ became TH /θ/ (as the TH in “think”). In Spanish the J /dʒ/ became ZH /ʒ/ and then SH /ʃ/ and then /x/ and in some dialects H /h/ (that's why the h-like sound in Spanish is written with J or G before E and I… because in many cases it comes from the sound that the “j” does in English).
I so happy that you're making videos again, you made me really enjoy linguistics and made me want to learn new languages. thanks to you I am currently learning Japanese, Spanish and a little German on the side. Anyways thank you for your contribution to this site I'm sure you've had a lasting impact on many people's lives.
I really admire your honesty. Keep them up!!! I love your content and I've learnt a lot with it, including with your mistakes. Thanks for making those videos
Omg I'm early! Hi xid! It's me from 3 years ago on youtube inbox •~• Oh god these mistakes...It's fine, as long as you learn from them, I mean. They're not that bad, but if you went on r/linguistics or r/conlangs and started saying this stuff, you would get cyberbullied tbh. Trust me, I learned my lesson. I said that there was only 3 alphabets in the world once....hell broke loose. Btw, I saw took that Casa/House thing very seriously XD
VSauce title "This is not yellow" has one up on you, because Michael there is TECHNICALLY right. The color he shows isn't yellow, but a mix of green light and red light
No. I feel strongly about this. The word "yellow" does not refer to electromagnetic waves of a particular range of frequencies. It refers to stuff that looks yellow.
I agree, if we go down the route of what "is" yellow and what "looks like" yellow, then we might as well start using E-Prime and completely stop using the verb "to be", and nobody wants that :D We say something "is" a certain thing or a certain way as shorthand for what we perceive because in most cases, for all practical intents and purposes, it applies.
+Xidnaf "The word "yellow" does not refer to electromagnetic waves of a particular range of frequencies." By definition, every colour you see is the result of a certain frequency of photons that your eyes receive. The claim "it looks yellow" is rather dubious because human eyes don't work in an absolute way (what is seen as yellow for you is not yellow for some other creature) and colour blindness is a thing. Matching conventional colour names to certain frequencies help us define things in a rather efficient and functional way. If the light frequency definition of yellow didn't exist, there would be no legitimate arbiter of what "looks yellow" other than each person's intuition and personal eyesight, both greatly unreliable tools.
> If the light frequency definition of yellow didn't exist, there would be no legitimate arbiter of what "looks yellow" other than each person's intuition and personal eyesight, both greatly unreliable tools. Color terms are primarily intended for everyday speech, where we don't care about frequencies and wavelengths of light but do care about what things look like to a typical human (and where precision is not usually important); therefore, it makes sense to define colors in terms of what things look like. If you want to be precise about electromagnetic frequencies, then you can use numbers; or you could define color terms precisely _within the context_, but if you do the latter, then those precise definitions only hold within the context where it's relevant, and to everyone else color terms will still refer to how things look.
+chrideedee To bring up Vsauce: If you rely solely on the fact it "looks yellow", how do you know that what you and other have agreed upon about what yellow is doesn't fluctuate even slightly between the participants? You could spend your entire life with an idea of what is yellow, but being fundamentally different than what someone else could see. After all, every day speech doesn't have to invoke photon frequencies and wavelengths, but that doesn't nullify the facts of it. This is more within the conundrum of philosophy rather than physics (colour being what it looks like or what it is fundamentally consisted of), but my take is that yellow has a definition, so imitation of yellow sure as hell looks yellow, but it's not quite the colour yellow. Step inside a dark room with no lights and what looked like yellow will be pitch black within seconds (unless it's actual light bulbs we are talking about).
This is really good Xidnaf, it's great that you haven't let your mistakes discourage your from continuing to do your awesome work. I really like your channel a lot and you are a very entertaining person to learn from. I think it would be nice if you took down the old videos and re-uploaded some updated versions, but I understand that that will be very time consuming, and this format has been entertaining to watch. Maybe keep on the way you have been, improving all the time, and just upload another corrections video when you find the mistakes have piled up. Either way, I really appreciate everything you are doing here!!
Your videos are fine, Xidnaf. You have made some of my favorite videos. Making mistakes is how you learn and improve! Don't forget to keep on being awesome!
I found your channel like 2 weeks ago and i wasn't sure will u ever upload, but u did!!! Aghh I love this channel :) Also I'm really happy that you corrected yourself, I was almost thinking that my whole life was a lie and Estonian is actually indo-european
Haha Xindaf, my man! You're doing great, being so honest and all. For starters you can just put annotations to all the videos correcting the mistakes or just pointing out that there are some, and / or link to this video to all of them at the and (as an annotation or just in the description). Secondly, you can make it easier and share some of the work. Make a team, issue assignments, I'm sure there are people who are fans that would love to work with you (me included :D) into making this a thing. In my account you're far better when it comes to getting to a point and humor then the competition.
I'm really glad you made this video. I respect that you can own up to your mistakes and do your best to correct them. Personally I think you should leave the videos up that just have minor/moderate errors, but the ones that have major flaws that undermine the whole message should be made unlisted. They could be edited and re uploaded if the core message could be better conveyed that way. Keep up the great work dude, love the vids even if they aren't perfect 👍
Love you to come up with this bro. Not many around my area do this kind of thing. And, no, Thai people can hardly understand ancient Thai writing. For me, it is complex and remain so solely by conservatism. There are some changes in spelling these days. Like, the word "Mai?" which can be spelled using a Mai Malai or Maimuan or Mai Hun-aghad but the official version is Mai Malai one. Some young people spell it using the last option, and it pisses a lot of people off badly.
