If you love language, and you also love role-playing games with a sci-fi flair, then you’re going to want to check out the new game Xenolanguage. It allows players to make first contact and decipher alien messages while working through their tangled personal relationships.
Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games joins us for this episode.
Listen to this episode
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Become a Patron!Show notes
American Dialect Society Word of the Year 2020 Registration, Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 7:00 PM | Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/american-dialect-society-word-of-the-year-2020-registration-126457609113
Starbucks releases ‘Carry the Merry’ holiday cups for 2020 – Abbotsford News
https://www.abbynews.com/trending-now/starbucks-releases-carry-the-merry-holiday-cups-for-2020/
English-language vowel changes before historic l
https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1319744#Salary.E2.80.93celery_merger
An Investigation of the /el/–/æl/ Merger in Australian English: A Pilot Study on Production and Perception in South-West Victoria: Australian Journal of Linguistics: Vol 34, No 4
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07268602.2014.929078?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=cajl20
The Cot-Caught Merger | Dialect Blog
http://dialectblog.com/2011/03/08/the-cot-caught-merger/
cot/caught: Map 1
https://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map1.html
Nestlé renames ‘out of step’ Australian candy products – Erie News Now | WICU and WSEE in Erie, PA
https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/42917408/nestl-renames-out-of-step-australian-candy-products
Saputo Dairy Australia affirms plan to dump ‘racist’ Coon cheese brand
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/saputo-dairy-australia-affirms-plan-to-dump-racist-coon-cheese-brand/news-story/6dc3af4e241c493cad121acb6f849145
Spain’s official linguistic institution steps back from gender-neutral pronoun · Global Voices
https://globalvoices.org/2020/11/13/spains-official-linguistic-institution-steps-back-from-gender-neutral-pronoun/
Lenguaje Inclusivo: Guía de uso
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SriDuhSPz6S0bR-43PgqQdZgZSgTnI3Az2FQmIFBwao/mobilebasic
Dialect: A Game About Language and How it Dies
– Thorny Games
https://thornygames.com/pages/dialect
Friends at the Table: The Road to PARTIZAN 01: Dialect Pt. 1
https://friendsatthetable.net/the-road-to-season-6-dialect-pt-1
Friends at the Table: The Road to PARTIZAN 02: Dialect Pt. 2
https://friendsatthetable.net/the-road-to-season-6-dialect-pt-2
Xenolanguage: A Game about First Contact by Thorny Games — Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thornygames/xenolanguage-a-game-about-first-contact
Fiddle Chopping
http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk/fiddle%20chopping/
TwoSet Violin
https://www.twosetviolin.com/home
Miasma theory – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
(PDF) Lechien et al, 2020: Olfactory and Gustatory Dysfunctions as a Clinical Presentation of Mild to Moderate forms of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): A Multicenter European Study
https://www.entnet.org/sites/default/files/uploads/lechien_et_al.-_covid19–eur_arch_otorhinolaryngol.pdf
Lost or changed sense of smell – NHS
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lost-or-changed-sense-smell/
Phantosmia, the brain condition that makes your nose hallucinate – The Science Show – ABC Radio National
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/phantosmia-phantom-smells/6854782
Use of Google Trends to investigate loss‐of‐smell‒related searches during the COVID‐19 outbreak – Walker – 2020 – International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology – Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/alr.22580
(PDF) The use of google trends to investigate the loss of smell related searches during COVID‐19 outbreak
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340590656_The_use_of_google_trends_to_investigate_the_loss_of_smell_related_searches_during_COVID-19_outbreak
Negative reviews of scented candles surge after increase in Covid infections | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/covid-candles-reviews-smell-b1763214.html
Autogolpe | Definition of Autogolpe by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of Autogolpe
https://www.lexico.com/definition/autogolpe
Trump’s wildest claims are going nowhere in court. Thank legal ethics. – The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-lawyers-legal-ethics/2020/11/20/3c286710-2ac1-11eb-92b7-6ef17b3fe3b4_story.html
Didion’s Bible: John Candy | Bandcamp
https://didionsbible.bandcamp.com/album/john-candy
Transcript
BEN: Any RPGs of a video game nature, or even just like a tabletop nature — right? — where you get to choose your, sort of like, values and alignments? I always go into them high-mindedly — and by high-mindedly, I mean low-mindedly — being like: oh, I’m going to be such a rogue! I’m going to be so bad! It’s going to be so good, hahahahaha. And within like 15 minutes of gameplay, I’m like: you guys, the goblins are really struggling! We should help.
[INTRO MUSIC]
DANIEL: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Because Language… Total Landscaping.
[CONFUSED LAUGHTER]
BEN: What?
HEDVIG: Oh, I see.
DANIEL: A podcast about linguistics, the science of language. My name’s Daniel Midgley. Let’s meet the team. It’s our manic pixie dream guy who turns our world upside down. It’s Ben Ainslie.
BEN: I like that. I feel like…
HEDVIG: That’s very cute.
BEN: …that is a stupid, two-dimensional thing that needs to apply to men as well as women.
DANIEL: I’m just doing my part.
BEN: Yeah.
DANIEL: And the gruff but lovable Hedvig Skirgård
HEDVIG: …I am very gruff lately! I love it! Yeah.
BEN: I’ve noticed that today! I’m like: Ooh, Hedvig… Hedvig has gruff-inated a little bit.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: It’s fun. I like it.
HEDVIG: I’m pleased. I’m not pleased — of course I’m not, but…
DANIEL: No, no.
BEN: No, gruffination is a good thing, I think.
DANIEL: Gruff it up!
BEN: Yeah, gruff on, gruff-meister.
HEDVIG: Okay, right. Well, I’ve got a character for this episode. That’s great. [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Excellent.
BEN: Play character.
DANIEL: And we are joined once again by Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games. Hey, Kathryn.
KATHRYN: Hello. Hey, I’m so glad to join you, here on this starry night in Berkeley, California.
HEDVIG: Oh, yeah.
DANIEL: Yeah, how are things going over there?
KATHRYN: You know, they are… they are better than they were, and worse than they were in other ways. So it is… But thankfully, at least for me, everyone is healthy and happy. And I have a cat on my lap. So all is immediately well in the world.
BEN: Aww, man, everyone is sounding like my partner today. Guess all of these tidbits are just floating through. It’s wonderful. I love it.
DANIEL: Wow. Well, this is the world-building part of the show. [LAUGHTER]
BEN: Indeed. And I’ve got to wonder, Kathryn: like, has everyone seen that shirt that, like, people going for their PhD can wear that’s like: “Thank you for not asking how my thesis is going”? I, I wonder, Kathryn, as a sort of like an American, do you kind of wish you had a shirt that’s like: “Can you just not ask me how America is doing for the next six to 12 months? Because I don’t fucking know and I don’t have a good answer.”
KATHRYN: That is the state of the world. But I appreciate the check-in all the same. Like I said, it’s one of those things where, like, you know, not saying it makes it sort of like the elephant on the airwaves. And it’s better to just state it, you know, have our cathartic moment of being frustrated and then move on.
DANIEL: Mmm.
BEN: Moving on!
DANIEL: Now, Kathryn has been on the show before, or should I say it back in the Talk the Talk era, when Thorny Games’ game Dialect came out, and we had a big chat about that. And we’re going to talk about your new game, Xenolanguage. Really looking forward to that.
HEDVIG: So cool.
KATHRYN: Yes. Stoked for that.
BEN: Game designers are the funnest kind of nerds. I’ve said it before and I stand by it. Game designers, funnest kind of nerds. Full stop.
KATHRYN: Wholeheartedly agree.
DANIEL: We’re just missing Hakan I’m afraid. Hakan Seyalıoğlu, also of Thorny Games. How’s he doing?
KATHRYN: He is normally just fit and wonderful. But tonight he got laid to rest to bed a little earlier with the… with the sickness from food. So, but otherwise, you know, he is great.
BEN: He is in our collective minds, hugging the porcelain drivers seat.
DANIEL: Thoughts and prayers.
KATHRYN: Thank you.
DANIEL: Our next episode is going to be a Mailbag. So you’re going to want to get your questions to us. It’s also a bonus Patreon episode. And pretty soon we’re going to be doing a playthrough. Now, Kathryn, are you going to lead us through Dialect, which we have never played through, or is the new game Xenolanguage in a state where we could be doing a bit of that?
KATHRYN: Well, you definitely have options, because both are playable online. But it would be awesome to play some Dialect with y’all.
DANIEL: Okay.
KATHRYN: I think if I had a vote, let’s, like, make a love letter to sociolinguistics together and play some Dialect.
HEDVIG: Cool.
DANIEL: Okay! It’s gonna be fun…!
HEDVIG: I’m very excited about it, and say I’m a big fan of Friends at the Table.
KATHRYN: Oh, yeah.
HEDVIG: And just anything Austin Walker ever does, I just, I get [FANGIRL SQUEEE], that’s what… I’m over thirty, and he’s the only person I would, like, have a fangirl attack if I saw in public. I’d be like: hard to breathe!
BEN: I politely contend your statement just then, Hedvig. This is not the first time we’ve heard you have a micro-fangirl moment about a person.
HEDVIG: That’s fair!
BEN: But I think it is a strong endorsement, a strong endorsement.
HEDVIG: But it’s, like, sustained over like several years. Like, I’ve been listening to this man for, like… I’ve been listening to various podcasts and stuff by him for a very long time, and I’m just… it’s this very sustained fire. Anyway, they do this cool thing in their long campaigns where they sort of play through different roleplaying game frameworks. And for the setup of a campaign, they played through some parts of Dialect and it was very cool. I’m very excited.
