30 -How did people come up with words

Transcript:

Nij: Hi, I’m Nij and today on Imagine This, we’regoing to the librryy (stumbling on words) Li-br-airy? Which one is it?

Kid 1: You say lie-bree

Kid 2: LibrAIRy

Kid 1: Liiiiie-brie

Nij: Libriry? Ugh, I’ve said it too many times now

Kid 2: A library is where people keep books thenthey put them back and other people can read them

Nij: Now I’m thinking about it, ‘books’ is a funnyword too. Book or book? Why’s it called a book? Why not… a took? Or a pageflapper?

Kid 1: Word plates

Kid 2: Chapter carrot

Nij: Or a story pancake

[Kids laugh]

Nij: Lucy and Evie have been wondering…

Kid 1: Hi my name is Lucy and I’m a six year oldand I was wondering how did people came up with names and words?

Kid 2: Hi I’m Evie and I wanna know where wordscome from?

Nij: Yeah! Why is anything called anything?

Kid 1: I think by a very, very very, um smart umscientists.

Nij: I think we better talk to Dr Howie Manns –he’s a linguist. That’s a person who studies the science of language. C’mon Ibet we can find him in the ancient history section at the libr-eee… lib-rairy…Gah! You know what I mean.

[Music endsas we enter a library, the sound of pages turning and people quietly movingaround the shelves can be heard]

Nij: Hi, Howie

Howie: Hi, Nij, hi kids

Kid 2: Hello!

Kid 1: Bonjour!

Nij: Howie, we have a question… can you tell us,how did people come up with words and names for things?

Howie: Words come from everywhere! We create themfor all the things in our lives.

Kid 2: So, people understand us and get what we wantand stuff.

Kid 1: Because if we don’t have words for stuff likefeelings, we can’t really understand what people are saying.

Howie: Yeah, we need a way to tell others about whatwe experience. So, we make up words and names for things!

Kid 2: I think its special be because we have aspecial whole big language where we can communicate about almost everything.

Kid 1: You can like say a unicorn with come in thefuture!

Nij: Yeah, we can talk about the past, and thefuture, and anything we can imagine!

Howie: And it’s not just with sounds coming out ofour mouths, we can communicate through pictures, through sign languages andwith technology. Nothing else on the planet can do that!

Nij: So how did we start coming up with all thesenames for things?

Howie: Have you ever named anything?

Kid 2: I’ve named my dolls.

Howie: How did you do it?

Kid 1: You pick a name cos it just feels right forthem.

Kid 2: Like if you have a bear and it looks like amummy, I named it ‘mummy bear’.

Howie: It might have started just like that – peopledeciding what sounded good, or what felt right.

Kid 1: By making up a gibberish word and declaringit somethings name.

Nij: But words are really old right? How did people start making up words?

Howie: No one really knows for sure how the firstwords were spoken, but we have some good ideas!

Kid 2: Like what?

Howie: I reckon it’ll be more fun if we use ourimaginations!

Nij: Definitely! Can we go in a time machine?

Howie: It’ll have to be a time and placemachine! We’ve got lots of ground to cover.

Nij: Where to first? Or…when to?

[Kids laughing as Howie clicks buttons and pullslevers – putting in time and place coordinates]

Howie: Let’s head back 100,000 years ago.  When early humans maybe have been developingspeech. Alright everyone, keep your arms and legs inside the time machine.

Nij: Buckle up! We don’t wanna get stuck in theeighties. Man, they had terrible hair!

Howie: (Laughing)Here we go!

[Lever crank– time machine blasts off. The door slides open, and we can hear elephantstrumpeting and insects chirping]

Kid 1: Wow I can see elephants, and I see giraffes,ooh but there’s no people around.

Kid 2: Can’t see any buildings.

Howie: We’re in southwest Africa, one day they’llcall this place Botswana. Now, we don’t really know how words and languagesstarted. But one of the theories is called

Nij: (laughing)Yo he ho? What’s that?