Unlist all questionable videos and put them in a playlist entitled something like "Classic Xidnaf". Then redo them. That will obviously take HUGE amounts of work, but you need to have your channel be presentable. If anyone wishes to see your older videos, they can look in the playlist, but they won't appear to any newcomers, who will only see your improved content at first. This is the approach Lockstin/Gnoggin used when he rebranded his channel, and I think it would work quite well for you as well. Best of luck! Edited for grammar
6:00 honestly this explains why I don't have the Cot-Caught merger whilst my mother does. I originally thought that once merge, vowels can't unmerge, but no, they can. Especially since I'm from the PNW.
If it was me, I would leave most of them with just annotations. For the top few with truly grievous errors, I'd redo them and reupload. Glad you're back uploading anyway, love your stuff!
Hey I have an idea for correcting mistakes! At the end of each video (form now on) you can add a little message saying "check the descriptions for any corrections!" so if you say something wrong in the video, you can just make sure to correct yourself in the description, and in a pinned comment! As for the old videos, I guess you can just add the corrections to the descriptions and in a pinned comment and just kinda hope people read it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hope this helps!
I'm so happy that your doing video again. even if you make mistakes, your videos are still very interesting and you made me love linguistic and stuffs, so I'm grateful for that
I think I would annotate those videos, linking them to a newer version, and redo them all. That way you keep the views, the comments, and still avoid people seeing them. And for those who don't have annotations turned on, you can change the video title with something like "Untranslability and Japanese Pragmatics - UPDATED VERSION LINK IN THE DESCRIPTION". Anyway, I really appreciate your videos, and am glad to see you correcting yourself. Keep up the good work!!!
I'd say to leave the videos up, but put corrections in the description. I also think there's a way to sticky comments to the top of the comment area so that people can see that you have made corrections when they scroll down to comment.
This piece is excellent. Not only is it a correction of past errors, it also adds to the wealth of linguistic information you present. I wouldn't bother listening to anything about linguistics, if your channel didn't exist. You're doing a great job. I would not remove any of the past videos.
So glad to see you back! I think it's fantastic that you're willing to hold yourself accountable in this way. I see no reason to take the videos down. I do like the idea that others have voiced of revisiting some of the older topics in new videos with revised information. I love your channel!
I hope we can all agree how brave you are for posting this. It could be another project editing and cleaning up the old ones. Maybe citing sources could be a thing.
3:42 sorry to correct you again, but Uralic languages are still spoken in the northernmost parts of European Russia. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Linguistic_map_of_the_Uralic_languages_%28en%29.png
Wow, this was a really entertaining and thorough way of addressing corrections! It made me laugh and made me think. When I make a serious mistake in a video that can't be fixed with just annotations, I'll generally try to upload a new updated version. But what to do about the incorrect upload? - If I noticed the mistake quickly (like, within 2 weeks) then I'll delete the old upload. - But if I notice, like, a year later, I'll sometimes re-upload a new version, and cover the original upload with an ENORMOUS annotation linking everyone to the new version, as well as at the top of the description. And hopefully the new version will eventually get more popular than the incorrect one. Of course, it just kinda depends on what you want to do. Either way, well done for making a fun and comprehensive corrections video. The New York Times should do these. :)
I love your videos. They're always great...even with occasional mistakes. 2 things below: 1) Pronunciation of yin/yang: In Chinese, it's pronounced yɑŋ, not yæŋ 2) You were asking if Chinese words are monosyllabic or not...it's kind of complicated. For example, the word for "phone" is 电话. These 2 characters mean 电＝"electricity" & 话＝"speech, word, etc.", so together...they make the word *phone*! Yay teamwork :D A lot of Chinese words are like this...电脑: electricity + brain = computer. 电台: electricity + station = radio. 电梯: electricity + stairs = escalator. 电池: electricity + pool = battery. The lesson to learn is that in modern Chinese, especially spoken, each character has a VAGUE meaning...but putting 2 together forms a SPECIFIC meaning. Because of this, most words, tend to be 2 characters.
First, I love self-deprecating humor, and you pull it off wonderfully here. Second, it I were the one doing this, I would probably unlist the old videos and re-do them. But I am a stickler for always being as perfect as possible and always hate everything I make because it's never possible to be perfect, so take that with a grain of salt. Third, you were the one that started me down the rabbit hole of linguistics and also realizing that I have every merger listed for General American. I've been really concentrating lately on bringing the letter t back into my vocabulary.
In Romanian, we can merge 2 words with a dash (-), and syllables are also merged. For example, we can merge "că" and "am" (că=a sort of because? and am is an auxiliary verb used to form a past tense... romanian grammar is REALLY complicated, okay?) to make "c-am". It doesn't mean anything different, we just do it for the sake of talking faster. Also, the 2 syllables merge into one, single syllable, despite the fact that there are 2 words. I don't know if this is relevant to the video, but I hope I helped!
