Here’s an entire show, curated by one of our most prolific contributors — newly minted speechie PharaohKatt!
She’s got news. She’s got words. She tries to stump us on Related or Not.
She even teaches us how to roll our R’s. Wow.
But best of all, she answers all our questions about speech and language pathology.
Listen to this episode
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Become a Patron!Show notes
Freya Allan || IMDB.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8463347/
Language development in children: 0-8 years | raisingchildren.net.au
https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/development/language-development/language-development-0-8
The Autistic Pragmatic Language Hypothesis
https://medium.com/neurodiversified/the-autistic-pragmatic-language-hypothesis-61d898806e25
Facilitated Communication | American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
https://www.asha.org/policy/ps2018-00352/
Speech Pathology Australia: Practice Guidelines
https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/SPAweb/Members/Clinical_Guidelines/spaweb/Members/Clinical_Guidelines/Clinical_Guidelines.aspx?hkey=f66634e4-825a-4f1a-910d-644553f59140
(see under “Augmentative and Alternative Communication”)
Boyce, et al. (2022). Self-reported impact of developmental stuttering across the lifespan. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology (64), 10.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dmcn.15211
Jim Hungerford: Australia’s shameful inaction on Indigenous hearing loss
https://thewest.com.au/opinion/jim-hungerford-australias-shameful-inaction-on-indigenous-hearing-loss-c-8394314
[PDF] Anelisa Fergus. (2019.) Lend Me Your Ears: Otitis Media and Aboriginal Australian languages
https://ling.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Anelisa%20Fergus.pdf
Korean deaf LGBT activists create new signs to express identities with pride
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/03/113_336633.html
Korean Sign Language Dictionary
https://sldict.korean.go.kr/front/main/main.do
Crikeycore: what is it and should Australians cringe at it?
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/22/crikeycore-what-is-it-and-should-australians-cringe-at-it
Explained: What Is Corecore, the Dada-esque ‘Artistic Movement’ Now Trending on TikTok?
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/corecore-tiktok-explainer-2250235
Bad linguistics alert: Saying “Does that make sense?” is fine. It helps check comprehension, and builds empathy. No idea why people have turned on it.
Never Ask ‘Does That Make Sense?’
https://hbr.org/2011/09/never-ask-does-that-make-sense
Let’s Stop Asking “Does That Make Sense?” After Everything We Say In Meetings
https://www.bustle.com/p/lets-stop-asking-does-that-make-sense-after-everything-we-say-in-meetings-9633631
Forget spy balloons, the world of surveillance has tried everything from schoolchildren to trained cats
https://theconversation.com/forget-spy-balloons-the-world-of-surveillance-has-tried-everything-from-schoolchildren-to-trained-cats-199300
The Curious Origins of the Girls’ Name Wendy
https://interestingliterature.com/2020/12/wendy-girls-name-origin-meaning/
Wendy | Behind the Name
https://www.behindthename.com/name/wendy
Transcript
[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]
PharaohKatt: LordMortis brought me bread.
Hedvig: Oh, nice.
Daniel: Bread from the rice cooker.
PharaohKatt: Bread from the rice cooker.
Daniel: Do you also make rice in the bread cooker?
PharaohKatt: I need to get a bread cooker so I can make some rice in the bread cooker. [laughs]
Daniel: The thing is, if you’ve got a rice cooker, why would you need a bread cooker? You’ll never use the bread cooker.
Hedvig: Yeah, because I’ve got bread in the rice cooker.
[laughter]
Daniel: You’ve got the bread. There’s no need to do… Mm.
[Because Language theme]
Daniel: Hello, and welcome to this special bonus episode of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language. I’m Daniel Midgley and with me now, she’s a linguist, a podcaster, and according to ChatGPT, she might also be a cast member on The Witcher. It’s Hedvig Skirgård.
Hedvig: Oh, my god. It said that?
Daniel: Yep. I did that thing where you look yourself up, “What is Hedvig Skirgård primarily known for?” It said, “Hedvig Skirgård is primarily known for her role as the character Ciri in the Netflix series, The Witcher.” And it’s not. It’s actually Freya Allan. It’s not an actor with the same name at all.
Hedvig: Our names.
Daniel: Totally different.
Hedvig: I would have thought if I’d be mistaken for the Skarsgårds.
Daniel: Oh, yeah. I mean, something like that.
Hedvig: Yeah, Alexander Skarsgård, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That would be a reasonable mistake if we got Skarsgård.
Daniel: Yes.
Hedvig: Oh, that’s funny.
Daniel: On the plus side, you are apparently a fan favorite among viewers of the show.
Hedvig: Hooray.
Daniel: We have no Ben today. Ben has been called up for a very important meeting, which is a thing that happens and we miss him. But we do have our very special guest who brings us so many great news stories, so many Words of the Week, and so many suggestions. We decided, well, it’s time to just get her to curate this entire show. It’s PharaohKatt.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] Hello, good morning. Well, it’s actually late afternoon, but never mind.
Daniel: [laughs] It’s morning for Hedvig.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] Good morning, Hedvig.
Hedvig: Thank you. Good morning. I also want to institute a thing where there’s a greeting for the first time you meet someone.
Daniel: Oh.
PharaohKatt: What is…?
Daniel: English needs that, like when someone’s not new, but they’re new to you, which is another thing English needs.
Hedvig: Well, per 24 hours.
Daniel: Mm-hmm.
Hedvig: Per 24 hours, the first time you meet your colleague at work, if it’s past 12:00, you…you can, I guess, just say, hello.
Daniel: We should do that.
Hedvig: That’s a boring solution.
Daniel: Well, you could go formal the first time, and then after that it’s like, “Hey.”
Hedvig: Yeah, I want a good morning, but, “Good first time I see you today.”
Daniel: Good first time we see you. I think we should talk about this a different time.
Hedvig: We should.
Daniel: PharaohKatt, you are a newly minted speech and language pathologist, or as we say a Speechie?
PharaohKatt: Correct.
Daniel: You’ve been a longtime supporter of the show and you’re the reason that I know how to spell the word PHARAOH.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] I did go through a bit of an Egyptian phase in my childhood, and that name has kind of stuck.
Daniel: Very good. Do you have a mnemonic for spelling it? I have a trick that I have to use every time, but do you have a trick?
PharaohKatt: I just learnt it by rote, and I just say it by rote. What’s your trick?
Daniel: Hedvig, do you have a trick, or do you just get it wrong every time?
Hedvig: Well, I don’t say it in English that much. So, I try and remember Swedish, and I get confused and I rely on spellcheckers.
Daniel: Sounds good. My trick is that there’s an ARA in the middle. It’s symmetrical. So, if you can remember that it’s P-H, and then there’s that A-R-A, and then what’s left? Well, an O and an H. So, that’s my trick.
PharaohKatt: There you go.
Hedvig: Oh, in English, you don’t pronounce the second A, do you?
Daniel: No, it’s just pharaoh. Oh, you know how it is with those vowels.
Hedvig: Yeah, we do. Phar-ow.
Daniel: Phar-ow.
Hedvig: Phar-ow.
Daniel: I like it. We did, but we decided it was just too much work and we said, “Pfft, forget it.” We’ll say the other A. That’s fine.
Hedvig: Oh, [mumbles]
Daniel: Are you looking up on spellcheck how to spell pharaoh?
Hedvig: No, I’m not doing anything. My hands are…
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: I’m trying to remember how Swedish works.
Daniel: Fair.
