129: They Started It: Children and Language Evolution (with Madeleine Beekman)

0:00Stee and I are moving from this town next year and we have talked about for five years going to see the local football team play and they're playing a game. And they don't always do that. That's good. And now Stee has seen all the three local football teams lose at home. Yes! As God intended.

0:30Hello and welcome to Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language. I'm Daniel Midgley. Let's meet the team. First up, it's Ben Ainslie. Ben, for this Halloween just gone, as you know, I was protest frog. Yes. I handed out buckets of candy with my tiny amphibian hands.

1:01I want to know if it impacted your life in any way, this Halloween thing, or if you observed any costume trends. So, as I think one of the sort of probably best global pastimes for Halloween now is just the social media content that's generated of people just doing incredible costume stuff. It's like cosplay for not cosplayers, I guess. So, like everyone, I had my faves there. I had two favourites.

1:31I had one lady show up on my TikTok feed who made what I can only describe as a prodigiously well-articulated armadillo costume for her little, like, her six- or seven-year-old daughter that she could actually, like, roll up in. And I also just have a huge affection for armadillos. I think they're just great creatures. So, that was one. And then another one I saw was a couple's costume of, and I'm sure this has probably hit your feet as well, Hedwig, they dressed up as the German girl at the pig contest,

2:02the really intense German girl who was showcasing the pig. Do you not know what I'm talking about, Hedwig? Do you not have any understanding of this? Intense German girl showcasing a pig? No. I won't slow this down too much now, but I'm sure there's a whole bunch of people listening to the podcast who are like, oh, yeah, so the guy was dressed in a very kind of almost belittling pig costume. Wow. Okay. We'll have a link in the show notes for this episode. And we have Hedwig Kiergaard. Hedwig, same question. Did Halloween touch your world this year? Yes, absolutely.

2:33I like Halloween. I like dressing up. I'm one of those, like, I like a classic, like, vampire, scary practice day. Monster. I like the cohesion. Like, I like the... I know that that's not everyone's cup of tea. Some people just dress up as whatever. But I like there to be a scary element. I think it's good to be scary. I think kids need to be scared sometimes. I think scary stories for kids and scaring kids is something I've gotten into trouble for before. I think I've talked about before. You got that crazy auntie energy.

3:05I just think there needs to be a bit of an edge in their world. A hundred percent. I understand that. I have understood in my later years that I should dial it back a little bit with some kids that I don't know. Scary is good because it prevents overfitting in their training data. Overfitting. Can you explain that to a non-research scientist? Does it? You know what I mean, Hedwig? I'm just thinking if it does. Well, overfitting is a problem in machine learning because the algorithm learns the training data too well, and so it can't generalize to new problems.

3:37But having something scary just throws a spanner in that training data and just keeps your brain from falling into a local minimum or maximum. Keeps them on their toes. If you ever watch the Addams Family, any Addams Family media, you'll understand that they look very scary and they are the nicest people in the neighborhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like Edward Scissorhands. Yeah, a hundred percent. And Gomez Addams, I think Loki is probably the single greatest template for like unrelenting husband love. Like he just loves his wife so much.

4:11Yeah, he loves everything about her. I'd always have. So we gave away thousands of pieces of candy this Halloween. And my observation, speaking of Addams Family, I found that the costume trend this year was Wednesdays. We had just Wednesdays for days. Because it had just come out. Yeah. But all the costumes were really different from each other because like Beetlejuice is a really well-defined costume, stripy suit, you know, but a Wednesday costume is much more of a vibe. It's just kind of like vague, gothic, lacy, something, something.

4:42Isn't it black dress with a white collar, a tie, braids? It should be noted though, Hedvig, you can manifest that in a lot of different ways, right? Like the phrase black dress means many different things. That's what I saw. Oh, I see. Well, maybe they did what I did, which is that like I didn't go to a Halloween store and buy a black dress. I have a black dress at home. And I'm not going to like buy new shit for no good reason. Something purpose built. Yeah, that's right.

5:12Yeah. So maybe the parents were just like, you have a funeral dress. Let's pick that. Also, there were some couples costumes, one with a number six on them and one with a number seven. Oh, kill me now. Kill me now. Oh no. Did some young people say numbers to you, Ben? It's just, we are, we, whatever the cultural equivalent of semantic satiation is, I am, I am there. Yeah. Okay. It's just, it's been bleached of all meaning and content. And it is now akin to seagull squawking,

5:45which is to say they're not hugely unpleasant, but also if it went away, I wouldn't be upset. It's not contentful. None. Well, thank you both for being here. It is great to see you for this episode. Here's what's coming up. Across our desk at Because Language headquarters, we got a book called The Origin of Language. That's the title. Ba-ba-bam. The Origin of Language. Yeah. That's a big swing. That's a big swing. It certainly is. It's by Professor Madalena Beekman, Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney.

