Category: Interesting facts

In 1972, Italian singer Adriano Celentano was fed up with the impact of American popular culture on Italian music. To make a point, he composed a song titled Prisencolinensinainciusol, whose lyrics are entirely composed of gibberish that, to Italian ears, sounded like American English. The song, in a genre combining funk, disco and a precursor of hip hop, was a massive hit in several European countries. Celentano claimed to have invented the rap genre with this song and stated that he had been inspired by the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, among other things.

Thanks in large part to YouTube, Prisencolinensinainciusol  has had a long second life, with its video racking up millions of views, and TV and radio producers using it in their soundtracks.

Photo Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147983/

There are only a few recorded instances in history of an individual member of a pre-literate society creating an original writing system from scratch. One is the example of Sequoyah, a Cherokee man impressed by the concept of rendering speech in written form, which he first encountered through contact with European settlers. Seeing that their ability to write gave white settlers an advantage over the Cherokee, Sequoyah decided to right this imbalance.

While many pre-literate societies become literate in their own language by adopting an existing writing system – for instance, the Roman alphabet – Sequoyah developed his own, which he finalised in 1821. 

Having toyed with pictographs at first, Sequoyah ultimately developed a symbol for each syllable in the Cherokee language. Using printed materials as a reference, including the Bible, he developed a syllabary of 85 symbols, many of them adapted from English, Greek and Hebrew letters – but representing completely different sounds.

Initially, Sequoyah’s work aroused suspicion and he was arrested by Cherokee authorities, but when they saw how he could use writing to communicate with his daughter, whom he had taught how to read, the Cherokee people became enthusiastic about the new writing system. Literacy spread rapidly among the Cherokee, with up to 100% of them literate by around 1846; a higher rate than among Europeans settling in North America in the same time period.

Sequoyah’s work would influence many others around the world. It is believed, for example, that when a literate Cherokee emigrated to Liberia, he inspired speakers of Bassa to develop their own syllabary, and several other West African cultures did likewise. 

Photo Source: https://www.native-languages.org/cherokee_alphabet.htm

Languages come into being and are disseminated in various ways. Obviously, the languages we speak, and how we speak them, are influenced by our family and cultural backgrounds, the education we receive, and the people we meet throughout our lives.

Some researchers also believe that language may be affected by climate. Linguistic anthropologist Caleb Everett points out that different sounds can be easier or harder to make depending on the climatic conditions. For example, some sounds are much harder to make if your vocal cords are very dry, which is more likely to be the case somewhere with a hot, arid climate. According to Everett’s research, languages that developed in places with very dry climates use fewer vowel sounds than languages that developed in places with high levels of humidity, and languages that come from places at high altitude use a higher number of ejective consonants, which are explosive sounds made when the vocal cords are closed.

Nowadays, human populations are extremely mobile, so cultural influences are likely to be more important than climate into the future. Nonetheless, this unusual, intriguing and emerging field of linguistic research opens up many avenues for future investigation, including the possibility that, over time, climate change may have a noticeable impact on how we talk.

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Photo Source: https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-climate-change

Prior to the conquest and colonisation of North America, the areas now known as Canada, northern Mexico and the United States were home to a large number of indigenous cultures, each with its own language. Many of those languages were not closely related, and while many people spoke several of them, it was often necessary to communicate with individuals from very different linguistic backgrounds. 

To solve this language dilemma, these indigenous nations developed a form of signing, known as ‘Plains Indian Sign Language’, ‘Hand Talk’, and by several other names. Historically, it was used for international commerce and diplomatic relations, much as Latin was once used in Europe. It combined simple gestures – such as pointing upwards for ‘up’ – with complex hand-movements denoting abstract concepts. It also existed in a written form comprising petroglyphs, pictographs and hieroglyphs that marked territory and provided information about local water sources and other crucial information. 

Today, Plains Indian Sign Language is – like many North American languages – endangered, but a recent resurgence in interest signals that it may still have a future.

Photo Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plains_Indian_Sign_Language 

If you’re ever tempted to doubt the power of language to influence behaviour, you need only consider the tragic case of the first known relationship between literature and mass suicide.

In 1774 – at a time when fiction-writing and reading were ever-more popular – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published his novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. With its overblown emotions and dramatic plot, it was a runaway bestseller, particularly among young adult readers. 

Young men all over Europe imitated the protagonist by dressing in his trademark yellow trousers and blue jacket, and some of them were even inspired by the fictional character’s sad death (suicide by self-inflicted gunshot after being rejected by the woman he loved) to kill themselves using similar means. Panic-stricken parents rallied, and the book – as well as the outfit – was even banned in some places, while debate raged about whether or not impressionable young people should even be allowed to read fiction at all.