DANIEL: Well, I’m excited, too, especially because I am a total RPG noob, so…
BEN: Oooh, that is exciting. I love fresh meat.
KATHRYN: Yes, best kind.
DANIEL: There we go. In addition, you can check out our shop. It’s got tons of Because Language gear, it’s on Redbubble and just in time for Christmas. Shall we get to the news?
BEN: Please, let’s do. Well, I mean, obviously there’s so little going on in the world at the moment. You’ve probably had to really scrape the bottom of the barrel. But let’s see what that barrel bottom looks like today.
DANIEL: Okay, well, the first plank in our barrel bottom is Word of the Year season. It’s coming up!
BEN: [SARCASTIC] Yay.
DANIEL: Lots of different word bodies have been naming theirs. Collins’ has named theirs, the Australian National Dictionary folks have named theirs. We’re going to be doing a big old rundown in December. And we’re going to be getting you, dear listeners, to nominate your Because Language word of the year. Chosen by you. And me. Sort of.
BEN: I sort of low-key, I know this is a super unrealistic desire on my part, but I low-key hope that it’s just nothing to do with either elections or coronavirus, just for a palate cleanse.
HEDVIG: That’s… very unlikely.
DANIEL: Wow, okay.
BEN: I know, I know.
DANIEL: Well, we’ve got a bunch of those too though. I mean. Yeah, yeah. Well, the one that really matters is the American Dialect Society Word of the Year. We follow it pretty closely. In fact, sometimes I’ve even gone to the voting sessions and participated, which has been a lot of fun. It’s a raucous affair.
[BEN SNORTS IN LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: But of course this…
BEN: Sorry. No, no, no, keep going. I definitely was able to picture that as authentically raucous in my head.
DANIEL: Okay.
BEN: Carry on!
DANIEL: But this time it’s online and everyone can participate.
BEN: The raucousity is now digital.
HEDVIG: What does that mean for the Americanness of the society?
DANIEL: Well, I’ve always felt like the American Dialect Society is American in name, but really the words kind of have a bit of a global focus. Not just in the way that we all live in America, but…
HEDVIG: I was going to say! That’s usually how Americans on the internet understand that.
DANIEL: No, I know, I know.
KATHRYN: So true.
DANIEL: But I’ve noticed that, you know, there’s a bit of international flavour if you look for it, and if there isn’t, then you can give it some.
HEDVIG: I’m just not sure if it was welcome. You know, if like, if they are the American Dialect Society, then, you know, they can say, “you can fuck off to Canada” if they want, right?
[LAUGHTER]
BEN: Wow, you have been sitting in some social media spaces, haven’t you?
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: When you sign up on Eventbrite, they also let you nominate five words.
HEDVIG: Oh, interesting.
BEN: That’s exciting.
DANIEL: Which then might make it into the final tally and the final list and we can vote for them.
BEN: Right-O, Daniel, you listen, here as my agent on the inside. I want nothing to do with elections in your five and none to do with coronaviruses, you hear me, mate?
DANIEL: Might be a bit late for that. I’ve already signed up.
BEN: Fine.
DANIEL: And you can sign up too, it’s on Eventbrite. We’ll have a link on our blog, becauselanguage.com. Let’s move on. Starbucks. Kathryn, we don’t have any Starbucks here in Australia, but you do in California.
HEDVIG: We do! In Germany.
KATHRYN: Oh, do we?
DANIEL: In Germany?
BEN: And we, Daniel, to just cement my role as the annoying person who contradicts everyone, we do have a small number of stores in Australia.
DANIEL: Well, in the Eastern states.
BEN: No, we’ve got a couple here in WA as well.
DANIEL: …
HEDVIG: It’s just that they don’t do that super well, I think.
BEN: Yes, we from an expansion high point of like a couple of hundred stores, we’ve reduced down to twenty-four across Australia because Starbucks just screwed the pooch really badly in this market.
DANIEL: Yeah, we do coffee already.
HEDVIG: Also, the opposite is true here in Germany. So tomorrow Ste and I are getting on a train. And part of the exciting thing about getting on a train is we go to the train station and we get to have Starbucks, which means decent coffee.
DANIEL: Oh, interesting.
BEN: Interesting, interesting.
HEDVIG: And there’s like one or two other coffee places in town that are decent. Yeah.
DANIEL: Oh yeah. Well, Kathryn, are you a Starbucks frequenter?
KATHRYN: I am not. But we use Starbucks to navigate typically in the US here. It’s like you go to the Starbucks on the corner, walk to the Starbucks that you find two blocks from here. It’s really how frequently they show up.
BEN: So basically, it’s that SNL skit where the Californians give people directions, but with a lot more Starbucks involved.
KATHRYN: Absolutely. Absolutely.
DANIEL: I’ve noticed I haven’t seen this recently, but the Starbucks to Wal-Mart ratio is an interesting political indicator.
BEN: Oh, okay. So a socioeconomic, sort of like, dowsing rod.
DANIEL: Precisely.
HEDVIG: What does it track, for those of us who don’t live in the American landscape?
DANIEL: It tracks socioeconomic status.
HEDVIG: Right, which is which?
BEN: Oh, Wal-Mart is less affluent and Starbucks more.
HEDVIG: That’s what I assumed, but I felt like someone had to say it.
DANIEL: Sort of more working class versus less.
BEN: Look at you HEDVIG, just being a good podcaster. Come on, Daniel, pick up your game, mate! [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Okay, okay, we’re focusing too much on this part of it. Well, they’ve released their new holiday cups because it’s a thing that they do.
HEDVIG: Yeah, they do, I remember people were really upset a while ago.
BEN: So what’s on the cups? What’s going on? I’m feeling that something is on the cup and it’s wordy and that’s why it’s here in the news. Come on, Daniel, bring us home.
DANIEL: The new slogan is “Carry the Merry”
BEN: Carry the Merry.
DANIEL: Presumably those two words were intended to rhyme, carry the merry.
BEN: Yeah, well, to be fair, they do perfectly. Even the way I’m saying it, just not in one of the rhyming conventions that we tend to think of as rhyming.
HEDVIG: Oh yeah!
BEN: Like, they do rhyme.
HEDVIG: I went to a lecture a while ago that’s very inspirational about like what constitutes rhyming in various poetic traditions, and how in some, like any vowels don’t matter as long as just like the same consonants at the end. Whatever. It’s just fascinating.
BEN: Like, I 100 percent think that Eminem would have called this a rhyme, right? Like, he rhymes the beginning parts, the mid parts, and the end parts of words.
DANIEL: Okay, but would it be a straight rhyme or would it be a… what do they call it when it’s not quite a…
HEDVIG: Slant.
DANIEL: Slant rhyme?
BEN: It probably is. Yeah. It would be a slant rhyme, I would imagine. Carry the merry.
DANIEL: Oh, okay, say it again, Ben?
BEN: Carry [kæɹi] the merry [mɛɹi].
HEDVIG: Carry the merry.
DANIEL: [LAUGHS] Okay, the first… Kathryn, you?
KATHRYN: Carry [kɛɹi] the merry [mɛɹi]!
DANIEL: Eyyy, me too. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about and it’s mergers.
[LAUGHTER]
KATHRYN: Yup.
DANIEL: I grew up speaking a variety of English, known sometimes as Pacific Northwestern US English and in that variety, carry and merry do rhyme because we have the Mary / merry / marry merger.
HEDVIG: Oh, so I married the other week.
DANIEL: Yes. You, you married [mæɹi:d].
BEN: Yes, yes yes [STEWIE GRIFFIN VOICE?] You got married.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Ben, why don’t you take this one.
BEN: And how… and how was your marr-i-age ceremony?
HEDVIG: The Danes were annoyingly convenient and pleasing and nice. I was looking forward as a Swede to sort of…
BEN: Hang on, hang on. You have…
DANIEL: You are gruff-ed.
BEN: You have gruffed to the stage where you are discontent that people at your wedding were nice?
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: I didn’t want the Danes to be nice!
HEDVIG: I just… No, I’m joking of course, it was it was very nice and civilised affair.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Oh, good.
HEDVIG: I was just a little bit resentful of the fact that we were getting married in Denmark when we’re not citizens or live in Denmark and…
BEN: Oh, is what’s really happening here, Hedvig, your usually very toned down Swedish identity is kind of rankling because your traditional rivals are the place where you ended up getting married?
HEDVIG: I wouldn’t say… I don’t think all listeners of our show would agree, especially when it comes to Denmark, that I’m always that toned down. Usually play it up for a joke. [LAUGHTER] But, you know, it’s Sweden and Denmark have fought the most battles against each other out of any European country. More than England and France. And currently, I have some disagreements with the way their politics work. But they’re a Scandinavian country and it was very nice to be there, and things worked the way I expected to. And yeah, it’s nice.
DANIEL: But we were talking about Starbucks.
BEN: Yeah. So let’s get back to that!
DANIEL: So Ben, could you give me the three words?
BEN: So in marry, merry and… what’s the third one I’m supposed to say?
DANIEL: The woman’s name.
BEN: Marry [mæɹi], merry [mɛɹi], Mary [meɪɹi].
DANIEL: Mary is the woman’s name. You marry someone and then you feel merry. Exactly. All three different. But I have the marry, merry, Mary merger. So I married [mɛɹi:d] Mary [mɛɹi] and then we made merry [mɛɹi].