6:17It's about how language got to be. And Dr. Beekman goes for child care as a prevailing mechanism that drove language. But here's the interesting bit. Dr. Beekman is coming at this from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist and not a linguist. That's fun. Yeah, I know, right? It's good to listen to different people. So Hedwig and I had a chat with Professor Beekman and decided to find out what was on her mind and how the evolutionary biology facts converged with the linguistic facts.

6:49And should we give some spoilers, Hedwig? Well, one spoiler maybe is because I think some linguists, when they hear that there's a book, The Origins of Language will go, so one spoiler is maybe that she discusses a lot of different things and I don't think that was her original choice for a title. That is what I got as well. Is that fair to say? That is fair. Well, that's what she told us. Yeah. But I will say that her book did not suffer against the linguistic facts as I have them. No.

7:19No. Right. That's what I'm going to say. So what I'm hearing between the lines here is basically like, you were both ready to be like, oh, here we go. And then you walked away from being like, oh, we didn't go there. This is great. Yeah. She's reading a lot of stuff and maybe she's not going to the conferences and talking so much directly, but I think she got things on the right track. She's a good researcher. That's the sign of a good researcher, right? She's dug deep and she's read all these things and I think it made a lot of sense. I would put it to both of you that all of the people who would enjoy spending time at

7:53linguistic conferences already do. Yes.

7:59I'm just going to put it that way. Well, we're having that chat with Dr. Beekman later on in this episode. Now it's November 2025 as we record this. That means we're getting ready for the annual mail out with stickers, magnets, merch. The annual postcard is going out to all of our paid patrons. We'd love you to get some of that juicy merch. So why don't you sign up? Patreon.com slash Because Lang Pod will make it worth your while. Have we decided what it all is yet? Or should we put a call out to people to like, we want, we want like Ben to do a version of

8:34the Coppertone ad or something like that? The classic Coppertone ad. Get out of those buttons, Ben. He'll do it. He'll do it, folks. A hundred percent. Don't know what you're talking about, but that's fun. I have some ideas for merch items. There are certain quotes that are memorable from our show. There's always a word of the year that I turn into some kind of item. You know, last year we had the linguistic chaos goblins. That was fun. Yeah, that was fun. They're so cute. So we'll come up with some good stuff.

9:04Once again, Patreon.com slash Because Lang Pod. All right, let's have some news. Let's do it. Or Ben can do a lead into the news. No, do you know what, Daniel? What? I cede the ground to a better segue. You did good. Very good. This one was suggested by PharaohCat and Diego on our Discord. It's a new American Sign Language dictionary. What does an American Sign Language dictionary look like to you, Ben, in your mind's eye? I'm guessing it isn't a series of illustrations anymore.

9:41Methinks that that would- And when I say illustrations, I don't mean animations. I mean literally like the kinds of things that you would have had to print in a book. I'm guessing it's not that anymore. It is not that anymore. And it's either animated or it's video. Hmm, he's good. He's very good. It is entirely online. It is video. It has about a thousand signs in it. And you'll see signed words defined using other signs. Just like when you have a dictionary in English, it defines words in terms of other English words.

10:12Well, this defines signs in terms of other signs. How about that? That's so fascinating. Going to right now, so it is the ASLDictionary.com. The ASL Dictionary Monolingual Edition.

10:27Monolingual Edition. So that's the key aspect, right? Because if there was any written component, I'm guessing that would make it bilingual, yes? Well, Tigertonia on our Discord has pointed out that written words are still a part of ASL, and they've got their own conventions like all caps. So that's a part of it, but this seems to be something special for the ASL community. This is a quote from one of the designers, MJ Bienvenu. Quote, creating a monolingual ASL dictionary is not just about the signs, definitions, and sentences. It's about honoring ASL as a complete independent language.

11:00This work celebrates our culture, our identity, and the power of seeing ASL defined through ASL itself. End of quote. Pretty cool. It looks really nice. Can I dig in just a little bit there, Daniel, to the idea of – so first of all, I need some help with the vernacular. So ASL can be expressed through the hands, or all signed languages can be expressed through the hands. But you've just mentioned that there is a written component which differentiates itself from written English in some key ways.

11:31What word do we use to describe those two aspects of ASL? Do we call them modes? Modes. Yeah, I mean, we could say it's multimodal. Just like spoken English is multimodal because there's writing and speaking and gesturing. Lots of modes. Okay, okay. So the reason I ask about this question about modes is I, until this very moment – and you would have thought that this would have come up before now for me in this show – I've just now learned that the written expression of a signed language is different from English, right? It's not just English.

12:01So there's different ways of, quote-unquote, writing sign languages, right? So, like, on this website, for example, there are English words, like, written in Latin characters. Like, there's an item here that says phone. And if I click on it, a little video will play, and it'll give me the ASL word for phone. But also when I click it, I see little symbols that say, like, sort of midpoint – it's – I actually don't – I can't read it.

