Language Complexity, the Meaning of Sounds, and Why Polyglots Matter - Juliana Barembuem | PGO 2021

The Elephant in the Room: Language Complexity, the Meaning of Sounds, and Why Polyglots Matter Have you ever noticed similarities between languages that are said to belong to different “families”? Why do the pairs “wick-wicked” (English) and “mèche – méchant” (French) have four different historical roots, yet they all share an underlying meaning, “twisted”? Why does the word “night” sound a bit like “n 8” in many different languages? (noche, notte, nuit, nacht….)? Why do “mère” (French) and “mare” (English) sound similarly, and “ma” (Chinese) can mean both “mother” and “horse”? Is it all just pure coincidence? There may be an explanation for these and many other oddities! Perhaps language resembles more a complex living organism than what science has discovered to date, and our capacity for language did not evolve in the ways we have been told. In this talk, I invite you to embark with me on an adventure to discover the complex nature behind each word, that elephant in the room that connects all languages,