HEDVIG: Oooh.
BEN: Interesting.
DANIEL: So there are lots of mergers out there. Is anyone aware of any others?
HEDVIG: I like celery [sæləɹi]-salary[sæləɹi] for Melbournites.
BEN: Oh
DANIEL: My favorite, the celery [sɛləɹi], salary [sæləɹi] merger.
BEN: Yeah, I yeah, I don’t have that.
HEDVIG: Had you heard of that one, Kathryn?
KATHRYN: I hadn’t!
HEDVIG: Yeah. So you know, the place that’s the second largest city in Australia? What do you call it?
BEN: [LAUGHTER] What is…? what is…?
DANIEL: It starts with an M. This is an elicitation, Ben.
KATHRYN: Starts with a… Is it Melbourne [mɛlbɜɹn]?
HEDVIG: Yes.
DANIEL: Yes, it is.
BEN: Oooh, look at this American, saying it like an Australian! That’s very impressive!
HEDVIG: Yes. Very good.
DANIEL: Yes, nice. But not quite like a Melburnian, because they would say Malbourne [mælbɜn].
BEN: Do they?
DANIEL: Oh, yes.
HEDVIG: Yes, sort of.
BEN: This is… look, I’m Australian and I’m learning this for the first bloody time.
DANIEL: This vowel is kind of moving a little bit. You fly around in a HALicopter and you eat SALary with peanut butter in it. No, you don’t.
BEN: Look, I’ve always found those Melburnians to be pretty distrustful on the whole. And this only cements that status further, really.
HEDVIG: I don’t know if this is the time to say that, Ben! [LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Okay, so there’s the there’s the celery-salary merger in MALbourne. Only seems to happen when E is followed by an L, interestingly.
HEDVIG: Yes.
BEN: What else have we got? What’s on that list? I want to know more. Give me more! Dance for me, linguistic monkey!
DANIEL: I have the cot-caught merger.
HEDVIG: Oh.
BEN: Caught and… what’s the other one?
KATHRYN: Ooh!
DANIEL: Cot.
HEDVIG: Cot, like a baby cot.
BEN: As in where a baby sleeps?
DANIEL: Yeah, like a bed. Yeah.
BEN: Oh, okay.
DANIEL: Baby sleeps in a cot [kɒt] and I caught [kɔt] the ball, but in my variety it’s just cot [kɒt] cot [kɒt].
BEN: Oh, yeah!
DANIEL: And this is an interesting merger, because it’s moving very fast, taking over parts of the USA. It’s moving so fast that it’s actually possible to find older people who don’t have the merger and younger people in the very same family that do.
BEN: So, some older Americans will say caught [kɔt] the way I’m saying it, to catch a ball. And the rest will kind of say cot [kɒt]?
DANIEL: Mhm.
BEN: Yeah, right. [FAKE AMERICAN ACCENT] I caught [kɒt] the ball. Fun!
DANIEL: Well, the other reason I like this ‘Carry the Merry’ slogan — sorry, Carry [kɛɹi] the Merry [mɛɹi] — is that it’s got one of these features that really aggravates people, especially when it’s used in advertising slogans, and that is nominalisation. Merry is an adjective and here they are just using it as a noun without asking anyone’s permission.
BEN: [LAUGHTS] Oooh.
DANIEL: And that’s a lot of fun.
BEN: Oh, I do love things that make prescriptivists grumpy. They’re just very… I, I like… it’s just fun!
HEDVIG: Do people get grumpy about this?
KATHRYN: Amen. Amen.
HEDVIG: Wait, wait, wait. Are they actually getting angry about this though, Daniel, or are you just suspecting they are? Because maybe they’re not!
DANIEL: I have heard oceans of complaints about this, for example, university slogans like… what was Curtin’s?
BEN: Oh… “Find your think”.
DANIEL: Yes, that was one. And then the other one was from UWA and it was “Pursue Impossible”
HEDVIG: That was so fine.
BEN: [GRUMPY OLD WHITE MAN VOICE] But don’t people understand that these are higher education institutions? And if we give ground there, then we’ve lost the war? Hubbub, hubbub, hubbub
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: We’re really…
DANIEL: In other rhyming news
HEDVIG: Yeah, I was going to say really pushing Daniel in keeping to the script here!
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Yeah, I know how far to let it run and then I know how to ramp it back.
BEN: Okay, another news item.
DANIEL: In other rhyming news. Here’s one about the Netflix show: Emily in Paris.
HEDVIG: I haven’t seen it.
DANIEL: I have been watching a little bit. Anybody?
BEN: I have not. I am told that it is the kind of, like… I’m really sorry everyone involved in the production of this show. It’s the kind of brainless drivel that’s not so aggressively stupid that you hate yourself for watching it.
HEDVOG: Okayy…
DANIEL: I would describe it as an amusing little trifle.
BEN: Yes. Yeah. This is what I’ve heard. It’s like a bauble that you don’t feel appalling for watching, like, say, reality TV or something.
HEDVIG: Ben, you know, you’re on a show with someone who, like, openly admits to like the Vengaboys, like we can’t…
BEN: I know exactly what I’m saying, and I stand by it.
HEDVIG: It’s like, whether it’s high or low culture or like intellectually stimulating is one thing, but it’s like…
BEN: You have your thing which is liking trash, and I have my thing which is not liking trash. And that’s just, you know, those are our standpoints and that’s fine.
HEDVIG: Yeah, okay. Yeah, fair enough.
DANIEL: I wouldn’t say it’s trash, would you say it’s trash?
BEN: I don’t know, I haven’t watched it.
HEDVIG: Because I’ve heard, I’ve been thinking it’s not trash and not interesting, and haven’t watched it. If it was someone said it was trash, I would watch it.
BEN: If it makes you feel any better, I, I extend this in the other direction as well. Right, so like, speaking of, like, recent Netflix shows, Queen’s Gambit: totally overrated. Not as smart as everyone thinks it is. Not good.
HEDVIG: I watched it… I thought it was decent.
BEN: Meh.
HEDVIG: Good music and fashion.
DANIEL: Well, Netflix caused a bit of kerfuffle when they pointed out on Twitter that Emily and Paris are supposed to rhyme.
BEN: Oh, of course, yeah. Emily in Paris [paʁi].
DANIEL: Emily in [paʁi].
HEDVIG: [GROANS] Oh…
DANIEL: I guess it’s kind of…
BEN: Listen to the groans, I love it!
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: No, it’s not… I’m not impressed.
DANIEL: In which case, you get… if you had a Netflix show it would be… your Emily in Paris name would be your first name plus a French city that kind of rhymes with your name. So I’m asking you, what would your Emily in Paris name, what would be the title of your Netflix show?
BEN: You guys say yours, I have to duck into the other room and speak to my fluent French speaking partner to figure out what Benjamin in French is. Hold on one sec.
DANIEL: I think it could just be Ben. Well, I’m going to be Daniel in Sarcelles.
HEDVIG: Oh, you can change your name, oh smart.
KATHRYN: Well done.
DANIEL: Well, kind of? Eh, eh? [LISTENING FOR BEN] He really is checking! Quick, quick give me a name!
[LAUGHTER]
KATHRYN: Okay, I…
HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah, go, Kathryn.
KATHRYN: Okay, so I’m going I’m going to mangle my first name for a good city. So it’s Kathr-i-on in Avignon.
HEDVIG: Oh, that’s good.
DANIEL: That rhymes. Okay. I was I was going to say Hakan… for Hakan, he would be Hakan in Rouen.
KATHRYN: Oh very nice.
DANIEL: Yes.
BEN: I need something that rhymes with [TERRIBLE FRENCH ACCENT] [bɛnxamã].
DANIEL: Say that again?
BEN: [EVEN WORSE FRENCH ACCENT] [bɛnʒ͡xamã].
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: I’ve got an idea.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
DANIEL: We could name you after the 11th biggest city in France, and you could be Ben in Rennes
BEN: Okay, I would take it.
DANIEL: All right.
HEDVIG: My name is pronounced ed-vij in French.
BEN: Oh, that is amazing.
HEDVIG: Oh, so French city that ends in -ij.
DANIEL: It’s just not a thing that happens, is it? I’m sorry. It’s not a thing…
HEDVIG: But I am Hedvig in Leipzig! Like, for real.
BEN: If we change the rules of the game and the geography, it would work perfectly!
DANIEL: I would watch the fuck out of that.
HEDVIG: Hedvig in Leipzig. That’s not in German how you properly pronounce Leipzig, but muh.
BEN: Well, we’ll do it.
KATHRYN: It would be grittier, it would be grittier than Emily in Paris, too.
DANIEL: It would, wouldn’t it?
HEDVIG: Oh, yeah, yeah. It would just be me going around trying to find coffee and… [LAUGHTER]
BEN: No, I love it. It would be like the Odd Couple sitcom. But one of the characters is a city that doesn’t like your Vengaboys sort of predisposed inclinations.
HEDVIG: Oh yeah, they don’t.
BEN: So you’re walking through this like gritty Eastern Bloc type thing and you’re just like [IN THE TUNE OF VENGABOY’S “WE LIKE TO PARTY”] “the Vengaboys are coming” MUH.
HEDVIG: [CONTINUES TO HUM “WE LIKE TO PARTY”]
BEN: And the whole city is like: MUH.
DANIEL: Yeah, but then eventually everyone will be won over by your earnest charm.
BEN: Bollywood narrative type thing. I get it. I like it.
DANIEL: It’s an arc, it’s an arc. It’s not a very well disguised arc.