12:32Yes, exactly. That's what I noticed. So this is really interesting. And I had, until this very moment – and I think this just goes to show how easy it is to fall into the trap of your own perspective and framework. I had just assumed that the written mode of ASL or Auslan or BSL would have just been written English. And it's not. And that's really – that's a really important thing for me to understand. But then, you know, we do this podcast. Hey, everyone. Did you know that –

13:03It's some different thing. Wow. I think I worked it out. Okay. What have you worked out? It's – the first thing is whether you use one or two hands. The second thing is hand orientation, then it's hand shape, then it's other parts of the body, and then it's direction. Something like that. So it's – Wow. What I've learned is, like, different components. Yeah. It's describing different components because you could hold your hands like this, like, with your palms facing towards me, like this, like, up and down. You can hold them lots of different ways. All those dimensions, if they are relevant to the sign, need to be described. But I have seen also other ways of transcribing.

13:36So there's many ways of transcribing it. It's really cool. What a really, really, really, really cool project. It looks really cool, yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that it exists. Okay. Let's go on. Yes. I like this next story. This is one I noticed, and I liked it because we have talked, have we not, Hedwig, about subject-verb agreement in English and how tricky it is. I still nominate a listener who's doing a BA thesis in linguistics to take the transcript of this podcast and study. What causes me to get it right? Because I'm interested in that.

14:07When do I do it, right? Why is that? That is one thing that I do not correct. So that one will be authentic. You can just treat that one as it is. Remind Dummy Ben of this linguistic phenomena. It's when I need to remember to say they is versus they are. Oh, okay. Yeah. You say the man eats food. You don't say the man eat food. Gotcha. But it's not as simple as that. So, Ben, tell me if the sentence sounds weird. The accuracy of the results are being questioned. The accuracy of the results are being questioned.

14:39Not weird. Okay. Not to me. It should be. Oh, okay. It should be weird. Because it's the accuracy, that's singular, of the results, that's plural. Usually you can take out the prepositional phrase of the results. Yeah, but it's the accuracy that's being questioned. The accuracy. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Let me take out the prepositional phrase of the results. I'll just do the accuracy are being questioned. That's weird. That's weird. Yeah. For sure. So, that means the first sentence should have been weird as well. The accuracy of the results.

15:09Now, grammatically, the of the results part is not really relevant. So, we take it out. It should agree with accuracy. The accuracy is being questioned. So, it should be the accuracy of the results is being questioned. And yet, somehow, having that word results, that plural, exerts a magical attraction. It does. There's a field. It's going. I'll do it the next sentence. It's president is singular, right? Okay. So, the president has been shipped off on a rocket to Neptune. But, check out this sentence.

15:41The president, along with a number of his associates, have been shipped off on a rocket to Neptune. Or, has. No, that still sounds okay to me. Yeah. Yeah. These are tricky ones. These are edge cases. No, but there are a lot of these. There are a lot of these. Like, what we did in the beginning where we said, like, they is, they are. I think I get that right most of the time. But, I think a lot of native speakers of English have variation in this space and are moving. Yeah. And some varieties of English are moving more than others. The ones that Daniel's presenting do not strike me as inherently bolted down at all.

16:15Mm-hmm. Well, here's the funny thing. When we're doing agreement, we have to figure it out structurally. But sentences aren't said structurally. They're said one word at a time. And if there's a plural just before our verb, it might just cause a... It's going to fuck with our shit. It's going to fuck with our shit. It's going to mess up our agreement. So, this is agreement attraction. Now, agreement attraction happens in English. But what about other languages? Turns out there are some languages that don't show agreement attraction like this. I would have assumed that's the case simply because non-English speakers struggle with it, right?

16:48Like, as with ever you see someone from, say, a Latin background mixing up verb order or whatever, my presumption is like, oh, you must just be doing it your way. Well, here's the funny thing. You can take sentences like the veracity of the results are being challenged. You can take a sentence like that that would trip up an English speaker. And it trips up people in other languages, too. Okay. Other languages also show attraction effects. But there are some languages that don't. And one of them is Czech. If you take some sentences that trip up English speakers or other speakers

17:21and you give them to Czech speakers, translate it into Czech, of course, it doesn't sound right to change it like it does for us. It doesn't happen. So, does that mean they just use the same way for all of the things and they just don't alter it? No, you have to be studying a language that also has some kind of agreement. But they just don't fall into the same traps like we do. But what happens when a Czech speaker is learning English? Do they resist agreement attraction or do they fall into the same traps that we just did?