@Xidnaf, Answer to the confusion about Chinese characters corresponding to syllables vs something more (to the best of my knowledge. I'm not a native speaker, but attended beginners classes plus asked my native-speaker friends lots of questions): 1. Traditional -> Simplified Chinese (Mandarin) transition made things... simpler. The existence of the 2 may explain why you read conflicting info (some info on Traditional, some on Simplified while thinking they were speaking about the same written language). 2. In Traditional Chinese characters Can (but don't always) represent words, sentences, paragraphs or even stories, especially if the characters in question were inscribed into metal (the heavier the writing limitations, the more concentrated the meaning gets) 3. In Simplified Chinese, 1 Character -> 1 Syllable, plus the complexity of characters is lower than in traditional Chinese, and there are fewer of them (It was created from Traditional in PRC times and is used in mainland China, whereas Hong-Kong (at least for Cantoneese) and Taiwan use Traditional.) I hope this clears things up. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
There's a mistake in this video.
"Earliest common ancestor of British and American English" should refer to PIE, right?
You're looking for "latest common ancestor"
nope. even if there was a proto-world, that's still the LATEST common ancestor of all the languages spoken today, not the first language ever spoken. the earliest common ancestor would be some sort of chemical signaling between single celled organisms or something.
RoCeb I think that doesn't really count as language in the sense in which it is used as it is not written or spoken
good thing that neither 'latest common ancestor' nor 'earliest common ancestor' mention the word 'language', or anything else to specify what we're looking for. hell, you could say that the earliest common ancestor of british and american english is the laws of physics.
No, it would be earliest because the latest common ancestor would be modern American and British English. The earliest common ancestor would be the dialect that surfaced when American English first became distinct from British English, it wouldn't be PIE or whatever.
you're thinking of descendants, not ancestors.
We all make mistakes dude, don't even get me started on mispronunciations...
Name Explain You make good videos they're very entertaining.
Thank you! Xidnaf is a huge inspiration of mine so I'm happy to be spotted in his comment section. :P
Name Explain I also like xidnaf's videos.
Oh my god your pronunciations are the worst lol
Yeah haha, perhaps I should make a video like this attempting to correct them all
5:43
**cough** but 难 is difficult and 男 is male, not the other way round...
I speak Japanese and noticed it. They're not even the same symbols (for difficult).
I noticed that too
Same thing tho
@@lecreeperweeb4813同じ漢字ですよww、simplifiedだけ
例えば
漢字 汉子
3:24
"Old Fench"
"Serbain"
"Coratian"
Were you in a hurry to make that slide? Or just drunk?
Let alone the fact that Serbian and Croatian are the same language.
@@maxkho00 shh don't tell anyone in the former yugoslavia lest you start another civil war (source: spent a long time in bosnia)
And Moldovan is actually another name for Romanian spoken in Moldova, although it's still romanian
@@pasoska_kontrola no. Štokavian, Kajkavian and Čakavian are different language, but all the official Yugoslav "languages" are literally based on Štokavian. You could've at least make it based on different dialect! But you don't do that and still call them separate! Otherwise it's just another case of Yugoslav nations being too nationalistic.
@@gamermapper i have changed my worldview since writing that comment - yeah, they're pretty much the same
As a Xidnaf traditionalist, I choose to only accept the facts from the earlier videos, and reject any flip-flopping nonsense in this correction video.
The dude made mistakes in his earlier videos. Get over it.
@@MrCubFan415 joke, your head, yadda yadda
@@MrCubFan415 Excuse me, sir, I think your joke detector broke.
@UCI0Wy5KWMVIxvYVIDoroBPg that's okay. There was time when I was bad at understanding anything that wasn't literal, and it was one of the reasons it was suspected I have Asperger's.
Is this a reference to Vatican II?
Mistakes are good for learning.
Or so I've heard once on a wikipedia page...
Shut up because WIKIPEDIA IS HIGHLY UNRELIABLE
@@michaelmao2171 Wikipedia told me that the Altaic language family was fact. I never gotten that corrected until my conlanging friend told me.
@@michaelmao2171 joke?
@@theshamanite That's false. It explicitly says that the Altaic family hypothesis is not accepted by the mainstream linguistics community.
@@maxkho00 maybe it was in his native language
This kind of thing takes a lot of bravery to put up. Well done, and I'm very excited to see you posting videos again lately.
Mage of Void +
+
400th like
The is .
*Also, you need to change this one too, **5:42** it is exactly the other way around. Left one = Difficult, Right one = Male.*
Mishtle Tsatsomoka Haha
corrections corrections
Holy shit thank you I was raging over that so hard...
I caught that too. I don't know Chinese, but I know that symbol on the right is the Japanese symbol for 'male'. Yeah, Japanese Kanji don't always have the same meaning as they do over in China, but that seemed like quite a change in meaning to me. For the record, the only example of this I know of is how the Japanese symbol for 'oni' is actually the Chinese symbol for 'ghost', even though China does have its own folkloric creatures called oni which accordingly have their own symbol, which isn't even used in Japan.
Ayyy same, I only Kew this was wrong because I'm learning Japanese and knew the kanji 男.
Imagine if he made a number of mistakes in this video too
Stop being under every second video i watch xD
yo yo. Well there's the part in 5:44 where he mixed up the meaning of 男 (male) with 难 (difficult).
he made one, 4:47 we know that house comes from proto west germanic.