BEN: It’s essentially Footloose in Leipzig. You’re going to come to town, you’re going to show everyone the true joy and wonder of the Vengaboys, and eventually the grumpy Preacher man at the end is going to be like: the Vengaboys were good all along.
HEDVIG: Yes.
DANIEL: Wow. Okay. Other news… we’re moving on. We have been doing a periodic update on racist candy.
BEN: Oh, we need one of those [BREAKING NEWS SOUND] doo doo doo doo doo doo… like, the latest update in this long running news story.
DANIEL: Okay, you do that, Ben; you give me the teletype sounds.
BEN: Okay, so you’ve got to give me a tiny like a five word lead in, breaking news, something like that.
DANIEL: Racist brand names!
BEN: [BREAKING NEWS SOUND] doo doo doo doo doo doo
DANIEL: Racist brand names, now not so racist anymore.
BEN: So what does Nestlé done now?
DANIEL: Nestlé has gotten… you know, they had a couple of racist candy names on the Allen’s line. Well, Allen’s has renamed those lollies.
BEN: So we’ve reported on this before where we’ve said they’re going to change the name and now they have changed the name. So what are our new names?
DANIEL: They did it. The chocolate jelly baby things are now no longer Chicos, they are now Cheekies.
BEN: Okay.
HEDVIG: Oh, I saw that. Yeah.
DANIEL: They’re still weird babies that you eat, but okay
HEDVIG: But that’s British. That’s just their heritage. That’s just, British people have done that for ages.
DANIEL: That’s just their culture.
HEDVIG: Yeah. That’s what they do, they eat babies.
BEN: If we’re really going to start applying like the lens of like objective reality to candies, I think we’re going to find a lot of problems, right? Like why are we eating dinosaurs? Why are we eating like blah blah, blah, blah?
DANIEL: And the red raspberry chewy things are no longer – sorry everyone – Redskins, they are now Red Ripper.
BEN: Cool.
DANIEL: So they’re changed, tada!
BEN: Ooh! Can I just be really Australian for a second?
HEDVIG: With Ripper, yes, please.
DANIEL: Why stop now?
BEN: With Red Rippers, I don’t know if you guys have ever had that lolly before, but the thing about them is when you unwrap them, they’re actually pretty mediocre candies in the sense that they’re quite gummy and you always rip the wrapper as you take it off! That is like such an appropriate name!
DANIEL: Rip, I see.
HEDVIG: Ohh.
BEN: Red rippers.
DANIEL: So they knew what they were doing.
BEN: And you always end up chewing like at least half of a wrapper in your mouth in this weird, like old person, gummy cow chewing it cud kind of thing. Like: Ngom nom nom.
DANIEL: Does it stick to the wrapper and then you have to like grimly, like, chew it off of the wrapper?
BEN: Kind of. Either that or you just pretend you’re sort of like an old timey Paleolithic human who is just getting a whole bunch of hair with their, like, bison hock or whatever.
DANIEL: Goodness gracious. In other news, the Washington football team with the racist name is now the Washington Football Team. That is the name. It’s the Washington Football Team.
BEN: Is that really what they’ve done?
DANIEL: That is really what they’ve done.
BEN: I have a lot of affection for that. As a person who doesn’t like sports, I’m just like: Cool, does what it says on the tin.
DANIEL: And now all we need to do is add some pressure to the Saputo company, because their racist cheese is still racist.
BEN: Oh, God damn it. I thought they said they were going to change it.
HEDVIG: We need to tell the non-Australian again.
BEN: Oh, okay. There is a brand of cheese in Australia that has a super, super, super, super, super, insanely racist name that starts with a C and ends with an N and has two Os in the middle.
KATHRYN: Hah! [TAKES MOMENT TO CATCH BREATH] They should change that.
BEN: Hmm, yeah.
DANIEL: That’s a good idea. Hmm, yeah.
KATHRYN: Hmm, I know!
BEN: Like, it’s amazing!
DANIEL: I did send a tweet but they ignored it, imagine. Finally, Spain’s language academy has added and then dropped a gender neutral pronoun, ELLE.
HEDVIG: What?
DANIEL: So this is the Royal Spanish Academy, which is kind of like the Academie Française, it’s like: Hi, we’re the official style body for the Spanish language and you should do what we say. And everyone ignores it, but they kind of… don’t?
BEN: Unlike France, where everyone is like: this matters very much.
DANIEL: Aw, you know what, they ignore them in France, too.
BEN: Okay.
DANIEL: Yeah, but they have this website called the Observatory of Words, in English anyway, that’s the English translation. And it’s supposed to be for words that they haven’t ruled on yet, but that may be causing some confusion or public debate. And so they stuck on the site the word ELLE, which in Spanish HE is ÉL, and HER is ELLA, and this is a gender neutral ELLE. And in translation it says, “the pronoun ELLE is a solution created and promoted in certain sectors to refer to those who may not feel identified with either of the two traditionally existing genders.” Problem there, already. “Its use is not widespread or well established.” And… however, there was some discussion and outcry and then they walked it back and deleted it. They said: we’re sorry if this caused any confusion, but we’re not incorporating this into the official Spanish dictionary.
BEN: Oh, that’s unfortunate.
KATHRYN: That’s so strange.
HEDVIG: So then the question becomes: is it something that is widely used?
DANIEL: I think it’s one of those candidates. If you look up Spanish gender inclusive language, but do it in Spanish, you’ll get you’ll get things with lots of E’s, for example, instead of CHICOS or CHICAS — for boys and girls — you’ll see CHICES with an E, or sometimes a letter X. We’ve all seen LATINX.
BEN: Yes.
DANIEL: Which isn’t really pronounceable, and seems to a lot of people kind of English-centered. But it is one of those options that people are doing. So use an X or use an E… I think E is more pronounceable.
HEDVIG: Yeah, E it seems great because it’s, like… it’s in a lot of Indo-European languages. It is the neutral gender associated like, yeah. So the dictionary — let’s remind ourselves — the dictionary describes what people are doing and people are doing this thing and they decided to not tell anyone about it.
BEN: They decided to tell people about it and then be like, never mind!
HEDVIG: Okay.
Daneiel: You know what I think happened? I think for English things are a little bit easier because we don’t have as much what’s known as agreement, like your nouns have grammatical gender. And then whatever your nouns are doing, whether it’s male or female or neutral or whatever, your adjectives also have to do that thing. So, for example, if I say “he arrived”, “she arrived”, “they arrived”. Or “he’s my friend”, “she’s my friend”, “they are my friend”, you know, it’s still FRIEND. But in Spanish, a male friend is AMIGO and a female friend is AMIGA. But a gender neutral friend would be an AMIGE. So then you have to start doing this thing where you say “él es mi amigo” “elles son mis amiges”. I mean, it’s no big deal, but it does mean that this process in Spanish is pretty thoroughgoing. And I feel like the RAE sort of stared into the abyss on this one and said, uhhh let’s just ramp it back a bit.
HEDVIG: I wonder, though, because the other day when I was trying to… when I was buying a bike here in Germany, the bike salesman decided to try and teach me and Ste some German, which happens sometimes. And he said, you know, you’ve heard about the gender and cases and stuff we’re like: yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s awful. And he’s like, no, no, no.
BEN: Always great to get someone onside that way.
HEDVIG: What you need to do, he was like, is you need to be super lax so that you’re ambiguous between different articles.
DANIEL: Yeah.
HEDVIG: So he’s like: if you don’t know if it’s DE or DAS, you go sort of DUH
[LAUGHTER]
KATHRYN: Oh, just choose a vowel in the middle, interesting.
HEDVIG: Yeah, and he was like no one’s going to pick you up on it. And he’s right. We, we use the wrong gender things all the time, and like…
DANIEL: Schwa to the rescue again!
HEDVIG: Yeah.
BEN: Man, look at this everyday superhero… selling people bikes, hero move number one. Just helping out with, like, the language, hero move number two.
HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah, I know. I was very impressed. So I think this, I think, I think this is one of the gender neutral, like, ideas that could work doing something like this.
BEN: Just like being like eyyeeee, yeah
DANIEL: Just mumble.
HEDVIG: Yeah, just mumble a bit. Yeah. Great, love it.
[TRANSITIONAL MUSIC]
DANIEL: We are here with Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games. Hey, Kathryn.
KATHRYN: Hello, stoked to be here.
DANIEL: We are glad to have you. We had you… once again, we had you when you released your last game Dialect. Now you’re working on a new game, Xenolanguage. You certainly do seem to enjoy language-based RPG games, do you not?
KATHRYN: Yes, that is… that is my jam. Resoundingly, yes. Who would have thought?
DANIEL: You’re not a linguist or anything, are you? Or are you?
KATHRYN: I am. I am actually.
DANIEL: You are? I didn’t know that about you
KATHRYN: Yes, sneaky, it is, isn’t it? And actually I went back to grad school recently, so now I’m even more officially so.
HEDVIG: Oh, cool.
DANIEL: Oh, wow. Okay.
HEDVIG: What kind of grad schooling are you doing?
KATHRYN: I… well, you know, many moons ago I had started a grad program in linguistics at Stanford. I’m trying to navigate my cat while I talk to you, so it doesn’t step on this keyboard. But uh…
BEN: Meow!
KATHRYN: Exactly. And then I left it, as I was lured out for a job in industry and then, after 10 or so years, I was like: you know what, I’m going to finish that thesis, in this grand year of 2020.
HEDVIG: Wow.