17:52Okay. So, like, is it just inherent and when they encounter it, they, too, encounter problems? Or because they were trained not to care about it, do they just continue not caring about it? Oh, this is fun. What? This is work from Jan Kromi of Charles University in Prague and a team published in Bilingualism, Language and Cognition. So, the team first tested native Czech speakers on the kinds of sentences that tempts people into agreement attraction and they found no effect in Czech. Okay. Then they said goodbye to all those Czech speakers and they got a bunch more native Czech speakers who were learning English.

18:27Got them to try reading and answering questions about sentences like, The file for the archivers likely was tightly sealed by the authorities. Did that sound good? Remember, it's The file was. The file for the archivers likely was. That seems so deliberately obtuse that I can't even begin to penetrate what's supposed to happen there. All right, then let's try it the other way. The file for the archivers likely were tightly sealed by the authorities. That seems okay. Sounds okay. They tried it other ways, too.

18:58Like, The files for the archiver likely was or were. They tried the files. The files for the archivers were. That's one. That ones were all the way down. So, they tried different people on all of these sentences, all these combinations. And sure enough, when they tried the English version of the test, the Czech speakers did show attraction effects in English.

19:23The sentences that sound good to us, even though they're structurally, you could argue, not correct, sounded great to them. Okay. But there's a funny twist. When they got the volunteers to first do the experiment in Czech, where there's no attraction effects, and then they got them to come back a couple of weeks later for an English version of the test, the effect vanished. Weeks. Weeks. Two weeks later, no more English attraction. Yeah, I would have thought that would have to be a rapid turnaround for that kind of effect.

19:54Yeah. I thought so, too. Did all those undergrad students that they had the first time, like, go to the same party the day before and talk about the experiment or something? Righto, guys. Wow. Well, here's what they say. The authors say that this is syntactic adaptation. They say it could have decreased the magnitude of the effect in the second session to the point of disappearance. In other words, they figured out the test. They figured out what was going on. Yeah. They pointed to factors such as familiarity and attention being relevant.

20:28So it sounds to me, it's still an interesting effect. It just means, oh, I did a test. I figured out that they were looking at this thing. Now I'm alert. And that was enough to make the attraction effect disappear. There you go. Pretty cool, though. Yeah. Attraction effects are certainly one of the more interesting things. And we're going to be talking a little bit early next year about an entire book dedicated to this and other linguistic illusions. I like this a lot because it speaks to that gray area.

21:00So grammar is supposed to be hard rules that are strict, that, like, you have to do this every time you say a sentence. You have to put a tense on your verb. You have to put a gender on your noun. You have to do this every time. But in practice, when we look at what people actually do, there's a lot of these gray areas where people are like, yeah, that's okay. I'm taller than you. Or you are taller than me. You are taller than I. Yeah. And I really like to be there and prod because that is like the prime hunting territory to, like, take down a proper grammar police person.

21:35Because they often have these. And when you alert them to it, they'll sometimes be – I have a friend who's a bit of a grammar, a police person. And she didn't know yet about the taller than me, taller than I. So she didn't have a strong opinion. And when I mentioned it to her, she formed a strong opinion right away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Which was a bit – Because she's a rule follower. Now she knows the rule. And I told her a rule. And she was like, oh, well, then I have to do this every time. And I'm like, well, look how beautiful this, like, you know, 100 flowers bloom.

22:08Look at this variation. She's like, yeah, no, I've just extended my territory now. Nope, they're done.

22:15So funny. Well, I mean, also, it's interesting not just for, you know, unearthing and quashing grammar police, but also it's one of those areas where our brains show a little bit of slipperyness. It's like, well, sometimes – I mean, usually I'm going to choose the version of the verb that matches with my subject, even though I don't know what a subject is, maybe. But, you know, sometimes I'll do it a different way because, you know, the balance of probability makes that other thing seem likely.

22:45So, you know, that works, too. It's also cool because it gives us a window into change because this is probably how change happens. So if English is ever going to get rid of its subject-verb agreement, this is the areas where that will start. This is where the creeping in starts. And as someone who – my native language is Swedish, we don't have any agreement on our verbs for anything other than tense. So I welcome you into the fold should you choose to take this path. Especially if it's not stigmatized.

23:16If there's an oncoming change that gets stigmatized, then maybe that's going to get stomped down. But this one is just below the level of awareness for many people. And this is one where you could see some movement. So fun, fun, fun. I've just – to button this little story because we were talking, we'd moved into a kind of territory of like grammar rule lovers and that sort of thing. I've recently expanded my thinking in terms of grammar police just a tiny bit. Obviously, we are all three of us pretty radically accepting of most things linguistically and at times somewhat derisive or dismissive perhaps is the best word of people who like to hew close to the tradition as it were.

24:04I found what I have found to be an acceptable place or space for like quite staunch grammar followers and that is people who find themselves in the role of teaching either people who have English as a second language or people who have speech problems full stop. Some people, not all people, but some people really, really, really, really love to learn from knowing the rules, right?