Hedvig: Okay.
Daniel: Since we’ve got a Speechie here, we wanted to just ask you a ton of questions about your profession. Does that sound all right?
PharaohKatt: Yes. Let’s do it.
Daniel: Before we do that though, this is a message to all you patrons listening to this bonus episode. Thank you for being Patreons. You’re supporting the show. You’re helping us have fun while talking about good language science. So, thank you very much. Why not come and join us on Discord, if you’re not already? All patrons can, no matter what level. And if you’re listening later, once this episode goes public and you’re not a patron, why don’t you sign up and become one? There’s lots of bonuses here. Bonus episodes, yearly mail-out, Discord access depending on your level. That’s at patreon.com/becauselangpod.
All right, so first question. Do you like the term “Speechie” or is that not a very good term for someone who is a speech language pathologist?
PharaohKatt: So, the thing with speech language pathologists is we get… There are so many terms to describe us.
Daniel: I know. [laughs]
PharaohKatt: So, you’ll hear SLT, SLP, SLTP, like, just speech language therapist, speech therapist, speech language pathologist, speech pathologist. There’s so many. In Australia, we tend to go with speech pathologist, but it does get really, really fraught. So, if you’re ever confused, just say Speechie. It’s nice and short.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: Speechie.
Daniel: Why is it fraught? What’s fraught about it?
PharaohKatt: There’s this kind of feeling that the terms that we’re using have some sort of impact on the way people are going to see us in our profession, and then it’s just, “Oh, is there a difference or is it the same?” It’s just confusing. So, no, just call us a Speechie. It’s nice and short. As Australians, we like to shorten things.
Daniel: Very Aussie.
PharaohKatt: It’s very Aussie.
Daniel: [laughs] Well, speech and language therapy is a pretty big umbrella. What’s your area of focus within SLP?
PharaohKatt: [giggles] If you want to know the full term that I get, it’s CPSP, which is Clinical Practicing Speech Pathologist.
Daniel: Oh, wow. Okay.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. I get two post [unintelligible [00:06:54]. I get MISP, which is Master in Speech Pathology, and I get CPSP.
Daniel: I did not see that C coming, to be honest.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, Clinical Practicing Speech Pathologist. And that’s the difference between someone who’s in the field and someone who’s, I guess, lapsed. Yeah, they’ve got the training, but they aren’t up to date.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: What does that mean for what you do day-to-day? Because I think I and maybe a lot of people listening think that you go to schools and help children who are struggling to pronounce their Rs or Js or something. Is that what you do?
PharaohKatt: That is one of the things I could do. What is your understanding of what a speech pathologist does?
Daniel: Great question.
Hedvig: I happened to take classes with speech pathologists in Sweden, because they had to take Intro to Phonetics, and we had to take Intro to Phonetics, and they were like, “Why don’t you guys just take Intro to Phonetics together?” My understanding is that… We call them speech pedagogues.
PharaohKatt: Huh.
Daniel: Speech teacher.
Hedvig: Yeah, I’m pretty sure we call them that. Fuck.
Daniel: Mm-hmm.
Hedvig: Anyway, my understanding is that some people have anatomical difficulties, like maybe that string under their tongue is a bit taut or there’s like… what’s it called when you have a little gap?
PharaohKatt: Cleft palate?
Hedvig: Yeah, cleft palate or something. That means that the way that everyone else pronounces sounds is not going to work and they might need to find an alternative route to pronounce sounds. So, when everyone else puts their tongue like that, you need to put your tongue a little bit like this, and then we make a sound that’s almost that. They try and help people produce speech in a way that other people will understand it, but not correcting… They’re not grammar nazis.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] No. We’re definitely not grammar nazis. So, there’s actually two broad areas of practice within speech pathology. Area one is communication. So, this is all of our language stuff. This is helping someone with their speech sounds. This is fluency or stuttering. It could be relearning to speak post stroke. It could be learning to use an alternate communication method if verbal words aren’t for you. That’s area one.
Area two is feeding and swallowing. The way that it was always described to me is we look at the neck up. So, all of the muscles that you use to speak are the same muscles and cranial nerves that you use to eat. So, if somebody has had a stroke and they’ve lost some of their functioning in their mouth and they can’t swallow properly, we’ll do reviews, we’ll do rehabilitation, we’ll do dietary changes to make things easier to swallow. But we also help anyone who has a swallowing difficulty. So, that could be someone with a tongue tie or a cleft palate who might need an alternate way to get nutrition.
Hedvig: That’s really interesting, because we’re one of the stupid primates that can choke on food, because like you said… [crosstalk]
Daniel: We have a descended larynx.
Hedvig: We have like one pipe, and then it splits at one point. It does split. Thankfully, we don’t digest with our lungs.
PharaohKatt: Underneath your epiglottis.
Hedvig: Yeah. But for quite a while, they’re the same pipe.
PharaohKatt: And all connected through to your nose and your eyes and your ears.
Hedvig: Yeah. Don’t eat with your eyes, probably.
PharaohKatt: No. That’s no.
[laughter]
Hedvig: That’d be bad. The story that I was usually told in intro linguistics was that evolutionarily, there was a cost benefit analysis of like, “Do you want to not be able to choke on food or do you want a slightly longer speech apparatus so that you can make more distinctive sounds?” Humans were like, “Yeah, choking on food. Let’s do it.”
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: Apparently, we don’t choke on food enough times that it’s a problem.
Daniel: It was a good tradeoff.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. Well, there’s actually quite a few protection mechanisms in your throat to stop you from choking. So, do you know what the epiglottis is?
Hedvig: I know, but let’s pretend we don’t know, because Ben’s not here.
Daniel: Okay. I don’t know.
PharaohKatt: So, the epiglottis is a little kind of flap, I guess, that sits at the back of your throat. When you swallow, your epiglottis covers your air tube so that food can’t go down it. So, that is your first primary form of protection. Your second form of protection is actually your vocal cords. You’ve got two sets of vocal cords, your false and your true vocal cords. When you swallow, these slam shut to prevent food from going down. So, if food misses the epiglottis and goes down underneath, you’ve got two sets of vocal cords there to stop it from going into your lungs. What a cough is, is it’s this forced expulsion of air through your vocal cords to get all of that stuff back out again so that it doesn’t go into your lungs and cause aspiration pneumonia.
Hedvig: Ah. So, it’s like trying to kick it up to the level above the epiglottis.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: Then, if it doesn’t go all the way up to the mouth, whatever, as long as it gets at least that high.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, because then you can keep coughing, maybe you’ll be able to swallow it back down. Yeah, it’s just that level of protection.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
PharaohKatt: I feel like we’ve gotten a little off topic from the question.
Daniel: No, this is actually interesting.
Hedvig: No, no, no. This is the question.
Daniel: Because this is an area that I don’t usually go to.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: So, after I aspirate some food, then I drink some water in hopes that the water will go near that area and get whatever it was, get those corn chips out of there.
PharaohKatt: So, don’t do that.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: My husband did that yesterday.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: We were eating, and he was coughing, and he was like, “Oh, I need to drink water.”
PharaohKatt: Yeah, and it was my first response too. But here’s the thing. That cough is a good thing. That cough is getting any debris out of your throat and out of your lungs. What you should do is make sure that you’re completely upright so that gravity is not working against you, and you should cough and cough and cough, and you should not eat or drink anything until it’s been completely cleared.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: Why shouldn’t I be upside down though?
PharaohKatt: Okay. I have no idea about upside down.