KATHRYN: So I found my way back. And it’s amazing, because grad school from your home just kind of blends in with everything else. So, it’s been a strange window into university life once again as, one, an adult; and two, just remotely.
HEDVIG: Yeah, that’s got to be weird.
DANIEL: You may not realise, but you are giving me hope as as a long term non-finisher.
[LAUGHTER]
KATHRYN: You just got a fullness of time.
HEDVIG: Again, I don’t know, Kathryn, if you want to learn more about Austin Walker, but I think he’s done the same thing.
[LAUGHTER]
KATHRYN: Oh, is that right?
HEDVIG: Yeah, he started grad school in, like, sociology or something in Canada and then left it midway, I think. And he’s written academic papers. Anyway.
BEN: I’m loving how shamelessly you are leaning into this, just: like, hey guys did you know that Austin Walker, that guy I was talking about earlier, you know, he did something similar to the thing you just said, oh, my God, it’s so interesting!
[LAUGHS]
HEDVIG: Yes! I feel like if there was like like, you know, those boy band teenage girl’s magazines I’d be like: ohhh, this is his horoscope!
BEN: Yes, I think that is very accurate.
KATHRYN: He deserves it, he is so dreamy and smart.
HEDVIG: Ohh, he’s so dreamy. Uugh.
BEN: You stan this guy the way a teenage girl stans Harry Styles. I’m putting it out there.
HEDVIG: Yes!
DANIEL: And there’s nothing wrong with that.
HEDVIG: No, it’s amazing!
[PAUSE]
DANIEL: Silence.
BEN: No, no. I didn’t say there’s anything wrong. I’m merely describing. I’m being a descriptivist.
DANIEL: Oh, very good.
KATHRYN: We have to send this episode to Austin once this is through, though clearly.
HEDVIG: Oh, no!
DANIEL: I’ll be sure to tag him. So Dialect was a monster release. It was huge. Quite successful. I am led to believe.
KATHRYN: Yeah. We were… we were thrilled with it. And it was definitely not what we expected. And it was sort of a jolt in the beginning, and we kind of been riding that way since. And then been propelled to make new games and really establish the the huge sector of linguistic space RPGs.
DANIEL: Tell us about what people have come back to you with. Have they been talking about, like, that they’ve learned things about linguistics, or that they have a new appreciation for language? What’s been the response?
KATHRYN: Yeah, I would say it’s really… it’s interesting. And I should say, you know, I’m a linguist and my partner… my design partner is a bilingual, bicultural person. So language really features strongly in who we are and just our worldview. And in general, like, we like using language in game design, as game designers just because it’s a really sneaky and evocative way to tell intimate stories about people. And I think that the big thing with Dialect, is that it lets people kind of steep in the story of this community.
So it’s a world building game, but really kind of take a different lens at it than what other games may offer, and experience, kind of like, world building and a shift in what people care about and what happens to them through the perspective of this language that they’re collaboratively building together. So the kinds of things that we hear from players is often just like, one, an appreciation for like how intimate and personal language can be. I think just in a way, especially for folks that aren’t linguists — and that’s really who we designed for, is just like people who enjoy games like first and foremost — we want these games to be fun, and they are. But just people getting an appreciation for the stories embedded in language. Also, just the fluency they have over language and language creation, I think is often a really big moment for people, when they realise that language is messy, but it’s something that they’re making all of the time and that there’s great power in being able to make it with friends at a table.
And the other thing that we hear, too, is that um… like, the game… you know, the game is really centered around people building up a dialect together that is centered on a setting that you’re playing in. And over the course of play, you build this, like, proto dialect, mini, a language kind of artifact. But by the end of it, the only people who speak it are the folks that you’ve played this game with. And so it’s very particular to that instance of people at the table. And even though the game itself is very much kind of around, like, building up these proto pieces of language and then watching it change, it’s also about language death in the sense and decay. And once the group of people that are at the table stop playing, they themselves are the only people that speak that in quotes dialect. And then as they go off, you know, that will not be used anymore or only be used when they come back together to sort of recall play. So it’s kind of a visceral feeling of at least one of the things the game wants people to think about.
HEDVIG: Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Have you got any feedback from people having played Dialect and felt… because when I listen to it being played through by the Friends at the Table cast, it’s quite emotional. Like it’s not, it’s not just a happy feeling.
KATHRYN: Yes. Yeah. And there are ways of playing it more lightly. Like we have settings around, like, wolf communication or… Our go to is often around just a Martian outpost where things go south quickly. But yeah, it is starkly emotional. And I think that you really need people to know that going into it. And we try and signal that in the book itself. There’s a lot of games these days that try and explore play that, you know, allows people at a table to take on, like, these thornier kind of topics. And this is one that tries to do that, too.
And it’s been I say one of the things that I’m really happy we are able to do with the game itself is include a bunch of settings by people who aren’t us, but that were able to contribute just from their own perspective and voice around ways of looking at a story that they would want told through language from their particular backgrounds. So we have had awesome contributions from amazing indigenous game designer and academic Elizabeth LaPensée, and also just from friends and game designer Ajit George, who has a setting in Tamil Nadu in India. And so I’m at least really happy that the game, as its package, one, like offers people settings that they can play in, like just in whatever way they want to approach it, as well as settings that really are grounded in reality and particular stories, that even if they don’t play through them, just by reading them, they can kind of get the perspective that a game like this is trying to tell you just all about how language is so deeply embedded in culture and people and identity.
HEDVIG: Yeah, such a cool idea.
KATHRYN: That was a long winded way of answering your question!
HEDVIG: No, no, no, but I think it’s such a… it is so smart and it’s such a cool idea of you guys to take… to want to tell such a story in this way. I think it’s a very clever use of roleplaying games.
DANIEL: And, you know, incorporating language like that is very sneaky, because language is so personal, and creating a language with people can really — I don’t know — it can evoke a sense of nostalgia when the game is over. I, I wonder if people continue using the slang that they built up in their real lives.
KATHRYN: Yeah. Some of the greatest sort of game reports we get are people that like totally codify their slang in different ways. I think, like I saw something tweeted at me, like the series of mugs that were made for a gaming group just with all of these amazing made up words and terms that, of course, I know nothing about. But tha just that they’ve made through playing this game. I love when that happens.
DANIEL: So tell us about the new game, Xenolanguage, because you felt like there was there was more to do in the way of language. What’s this like? What is this game?
KATHRYN: Yeah, I feel like we have so many damn language games in us. It’s pretty silly at this point. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, so Xenolanguage is different, but kind of related in the sense that it’s trying to use language as like an interesting way to tell stories about people and relationships. So Xenolanguage, it’s a tabletop story game about first contact with alien life, messy human relationships, and then what happens when they mix together. It’s really trying… it takes a nod from these soulful sci-fi media that you find from movies like Arrival, very much so, and Contact, where you’re kind of taking this kind of dreamy, introspective look at what it… what it would be to truly make first contact with alien life.
But in Xenolanguage, you are playing as these group of scientists, one of which is a linguist usually, that are tasked with making or deciphering messages that are coming to you from first contact from aliens who have landed on Earth. And the way that that is mechanically done is through a sort of this modular custom channeling board that we designed. So in the sense of like people kind of touching a planchet-like lens and using that to channel over kind of these alien symbols that become the basis for a message that you’re trying to uncover over the course of play.
So, yeah, it’s a very different game, but still fundamentally in terms of language as a lens on relationships and people, I think that beating heart is still there.
Yeah, we’re stoked for it. It’s been a journey, but it’s always exciting to finally get a game like this live. And we’ve been play testing it just high and low now, around the country and the world at this point. So we’re feeling pretty great about it.
HEDVIG: I was going to ask the boring mechanics question, because I wasn’t sure I understood the tablet mechanic.
BEN: So yeah, I was going to sort of say a similar thing, do you want to just run us through like 30 seconds of, like, gameplay?
KATHRYN: Totally.
BEN: Of what that would look like.
KATHRYN: Okay, yeah. So like many other games, you start off first by creating a character, and then relationships with other characters. These are all people that have been asked to go on a mission. And this mission is to uncover what is the meaning behind this alien message or these messages that you will be receiving.
BEN: Should we do that right now? Daniel, you are the linguist, all right? Hedvig is the gruff, like military pilot who has been, like, put into space work, right? So she’s like, no nonsense. She’s just like: I’ve got no time for your science shit. And I’m going to be, like the like, the botanist who’s on the planet who’s just like: hey, guys. Like, I just really like plants!
HEDVIG: And keeping the oxygen levels correct.
BEN: Yeah, exactly.
KATHRYN: Perfect. Perfect so far. And then then you’ll all have relationships with each other. So the botanist and the linguists perhaps, perhaps you’re married.
BEN: An illicit love affair I would prefer, if we can do it.
DANIEL: Yes. My preference as well.
KATHRYN: And these would all go around and we’d kind of understand the backgrounds of of these relationships. So this is a group of people that’s coming into this mission with history.
BEN: Gotcha.
KATHRYN: And then the game plays out in this card-based way, sort of like the beats that are leading up to people as they kind of get in, get in the Humvee or take the helicopter to the site of landing and what ultimately it is to behold this craft and then get to the platform. The platform itself is represented by the board that will sit on the table, that is kind of meant to be this like IRL alien artifact in front of you.
BEN: Okay. Fun!
KATHRYN: And the board is this depicted sort of like alien web that has kind of symbols that are fruiting out of it.