Kid 1: Maybe singing? Cos, we didn’t know how tospeak. They only probably knew how to sing, maybe?

Howie: Yeah, it’s the idea that people used to gruntand make sounds all together while they were working or doing something tricky.

Kid 2: Yo he ho!

Nij: Are you serious? Really?

Howie: There’s also the bow-wow theory!

Nij: Bow wow?

Kid 1: (barking)Bow-wow – like a dog!Bow-wow!

Howie: Yes, it’s the idea that early humans firstcopied the sounds of the environment. Like… the wind!

[Gust ofwind blows]

Kid 2: Whooosh!

Howie: And animals!

[Lion growlsand kids start growling and howling]

Howie: It was so long ago, we’ll never know forsure, but we do know that words help us communicate with each other and worktogether in a community.

Kid 1: People muddling together sounds saying a blurrgh patcherr rand pointing to something and someone else saying, ‘Oh! A blurrgh patcherr means… pumpkin’

Howie: Exactly

Nij: That’s cool that might have been how firstwords started!

Howie: Over time those simple words got spoken bymore people in bigger and bigger communities. Then as people built more thingsand learnt more stuff, we created more words to talk about our lives and on andon until they became languages.

Kid 2: Who made up English? 

Howie: Well, let’s head to England! That’s the homeof English.

[Fiddlingwith nobs and dials in time and place machine]

Howie: We’re 100,000 years in the past, so let’sjump forward now, to just 1500 years in the past.

Nij: That’s not that long ago.

Howie: Yeah, compared to lots of other languages,English isn’t that old!

[Lever crank– time machine blasts off. The door slides open, and we can hear medieval music,horses and carriages passing in a busy open street]

Nij: Old London town sure is smelly.

Kid 1: It smells like poo.

Howie: Yeah, toilets haven’t been invented yet.

Nij: Watch where you step! Look there’s a carriage.

[Horses trotpast]

Cars haven’t beeninvented yet.

[Peoplespeaking Olde English in background]

Howie, I can’tunderstand what anyone is saying.

Kid 2: That’s not English.

Howie: They’re speaking Old English. It’s verydifferent.

Nij: How come?

Howie: Words and languages never stay the same.They’re always changing. English is a big stew of lots of languages! 1500 yearsago, tribes of people from Germany came to England and brought their languageswith them. Have you heard the word sneeze?

Kid 1: Of course!

Howie: That’s from an Old German word ‘fneeze’!

Kid 2: Fneeze?(Laughing)Fless you!

Howie: We also borrow new German words like noodle!

Nij: Noodle? I had no idea ‘noodle’ was German, orthat it was new!

Howie: C’mon you noodles, let’s fast forward a fewhundred years.

[Lever crank– time machine blasts off. Doors open and we can hear a loud sword fight. Anaxe flies past]

Kid 1: Look out!

HOWIE andKIDS: Vikings!

Howie: They added some of their words into Englishtoo. You can thank them for the word Thursday.

Nij: Really!?

Howie: Well, they would’ve called it Thor’s Day. Thewords ’happy’ and ‘angry’, even the word ‘kid’ is from Vikings!

Kid 2: Cool!

Nij: I use Viking every day!

[Table isthrown across room]

Nij: Ah! This place is rough.

Howie: Let’s jump ahead…

[Lever crank– time machine blasts off. Classical French music plays as doors open]

Howie: … to when the French sprinkled their words in.

Kid 1: There’s French in English?

Howie: There’s lots! It started as a way to makeEnglish fancier.

Kid 2: Like what?

Howie: Like, our first meal of the day typicallyisn’t very fancy. We just use an English word for that - breakfast. But ournight-time meals can be fancy, so we use French words those - supper, dinner orfeast!

Kid 1: Yum!

Nij: So, English words are made up from lots ofother languages?

Howie: Definitely! When people move to differentplaces, they bring their languages with them. It can mean that languages becomea mix of lots of others, like with English.

Kid 2: What about in Australia?