Daniel: I think it works the same way because of peristalsis.
PharaohKatt: Peristalsis forces food down.
Daniel: It does. That’s why I think it’s the same. It works the same way if you’re upside down or right side up.
Hedvig: We’re trying to get food up through the tract. Then once it’s somewhere good, get it hopefully down the right food pipe, right?
Daniel: Get it down again.
Hedvig: Okay. So, holding someone by the feet and shaking them.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] Please don’t do that.
Daniel: [blabbers]
Hedvig: We should say, “This is not medical advice. I am not a medical practitioner.” [crosstalk]
Daniel: Nothing in this show is medical advice. Nothing.
PharaohKatt: No. The best thing to do is, if someone is full on choking, if they start to go quiet, if they aren’t able to cough, that’s when you do your CPR… not your CPR, your first aid and back blows and chest thrusts.
Daniel: Back blows, which are the preferred method over what used to be called the Heimlich maneuver. We don’t do that anymore, do we?
PharaohKatt: No, because it’s a very specific move that doesn’t work a lot of the time because it’s very hard to get right. So, back blows and chest thrusts are better, but that’s to try and basically dislodge whatever’s stuck in the throat.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: So, it sounds like the overlap between linguistics and your work as a Speechie has a lot to do with the mechanics of the human vocal tract and that would get us to a lot of phonology. Would that be right or is there more to it?
PharaohKatt: Well, phonology is definitely part of it. Where I’m at the moment, I’m working a lot in the disability field. So, it’s a lot of people with different disabilities who need support with something, and that includes swallowing, and it includes communication. But for things like speech sounds, phonology is actually a big part of that. There are these things we call phonological processes, and that’s the typical pattern of errors that children make when they’re learning how to speak. So, things like saying a W sound instead of an R sound. That’s a typical phonological process.
Hedvig: They’ll be different in different languages, because there are different target sounds. So, you work in Australia, and I think that most of the people you encounter are attempting or are speaking English.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: For example, this thing you just said about, Rs, in Swedish, the most common thing is that people can’t roll their Rs.
PharaohKatt: Right.
Daniel: That was my next question.
Hedvig: Which English speakers don’t even have to care about at all.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. What is considered to be a delay or a disorder for speech sounds does change based on what language you’re speaking. So, in Australian English especially, we don’t expect kids to roll their Rs. If they can, that’s fine. If they can’t, that’s also fine, because it’s not a sound that’s required in our language. But for a language like Spanish, where it is required to roll your Rs and there’s actually difference between different types of Rs and it changes the word, then yeah, not being able to roll your Rs can be seen as a language delay, a language disorder, and might be addressed by a Speechie.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: I was thinking of our pal, Dan Dediu, who gave us an interview in the Talk the Talk days.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah.
Daniel: He his native Romanian. He just had a hard time doing it. Okay, before I go on to my real question, I have a secondary question. It’s come up on Twitter. People have been asking, “How do I roll my Rs?” How do I do what’s known as an alveolar trill, rrrrrah, [PharaohKatt giggles] which I’m good at, but not everyone is.
Hedvig: Rrrrrrr.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: If you wanted to tell somebody how to do that, could you describe that, even though it’s not an English sound, at least except in Scottish English, it’s not a usual English sound?
PharaohKatt: For rolling your Rs, I couldn’t describe it or actually… [crosstalk]
Daniel: Now, I don’t feel bad.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. Well, the one thing people keep saying is vibrate your tongue but that’s not a thing that you can really consciously do, right?
Daniel: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: What you can do is tap the top of your mouth with your tongue. Just a really quick tap, like in the sound “better.”
Hedvig: Ta, ta, ta, better, better. Yeah.
PharaohKatt: Like, that sort of T sound.
Daniel: Better, better.
Hedvig: Yeah, that’s good.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: Better.
PharaohKatt: So, if you do that, that can become not a rolled R but a folded R.
Daniel: Yeah, that’s right.
PharaohKatt: So, in a word like correr.
Hedvig: Like a bit retroflex.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. So, that’s that little flap, that’s that tup-tup of the tongue.
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: If you try to do that, tap it but hold it, that becomes more of a rolled R.
Daniel: Oh-kay, I’m going to try that.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, right? I’m very bad at this.
Daniel: Rrrrrrrrr.
PharaohKatt: But you’re tapping the top of your hard palate with your tongue.
Daniel: Rarararrrr.
Hedvig: Rrrrrrrrrr. Yeah.
Daniel: The top of your hard palate? Really?
PharaohKatt: Yeah. Your soft palate is way, way, way back there.
Daniel: No. Isn’t that too far back?
Hedvig: Yeah. It’s between… the postalveolar.
PharaohKatt: Your hard palate is directly behind your teeth.
Daniel: Rrrrr. I’m using my alveolar ridge. Oh, you say you… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: Which is part of your hard palate. Yes.
Daniel: You’re describing that as part of your hard palate. That’s cool… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: That is [crosstalk] of your hard palate. Yes. [laughs]
Daniel: All right. Cool. All right. Sorry, I was thinking farther back. Never mind. Okay, thank you. That’s an explanation that I can work on.
Hedvig: My niece and nephew were trying to teach my husband to roll his Rs. When we were in Sweden, he was learning Swedish and they were like, “Oh, he clearly has a problem with this particular sound.” They were saying words and he was not producing them the way they liked them, and they would just be like, “Just look at my tongue. Look at my tongue now. Rrrrrr.” They would just point at their mouth and make the sound, and he was like, “I’m not Superman. I can’t see inside your mouth.”
Daniel: No.
Hedvig: But that was a revelation to them. So, they were like, “Oh, when I make that sound, that’s not visible to other people.” No, [crosstalk] it’s not.
Daniel: Huh, theory of mind.
PharaohKatt: If you look at speech sound development, the sounds we can see are the ones we get first. So, things like mm, ba, um, and some things like tch and da, because you can see the tongue moving. Those are the ones that you get first. The sounds at the back like ga, er, those ones develop later, especially er, which is basically you’re just vibrating your throat.
Hedvig: Er. Yeah.
Daniel: There have been a lot of times when I’ve given talks and lectures, people come to me and they say, “I’m concerned about my little nephew,” or, “A teacher said that he should get help from a Speechie because he says this thing,” I always make it clear that I’m not a Speechie and that they should see someone who’s qualified. But I also know that a lot of things that people consider errors really do resolve with age. But could you give me a good guideline? What should I be telling these people from your perspective? When is intervention appropriate?
PharaohKatt: With any sort of intervention, the first thing you want to look at is the milestones. There are speech sound milestones, there are language milestones, how many words, what type of words, how many sounds, what type of sounds, all of those that go across the lifespan. So, if you’ve got a three-year-old who can’t say an R sound, who’s saying wabbit, that’s considered fine, because it’s within that developmental milestone.
Daniel: Mm-hmm.
PharaohKatt: When you start to get some delays, then you might start to look at intervention. So, say you’re at 18 months and your kid’s not babbling, that’s the thing that you go, “Oh, okay, this is well past the milestone. This is the time we need to get intervention or at least to get an assessment.”
Hedvig: Mm.
Daniel: Mm. I’ve heard that if you’re not saying your first word by maybe two years, that’s pretty late.
PharaohKatt: That’s very late, yes.
Daniel: If you’re not saying your first sentence by three years, that’s pretty late as well. Is that right?
