Weekly update October 31, 2015

From Marc van Oostendorp's "Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics" course https://www.coursera.org/course/humanlanguage

(Marc van Oostendorp) So this is how
we have got more insight

into how the language
really works in the brain.

This is how we got more insight in
this particular miracle of human language.

We just concluded now another video.

We're just filming now, we're here
in the studio filming

basically the last thing we have to film
for the new module,

which will be about
language and the brain, of this MOOC,

while you have been studying and
working very hard on the first week,

and you've been doing great,
you've been doing fantastic:

for instance in our discussion forum

there have been many very interesting
discussions going on already.

I like particularly the discussion
about Esperanto.

Esperanto: a constructed language, meaning
a language which didn't exist

until the mid 19th century, when it was
made up, basically, by one person,

Zamenhof, and now, there are a few people
who speak it natively,

and people have been wondering what does this mean?

Is that now a natural language?

Is it a natural language like any other language?

I have to admit to you this question
comes close to my heart,

also because I learned Esperanto
as a child myself.

I'm not really a native speaker, but
I come quite close, maybe,

to being a native speaker of Esperanto,

so I'm very interested
in the question myself.

And it's not true what some of you say
that linguists generally think

that it doesn't count
as a natural language.

It's a little bit different,
but Esperanto, it's true,

it has people who speak it natively
or quasi-natively,

it has a community of speakers,

people use it for all different kinds
of purposes.

So it definitively, at least, comes very
close to being a native human language.

But on the other hand, it is also
a little bit different.

We have to admit that.

There is no village, there is no town

there is no community of people
living together and using that language

in everyday life.

There is no bakery where people go to
and order their bread in Esperanto.

So, this difference between natural and
artificial, constructed language

is not just an opposition,
it's more like a scale

and Esperanto definitely is somewhere
there on that scale.

Some people have also asked about
Sign Language.

If we count Esperanto as not being
a full human language,

a full natural language, what about
Sign Language, then?

And it's true that some of the things
I've now said

are also true for Sign Languages.

For instance, also for Sign Languages,
there usually is not just some community

of people living together in one place
and only using a Sign Language.

There's also very few bakers,
bakery shops,

where you can go and buy you bread
in Sign Language.

So they have certain things in common.

So Sign Language is just
yet another point

on this large scale of natural versus
artificial languages.

That's my take on this, it's definitely
also not the last word to be said on this:

the last word to be said on this,
you can say it.

Go to the forum, go to the Coursera page
and talk about this further.

I would love to join, and I'm
probably going to join you as well

in this discussion.

And then, see you next week, see you
next week for the second module already,

a module where we're going
to talk about sounds.