Manojoogo I guess it means we have the same interests :)
MISTAKECEPTION
rather than edit and re upload all your past videos you could begin a new series revisiting old topics with better fact checking and try to introduce new spins on the ideas that you conveyed the first time. you could accomplish this over the next year or 2 years and at the end of it delete the old videos so that you have a more accurate library for posterity. This would allow you to alternate between new videos and revisited videos, increasing the longevity of your channel without increasing your workload.
Lovemachine
+Xidnaf DO IT DO IT DO IT
+xidnaf this is a great idea. it's great to see your metamorphosis. :) i learn so much. thankyou
Yeah! But I wouldn't delete them, since he wants to keep the comments from the old videos. Just make them private though.
I wouldn't say private. Just have them be unlisted and leave the links in the descriptions of the new versions.
+
Acknowledging your errors and being open about them is a very noble thing :)
Sounds like your channel was just as big of a learning experience for you as it was for us.
I would edit out the most Grievous errors.
I don't think you quite understand how CZcams works. Once it's up, the only way to change it is to take the whole video down. I can change the title, the thumbnail, the description and the annotations, but not the video itself.
Well you will have to, or add some kind of disclaimer in their description.
Xidnaf I don't think that is necessary. You are learning, making mistakes is 100% imperative in order to grow and learn and while you know way more about this than I do, we are learning together. I appreciate that you are so passionate about this that you upload a video so fast that you might forget to fact check some things. You're human and make mistakes, it's fine. Just make sure you keep correcting yourself and improving. That's all we can ask for.
As much as I hate to put work on your shoulders, I tend to agree with the people here. If you care about providing correct information, either pull down the wrong videos or go through those videos you messed up and correct them.
+Xidnaf
Um, you can reupload after editing.
I still think "English is a Semitic language" was a good title
rzeka Me too :D I thought that anyone who has a little bit of interest with linguistics will know that English is a Germanic language with Romance influence :/
He should pull an Evangelion and re-title it as "English is (not) a Semitic language"
You get the best of both worlds that way! :D
That actually is a good idea!
No, it is downright a bait title.
+106103456813160498556 I'd only consider it bait if he never addressed it in the actual video, which he does
In french, there's a thing called 'liaison' so syllables can spread through words
Yeah my french teacher is always reminding people in my class about it. Weirdly, it happens more with nous avons or vous avez than for anything else that requires a liaison
I'm here just because I'm an english learner and I just wanna train my listening (because you speak super fast) and learn something interesting while doing so.
Keep it up 😂
Do we actually not know where the word house comes from? I assumed it was Germanic. (Haus in German)
Yeah, but we don't know where Proto-Germanic got it. We don't know if it goes back to PIE or if it went through Grimm's Law.
Perhaps it is a Germanic thing that Spanish picked up from Gothic. Other Romance languages use "doma" or something similar
Latin has the words 'casa' and 'domus', both meaning house, but 'casa' was something more like a hut or a house of poor people and 'domus' was the type of house occupied by the upper classes. So Spanish, Italian and Portuguese got 'casa' from there.
Really? I would expect the opposite. Casa coming from castle or castile or castilian, the rich people, the kings and dukes. Doma as in domicile just meaning a place you live in.
Interesting point. I assumed English house and Spanish casa were related. But then, Hungarian has ház, which sounds so similar, that I assumed it must have been borrowed from German, but apparently, there is also a Finnish word it could be cognate with. But then there is Hungarian fiú, meaning boy, related to Finnish poika? And Romanian fiu, meaning son, from Latin filius. Coincidence? Confusing?
man the difference in sound quality
Don't worry, everyone makes mistakes. Your video's are fun and interesting which is why I watch them. Besides me slightly misunderstanding the history of the Thai language is going to cause any massive problems in everyday life.
*isn't
"...the Thai language *is* going to cause..." -> "...the Thai language *isn't* going to cause..."
Att lite missförstå historien av Thailändska kommer inte orsaka gigantiska problem i ditt vardagliga liv.
xidnaf, we all make mistakes but it's how we deal with our mistakes that define us. thanks for the straight up honest video, you can hold your head high.
5:43
wow that really yanged my ying
呂紹熙
I wonder if Jacksfilms is really this big.
Don't you mean it yinged your yang?
+Vexillographer You are on another level of dad.
呂紹熙 SUCH A GREAT PUN
Is Xidnaf finally back to making content semi-regularly?
He said it in a comment that he's trying his best to be active on yt
he had a horror 2016, the community hopes he can return to posting again :D
my thoughts exactly
well people make more mistakes the more often they upload :) that's why CGP grey almost never uploads.. he is a perfectionist and tries to get everything right... and then even he get's a few things wrong and it "kills him" :P
I feel the struggle too
Dude, I once had to do a presentation in eighth grade about my favorite President. I was a smart kid, but didn't know who to do it on. My dad suggested Reagan. I, a gay thirteen year old, told the world, well twenty other thirteen year olds that my favorite President was a man who destroyed unions, and ignored, thereby exacerbating the AIDS crisis. Later on I went to college for international affairs, and got in a full on screaming match with a guy in class because he rightly pointed out that the war my dad fought in was completely amoral. You're going to make mistakes. Learning isn't always pleasant, which is why a lot of people choose not to. You're inspiring a ton of people to get into linguistics. Sometimes you'll be wrong. That's okay. You could have a PhD in linguistics, and someone will nitpick a sentence in your paper to discredit you. Keep your head up. I don't know you at all, but I love your videos, and am weirdly proud of you for this one. Keep it up!
ibx2cat just did the same with his geography series and I loved that he did it, yours even more since these mistakes are sometimes hysterical haha!