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: Most children will say their first word within 12 months. So, if you’re getting to 18 months and two years and there’s no verbal language, then that’s when you’d want to say, “Oh, okay, I need to get this assessed.”
Hedvig: Right.
Daniel: What’s the first thing you do? Straight to the Speechie or would you do something else first, like a hearing test?
PharaohKatt: I would first see your GP and get a hearing test.
Daniel: Yep. Good, good, good.
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: Hearing loss or hearing difficulty is actually the number one cause of language delay.
Daniel: Yep.
Hedvig: Yeah. [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: Because if you can’t hear words, you can’t learn them. And so, even if they’ve got tested at birth and there were no problems, I would still get them tested again because things like ear infections, swelling in the ear, anything like that, constant sinus infections, that can cause hearing loss or hearing impairment and that will affect your language.
Hedvig: Right.
Daniel: Are these milestones known and we can look them up?
PharaohKatt: Yes. Actually, there’s a website called raisingchildren.net.au. That one has all of the key language milestones from birth to eight years old. It includes some literacy milestones as well. You can go in, “Okay, expressively, what should they be able to say? Receptively, what should they be able to understand?”
Hedvig: But I’ve heard that some of these milestones can be controversial as well. A lot of commercial interest is invested in making parents very anxious or exploiting parental natural anxiety.
Daniel: We’re just looking out for Big Speechie here… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: Sometimes, I would definitely be like, “I’m not a speech pathologist,” but I would also be like, “If they’re under three…” I don’t know exact milestones, but I’m like, “It’ll probably resolve itself.” Because, like you say, most kids produce their first word before they’re one year old. But some kids produce them later and then develop fine, right?
Daniel: Variability is the rule.
PharaohKatt: Yes, but it’s not a bad thing to get them looked at.
Hedvig: Right.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: But maybe not go to the company that says like, “If you buy this thingamajig and play them this tune every day,” then like, “Oh.”
PharaohKatt: No, don’t do that.
Daniel: Yeah, that is a good question, actually. Are there any really bad things out there that people should avoid? What’s some junk science that you’ve seen that people should just stay the heck away from?
PharaohKatt: Okay. So, firstly, there’s junk diets. If you feed this kid this magical diet, all of their mental problems will go away and all of their language will get better, because they’re not so busy being hurt by their food. That’s junk, stay away from that.
Hedvig: Unless they’re actually gluten intolerant.
Daniel: I can see why people would be concerned about that, because diet is super important, but that can be weaponised.
PharaohKatt: Yes. Randomly putting kids on diets that they don’t need to go on isn’t necessarily going to help.
Daniel and Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Okay. What else?
PharaohKatt: So, there’s something called facilitated communication.
Daniel: Oh, god. Oh, okay, yes. Thank you.
PharaohKatt: [giggles] So, this is when you’ll have someone called a facilitator who is taking the kid’s hand and moving it along a keyboard and they’re saying, “Oh, no, it’s the kid who’s moving their hand. I’m not doing it,” but… [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Wait, what?
Daniel: They’re doing it.
PharaohKatt: They’re doing it. This is like a Ouija board for kids.
Daniel: Yes, I love you.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Thank you. That’s so good.
Hedvig: When you said the word, facilitated communication, I thought you were going to talk about assisting gestures.
PharaohKatt: Assisting gestures?
Hedvig: Like, “Oh, milk.”
Daniel: Oh, like baby sign?
Hedvig: Like baby sign or just teaching your kid a sign language.
PharaohKatt: Oh, no.
Hedvig: But there’s a third person between you and your child.
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Hedvig: Like you, you’re the parent, you have a child, a third person comes in.
Daniel: Yes. And they hold the child’s or the person’s hand… People think that it works for adults too, and they say, “Oh, no, the person’s typing,” but it’s actually totally them typing. This is easy to prove. You show both of them a picture and then you say, “What is the picture?”, they’ll get it right every time. But if you show the person and not the facilitator the picture, they can’t do it because it’s totally the facilitator who’s doing it.
Hedvig: Why is this legal? What’s happening? Who’s doing this? This is crazy.
PharaohKatt: It’s been denounced by SPA, which is Speech Pathology Australia. That’s our governing body in Australia. It’s also been denounced by ASHA, which is the American Speech and Hearing Association. But there are charlatans who keep putting it out there. They’ll give it a rebrand and they’ll give it a new name and they’ll say, “Oh, this is actually something else. This is assisted typing.” But no, that’s facilitated communication again.
Daniel: Yeah. It’s such a compelling illusion. Ouija boards are compelling illusions.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. It is very much like a Ouija board, because the facilitator is moving their hand, but they might not even realise it.
Daniel: Okay. So, we’ve got two different kinds of junk science. Was there any other kind of junk science that you wanted to warn people away from or should we…?
PharaohKatt: The things to look out for is, does this have a bunch of testimonials and that’s the only thing supporting it?
Daniel: Yeah.
Hedvig: Ah.
PharaohKatt: Does this have a lot of those buzzwords, like extreme improvement and all those big promises? So, anything that’s promising a lot for a little bit of effort, that’s a red flag right there.
Daniel: Yeah. Too good to be true.
Hedvig: Is the truth that small improvements actually take a lot of effort? [laughs] Like getting a child to not say wabbit, is that really hard? [laughs]
PharaohKatt: Well, I worked with a kid for 10 weeks to say a “shh” sound. We were doing all of the right lip movements, and all of the right teeth positions, everything, but it was just really hard for this kid to do a “shh.” That’s not even to start on the cha and the ja that we also needed to work on.
Hedvig: I was going to say, I’m a second language speaker of English. Those things are not like… sheep, baah, and, “That’s a cheap dress,” fuck me.
Daniel: Sheep and cheap. Yeah. [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Ship and chip.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: Let’s talk about autism for a second.
PharaohKatt: Yay.
Daniel: What’s the connection here between speech and language disorders in autism?
PharaohKatt: It’s kind of a defining feature, really. So, one of the things that we do… There’s a new thing in speech and language pathology, and you’ll also see it in other disciplines like in psychology and in occupational therapy, but we’re trying to be neurodiverse affirming. So, I’m going to be using some neurodiverse affirming language in this section.
When I talk about communication being a defining feature of autism, if you look at the medical clinical model, you will see that there are two kind of… They call it the dyad of impairment, but I really don’t like that term. But there are two main things that they’re looking for to diagnose ASD. One of them is restricted interest in repetitive behaviors and the other is social and communication or difficulties. The reason that social and communication all are grouped together like that is because socialising is a huge part of communicating.
That’s the background for it. If we’re looking for, we call it, neurodivergent traits or neuroatypical traits, one of the ones you will see are differences in communications or differences in the way we communicate, which includes differences in eye contact, differences in tone of voice, differences in the words that we use, all of that is one of the neuroatypical traits that you will see in autistic children and adults.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm. Unless they’re spending a lot of effort masking which…
PharaohKatt: Yes. That’s actually part of it as well, because it shouldn’t be hard to change your tone of voice based on what you’re saying, and it shouldn’t be hard to figure out what language to use. You see, I’m having a bit of trouble with my language right now, [laughs] but this sort of thing doesn’t come naturally. It does end up getting explicitly taught.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: You shared with me a thing, an article on Medium by Rachel Cullen-
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Daniel: …about the autistic pragmatic language hypothesis, which I read through it. It sounds like it’s saying the difference between someone who’s autistic and someone who’s allistic the way they handle language seems a bit like a cultural difference. I mean, there’s brain stuff, but it’s also just a difference in culture. Am I getting that wrong or…?