BEN: Can I ask, the vibe I’m getting is that there’s a little bit of a sort of like a Werewolf or a Mafia sort of vibe, in that like, a set of things happens that’s somewhat outside the player control, and then the players talk about it for a while and then another sort of thing happens, and those sort of like… the discussions that are grown out of those things, feed back into the sets of things that keep happening, is that?
KATHRYN: That’s totally fair, though I would say that it’s also more it’s more of a role playing game, in the sense that you are characters. And there are moments where you truly do, like, flashback scenes together, where you’re experiencing and kind of building out your back story.
BEN: All I can say to you, Kathryn, is you need to play Werewolf with me some time because I promise you, I go full method on that character.
KATHRYN: Oh, yeah? Awesome!
BEN: If I am like goody so-and-so, I will be clutching my lapels. I will be… I will be screaming that [LITTLE GIRL VOICE] it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. I don’t have a demon inside me!
KATHRYN: Fantastic. As Werewolf should always be played. You’re basically LARPing at that point, and I do love LARPing.
BEN: Exactly!Well, yeah. If you are that way inclined, all board games are LARPs sometimes. Play Monopoly with me sometimes: [BANKERS VOICE] Yeah. Yeah. You’re not going to get on my property, see! I’ve got no time for it — None! Okay, so follow up question: When are we playing this together? All of us? Because it sounds like a bloody good time.
KATHRYN: It’s a lot of fun. You’ll have to schedule it after our next Dialect game.
DANIEL: Okay.
HEDVIG: Yeah
KATHRYN: It’s been fantastic to see how people can get so into it. But also just like you really need something mechanically big to really try and conjure a feeling of like first contact at a table. And we knew we always kind of want to tell an Arrival-like story because I fucking love that movie, or really the story that it’s based on.
BEN: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
KATHRYN: And it really took the right mechanic that could feel kind of epic enough, but that still worked at a table. And I think that that that sort of physical motion of kind of collaborative storytelling that comes from like a Ouija like experience. On top of like things that you make together at the table, just… it’s been a while getting here, but we’re pretty happy with it.
HEDVIG: I think it’s really smart.
DANIEL: It is. It sounds like a really cool game. So we’re going to put a link to the Kickstarter up on our blog becauselanguage.com. How can people find you, other than that?
KATHRYN: We are usually at thornygames.com on the Web, and then also more of these days on Instagram @ThornyGames. And I personally am on Twitter as @chicalashaw
HEDVIG: Good name.
[LAUGHTER]
BEN: You got you got a very muted mumble of approval from a gruff former military spice pilot. That is like super high praise. Like, that… like, he once, she once called me a fucking dick-wit and I was like: oh, she likes me so much!
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: And I’m just above it all, you know, because I’m I’m not engaged in the military power structure. I’m just the brains behind the outfit.
BEN: Oh, she hates you so much, you bookish nerd.
DANIEL: I know. But she can’t do anything about it.
BEN: Ah, true.
HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good. I also have had a habit, I play DnD with my friends as a ot of people do in isolation. We did before as well. But um, it, this is beside the point, but like it was actually weird when you said that when you said that, Ben, you started saying HE and then switched to SHE. I actually usually play men for some reason.
BEN: Oh.
KATHRYN: Interesting.
HEDVIG: Yeah. I think it’s fun.
BEN: Oh, I definitely was doing that and knowing about it and not needing to re-examine my personal biases around military people who fly spacecraft, for sure!
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: I just think it’s fun to, and Ste has taken to playing female characters.
BEN: I do it all the time. I am always the opposite gender in all of the video games that I play that allow me to make that choice, I have always been FemShep. I just… my one regret is that there’s not like a female Geralt of Rivia, I really wish there was.
HEDVIG: Oh, right. I also like to pick very silly names that don’t sound fantasy at all. In our last two campaigns I’ve been Keith and Kevin.
BEN: Phillip.
KATHRYN: Awesome.
[LAUGH]
BEN: Kevin, I love it.
DANIEL: Big Kev.
HEDVIG: Everybody else has like really out there names that don’t exist in the world, and our DM has to say “and then it’s… Kevin’s turn”
BEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ellforth The Mighty has completed his motion… and now we turn to Kevin.
HEDVIG: Yeah, I can recommend it.
DANIEL: The game is Xenolanguage from Thorny Games and they are also the publishers of Dialect. We love language and we’re glad that you as a linguist are helping to create interesting and innovative games about… that involve language. So thanks for doing it.
KATHRYN: Yeah, we’ll keep on, keep on keeping on.
[LAUGHTER]
BEN: I said it, I said it at the start of the show. Game designers are the best kind of nerds and I can conclusively say that this is yet another piece of evidence that it’s 100 percent true.
KATHRYN: Oh, I will take it.
[TRANSITIONAL MUSIC]
DANIEL: Welcome to Words of the Week. We are here with Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games, and Kathryn, I believe you’ve got a word for us.
KATHRYN: I do. I do have a word. It’s related to…
BEN: The best kind of nerds!
KATHRYN: It’s related to something that I’m going to be doing tomorrow online. And it is related to another hobby of mine also around play, but a different kind of play. I am a fiddler.
HEDVIG: Oh, cool.
KATHRYN: And I would like to share with you…
BEN: As in a person who plays the instrument, the fiddle?
KATHRYN: Exactly so. Exactly so.
BEN: Because my brain was also like, okay, like you just you compulsively play with small kinetic toys.
[LAUGHTER]
KATHRYN: Yes, that would also work. But… but I hang out with the, let’s say, less fancy violin as the fiddle and…
BEN: The working man’s violin!
KATHRYN: Absolutely. And the word I would like to give to you today is the word “The Chop.”
DANIEL: The Chop
KATHRYN: So The Chop is something that happens to a violinist, when you get to the point where you really wish that you were a drummer. So, the chop is this percussive sound that you actually make with your bow against the string. And it’s really popular in lots of different kinds of music, like bluegrass and other stuff. But actually, like in the last 10 years, this gang of miscreants and like awesome musicians have just totally leaned into it. And now there’s this complete world of chop, where you can like high chop and low chop and soft chop and like scratch chop and drive chop and ghost chop. And so it’s just a bunch of people…
HEDVIG: Ghost chop? Sorry, that one we need to hear more of.
DANIEL: I need more. I need more.
HEDVIG: Ghost?
KATHRYN: Ghost. Yeah, so a ghost chop would be when you are actually like playing notes with your left hand while you’re chopping with the bow, so you only hear these little ghost notes over it. And it’s awesome because it almost reminds me of kind of like the language around clicks and like point of articulation. So there’s now a huge like musical notation that’s kind of blossoming out of people trying to actually write down what the hell is happening with the chop.
BEN: Oh, that’s fun.
KATHRYN: It is fun.
BEN: That’s really fun.
KATHRYN: It’s a bunch of beatboxing fiddlers that are chopping on their instruments. So that is my word for you.
HEDVIG: That’s cool. I like it.
BEN: This reminds me, I don’t know why, but it just it reminds me of like scratching and turntablism, where you take this tool and then you just do a completely different thing with it and everyone’s like: that’s awesome. I love it. More.
KATHRYN: Totally.
DANIEL: Hmm, wow, okay, cool.
BEN: The chop.
DANIEL: The chop. And it sounds like chop is becoming a…
KATHRYN: It’s a way of life.
DANIEL: Sort of like… it’s sort of like words like core or wave. It’s like becoming a denotation for different genres of this style of play.
KATHRYN: Yes. It evokes strong feelings in people, I would say also.
DANIEL: So my four-year-old daughter, formerly three years old, but birthday today.
KATHRYN: Oh, happy birthday!
BEN: Happy birthday!
DANIEL: That’s what I was doing today. I was having a kids party.
BEN: [SHUDDERS]
DANIEL: It was great! She wondered what was the difference between a violin and a fiddle, and I didn’t know how to explain it to her.
BEN: I was going to ask the same thing! I’m so glad that your four-year-old got in there before me.
DANIEL: She’s a curious tot, just like you.
KATHRYN: It’s a great question. It is the same. It’s all about how you play it. And it’s just a style of music style. Let’s say it, like, the violin you’re leaning into that. You’re really like holding onto the violincello and being very classical about it. And you’re looking for your Bach and Vivaldi. This is all of that. I say that having been subjected to that myself and still loving it secretly, but the fiddle is when things get a little a little wild and folky, and then you break all of those rules. So it’s the same.
BEN: So it’s just style. It’s no instrumental differentiation of any kind.
KATHRYN: Yeah. And style, and sometimes how you play. So sometimes you’ll see people with… like, the way they hold the fiddle, like, it’ll almost be like, you know, it’s like propped up on their chin rather than like proper form or other, you know, business like this. The one thing you do see when people do change their instruments up, sometimes you’ll have fiddlers that actually add a fifth string. So there are five-string violins.
BEN: Oh, so that is a big difference.
HEDVIG: Oh, what?
KATHRYN: That is a big difference. It is.
BEN: But not all fiddles have a fifth string.
KATHRYN: No, no.
BEN: Yours? Does it have a fifth string?
KATHRYN: It sadly doesn’t. It doesn’t. But someday.
BEN: But you have a fiddle though, right? Like so in your… sorry I’m just trying to work it out in my head. The thing that you hold is a fiddle, which is the same as a violin, but you don’t call it a violin, because you play the fiddle.
KATHRYN: Exactly. It’s all about the energy that you bring to it.
HEDVIG: I don’t know if… so we’re an Australian podcast, so I feel like we can’t talk about violins and being an Australian podcast without mentioning briefly TwoSet?