Xidnaf, I'm sure most of us are mere hobby linguists as well. That's why we come and watch your videos. If somebody happens to use your channel for legitimite academic research, that's on him.
We still learned a bunch. *And so did you.* And you stood up for it, you didn't look for excuses and made this video.
You stayed true to yourself and even if you gain heaps of subscribers in the future, I doubt very much you'd sell out, since you seem to be genuinely passionate about your channel :)
Oh, and about the vocalized thing: In German a vowel is called Vokal. Naming a consonant that becomes a vowel vocalized feels very natural to me at least! ;D
This is like the roast yourself challenge but ranked
I think people who watch this type of educational content in their free time are naturally skeptical, and you're doing everything right in terms of highlighting and apologising. Maybe link this video in the description for all of the videos with serious errors if you want to do more. I also think you have low self esteem, I do as well. People like your content, I would be very upset if you quit youtube because you spent too much time thinking about your failures
I pointed out a minor presentation error on another language channel and he totally lost it, insulting me and talking about how much time he puts into the videos etc. Would you rather be that guy, or too apologetic? Who do you think will do better over time, someone who throws a wobbly whenever they get criticism, or someone who corrects and builds?
Look CGP grey has the same issues, every artist and creator face criticism.
I think it's a postitive good thing, even if most humans are not equipped to handle this we have this community that can be of help and support.
For your error n° 2, syllables spawning over two words exists in French (you mostly see this in poetry where you have to count syllables)
And I think you can keep it all uploaded, they're interesting, they're good to show progress and understanding, and if really, just put the details/errors/corrections in the description :)
I'm very happy to see you back and forth, and to be honest as an ESL teacher at uni, I sometimes show the football video or the ass video to students for a laugh and a discussion :)
I'm impressed. That video took a lot of courage to make. I've been subscribed to your channel for a while and I know you're not the only one that makes mistakes but it's the first time I see someone so thoroughly revisit and own up to their mistakes. Kudos. Your frank humility humbles me. Keep your videos coming!
2 xidnaf videos in one month? Next there'll be a second coming of Jesus.
The month isn't over, yet ^.^
I rather pray to the google technicians and subbox working correctly.
5:44 Doesn't the one on the right mean male and the left one is difficult?
Let's just say he's not really familiar with asian languages
Fummy yes, you're right
Fummy I was just about to post this. I think an annotation may be needed.
Fummy yes it's the other way around.
I noticed that one too XD
It's really awesome you haven't taken the videos down. I wish I could own my mistakes half that well. And regarding the thai-video, I think the sentiment is still pretty much right even if it isn't exactly as you said. I remember how that video helped me see the bright side of english ortography for example.
I've never watched this guy beyond his video about china not existing and this one. I just love how his crudely drawn face can show an emotion I don't have a word for bu accurately portrays how he feels about the mistakes, it's fantastic.
The fact that Xidnaf would want to make a video like this makes me like his channel even more.
Edit: Would it be so much work to redo the voiceover for the video on Thai with the vocalized problem?
Replacing audio is a bit difficult, I have tried to do this myself and it's very frustrating T_T
But yes, it's possible.. Perhaps the best way of doing it would be to use dubbing techniques to just overwrite the parts that are wrong... well that's basically what you suggested xD
Very humble video. we all here 4 u
"A gentleman upon realizing he has made a mistake strives to correct it". I still like your vids dude. Also, necroposting and you may already know this by now, but there is some debate on whether or not Old Chinese (Shang-Qin/Han) used characters that represented polysyllabic words, what they most certainly DID have were contractions, like 盍 for 何不 "Why not", 焉 for 於之 "at/on/in that/this place" and finally my favorite 旃 which is a rarely seen contraction for 之焉(as in the above) which means it's a contraction of 之於之. The meaning is highly context based but *very* roughly equates to "(action done to)[object] at/on/in that/this place". ALSO, to make this even more complicated, current comparative linguistic research suggests Old Chinese had suffixes/prefixes (reconstructed via comparison to other Sino-Tibetan languages that recorded them, as they are not reflected in the characters themseves), the suffix'd word would then sometimes, but not always, be recorded with a different character, and I could go on but I feel another PTSD attack from learning Classical Chinese coming on. Cheers!
Thanks for clearing things up. This is a pure sign of personal growth.
omg I LOVE number 4! Moreover, I'd have thought exactly the same thing if I were in your shoes! 😜 But seeing it on context, with people's responses is priceless 😄
It takes a great man to admit his mistakes, much less shine a huge spotlight on it for 11 minutes!
I'll forgive you ;)
Not sure why, but this video really endeared me to your channel. I already have a budding interest in linguistics, but an honest and frank sense of self-correction can go a long way to earning trust. Makes me want to double-check my own borrowed facts. love ya Xidnaf! Keep learning and being human :)
I'm a (very) amateur linguist myself, so this video speaks to me. Don't be too hard on yourself Xidnaf! (Even though I do find your self-deprecating animations cute and hilarious)
hirigana made me laugh, xd still the most interesting channel about languages!!
I like how you get frustrated at yourself throughout haha. I am in love with your humility. Thanks for being who you are.