PharaohKatt: Well, it’s kind of cultural in the sense that there is an autistic culture.
Daniel: Yep.
Hedvig: But also, it can be quite alienating, because the people around you are all expecting you to be a certain way and speak in a certain way and communicate in a certain way, and we just don’t do that.
Daniel: Yeah. You say “we” as an autistic person… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: As an autistic person, yes.
Daniel: As an autistic person. Yeah.
PharaohKatt: [giggles]
Hedvig: There are certain countries and cultures that are known for being more, for lack of a better word, blunt. I lived in the Netherlands for a while, and I follow this Dutch comedian on TikTok, and they make a lot of jokes about how Dutch people are blunt and are like, “Oh, I got a gift.”
Daniel: [unintelligible [00:32:16]
Hedvig: “Oh, this is an okay gift. Thank you.”
[laughter]
Daniel: “Yes, this is most satisfactory.”
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: This is okay. Whereas, for example, Americans are known for being like, “Oh, amazing. This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. Oh, my god.” But it’s a lie. For a lot of Northern Europeans, it’s hard to interact with Americans because we’re like, “Why are they lying all the time?
[laughter]
Hedvig: “It’s very stressful. I have to guess.” Sometimes, when I, as a Germanic, Northern European person interact with Americans… I’m not saying I don’t think I am on an autism spectrum at all, but it sounds a little bit similar to some of the things I’ve heard. Do you think that means that it’s easier to be autistic in the Netherlands? Forgive me if that’s a stupid question.
PharaohKatt: That’s an interesting question, because things like eye contact, that’s a very Western concept. When I went to Japan last year, I wasn’t expected to make eye contact with anybody and that was great.
Daniel: Mm.
Hedvig: Right.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. I think in different places, different autistic traits would be more accepted or less accepted. But it’s the overall picture that determines whether this is a disability or not.
Daniel: Mm.
Hedvig: It’s also similar to what we were talking about with the speech sounds in a way that English has couplers. Your target, the measure of disability is how easy it is for you to achieve a certain target. But if that target varies culturally and by language, then yeah.
Daniel: Like deafness is only a disability in the context of a culture that doesn’t get deafness.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. So, it is very culture dependent. There are some things that would be similarly difficult across the board. So, if you find verbal language very difficult to use, then it’s going to be difficult to communicate with people who are expecting verbal language, no matter what language that is.
Hedvig: Right.
PharaohKatt: If your primary form of communicating is something we call echolalia, which is repeating phrases or words that you’ve heard, it could be either straight after you’ve heard them or it could be kind of later on, like taking all those phrases and using them to communicate instead of creating your own individual phrases, that’s going to be a noticeable difference across the board, whether you’re speaking English or German or Japanese or whatever. It’s going to be something that basically shows the world that you are a different person.
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: But having said that, one of my areas of interest and one of the things that I do a lot of in my work is with something called AAC or augmentative and alternative communication. That’s big words, right? [giggles]
Daniel: Well, I was getting a little worried, because it sounded a bit like facilitated communication, but I’m listening.
PharaohKatt: Oh, goodness, no. I’ve actually had to be very firm with some people about how to actually do that. No, this is using things that are not verbal language to communicate. So, it can be using some signs. This is not the same as a signed language. Just making that clear. It’s more like using specific signs, because at this time, it’s easier to move my hands than my mouth.
Daniel: It’s a gestural system.
PharaohKatt: Yes, it is a gestural system and different countries will base it on their signed languages, but it doesn’t follow the grammar of signed languages-
Hedvig: Fair enough.
PharaohKatt: …and it doesn’t have as many words.
Daniel: Got it.
PharaohKatt: It’s also things like picture communications. So, pointing at pictures in a book or handing over cards-
Hedvig: I’ve seen that.
PharaohKatt: …or something, which is one of the things that I’ve had a lot of training in is high tech communications. So, it’ll be an iPad or a dedicated communication device where you press buttons and then it speaks.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: I had one question which Daniel hadn’t written, which is not related to what you were just talking about, but which I wanted to ask you about.
Daniel: Yes, please. Go for it.
Hedvig: Okay. Which was, like we were talking about before, there are certain milestones and you could go get assessed, probably, don’t let your anxiety run wild and buy a bunch of shit?
PharaohKatt: No, don’t do that.
Hedvig: For example, friend of the show, Megan Figueroa, is often reminding people on Twitter that some of the research done on so-called word gaps are not real, and there are ways of assessing people that… For example, I was reading a study about Samoan kids… In different cultures, you have different ways of bringing up kids. Taking a child away from their parents and putting them in a room in front of a white researcher and asking them what words they know is not a thing everyone’s going to be equally good at socially. So, there is research to show that those experiments don’t show what people actually know and also that how many words you know might not always be a great measurement of how good you are at communicating necessarily, right?
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: So, I was wondering, if you could talk about… because that’s all I know. I follow Megan and I see what she writes, and I know some things. But what do speech pathologists think and talk about these things?
PharaohKatt: That’s very accurate that definitely you’re not going to sit someone down in a room and expect to get everything out of them. The thing with language and communication is it is very context dependent. So, if I am doing an assessment, I’m not just going to go in with my test and my norms and say, “Here is the thing. Where do you fall in amongst these norms?”
Hedvig: Oh, okay.
PharaohKatt: I’m also going to be speaking to the people around them, like how do they communicate with their parents? How do they communicate with their teachers? How do they communicate with other kids in the playground? Because you need that full picture. I might do an observation at home or at school just to see what are they doing. It’s never going to just be one test, because one test is not going to give you the right answer. Even when we do things like Kindy screens, which is, you take a whole group of children from one cohort and you give them all the same tests on the same day or the same couple of days, it’s basically just to get an average of how are these kids in this cohort, where do they fall.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
PharaohKatt: That is going to give you how a child did on that particular day, and that’s it. It’s not going to tell you their overall communication ability. It’s not going to tell you what they’re capable of. It might say, “Oh, here is an indicator that we might need to look into some intervention.” But even then, you kind of got to take it with everything else that they have, especially if they’re bilingual. That’s a whole another kettle of fish. Bilingual children will perform poorly on English normed tests, because they’re based on English primary speaking populations.
Hedvig: Right.
Daniel: Then, people say, “Oh, no, bilingualism, it’s bad for kids. It’ll lead to delays.”
PharaohKatt: So, here’s the thing about bilingualism. A lot of research has been done and there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. But if you look at just the number of words that kids are speaking, you can’t just look at how many words they know in English and how many words they know in Mandarin. You actually have to see, “Okay, what’s that total?” Because what they find is actually, yeah, they are speaking less words in English and less words in Mandarin than same age peers. But if you add that number together, it becomes quite similar.
Hedvig: Right.
Daniel: Yeah, but that doesn’t matter, because the only language that matters is English.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Yeah. I can see why people would have that.
Hedvig: Maybe there’s also two different sort of points, because people can have problems that we classify as a disability. Like we talked about before, that can be culturally dependent, be that autism spectrum things or speech or something else. And speech pathologists come in and try and help people to reach a certain basic level so that they can get on with their lives, right?
Then, there are parents and stuff who worry about them getting straight A’s in school and getting into Ivy League schools. That’s not something, for example, that I think speech pathologists work up, right?
PharaohKatt: No. We’ll do some stuff on literacy. We don’t diagnose things like dyslexia. That’s actually psychologists who do that. But we do support reading and writing with kids and with adults. But we’re not here to teach you how to write a good essay or something like that.