Today, social contagion, particularly when it relates to tragic or unfortunate outcomes, is often attributed to the media. Researchers in the area still refer to the ‘Werther effect’ in discussions of copycat suicide with a connection to language and media.

Photo Source: https://andrewbarger.blogspot.com/2017/04/review-of-sorrows-of-young-werther.html

People caring for infants often instinctively use a specific type of speech, commonly known as ‘baby talk’ or, by researchers, as ‘child-directed speech’.  It is notably higher in pitch, with a slower rate of speech and a more melodic deliverance than that typically used by adults, with an emphasis given to the enunciation of vowels, and longer pauses than is typical in spoken language.

People using baby-talk might sound irritating to the unsentimental bystander, but they haven’t actually gone goo-goo/ga-ga. Research shows that babies are more responsive to child-directed speech,  that they focus more intently on and interact more with adults speaking this way, and even that it enhances their cognitive development, including speech acquisition!

Photo Source: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/03/babies-love-baby-talk-world

Bardic poets occupied a very important role in Irish society from the pre-Christian period until the seventeenth century, with many texts surviving. Bards used highly formalised, complex poetic language to memorise and retell the history and traditions of the tribe or area they worked in, including detailed genealogies and life-stories of the elite.

In order to become a bard, would-be scholars attended special schools that were often restricted to particular families, with students subjected to arduous training, which included having to commit lengthy poems to memory, as well as writing them down. 

Bardic poets were held in such high esteem that when they cursed their employers’ adversaries, it was believed that their words could even have the power to do harm. 

Modern Irish people still admire and respect both poets and members of the general public who are good at using words to praise their allies or declaim their foes. While taken less seriously than before, inventive cursing still plays a role in modern Irish discourse. 

Photo Source: https://meathhistoryhub.ie/o-dalaigh-bardic-poets-their-poetry-and-their-patrons/

In Slavic tradition, the word ‘zagovory’ refers to verbal incantations thought to cast spells. The word itself means roughly ‘that which is performed with speech’. Practitioners used particular words, pronounced in a special way, as they performed their rites.

The tradition of zagovory is based on pre- or non-Christian beliefs, with frequent reference to sacred trees and to celestial bodies such as the sun and moon. It was an integral part of life in Slavic regions until the religious authorities decided to crack down on it from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. In response, the tradition adopted Christian themes and imagery, with the names of figures such as Jesus frequently invoked in more recent iterations of the tradition.

Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/green-and-brown-mountain-under-white-sky-during-daytime-hOevKaw_hfk?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash

Communication is one of the biggest challenges for people with significant levels of intellectual disability, who often struggle to express their needs and wants in language.

However, researchers and educators have found that using signing to support speech, and sometimes written words, can make a big difference.

Developed in the UK, the Makaton system of signing is taught to people with intellectual challenges, who can use a series of signs to get their message across, in combination with spoken language. Similar signing systems include Lámh (meaning ‘hand’) which was developed in Ireland. The signs are focused primarily on a vocabulary for essential needs, such as ‘eat’ or ‘drink’ or ‘sleep’, but can also help people to communicate their emotions, with signs for ‘sad’, ‘happy’, and so on.  

Makaton, like related signing systems from different countries, is not a fully developed sign language, like sign language for people with deafness, but it does use some of the same signs, so different regions have dialectal differences, and there is no universal vocabulary.

Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-man-in-a-white-coat-holding-a-piece-of-paper-ysYZzGKlz48

Speech that involves using a mixture of languages is known as ‘macaronic’. There are lots of examples of these from all over the world, including both spoken and written language, generally from cultures in which bilingualism is common. They include: medieval European texts that mixed Latin (then a lingua franca for the educated and for commerce and diplomacy) with a variety of vernacular languages; spoken and written language in Ireland and Scotland until the mid-nineteenth century; and languages spoken in swathes of Latin America until the present

The term ‘macaronic’ comes from a 15th century Paduan word ‘maccarona’, referring to a kind of dumpling eaten by the poorer classes at the time, presumably a verbal sneer at those seen as being less educated. This word can be found in the Italian ‘maccheroni’, a food eaten by the poor, but also in the much more refined French sweets ‘macarons‘‘.

Modern writers and singers still employ macaronic speech in their literature and music, notably Talking Heads with their 1977 hit Psycho Killer. 

You’ve probably engaged in macaronic speech yourself, perhaps referring to ‘having a siesta’ or ‘enjoying some dolce far niente’ or sighing something along the lines of, ‘Well, you know, c’est la vie…’

Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-friends-at-a-coffee-shop–uHVRvDr7pg