KATHRYN: Oh, I love TwoSet. I love Two… I’m wearing my TwoSet merch just yesterday.
HEDVIG: Oh, really?
KATHRYN: They’re fantastic.
HEDVIG: Amazing. Yes. Ben and Daniel, do you know what this is.
DANIEL: Nope
BEN: I don’t know TwoSet, but I can guess because I know another, like, string quartet who do what I assume you’re talking about, which is like string covers of, like really famous pop songs.
HEDVIG: Mmm, I mean, I guess they do that. Daniel, you want to guess?
DANIEL: No guesses here!
HEDVIG: They’re a very popular YouTube channel. They are, I believe, Taiwanese-Australian.
BEN: Okay.
HEDVIG: Kathryn, is that right?
KATHRYN: I’m not sure the background besides Australian, but they’re so funny.
HEDVIG: They’re two very, very funny violin players who do like funny videos. There are very memey, very funny editing, very trendy right now. And they do like comedy and they get people interested in violins and classical music and they bully people who play viola a lot.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: oh, that’s just normal.
HEDVIG: And they do reaction videos and they play different instruments and they’re very talented, very funny comedian-type classical music memey any people on YouTube, and they’re quite popular right now. And they’re Australian.
DANIEL: Oh wow, okay,
BEN: Okay, I’m on board. We’ve been sharing a lot of YouTubers, this has been fun. This is like how podcasters… like, if we were all dogs sniffing each other. This is like the podcast version: oh, you seen this content creator? Oohm what about this content creator?
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: I wonder, yeah, I’m a little bit worried that maybe that isn’t as fun for our listeners as it is for us, but we’ll see.
BEN: I 100 percent disagree. When I’m listen to a podcast and they’re like, oh, here’s this thing we love I’m like, I’ll be driving my car or something and I’ll start like reaching in the back seat for something to, like, write or type on. I’m like: oh no, I got to get it down!
DANIEL: Like Lenny in Memento.
BEN: Yeah.
DANIEL: Well, thanks for that word. Let’s go to our next one. This one is: PHANTOSMIA. Phantosmia.
BEN: Phantosmia. Not like phantasmia? Or phantasmagoria?
DANIEL: No. Nope. This is phantosmia. You know, you can probably guess a little bit of the word if you know some of the parts. You’re on the right track.
BEN: Is it to do with miasma?
DANIEL: No, not this time. What is a miasma?
BEN: Well, isn’t a miasma like ‘bad airs’, back in the day?
HEDVIG: Oh yeah, it’s what they thought the plague was carried by.
BEN: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like when you… when you were… like 300 years ago when everyone started dying, they were like: ope, bad air in this place!
DANIEL: And that’s why they called it MAL…ARIA.
EVERYONE: Oh!
DANIEL: They thought it was the air, they named it wrong. There you go. Okay, other guesses from anyone who didn’t read this one who didn’t read this one? Who didn’t read the run sheet?
HEDVIG: Is this somehow related to, so Kathryn help me here, what’s the name of that game? The Fantasma?
KATHRYN: Oh!
HEDVIG: How’s it pronounced? It’s not related to that. It’s related to a game, Daniel.
DANIEL: No, not this time.
KATHRYN: Final Fantasy?
BEN: Is that the Ghost of the Phantasm, the Zelda edition?
HEDVIG: No, it’s called Phantasmagoria.
KATHRYN: Oh, Phantasmagoria, yes, yes, yes.
HEDVIG: Oh, it’s not new, but everyone’s playing it now. Questionmark. Don’t know. It’s trending.
BEN: Well, I’m hearing a no coming.
DANIEL: That might be a no. So this word comes from PHANTASM, meaning illusion. It’s a Greek word, but also OSME meaning smell. Smelling things that aren’t there. Phantom smells.
BEN: Oh!
DANIEL: And the reason this one is in the news this week is because it has come to light that this is a symptom of covid. Not only can you not smell things, and that’s one way to tell that you have it. And in fact, people can tell where covid is on the rise because you see an increase in Google searches for “I can’t smell” in that area.
BEN: Ooo, interesting.
DANIEL: But sometimes even people who get better still have terrible tastes, like the foods that they used to love just taste gross. There’s one story in The Washington Post about a woman who opened a bottle of wine she’d been saving and it just tasted like petrol.
BEN: Oh, man.
HEDVIG: Oh, no!
BEN: This is such a weird disease, isn’t it?
HEDVIH: So weird.
DANIEL: It is a weird disease.
BEN: I mean, it does some really wacky… The flu doesn’t do that, right? Like, I’ve never had a flu and then later on been like: Oh, no! pasta carbonara? I hate this now! Like, doesn’t exist.
DANIEL: It would be a rare symptom for many things. It is possible. There are articles on it that go way back. But this is one particular thing for some people about covid. It could be that your sense of smell will just return to normal in a few weeks or months, but for some others, it could be a bit longer lasting.
And in other covid related news, I found this one. Instead of pandemic, it’s being shortened to PANNY.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: This is a tweet from @IamGMJohnson coming after the election: “THEY GONNA EVICT TRUMP DURING A PANNY!”
BEN: I, I’ve got to say, I took this word in a different direction.
DANIEL: Oh, did you?
BEN: I feel like this — maybe it’s the Australian in me talking — I feel like this is a contraction for panic attack.
HEDVIG: Oh!
BEN: Oh, just gone out the back and had a cheeky panny. All good now. Back in play.
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIHG: Cheeky panny.
DANIEL: Yeah, yeah. I’ve never heard it expressed that way, but this definitely is an Australian thing. And this sounds super Australian to me, but it’s… I don’t think this person is.
HEDVIG: Yeah, Australians love their love, their diminutives with the Y.
DANIEL: We do. And, you know, it reminds me of also Zipf’s law of brevity: When a word increases in frequency, sometimes it gets shortened because it’s just more economical to say it and everyone knows what you mean.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
DANIEL: Finally, NON-ZERO NUMBER, which is not a new concept, but it saw an interesting use this week. I promise I will get through the interminable election things. So impeached and outgoing President Donald Trump is unfortunately trying to overturn the will of the voters and stage, well, a bit of a coup. Actually, some people would say it’s not a coup because a coup is when somebody else tries to replace the president. Instead, this is when the president is trying to use methods to try to stay in power. So some people have said, no, no, this isn’t a coup. This is actually an “autogolpe”, which is the Spanish word for a strike or a blow, which is what a coup is. But it’s an autogolpe, meaning the president is trying to stay in power. To which I say: I don’t really want to get out the semantic tweezers and parse that. I’m just going to keep calling it a coup. But anyway…
BEN: Yeah, like if it’s dumb but it works, it’s not dumb, right? Like it’s like one of those situations.
DANIEL: Exactly.
KATHRYN: And it’s punchy.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: It’s a coup. So Trump is trying to overturn the result by legal shenanigans. But it seems that you’re not allowed to lie in court. You’ve got to be transparent and open. So…
BEN: Ugh, boring.
DANIEL: I know. So one of the things that the Trump team is trying to allege, is that observers in Philadelphia weren’t allowed to see the results. And so the judge said: wait, are you trying to say that they weren’t allowed in the room? And the lawyer replied that there were a non-zero number of Republican observers in the room when the votes were being counted. So I just thought that was a fun way of saying: yeah, there were totally people in the room. But instead, it’s a non-zero number of people.
KATHRYN: Ugh.
HEDVIG: Yeah, I like it.
KATHRYN: Our 1984 authoritarian doubles talk, so bad.
BEN: That reminded me of NONTRIVIAL, which is a thing I use all the time.
HEDVIG: Oh yeah. I like nontrivial.
BEN: Yeah, I bust nontrivial out heaps.
HEDVIG: And not insignificant.
BEN: Yes.
KATHRYN: Yes.
DANIEL: I like using “large values”, so two plus two could equal five for very large values of two.
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: What?!
BEN: I feel like you’re just, you’re just on a Radiohead like jag, and you’re just hammering it into whatever you can find.
DANIEL: Okay, well the other one that I like is “large positive integer”. So when someone says how many people were at that thing? And I’m like: Um, N, where N is a large positive integer.
BEN: Nerd!
HEDVIG: I prefer non-zero.
BEN: Yeah.
DANIEL: Non-zero number. Okay, well, there was a non-zero number of people there. Yeah. Okay, so we’ve got CHOP, PHANTOSMIA, PANNY and NON-ZERO NUMBER, our words of the week. Once again, Word of the Year season is upon us, so watch our Facebook, watch our Twitter accounts, watch all the places, because we’ll be having our vote for Because Language Word of the Year coming very soon. Let’s get some comments. We talked about canola in a previous episode and we surmised that it might have been from Canada?
HEDVIG: Yeah, I think I’m wrong.
[LAUGHTER]
BEN: Got to love that one.
DANIEL: Our good friend Don, writing to us on hello@becauselanguage.com says you are in fact correct. Don says,
HEDVIG: [HIGH PITCHED SQUEAL]
DANIEL: I know!
HEDVIG: What?! The seeds!
DANIEL: Well, it’s better than what they used to call it, right? I mean uhhh.
HEDVIG: Yeah.
DANIEL: Don says, “Canola was indeed created by Agriculture Canada. The father of a close friend of mine was one of the scientists who worked on that project.” And while I haven’t investigated this myself, I like it well enough that I’m going to say, yep, that’s totally what it is.
HEDVIG: I’ll take it.
DANIEL: Me too.
BEN: Take the win. Take. The. Win.