Hedvig: Right, exactly. So, some of the things that I saw about the word gap things is people are correlating it with your mean income later in life, that the more words you know… It’s basically just me, like, the more middle class you are, surprise, the higher income you get.
Daniel: [laughs] Blah, blah. blah.
Hedvig: Blah, blah. Who knew?
PharaohKatt: Yeah. If you look at a lot of those studies, when they’re talking about word gaps and language gaps and things like that, is it actually does come down to income. So, the kids who end up with the higher paying jobs are the kids with the richer parents. And so, it was things like owning books is correlated with higher income and higher test scores. And it’s not about the books at all. It’s about having enough income to own books, to have a room dedicated to it or something like that. So, yeah, it’s all about income inequality.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Hedvig: That’s fair.
Daniel: So, what do people need to know? What’s a misconception that you’d really like to correct about Speechies and speech and language therapy? Speech and language pathology, sorry. Ah, I will get it, I will get it.
PharaohKatt: Oh, it’s fine. See, people still say speech therapist.
Hedvig: Speechie therapist.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. I have three ID cards from my new job, because it kept getting printed wrong, and one of them says “speech pathologist” and one of them says “speech therapist.” So, it’s all confusing. We are not here to fix anyone. I’m not going to come to someone and say, “You are broken, and I need to fix you.” That’s not my thing, that’s not what we do. What I care about is, “Can you communicate with the people around you? Can you get across what you need, what you want, what you’re thinking?” Not just asking for things, but being able to say, “Isn’t it a lovely day today?” or to communicate that sort of thing. “And are you safe?”
So, a bit of this is the swallowing. Are you able to have the right nutrition and are you able to eat without getting a lot of chest infections? That’s are you safe? Can you communicate that you are unsafe? Can you tell someone around you, “Oh, actually I’m being hurt by this person or this thing is making me feel sick.” Can you communicate, “I have an allergy to bees. Are you safe?” Yeah, I don’t want to fix anybody. I just want them to be themselves and to be effective communicators.
Hedvig: [chuckles]
Daniel: Brilliant. Thank you so much for telling us a little bit about your area. I know that this is an area that we don’t touch very much, because it’s something that I haven’t really gone into it. So, I’m really grateful that you have come and given some ideas and corrected some misconceptions. Thanks for that.
PharaohKatt: Anytime.
Daniel: Are you ready to play?
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Daniel: Yes.
Daniel: I think it’s time to play Related or Not, the game where PharaohKatt is going to give us a couple of words or the same word with two different senses and we are going to try to guess, [PharaohKatt laughs] whether they are related etymologically, or is the connection between them merely coincidental? PharaohKatt, what have you got?
PharaohKatt: So, I had two words and then I completely forgot what I was thinking about with those two words.
Daniel: Good start.
PharaohKatt: But then, I remembered again.
Daniel: Okay, good.
PharaohKatt: Okay. So, sense, as in, what is that sense? Your smell, your eyes, your senses.
Hedvig: Okay, like sixth sense.
PharaohKatt: Yep. And sensible, like, “I am a sensible person.”
Daniel: Okay. [laughs] Argh.
Hedvig: To be a sensible person, we don’t know if that’s related to, “Does it make sense?” “She has a lot of sense.”
PharaohKatt: Oh, that’s an even another one.
Daniel: Okay. Well, that’s another thing entirely, so we might have to tackle that one.
Hedvig: But do we think that, “She has a lot of sense,” and, “She’s sensible”?
Daniel: When you put it that way, it sounds like they’re just totally the same word and normal outgrowth. I’m aware though that in English, this is a little bit different. For example, in English, we say that, “Someone is sensible.” But in French, if you say that someone is sensible, which sounds like it would be the same word, it doesn’t mean that they’re sensible. It means that they’re sensitive. But that still retains a bit of the sensi-sense of sense.
Hedvig: I think they’re related.
Daniel: Okay. [laughs] Well, in that case, I think they’re not related. I think there’s enough play there that I think maybe they snuck in under the same word, because they’re the same thing and that happens all the time with words that start out different. They grow together.
PharaohKatt: Okay. The answer is, they are related.
Daniel: Argh.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Good job. Good job.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] There’s a nice proto-Indo-European root of “sent,” “to go,” as in, “I have been sent somewhere,” which is really cool and that kind of morphed into “to have in mind” or “to perceive.”
Hedvig: What?
Daniel: What? This is bonkers.
PharaohKatt: Then, that got applied to the external or outward senses.
Daniel: Oh, my goodness.
PharaohKatt: So, you’ve got your inner sense or your common sense or your consciousness. So, that then went into capable of sensational feeling, sensible.
Daniel: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: So, there we go.
Hedvig: Oh.
PharaohKatt: So, there’s some words in German and some words in French, and it all has a common proto-Indo-European root.
Hedvig: That’s really fun.
Daniel: How about that? Yep, okay. Well, that makes sense.
Hedvig: In Swedish, I think the same cognate also means mind.
PharaohKatt: Yep, that would make a lot of sense because…
[laughter]
Daniel: It would make a lot of what?
Hedvig: Right.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: Yeah. God, do you know about the thing that’s supposed to be a thing that women do in email a lot and I do it a lot? Does it make sense?
Daniel: Does that make sense? I’m famous for saying that a lot.
Hedvig: Does that make sense?
Daniel: Does that make sense?
Hedvig: I [crosstalk] that a lot. It’s just, I’m like, “I don’t want to have an aggressive time.”
Daniel: Yeah, I know what you mean, but it’s also a really useful skill. You’re building connection, you’re doing a comprehension check. That’s a really good thing to be able to do. Does that make sense? I don’t know why people have focused on that as an irkage thing, except that it’s noticeable and people seem to get mad about anything that they notice.
Hedvig: Maybe.
Daniel: It just makes sense. Thank you for that.
Hedvig: Okay. Thank you. That was good.
Daniel: We are seeking out sponsors. If your product doesn’t suck and we don’t hate you, then get in touch and you can sponsor a game of Related or Not or Yeah-no or No-yeah.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: Thank you, PharaohKatt.
Hedvig: Yeah, we decided on that.
[music]
Daniel: Let’s get to some news. This one is a big study about stuttering, which is something that I’m sure, PharaohKatt, our Speechie, you know a lot about. This is a paper by Jessica O. Boyce and a team. Dr. Boyce is from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, and the article was published in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology.
PharaohKatt: Yep.
Daniel: Tell us about this study. I see that it was pretty big, nearly a thousand participants across the age span. So, this sounds like it’d be a blockbuster.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, it’s one of the biggest studies of its kind, which is pretty cool. This is a study on stuttering and genetics, because there is an idea that stuttering has a genetic component, which was proven by this study.
Daniel: Oh, my gosh.
Hedvig: Oh.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. So, it’s not 100%. I don’t think anything is ever 100%. Bu basically, what we’re finding is that if you have specific genetic traits and add to that, specific environmental traits, your chances of being a stutterer increase.
Hedvig: Huh.
Daniel: I see here that about half of the folks that they studied had a family history of stuttering. That’s huge.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, that is one of the big things. That’s actually a lower number than I expected.
Daniel: Oh, really?
Hedvig: Oh, really?
PharaohKatt: Really.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: It does make me wonder about… because this was all self-reported stuttering. It does make me wonder about people who either had a stutter and recovered and their kids didn’t know about it, or there was some other distant relation.