24:35And so they will learn best from someone who can just top to toe be like the rule is this, the rule is this, the rule is this, the rule is this. 100%. So I think there is a place – I will concede that there is a place for people who have knowledge of and are probably themselves very inclined to be like strong rule followers. I would just hope that that individual has the capacity to know and to acknowledge the breadth of human expression whilst they take their preference and use it for other people for whom that preference works as well.

25:08I think we've talked about this before because the other side of that coin is also there is variation, but often one of them will give you a better result in a job interview, right? Sure. And it's all well and good to say that like all varieties of English are beautiful, all dialects are beautiful, all registers are beautiful, but I think there's also – I think we've talked about this in the show before. There's also like the hard-hitting reality of like if you come from – Yeah, Stacey needs to get paid. Yeah, Stacey needs to get paid. And if Stacey comes from like a working-class family where she doesn't have access to those registers, it's great if maybe the school could give her a little bit more of a level playing field later when she meets a bunch of bigoted people in the workplace.

25:51100%. Yeah, for sure. I've done a lot of English teaching in my time. That's how I got started in linguistics. And you wouldn't be a very good linguistics teacher if you just said do it however because all varieties of language are valid. Students want to know what's going to be considered correct. You're the cool, fun teacher that low-key actually is the biggest destructive influence in the school environment. Just like, hey, guys, let's just – no harsh vibes. Let's just do it. Let's – whatever. You're the cool mom holding parties, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but what I would hope if you're an English teacher, what I would hope you would do is be aware the variation exists.

26:28Be aware of what both versions or all three versions – all the different versions mean socially and then communicate that in a way that students like because students are hungry for this information. Let's finish up with a story about friend of the show, Nick Evans, who has just been awarded the Neil and Sarah Smith Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Linguistics. Hedvig, tell us about this because I think you noticed this item first. I noticed it, but now – wait, wait, wait. I need to just look up some details about the prize.

27:00Well, tell us who he is because we know who he is. I know who he is. I've talked to him a bunch of times, had him on the show back when it was Talk the Talk, not recently. But tell us about his work and what you know about him, which is lots. Oh, Professor Nicholas Evans of the Australian National University is a great linguist. He's Australian. He has worked on indigenous languages of Australia and also languages of Papua New Guinea and many other places. He's now branching a bit into like oceanic territory, which is fun for me as someone who's worked in Australian languages.

27:33He's done a lot of really good, well-respected research in the fields of language description, of how – especially in like working out new ways that grammar can be, maybe is one way of phrasing it. He's also interested in like things like poetry and oral stories and a lot of different things. His scholarship is very wide. He was my PhD supervisor, I should clarify. So he is my Dr. Fata, and he's an all-around very cool guy.

28:08He also speaks – besides knowing various like indigenous languages of Australia, et cetera, he also is surprisingly good at German. I listened to an audio interview with him on a German radio station once, and I actually couldn't tell when he started speaking and the other people were speaking because I didn't know his German was that good. Nice. So I thought I was going to pick up like the Australian-speaking German and – Just clunkily ham-fisting his way through Deutsch. Yeah.

28:39And yeah, I did not. What else is there to say about Nick? He's also the originator of COITL, the Center for the – oh no, what does it stand for? Or what did it stand for? It stands for the Center, the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Language Dynamics. Which studied language change, language diversity. Yes. It was an umbrella under which a lot of people worked for a decade. So, including you, Hedwig. Yes, including me, including my husband as well.

29:11He's a great man, and besides being a great linguist, he's also very good at taking care of his flock, I would say. Oh, that's what I want to be. Yeah, he's funded a lot of cool people and found ways of making them their career in academia work, which is very cool. There is – on the website for the award, there is a longer description with more things that I probably haven't mentioned that I probably should. Um, if you want to read a book by him, I think it's in this list, surely.

29:45Um, isn't it called Dying Words? Yes, Dying Words. Yeah. It's a beautiful book. Uh, it's a sad book. Um, but I could – I could recommend reading it. Well, congratulations to Professor Evans. That's a great honor and very well-deserved. Now, it's time for Related or Not, we have a new jingle, and here it is. Related or Not, Related or Not, Related or Not, Related or Not.

30:39And we're back. And we're back. It is an impressive human being who can put a bridge in a song that goes for 31 seconds. Strong all the way through. Yep. That's my man. Yep. For those who are not familiar, that was my husband, Stephen Mann, um, playing piano and singing. He also recorded a much longer version for us as well, which maybe we could put at the end of the show. Is that appropriate? That's fun. Um, yes, or a Patriot Extra or something like that. Or something. Okay. Definitely.