KATHRYN: Yeah, absolutely.
DANIEL: And finally, we had a episode a long time ago about, what’s the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin? And can someone pass if they’re a Cantonese speaker, can they pass as a Mandarin speaker? How easy is it? Samuel says, “Hi, Hedvig, Daniel and Ben. I was just listening to episode four, ‘The Bonus EP’, been catching up. And heard that you wanted to hear about differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. I’m from Hong Kong, but living in Scotland now, speak both languages and studied linguistics, so I thought I might be able to share some insights.”
HEDVIG: Yes.
DANIEL: “I hope it’s not too late or too long.”
HEDVIG: No.
DANIEL: “By the way, love the show.”
HEDVIG: So for context, I believe we’re talking about protesters Hong Kong where people found that if they were stopped by the police and pretended to be a mainland Mandarin speaker who just happened to be at the scene at the time, they were sort of not picked up by the police, versus if they spoke Cantonese and seemed like they were a local Hong Konger. And because people are probably experiencing a lot of Mandarin culture and media and in school, etc., it’s not that hard. I think even if you… it’s probably hard to find someone who speaks Cantonese, who has no experience with Mandarin at all.
DANIEL: Well, Samuel sent us some information in his own voice.
HEDVIG: Cool!
DANIEL: So what I’m going to do is I’m going to drop that at the tail end of this show and you can stick around and listen to that. I thought his comments were very illuminating. Thank you, Samuel, for that.
BEN: What a ledge.
[KATHRYN LAUGH]
DANIEL: I know. We have some great listeners.
BEN: What, someone laughing at ledge? Ledge is a good word
DANIEL: Ledge. What a ledge.
KATHRYN: Hey, I’d love an explanation actually of ledge
BEN: Legend! What a legend!
KATHRYN: Oh! Fantastic. I’m going to drop that and it’s going to spread like wildfire in California.
[LAUGHTER]
BEN: Ye… Whooa! Whoa!
DANIEL: Whoa! Oh my gosh.
KATHRYN: I’m allowed to say it, I’m from California!
BEN: Yep. Yep. I’m… yes, you are. And I just, look, all I can say is: that was hot.
DANIEL: Either that or it could just be a part of this conversation and it will vanish as soon as we leave this chat session.
KATHRYN: Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
DANIEL: Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games, thank you so much for hanging out with us and talking today.
KATHRYN: Thank you for having me. This is a ton of fun.
[OUTRO MUSIC]
DANIEL: Ope. You know what that music means. It’s… time to say the things
BEN: [SINGING] Time to say the things, doo doo doo. I’m first, aren’t I?
DANIEL: Yep.
BEN: Yeah, if you’re anything like me, which is to say, a giant nerd who loves games, you’ve probably had a whole bunch of things that you wanted to say, or ask, or include about what we’ve been talking about today. Good news: there are so many ways you can do that. You can do it on Facebook, you can do it on Twitter, you do it on Instagram, you can do it on Mastodon, you can do it via Patreon if you want to give us a little bit of the cashola, we are becauselangpod in all of those places. And don’t forget, we have a Mailbag episode coming up. This is your chance to break Daniel’s brain. It’s really fun. You’re all way smarter than us, and you ask, like, the very best questions. I don’t do anything! Like, you all know this, I’m an idiot. So Daniel has to do basically all of the work. And it’s just like it’s so gratifying to watch a person’s brain do a backflip, and then explode in slow motion over a microphone. It’s great. So you can contribute to that.
HEDVIG: And you might say, isn’t Hedvig the other linguist on the show? This is true, but Hedvig hates smart questions, and gets very annoyed by them. So if you actually want to break someone, you have better luck at breaking Daniel than me.
DANIEL: That is true, but I will also say that when I turned it over to Ben in our episode: Will Ben Get It Right — sorry, I think it was called Will Ben Fuck it? but I decided to change it — I think…
[LAUGHTER]
BEN: Awww, you, you, you little ex-mormon! We have done studies of our audience. They don’t mind the swearing at all. And you still cleaned it up!!
DANIEL: Yeah, but in the title? You know, come on. Anyway, as I remember it…
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: We need to get you more Australian!
BEN: That puritanism runs so deep!
DANIEL: You nailed it 100 percent on those episodes. So don’t, don’t give me that stuff about how, you know, you do nothing.
BEN: Okay. Fine. Fine. Do you know what my payment shall be, Daniel? Leave my swearin’ in, even in the title!
DANIEL: Okay. Fuck yeah! I just want to also say a big shout out to Sandman Stories (@StoriesSandman), who has been tireless, relentless in promoting us on Twitter. Every time I look, there’s somebody saying, “Hey, does anybody have any good podcasts that they like to…” you know. And he’s like… it’s like twice a day! There’s two of them where he’ll drop a big old list, including us. And this person…
BEN: What an absolute lord.
DANIEL: So this is Sandman’s stories — @StoriesSandman — and you can check them out. There you go, sharing the love back.
BEN: Nice one.
HEDVIG: Speaking of sharing the love, we are very grateful for our Patrons, who on the regular share their love with us in terms of supporting us monetarily. One of the things we do with the money they give us is make transcripts for all of our episodes, which is really cool, and it means you can search and you can find out what we talked about. So if you ever wondered “when was it that Hedvig was fangirling so much over Austin Walker?” you can find this episode, easily.
[LAUGHTER]
HEDVIG: We also make bonus episodes and we’re planning on — soon, hopefully, I believe certainly before the end of this year — we’re going to be playing as the game we talking about Dialect as a bonus episode along with my husband, which is going to be tons of fun.
BEN: Aw, you’re still in that phase of saying the word and just being like: oohh!
DANIEL: Ooooh, weird.
HEDVIG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I say it all the time. The other day he called me girlfriend and I glared at him.
DANIEL: It’s a good thing. When your wife is your girlfriend, that’s awesome.
HEDVIG: If you want to listen to a bonus episode, and help support us, you can join us at patreon.com/becauselangpod. And we’re also looking to send you some fun things over the holidays. Thank you so much to all of our lovely patrons on Patreon. They are: Termy, Chris B, Lyssa, The Major, Chris L, Matt, Damien, Helen, Bob, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Christelle, Elías, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Maj, Nigel, Kate, Jen, Nasrin, Nikoli, Ayesha, Emma, Andrew and Samuel. Thank you to all.
DANIEL: Our music is written and performed by Drew Krapljanov. He’s in the band Dideon’s Bible, and their new single, John Candy, is available on their Bandcamp page. It’s really good. And Drew is also a member of Ryan Beno, which is also a great band. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. Because Language.
SAMUEL: So, as you might know, Hong Kong has been ruled by China since 1997, and since then there’s an increase in Mandarin education in the school system. Numbers now say about half of the population can communicate in Mandarin, but I’m not really sure of that, if that’s really accurate. So I was born after the handover and I was taught Mandarin since primary school. So I speak it fluently. But I do know many people around my age or older who don’t really speak it well, or they may just like passively understand it. So it’s even more true for older Hong Kongers. Many of them can’t really speak it at all.
And nowadays they’re more and more school kids who speak Mandarin to each other at school, both because of the influx of Chinese immigrants, and also the policies where certain primary schools decided to use Mandarin as a language of instruction. So whenever I hear kids speaking Mandarin to each other, it really sends chills down my spine because it’s just a sign of how the children are starting to abandon Cantonese in favor of Mandarin, and it really breaks my heart.
But going back to Ben’s question about how similar Cantonese and Mandarin are and how easy it is to code switch between the two. So something you need to know about Hong Kong, is that it’s very different from other places, with the local language and a bigger language across the border. So in Hong Kong, the standard written language is just called Chinese, which is basically Mandarin. So it’s taught in schools. It’s what all the newspapers, books, and official documents are in. Even on Cantonese TV shows, you’d see Mandarin subtitles essentially, but they’re not really thought of as a different language. And it’s just like how you should write. So Hong Kongers, regardless of their Mandarin proficiency, can definitely read and write Mandarin. But there will be some local idiosyncrasies that are different from how native Mandarin speakers actually speak. But it’s pretty close.
So this basically means that very often you can kind of wiggle your way into being proficient just by learning the sound correspondences. You guys probably already know about, like consonant and vowel correspondences, so I won’t really get into that. But I do want to talk about tone correspondences.
So Hedvig talked about the two languages having different number of tones, which is correct. But once you know Cantonese tones, you can guess the Mandarin ones with very high accuracy, because they came from the same tones in middle Chinese. So, for example, Cantonese has six tones and Mandarin has four. And tone one in Cantonese corresponds with two and one in Mandarin tones. Two and five correspond to tone three. Tones three and six correspond to four, and finally tone four with tone two. And there are good ways to remember it, but it would involve learning about how tones in middle Chinese work, and it’s quite complicated.
But it essentially means that it’s relatively easy for Hong Kongers to learn Mandarin because they’re already taught how to read and write it since kindergarten, and most of the effort is made in trying to learn speaking and listening. And there are also lots of grammatical differences, like different word order or using different grammar particles, etc., which can definitely contribute to difficulty in learning Mandarin.
But I believe most of the hard work is in learning how to pronounce it. That said, you can entirely function in Hong Kong without ever using Mandarin. So naturally, many people still don’t really speak it, at least for now. And that includes the police, who has a reputation of not being very educated, and being pretty bad at foreign languages. So probably they wouldn’t be able to tell if you’re really a Mandarin speaker anyway. So that’s my two cents and I hope it helps. I love the show.