Daniel: Ah, because people just don’t want to talk about it.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: The reason you were surprised and thought it would be a higher number is because you’ve met people who stutter, and you’ve noticed patterns.
PharaohKatt: I’ve noticed patterns. So, you’ll see someone say, “Oh, my kid has just started stuttering. Will he grow out of it?” “Oh, come to think of it. My husband speaks like that sometimes. I wonder if he just learned it from him.” And the husband’s not identifying as a stutterer, but you know that that’s what’s going on.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: Hmm, it seems like a little less shame is needed for this kind of thing to get… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: Yeah. That’s the other thing is I think that awareness is growing. So, kids are being identified as stuttering more often than they were in the past. There were some other really interesting things that they found. For example, there’s no gender correlation at all. So, gender does not affect your risk of stuttering.
Hedvig: Ah, okay.
PharaohKatt: Anxiety though.
Hedvig: Oh.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: Everyone’s massively surprised. Yeah.
PharaohKatt: The problem with this is that it’s like a chicken and egg sort of problem, because having a stutter and not being able to get your words out or having that sort of fear of judgment can increase anxiety. And also, if you are already a stutterer, that gets worse during periods of high emotion, including anxiety, which then makes it worse, which then increases anxiety. So, it kind of is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Hedvig: Yeah. Okay.
PharaohKatt: So, what we found is people who stutter are much more likely to report having anxiety. So, the numbers just grow and grow and grow. If you look at people with persistent stuttering, not anxious is 9.6%, a little anxious 24.9%, fairly anxious 27.2%, very anxious 26.8%, and then it goes down again for extremely anxious, but you can see it climbing.
Hedvig: Right.
Daniel: Hmm. I see also that they looked at stuttering severity over ages, and I noticed that the older people reported a severity of like ones and twos, not very much. But the young people were much more spread out across the levels. Is that because older people have worked on it and gotten it under control?
PharaohKatt: Well, people can learn tricks to self-manage their own stuttering. You aren’t noticing it, but I’m actually using some of these tricks myself.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: So, things like slowing down. There’s a hand gesture that I teach sometimes that helps, because it helps you move with the flow of the words. But a lot of these tricks you learn to use… Sometimes, you don’t even need to be taught them. You just go, “Oh, this is what made my stuttering better. So, I’m going to do this a lot.”
Hedvig: Ah, okay.
PharaohKatt: So, yeah, basically the older you are, the more likely it is that you’ve learned some of these tricks and you’ve got your own little adaptions working.
Hedvig: And learning things just take time. So, it’s not a surprise that it’s correlated with age.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. One thing I found interesting in this study is it was all seven and up.
Hedvig: Okay.
PharaohKatt: So, the most likely onset of stuttering is between around two or four, like two to four, which is when you get this nice language explosion. So, when we hear three- and four-year-olds have suddenly started stuttering, we go, “Ah, yes.” That is the time that I expect stuttering to happen, because your brain is working on so many things that it starts to almost misfire a little bit. If you have therapy for stuttering at that age when it first onsets, you can stop stuttering. So, basically, you retrain your brain, and those studded pathways don’t get hardwired.
Hedvig: Oh, okay. This is like the general thing we know about the brain, that things you do a lot are easier to do, and that goes for good things and bad things. So, you can develop bad and good habits and bad and good ways of doing things. So, the idea is, if you catch it early while the brain is still plastic and malleable, you can be like, “Yeah, you explored that pathway, but how about you go this way instead?”
Daniel: Yeah. [chuckles]
PharaohKatt: Yeah, you basically just re-encourage the brain to speak without the stutter.
Hedvig: Wow. Okay. I didn’t know that.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. It’s not as true in Australia where we do have stuttering clinics for younger kids and stuttering programs for younger kids, but a lot of adults in the UK and the US won’t end up getting any sort of treatment until seven plus, and you’re much less likely to recover if that’s when you start to get intervention.
Daniel: Well, I noticed that from the study that it said 75.9% of participants had sought stuttering therapy, but only 15.5% identified as having recovered. Does that mean that this is just super intractable if you let it go?
PharaohKatt: No, not necessarily. The problem that you get is that there are some kids who have a stutter for a year or two and then just spontaneously recover.
Daniel: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: There’s just no way to identify that. So, in that moment, you don’t know, is this person going to spontaneously recover or do they need some sort of stuttering therapy? But with adults, the treatments you use are different because you’re not trying to change that pattern before it’s wired, you’re trying to support speech more. It’s fluency facilitation. So, it’s basically developing strategies that make it easier to speak fluently rather than trying to fix the stutter. So, once you hit 10 and up… Yeah, at that point, you’re probably not going to be trying to fix. You’re more likely to facilitate. This one is very interesting. I get access to the full script, because I am an alumni member of my university library access.
Daniel: Yay.
PharaohKatt: There’s another study that the Curtin Institute is doing, which is specifically looking for genetic markers. So, when that one comes out, I will give you guys a heads up if I can.
Daniel: Just please. That sounds really fraught, because no parent… Genetics is genetics, but sometimes, when something is genetic, parents feel like they’ve somehow done something to delay their children or to hurt their child, which isn’t true.
PharaohKatt: No, it’s not. That’s one of the things that whenever we are talking to parents, we need to keep that in mind, because no one’s at fault here. The kids not at fault, the parents not at fault. It’s just, this is how this random confluence of factors has emerged in this person. So, yes, there’s some genetic likelihood, but then there’s also environmental factors. There’s also personal factors, like, kids who are more resilient or less likely to develop a stutter. So, there’s this so many things happening, you can’t just say, “Oh, it’s genetics. I did this. My fault.”
Daniel: Mm-hmm. It’s just brains, ma’am.
Hedvig: I have some friends who stutter, and they have some strategies and stuff. As a person who’s not stuttering, you can learn strategies of trying to be helpful to them and it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of the world.
PharaohKatt: No, it’s not the end of the world.
Hedvig: Right.
PharaohKatt: If it is causing you distress, then you get help.
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: If it is not causing you distress, live your life.
Daniel: Okay. All right, let’s go on to our next story. This one is from an article in the West Australian by Jim Hungerford. He’s the CEO of the Shepherd Centre. It’s about indigenous hearing loss, hearing loss among Aboriginal people. This had a fairly mind-blowing statistic for me.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. So, 43% of Australian indigenous children have some form of hearing loss or impairment.
Daniel: Wow.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. This is things like repeated ear infections, or burst eardrums, things like that. That’s a shocking statistic. That is something that Australia and also us as species, we have a role as well to address this. The thing that gets even more upsetting for me is that it’s not 43% across the board. It’s something like 49% in rural and remote communities. So, the chances increase when you’re living in a rural or remote area.
Daniel: Wow.
Hedvig: Well, you’re also less likely to get assessed for stuff like that.
Daniel: So, what’s going on?
Hedvig: Yeah, why is this happening? Do we know?
Daniel: Is it genetic or…?
PharaohKatt: There’s not really any evidence to say it’s genetic.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: There have been some theories about it, about genetics and speech sounds and stuff, but that is not my area of expertise. So, I’m not even going to try there. So, please keep in mind that I am not an indigenous person and nobody here right now is an indigenous person. So, we are coming at this from a position of privilege, and I think that needs to be acknowledged.
Daniel: Yeah, definitely.