I appreciate your effort to correct your mistakes, especially in such detail. Shows an honesty that many lack
However many mistakes you've made, you still helped me FINALLY decide what to do with my life: I applied for Japanese to start next year so I can start 'developing' my absolute love for languages and origins while studying something that'll be able to get me a job that I'll love in the future.
Always love your content, keep it up!
It shows character that you spent time to make a video just explaining when and why you were wrong in videos from up to 4 years ago. As for the videos themselves, maybe add "Watch my 'Corrections' video " to the videos' titles or the descriptions?
well done making a video of corrections. It really shows that learning is about making mistakes and clearing up misconceptions about what you know.
Thank you for spurring my interest in linguistics when i was younger!
Loved the sincerity of the video! GREAT JOB!!!
Awww, Xidnaf. I love your honesty and humility. I appreciate you making this video, and will always continue to watch your videos. Just make sure to fact-check from now on. I can't be spewing lies and citing Xidnaf in my linguistic papers, ya hear?
In most languages that come from vulgar Latin you see the C being pronounced with a soft sound as in suh before e and i, and c with a kuh or hard sound before a,u, o, i.e. Spanish, you also see it with G, the same rules apply. So, I don't think it was the French starting to pronounce it that way since most Romance languages follow this rule.
Yes. What happened is that before I and E the hard C /k/ and G /g/ (like in “cat” and “game”) bacame palatalized /kʲ/ and /ɡʲ/ and then palatal, so basically their sounds became CH /tʃ/ and J /dʒ/ (like in “choose” and “joke”). In Italian and Romanian they're still pronounced that way, in other romance languages the sounds diverged. In French the CH /tʃ/ became TS /ts/ and then /s/ (that's why in French and Old French borrowings “ce” and “ci” are pronounced like “se” and “si”) and the J /dʒ/ became ZH /ʒ/ (like the “s” in “pleasure”), but in English they went back to be pronounced J /dʒ/ (we say “age” /eɪdʒ/ and not /eɪʒ/). In Spanish the S /s/ became /s̺/, while the CH /ts/, then /s̪/, then in some dialects /s̪/ and /s̺/ became both /s/ and in other dialects /s̺/ kept beinɡ /s̺/ and /s̪/ became TH /θ/ (as the TH in “think”). In Spanish the J /dʒ/ became ZH /ʒ/ and then SH /ʃ/ and then /x/ and in some dialects H /h/ (that's why the h-like sound in Spanish is written with J or G before E and I… because in many cases it comes from the sound that the “j” does in English).
I so happy that you're making videos again, you made me really enjoy linguistics and made me want to learn new languages. thanks to you I am currently learning Japanese, Spanish and a little German on the side. Anyways thank you for your contribution to this site I'm sure you've had a lasting impact on many people's lives.
I really admire your honesty. Keep them up!!!
I love your content and I've learnt a lot with it, including with your mistakes.
Thanks for making those videos
Omg I'm early! Hi xid! It's me from 3 years ago on youtube inbox •~•
Oh god these mistakes...It's fine, as long as you learn from them, I mean. They're not that bad, but if you went on r/linguistics or r/conlangs and started saying this stuff, you would get cyberbullied tbh. Trust me, I learned my lesson. I said that there was only 3 alphabets in the world once....hell broke loose.
Btw, I saw took that Casa/House thing very seriously XD
Eisen Heinrich xid
my thoughts 501 what?
VSauce title "This is not yellow" has one up on you, because Michael there is TECHNICALLY right. The color he shows isn't yellow, but a mix of green light and red light
No. I feel strongly about this. The word "yellow" does not refer to electromagnetic waves of a particular range of frequencies. It refers to stuff that looks yellow.
I agree, if we go down the route of what "is" yellow and what "looks like" yellow, then we might as well start using E-Prime and completely stop using the verb "to be", and nobody wants that :D We say something "is" a certain thing or a certain way as shorthand for what we perceive because in most cases, for all practical intents and purposes, it applies.
+Xidnaf "The word "yellow" does not refer to electromagnetic waves of a particular range of frequencies."
By definition, every colour you see is the result of a certain frequency of photons that your eyes receive. The claim "it looks yellow" is rather dubious because human eyes don't work in an absolute way (what is seen as yellow for you is not yellow for some other creature) and colour blindness is a thing.
Matching conventional colour names to certain frequencies help us define things in a rather efficient and functional way. If the light frequency definition of yellow didn't exist, there would be no legitimate arbiter of what "looks yellow" other than each person's intuition and personal eyesight, both greatly unreliable tools.
> If the light frequency definition of yellow didn't exist, there would be no legitimate arbiter of what "looks yellow" other than each person's intuition and personal eyesight, both greatly unreliable tools.
Color terms are primarily intended for everyday speech, where we don't care about frequencies and wavelengths of light but do care about what things look like to a typical human (and where precision is not usually important); therefore, it makes sense to define colors in terms of what things look like. If you want to be precise about electromagnetic frequencies, then you can use numbers; or you could define color terms precisely _within the context_, but if you do the latter, then those precise definitions only hold within the context where it's relevant, and to everyone else color terms will still refer to how things look.
+chrideedee To bring up Vsauce: If you rely solely on the fact it "looks yellow", how do you know that what you and other have agreed upon about what yellow is doesn't fluctuate even slightly between the participants? You could spend your entire life with an idea of what is yellow, but being fundamentally different than what someone else could see.