31:10It has more words in it. Did you notice that quick sort of redirection of force that just happened there? I'll do it. I'll do it. We'll stick it there. Thank you, Steve. You know, special friend of the show and sort of fourth member of our team. Okay, this one is from Gordon and partly from me. Gordon emailed and said, I have a few pairs of homonyms I'd like to submit for related or not. In each case, one is a verb and one is a noun. Hope you enjoy. Hope it's not too obvious. Love the show. Love the feature. Okay, so in this one, I'm giving you three pairs.

31:42Two pairs are related. You have to find the distraction. Here we go. Number one, loaf as in the bread and loaf to idle about. That's the first one. Okay. Number two, hide from an animal. I mean, as in the animal's skin, the animal's hide. Right. And hide from an animal because it's going to bite you. Okay, here we go. To conceal oneself. To secrete something. And the third pair, jam the fruit preserves and jam to crowd something in together.

32:17Loaf and loaf, hide and hide, jam and jam. One of these is a distraction, but the other two pairs are related. Which one's the distraction? I'm feeling good about this. Okay, Ben's going first. Yep. Yeah, me too. I think that hide and hide are false friends. I do not think they are related. As in, if you would ask me just by yourself, I would say they were related. But I think they are unrelated because the other two seem so, so very related to me.

32:51Jam and jam for me is like a non-question, right? Like we call jam because we jam all the stuff in there or vice versa. I don't care which way it went. And loaf and loaf. And tell me about bread and walking around. Yeah, what's that? So loaf, if someone is loafing, right? They are sitting there doing nothing. Like a loaf of bread. Are they sitting? Sitting on a countertop. Just sitting there like a loaf of bread. Just loafing. Yep. I genuinely think that started where someone looked at some lazy git of a 12-year-old.

33:25I was like, you might as well be a loaf of bread for all you're contributing right now.

33:30Okay, we found a unifying sense. Hedwig's not convinced. Hedwig, which do you find the most likely to be the distraction? I think loaf and loaf because first of all, I thought loafing around also could have a movement in it. No. Smoovement? Movement. Like that you're like wandering around. You're saying no? No, I suppose it can, but I think it's semantically expanded to be like if you're bumming around the house, you might be moving, but you're not doing very much kind of thing.

34:01See, I think that back in the day where people used more animal hides. By the way, I just bought an Icelandic sheep fleece. Oh, yummy. Which they actually love. I bet they do. Um, I think hide and hide. I think you can hide under hides. See, that's what I think. Yep. I think, look, I can't say that that is any more insane sounding than loaf and loaf, so. Right, right. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I also chose loaf and loaf. I thought that jam was a non-starter because it's easy to see the connection.

34:35Hide and hide are a little bit hard to tell, but I just think loaf, it goes back to Old English. Loaf. It's so old that there was a huh in front of it. And loafing to idle about seems much more, uh, much more recent. Okay. Well, first of all, jam and jam were in fact related. Cool. So you really are jamming. It's possibly a variant of Middle English cham to bite upon something. Don't cham your food. And then jam, the preserves are just the same.

35:07You really do jam all those berries together. Hide and hide are in fact related. Aw, son of a bitch. What's going on here? The connected sense here is that you hide, meaning you conceal yourself, and the animal's own skin is something that covers it, covers it up, hides its middle. Oh, we have an animal here. Let's find out what color its hide is.

35:38I would say orange. Hey, Sandy. However, loaf, the word loaf, the bread is really super, super old, old English, whereas to loaf around first appeared in American English around the 1830s. And it comes from a word loafer, loafer. So it's one formed. But loafer, the shoe, why do we call it that? Is it because the loafer looks like a loaf of bread? Well, there was. This is from Edim Online, our pal Douglas Harper, possibly coming from the German word

36:09Landlaufer, meaning somebody who is a vagabond. A vagabond. Oh, okay. So from there, you go to the shoes that they wear, the loafers. Okay, okay. And then you back form the verb loaf. So that's a back formation. I was trying to clutch my way to success there, but no sale. Yeah, because loaf is, I think it's run. Am I right? A land runner. A land runner. Hey, like the vehicle. And I think in that case that it's connected to maybe leap. Okay.

36:40Ooh, that's interesting. Interesting. We've seen that leap and lope are connected words. This was a while ago. Thank you, Gordon. Let's go on to our second one. This one's from Pharaoh Cat from Real Life because listener Renee was in town recently. Oh, yes. So I got together with Renee, Pharaoh Cat, and Lord Mortis, and we had a hang. It was great. Nice. I saw the picture. That's very nice. Yeah, there's the picture of us on the Discord. And because they were going to the football, I didn't, but they did.

37:12But we got to wondering, Guernsey and Jersey. Oh, okay. Guernsey and Jersey. Can we throw a third one in here? Maybe. The island? Well, okay. I thought we were talking about the island. I think we're going to wind up on the island. Yes. Tell me what you know about the island. They're suspiciously close to France for belonging to the UK. But then again, Gibraltar belongs to the UK and is land attached to Spain. So my understanding is there are actually, there is an isle of both Guernsey and Jersey, is there not?