Howie: Australia is full of differentlanguages! C’mon!

[Lever crank– time machine blasts off. Doors open to outback Australia]

Nij: Aw we’re back home. We’re in the bush!

Howie: People have been speaking here for more than60,000 years!

Nij: Yeah, there are hundreds of First Nationlanguages – Noongar, palawa kani

Kid 1: Adnyamathanha

Kid 2: Yugambeh

Kid 1: Yorta Yorta

Kid 2: My country is Bundjalung Country

Howie: When people have been living in a place for along time, there are often lots of languages.

Kid 1: Yeah right, that’s pretty cool actually.

Howie: I like to think of language and words as acollection of people’s good ideas! Words are full of information

Kid 2: Like what?

Howie: Well, a lot of Aboriginal place names cantell you something about the area.

Kid 1: They got the name from the surroundings.

Howie: Like Noosa in Queensland means ‘shady place’.

Kid 2: Dubbo means ‘red earth’.

Kid 1: Bundeena – that means ‘sounds like thunder’.

Howie: Ilive in a place called Maribyrnong, which means ‘I can hear a ring-tailedpossum’!

Nij: It’s so much in just a name.

Howie: That’s why learning other people’s languagesis so important. It keeps words alive! It’s also a great way to make friends,because we learn a lot about the world and others.

Kid 2: There also might be other words in otherlanguages that aren’t in your languages. Like, for example – dépaysement – isthat feeling you get when you move countries, but it doesn’t exist in English.The feeling is still there for people who do speak English but there’s no wordto explain it.

Nij: That’s so cool! So, we’ve learned how wordshave moved around the world and mixed and changed to become different languagesbut how does a word become a word?

Howie: The only reason anything is called anythingis because enough people agree on it and start using it. You asked when wefirst met, why is it called a library? Well because many years ago librum meant‘the bark of trees’

Kid 1: Because papers made of bark from trees.

Howie: Exactly. Over time it’s changed a little –librumto library – and maybe in the future, if we have less paper books and morecomputers, it’ll be called something new

Nij: So, once enough people start using a word, itbecomes a word?

Howie: Yeah! Words are created to help us talk aboutour lives and experiences. It means languages are always changing. Thousands ofnew words are created every year!

Nij: Howie, can we make up a word right now?

Kid 2: Yeah!

Nij: My favorite sound is ‘oooh’

Howie: Oh, that’s a good one. I reckon mine is ‘shhe’

Nij: Let’s mix them together –

Kid 1: Ooosha!

Howie: What will it mean?

Nij: How about, learning something super cool withour imaginations!

Howie: Well in that case I love to ooosha

Kid 2: Oosha! Oosha! Oohsa! It’s fun to say.

Nij: (laughing)I love to oosha too!

[TheAustralian bush sounds fade out and gentle classical music begins]

Nij: Exactly how people started coming upwith words is a bit of a mystery. They might have started by grunting andmumbling to each other

Kid 1: Yo he ho!

Nij: Or by copying the sounds of the world aroundthem.

[Kookaburra cacklesand child copies the sound]

No one knows forsure. We do know, that over time, humans got better at speaking. We learntmore, built new things, and needed words to talk about our lives and worktogether. Many languages are a mix of other languages.

Kid 2: German, French, Viking!

Nij: That have grown and changed and moved over along time. Other languages have stayed in the same place for thousands andthousands of years

Kid 1: Adnyamathanha, Yugambeh, Yorta Yorta

Nij: New words are being created every year.

Kid 2: Ooosha!

Nij: And they become words, simply by people usingthem. Words tell us a lot about people and culture and even history. Andthey’re a great way to make friends.

Kid 1: Bonjour!

Kid 2: As-salamu alaykum!

Kid 1: Buongiorno!

Kid 2: Hola!

Kid 1: Kon'nichiwa!

Kid 2: Yaama!

Kid 1: Nǐ hǎo!

Kid 2: guten Tag!

Kid 1: Kia ora!

[Classicalmusic ends]