After all, every day speech doesn't have to invoke photon frequencies and wavelengths, but that doesn't nullify the facts of it. This is more within the conundrum of philosophy rather than physics (colour being what it looks like or what it is fundamentally consisted of), but my take is that yellow has a definition, so imitation of yellow sure as hell looks yellow, but it's not quite the colour yellow. Step inside a dark room with no lights and what looked like yellow will be pitch black within seconds (unless it's actual light bulbs we are talking about).
This is really good Xidnaf, it's great that you haven't let your mistakes discourage your from continuing to do your awesome work. I really like your channel a lot and you are a very entertaining person to learn from. I think it would be nice if you took down the old videos and re-uploaded some updated versions, but I understand that that will be very time consuming, and this format has been entertaining to watch. Maybe keep on the way you have been, improving all the time, and just upload another corrections video when you find the mistakes have piled up. Either way, I really appreciate everything you are doing here!!
Your videos are fine, Xidnaf. You have made some of my favorite videos. Making mistakes is how you learn and improve! Don't forget to keep on being awesome!
I HAVE BEEN RE-KNOWLEDGED AGAIN
3:26 Old Fench
I found your channel like 2 weeks ago and i wasn't sure will u ever upload, but u did!!! Aghh I love this channel :)
Also I'm really happy that you corrected yourself, I was almost thinking that my whole life was a lie and Estonian is actually indo-european
Haha Xindaf, my man! You're doing great, being so honest and all.
For starters you can just put annotations to all the videos correcting the mistakes or just pointing out that there are some, and / or link to this video to all of them at the and (as an annotation or just in the description).
Secondly, you can make it easier and share some of the work. Make a team, issue assignments, I'm sure there are people who are fans that would love to work with you (me included :D) into making this a thing.
In my account you're far better when it comes to getting to a point and humor then the competition.
You're fine my friend, if someone doesn't like it....they can leave :D
Hey, Xidnaf, it's ok to make errors. Take it easy on yourself. We all do.
I'm really glad you made this video. I respect that you can own up to your mistakes and do your best to correct them. Personally I think you should leave the videos up that just have minor/moderate errors, but the ones that have major flaws that undermine the whole message should be made unlisted. They could be edited and re uploaded if the core message could be better conveyed that way.
Keep up the great work dude, love the vids even if they aren't perfect 👍
Love you to come up with this bro. Not many around my area do this kind of thing. And, no, Thai people can hardly understand ancient Thai writing. For me, it is complex and remain so solely by conservatism. There are some changes in spelling these days. Like, the word "Mai?" which can be spelled using a Mai Malai or Maimuan or Mai Hun-aghad but the official version is Mai Malai one. Some young people spell it using the last option, and it pisses a lot of people off badly.
Unlist all questionable videos and put them in a playlist entitled something like "Classic Xidnaf". Then redo them. That will obviously take HUGE amounts of work, but you need to have your channel be presentable. If anyone wishes to see your older videos, they can look in the playlist, but they won't appear to any newcomers, who will only see your improved content at first. This is the approach Lockstin/Gnoggin used when he rebranded his channel, and I think it would work quite well for you as well. Best of luck!
Edited for grammar
Drewthedude64 I agree
Most CZcamsrs don't really do that.
I laughed a lot during this video. The problem is that I had a sore throat and now I have a horribly hurting throat.
This my favorite nod your videos it really shows your learning
6:00 honestly this explains why I don't have the Cot-Caught merger whilst my mother does. I originally thought that once merge, vowels can't unmerge, but no, they can. Especially since I'm from the PNW.
Don't be so hard on yourself, Mr Xidnaf :(
7:43 Correction: Years, 4 y/ago and 2 y/ago are 2 years apart. Not months, years
If it was me, I would leave most of them with just annotations. For the top few with truly grievous errors, I'd redo them and reupload. Glad you're back uploading anyway, love your stuff!
I love the expressions of exasperation and annoyance on your stick-figure's face. So expressive.
It's also good to get all these corrections.
Hey I have an idea for correcting mistakes! At the end of each video (form now on) you can add a little message saying "check the descriptions for any corrections!" so if you say something wrong in the video, you can just make sure to correct yourself in the description, and in a pinned comment!
As for the old videos, I guess you can just add the corrections to the descriptions and in a pinned comment and just kinda hope people read it!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hope this helps!
It's only natural that people make mistakes. I'm glad you're keeping all the videos in their original form.
I'm so happy that your doing video again. even if you make mistakes, your videos are still very interesting and you made me love linguistic and stuffs, so I'm grateful for that
I think I would annotate those videos, linking them to a newer version, and redo them all. That way you keep the views, the comments, and still avoid people seeing them. And for those who don't have annotations turned on, you can change the video title with something like "Untranslability and Japanese Pragmatics - UPDATED VERSION LINK IN THE DESCRIPTION". Anyway, I really appreciate your videos, and am glad to see you correcting yourself. Keep up the good work!!!
Dude don't be so hard on yourself. Your videos are good!
I'd say to leave the videos up, but put corrections in the description. I also think there's a way to sticky comments to the top of the comment area so that people can see that you have made corrections when they scroll down to comment.
This piece is excellent. Not only is it a correction of past errors, it also adds to the wealth of linguistic information you present. I wouldn't bother listening to anything about linguistics, if your channel didn't exist. You're doing a great job. I would not remove any of the past videos.