37:49In the Channel Islands, yes. They both exist. Okay. So the real question is, if the garments are both related to the island names, are the island names related to each other? And I'm going to guess that they are. And this is a classic French says this, English says this scenario. Ah, okay. Okay. Good. That's a vote for connected. Okay. By the way, just for anybody who's not aware, I know that a football jersey is a thing that you wear and a Guernsey is also the thing that you wear.

38:23Yes. Is it a groin thing? A groin thing. No, it's not. No, no, no. It's just a sweater. It's the same word for the same garment, right? Some people will call the thing a football player wears a jersey and some people will call what a football player wears a Guernsey. Oh. Okay. But then you say, oh, wait, they're two different islands. Could they be different? But then you're saying, nah, they're the same. They're the same word. I don't want to get anyone at the tax havens pissed off, right? Because they probably have a lot of resources to come after me. The islands are different, but I'm wondering if the names are related.

38:54Okay. I said, of course, related. If Warden and Guardian can be the same thing because Gu is such a weak sound, then Guernsey and Jersey can be the same also. I thought they came from the same time. Okay. And are they both the name for a kind of cow? I also think they are related. I recently saw a little TikTok video of the language spoken on Guernsey and Jersey. Like, they speak like a sort of language that has, like, touches of English and French. It's very interesting.

39:25And they had a lot of pairs that were, like, one letter off from each other. So I think they probably have that for their place as well. Both of those languages are romance languages, and both of those languages are Languedoyle. They are both yes-having languages. We know about the no-having languages of Australia, correct? Yes. Oh, we've talked about this. I think we might need to remind our listeners. This is a fun thing. There's a paper on it by, I think it's Patrick McConwell, that sometimes you don't have a word for your own language.

40:01You might call your language, like, the language or, like, our tongue or something. But then you meet other people that are neighboring to you, and they speak something that's a bit similar. What you do is you pick a shibboleth. You pick one word that tells you a part. And then you say, we're the blue languages, and you're the blah languages for that thing. So this shibboleth is the no. Yes. So in Australia, there's a set of languages that do this for no. Not all languages of Australia do this. Some do. So let me get that right.

40:32Is that happening in Queensland, right? The one example that I can think of is the language boonarung, where boon is their word for no. And then the woiarung, where woi is their word for no. And so people just say, oh, yeah, they're the boonarung, which means they're the no-sayers. They say boon for no. And oh, yeah, they're the woi-sayers. They say woi for no. So those are the no-having languages. In Southern New Guinea, languages that Nick Evans has worked on, they do the same thing, but with the word what. So, like, the different ways of saying the word what.

41:04Okay. And in ancient times, in, like, the Middle Ages, in France, before France, you know, all over Europe, there wasn't – we've talked about this many, many times, but, like, nation states are a new thing. French is a fairly modern concept, linguistically. French is kind of, like, an agglomeration, like, you jam a bunch of different things into one. And one way of distinguishing the different romance varieties that were spoken in what we today call France is how they said the word. Yes. Yes, so in the north they said oil, and in the south they said ok, which is why you have Occitan in the south, and that's also why in Paris they say oui, because it's a leftover from the oil languages.

41:46Okay. So we all three said that they are related, Guernsey and Jersey. Yes. Uh, answer. Nope. They're not. What? What? What? Triple wrongness. What? Okay, you're going to have to work hard to convince me of this. Lay it on me. For both of them, the E, Jersey, Guernsey, it's Old Norse for island. That's just island. Okay. And as we've talked about before, those ones we kind of, unfortunately, count out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for good reason, I think.

42:17Yeah, yeah. That's right. If they're both islands, I don't think that's fair. Like, that's just... Yeah, yeah. Now, I just did a little bit of digging. This kind of went everywhere, but the Guernsey is a kind of sweater because the men were going out to sea, and this is from guernseywollens.com. Many families had their own variation of the patterns in their knitwear that became a means of recognition when unfortunate sailors were lost at sea. Oh, wow. Like a dog tag. Kind of. Oh, wow. So they both have their own languages.

42:48As far as the names, Wikipedia says, scholars variously surmise that Jersey and Geri derive from Jorv, Old Norse for earth, or Jarl, which was an earl, or perhaps the Norse personal name Gyr, thus Gyrsi, Gyrs Island. So those are three possibilities there. But this is for Jersey. Yes. Okay. Gyrsi, which became a J. Now, as far as Gyrnsey, that's also of Norse origin.

43:21The original root Gyrn is of uncertain origin, could have been Grani or Warren, which is a person's name, different name, or from Gyrn, meaning spruce or pine. So different names, different places. Yeah, say it again. Gyrn is spruce or pine. Okay, good. Thank you for that pronunciation. So it might have just been like sprucey island. Gyrnsey. Spruce Island. Pine Island. Doesn't grow that far south, does it? I am not sure. There's one expression that we talked about, the four of us, when we were hanging out.

43:55What about getting a Guernsey? Why is it called that? When you get a Guernsey, what is that? In that formulation, that means being awarded, usually, something. And I have always assumed it meant, in the tradition of some sports, like in the Tour de France, you get a certain jersey or Guernsey when you win or when you do a special thing or whatever. So getting a Guernsey has become a homonym, no.

44:26It means you made the team. Yeah. You got selected. So basically, you either you make the team or sometimes in certain sports, you also get a special one for like winning a thing. There you go. Okay. So Jersey and Guernsey, shout out to people who speak those languages. I enjoyed finding out about that and we'd love to hear from you. Hey, go. Can I do a callback? Sure. So that means that Nick Evans has gotten the Guernsey for joining the team of everyone who's gotten this Sarah Smith medal. Yes. Well, who else got that medal? Which includes Noam Chomsky, William Labeau, Marianne Mithun, John Lyons, Barbara Hall,

45:00Partey, and Bernard Comrie, former director of the institute I work at. But that means that Noam Chomsky and Labeau and all of these people all have this Sarah Smith Guernsey. Am I getting it? There you go. There you go. Yeah, you nailed it. Last one from Hannah on Facebook who says, hi there, this is probably not the best place to put a related or not pair of words, but maybe better than nowhere. She has correctly figured out that I sometimes forget that Facebook exists. What about bourrée and jamboree?

45:33They both have to do with dancing, etc. If I say bourrée, does that mean anything? Do you mean the hat that French people stereotypically wear? No, not the beret, but a bourrée. Okay. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote lots of bourrées. It was a lively dance with two beats in a bar. Spill. A bourrée. B-O-U. Double R, double E. And the first E has an accent. Ague. Oh my God. This is hard. Bourrée and jamboree. Okay.

46:05Now, I'm going to have to spoil this one. I guessed no. Just your instincts, just quickly. No, but because it's being asked of me, I'm like, yes. Yeah, so for me, the bourrée of jamboree, it sounds like there would be something where like, oh, then this jam bit got added to the front. And so I could see how that could happen for a lively dance. I could too. Especially if we're talking the difference between like, snooty high class people and

46:36like, the work and folk and all that kind of stuff. Like, it's a bourrée when rich people do it. And it's like, jamboree when like, the poor folk do it. Well, I took a look. I dug as far as I could. And unfortunately, this is one of those rare pairs of words. Unclear. Where for both words, we just don't know. We have no idea where these things come from. It's a twin mystery, like into the fogs of history. And I liked it. So thank you very much, Hannah, for that related or not. It was fun to look up.

47:07This reminds me of like, every now and then, I really respect certain inanimate objects and just entities in our world for being so effectively resistant to being known. Like, I've always had an affection for a meme I saw, which was someone saying, I really, really, really respect the moon's steadfast refusal to be photographed effectively on a phone. And I love it. I have held on to that since I've, and I also love that the moon refuses to be photographed

47:39effectively on a phone. I like that these two words are just like, you don't get to know. You don't get to know. I'm mysterious, bitch. You don't get to know. You will never crack our secrets. I learned a word for this. Yeah? That, stop me if I've told you before, Hannibalism? Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Okay. Hannibal, like the lector? Hannibal was- The warrior. A Cartesian military officer who marched on Rome with elephants through the elves.

48:09It should be noted that for nearly everyone in the world, they will think of Hannibal lector from Silence of the Lambs first. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Carthage was a Phoenician empire that was rivaling with Rome and Hannibal was warring on Rome and he walked through the Alps. So he walked through Spain and France and the Alps into Rome, into Italy and then into Rome. And historians have tried desperately to figure out exactly how he walked. So like, what path did he take? Yeah. Right. His exact route.

48:40Oh, okay. But this is really hard because he did it once. So there's not like a ton of archaeological remains. Sure. And the writings don't say exactly where he went. But some people are really trying to figure it out. And some other people have coined the term Hannibalism for, you're trying to figure something out that like, it's lost in the sense of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you can't know if he- Like, we get it. You really want to know, but not- You really want to know, but like, if he took a left or a right here, we're never going

49:13to know. And maybe this is a waste of resources. I like that. Hannibalization. That's fun. Hannibalism. And it has 100% less cannibalism than I would have thought. So that's great. That's a win. Well, thank you to Gordon. Thank you to Hannah. And thank you to the team for these Related or Nots. Thanks also to Steve for putting together a brand new theme for us. If you'd like to send us your Related or Nots or any jingles, then you can do that in all the usual ways. Hello at BeacusLanguage.com or on the socials.

49:53We are here with Professor Madalena Beekman, who is an evolutionary biologist, a bee watcher,