So glad to see you back! I think it's fantastic that you're willing to hold yourself accountable in this way. I see no reason to take the videos down. I do like the idea that others have voiced of revisiting some of the older topics in new videos with revised information. I love your channel!
#9 5:43 nooope wrong way around!
I hope we can all agree how brave you are for posting this. It could be another project editing and cleaning up the old ones. Maybe citing sources could be a thing.
Even if I was misinformed (at least for awhile) because I watched your videos, they gave me a genuine interest in language
Thanks
God bless you man. You truly love this stuff
I LOVE YOUR ANIMATIONS
It's less an Animation as a Bush is a Sequoia tree.
Neo-Nuclearcrazed ɪ'm not saying they look good. ʙut they're droll, simple and easy to understand.
eL whYwhY me too :DD
ciraDany '_'
I'm just saying that it isn't really an "Animation"
Neo-Nuclearcrazed its still a sequence of images, not a proper animation. but thats fine
3:42 sorry to correct you again, but Uralic languages are still spoken in the northernmost parts of European Russia.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Linguistic_map_of_the_Uralic_languages_%28en%29.png
Hente Hoo yusshhhhhhh
It's nice that you acknowledged the mistakes, you should keep doing more videos!!It's fun to learn with you and you don't make mistakes so often
Wow, this was a really entertaining and thorough way of addressing corrections! It made me laugh and made me think.
When I make a serious mistake in a video that can't be fixed with just annotations, I'll generally try to upload a new updated version. But what to do about the incorrect upload?
- If I noticed the mistake quickly (like, within 2 weeks) then I'll delete the old upload.
- But if I notice, like, a year later, I'll sometimes re-upload a new version, and cover the original upload with an ENORMOUS annotation linking everyone to the new version, as well as at the top of the description. And hopefully the new version will eventually get more popular than the incorrect one.
Of course, it just kinda depends on what you want to do. Either way, well done for making a fun and comprehensive corrections video. The New York Times should do these. :)
0:32, they don't even exist anymore
RIP annotations, and fuck YT for getting rid of them and the dislike count.
Re upload them with a buzzer noise every time you get something wrong and in the description you can say what was wrong.
I love your videos. They're always great...even with occasional mistakes. 2 things below:
1) Pronunciation of yin/yang: In Chinese, it's pronounced yɑŋ, not yæŋ
2) You were asking if Chinese words are monosyllabic or not...it's kind of complicated. For example, the word for "phone" is 电话. These 2 characters mean 电＝"electricity" & 话＝"speech, word, etc.", so together...they make the word *phone*! Yay teamwork :D
A lot of Chinese words are like this...电脑: electricity + brain = computer. 电台: electricity + station = radio. 电梯: electricity + stairs = escalator. 电池: electricity + pool = battery.
The lesson to learn is that in modern Chinese, especially spoken, each character has a VAGUE meaning...but putting 2 together forms a SPECIFIC meaning. Because of this, most words, tend to be 2 characters.
First, I love self-deprecating humor, and you pull it off wonderfully here.
Second, it I were the one doing this, I would probably unlist the old videos and re-do them. But I am a stickler for always being as perfect as possible and always hate everything I make because it's never possible to be perfect, so take that with a grain of salt.
Third, you were the one that started me down the rabbit hole of linguistics and also realizing that I have every merger listed for General American. I've been really concentrating lately on bringing the letter t back into my vocabulary.
I wish a channel like yours exist expect it is academic. Maybe Nativelang is the closest. Not that your work is not great. Keep it up!
Re upload them with corrections, but keep the originals ones also
In Romanian, we can merge 2 words with a dash (-), and syllables are also merged. For example, we can merge "că" and "am" (că=a sort of because? and am is an auxiliary verb used to form a past tense... romanian grammar is REALLY complicated, okay?) to make "c-am". It doesn't mean anything different, we just do it for the sake of talking faster. Also, the 2 syllables merge into one, single syllable, despite the fact that there are 2 words. I don't know if this is relevant to the video, but I hope I helped!
Love the channel. Don't let your mistakes get you down. Keep up the great work.
Corrections: at 5:43, “难” means difficult and "男" means male.
Look at the bottom left corner
Leave some annotations, some edits in the descriptions, whatever you gotta do. But leave the videos, dude! Love em
@Xidnaf, Answer to the confusion about Chinese characters corresponding to syllables vs something more (to the best of my knowledge. I'm not a native speaker, but attended beginners classes plus asked my native-speaker friends lots of questions):
1. Traditional -> Simplified Chinese (Mandarin) transition made things... simpler. The existence of the 2 may explain why you read conflicting info (some info on Traditional, some on Simplified while thinking they were speaking about the same written language).
2. In Traditional Chinese characters Can (but don't always) represent words, sentences, paragraphs or even stories, especially if the characters in question were inscribed into metal (the heavier the writing limitations, the more concentrated the meaning gets)
3. In Simplified Chinese, 1 Character -> 1 Syllable, plus the complexity of characters is lower than in traditional Chinese, and there are fewer of them (It was created from Traditional in PRC times and is used in mainland China, whereas Hong-Kong (at least for Cantoneese) and Taiwan use Traditional.)
I hope this clears things up. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I think you're amazing, Xidnaf. Just put the link of this video in the description of the old ones and that's fine. So good to see you back!