PharaohKatt: So, there are some factors. For example, there is a gap in health services between white Australians and Aboriginal Australians. There is a lack of health services available to indigenous Australians. Some of it is direct, which is things like longer waiting lists or less likely to be taken seriously about concerns. Someone I know actually had that directly happen to them, where their child was getting repeated chest infections and illnesses, but the health department was not taking it seriously. Not the health department, the health system was not taking it seriously. It wasn’t until they got the white grandmother to come in and speak on behalf of them that they actually got access to health services.
Hedvig: Oh.
Daniel: Oh, no.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, there is this lack of access. Add to that a mistrust, and this is an earned mistrust. This is because the health system has treated Aboriginal people so shockingly and appallingly that you get people who don’t want to go to the doctors, because they know this is the sort of thing they’re going to be facing.
Hedvig: Right.
PharaohKatt: Then on top of that, rural and remote communities are less likely to have health services on site. So, you need to travel further to get health services. Telehealth is something that’s only recently come about, and that’s about to lose Medicare access as well. So, there’s all of these factors that are contributing to it.
Daniel: One solution that Jim Hungerford says is the introduction of indigenous voice to Parliament, I’m quoting here, “A body enshrined in the Constitution that would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to provide advice to the Parliament. Should the voice be created, communities have a greater chance of being heard, prompting further action from the government.” That sounds like a pretty good start.
Hedvig: It sounds like, I don’t know, like Kitty was saying we’re not indigenous folk. It sounds a bit like it’s a bit of a distance, like on the ground access to healthcare that you trust and you can rely on, and an indigenous voice to Parliament in Canberra, there’s a lot of steps in between, right? There’s a lot of people in between, there’s a lot of authorities in between, there’s a lot of time in between. Probably, this can take a while to push. I was wondering if there’s more of a campaign to get more representation of indigenous folk in healthcare roles.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, I’m definitely a supporter of the voice as well as treaty. That’s something we need. So, there is some kind of effort to increase the number of doctors and nurses and healthcare workers who are indigenous, but there are a lot of barriers that need to be overcome for that to work. So, there’s things like monetary barriers. As part of my degree, I needed to work for 20 weeks without pay, four days a week.
Hedvig: That’s outrageous.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. If I didn’t have a partner who could support me, I wouldn’t be able to do that.
Hedvig: Yeah. No, I think it was… I saw a clip from Cardi B who was saying, “Why are you making people pay to be higher educated, to provide a vital role to society?”
PharaohKatt: Yeah. So, if you’re already facing economic inequality, it’s very, very hard to get to that level.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah.
PharaohKatt: A number of my cohort dropped out or went to part time, because they simply couldn’t afford it.
Hedvig: Yeah, for sure.
Daniel: Wow. Cardi B, does the B stand for based?
PharaohKatt: [laughs] There’s also things like housing inequality. You’re more likely to get illnesses and infections if you’re living in crowded living conditions, which is more likely to happen if you have income inequality.
Hedvig: Right. Yeah.
PharaohKatt: So, all of these factors just compound on top of each other.
Daniel: This fills me with despair. What do we do?
PharaohKatt: That’s a great question, and I would like to know.
Daniel: We solve systemic inequality. Yay.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] One of the things that, SPA, Speech Pathology Australia, has just started doing is having cultural sensitivity and cultural safety training as part of your yearly registration. So, we’re required to get a certain number of mentoring hours and training hours to keep registration. Some of that doesn’t have to be but can be specifically for cultural sensitivity. But it’s things like getting the skills to work with communities, and to support communities to not just go in as the white person who’s going to save them, and I’ll be the healthcare worker who’s saving you. But actually have a cultural liaison, and work with them, and train them to be their own healthcare workers.
Daniel: Mm.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
PharaohKatt: So, it’s a slow process, and I just really hope that we can get it together.
Daniel: Me too.
Hedvig: Yeah, sure.
Daniel: Closing that gap has been rough. It’s hard. Let’s take the final news article that you gave us. This is about new LGBT signs in Korean sign language. There’s an article in the Korea Times about a couple of activists… well, a bunch of activists, Woo Ji-yang and Kim Bo-seok creating new signs, because the old ones, frankly, were not great. What did you notice about this one, PharaohKatt?
PharaohKatt: I actually noticed that this has some similarities with the way that gay and lesbian used to be done in Australian signed language or in Auslan.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah.
Daniel: Ooh. Okay.
PharaohKatt: So, the Auslan sign for gay, it used to be like this limp wrist gesture-
Daniel: Oh, my god.
Hedvig: …which is, of course, considered fairly offensive. Now, it’s just hands… You can’t see what I’m doing. I’ve got my hand up in front and I’m touching my middle finger to my thumb three times.
Daniel: Right.
PharaohKatt: So, that’s gay. Then, if I make a little L shape with my hand and put it to my chin, that’s lesbian.
Hedvig: Okay.
Daniel: That’s a new sign or that’s the old sign?
PharaohKatt: That’s the new sign.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Because I noticed that the article was super vague about the Korean signs, but it sounded like they were not great. Like, the gay one was iconic for butt sex. I’m sure that the lesbian one was like fucking this kind of thing.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: Oh, wow.
Daniel: Yes. Jesus Christ. Okay.
Hedvig: I was going to say, again, none of us here are scientists or deaf, but I know that in queer communities, spoken communities, sometimes people have tried to reclaim terms, right?
PharaohKatt: Yep.
Hedvig: I don’t know, the limp wrists are, like, it sounds like the ones where you’re actually imitating sexual acts is a little bit. Well, I guess… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: Yeah. That does sound a little bit more extreme than the limp-wrist gesture.
Hedvig: Yeah. Well, maybe people are like, “Oh, yeah.” [giggles]
PharaohKatt: Yeah. It just struck me at how LGBTQ and queer communities have had to fight to get their words for themselves to be representative of themselves.
Daniel: Yes. So, I noticed that the sign now in Korean sign for gay is a right fist with a thumb up moving forward from one’s chest. What that expresses is a man who is attracted to another man.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: So, that’s cool.
PharaohKatt: The same.
Daniel: Yep.
Hedvig: It looks like great like, “Okay.”
Daniel: I like that too.
Hedvig: Because thumbs up is… [crosstalk]
PharaohKatt: Well, in Auslan, this is good, this is bad, and this is finished.
Daniel: Right. Okay.
PharaohKatt: Right. Because there’s lots of fun signs with their hands.
[laughter]
Hedvig: Is it because the thumbs up fist gesture in Korean sign means a man?
PharaohKatt: I don’t know.
Daniel: That was the thing that I got… from reading the article that gave me that impression, but I can’t confirm it.
Hedvig: Okay.
Daniel: I tried looking at… There’s a good Korean sign dictionary, which I will put up on our web page for this episode in the show notes. It’s becauselanguage.com. I couldn’t read it, because the site was in Korean, and I got hung up on the translation thing.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, it’s not easy.
Daniel: Oh, sorry, my bad for not speaking Korean. But anyway.
PharaohKatt: [giggles] Yeah, I clearly don’t know Korean sign language, but it just goes to show that all around the world, the queer deaf community has had to fight to have their words used and understood, and to not be demeaned by the words that they’re spoken or that are signed.
Daniel: Signed. Yes. Well, that is super positive. Thank you so much for bringing these stories to us. We really appreciate the contributions that you make, because you haven’t just curated this episode. As any listener to the show knows, you’ve been constantly handing us great stuff that you find, and we’re really, really grateful to you for all that you contribute to the show.
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: Now, as a member of SPA, I get access to specific scientific journals and they send me an update every quarter. So, I get all of this cool new research and stuff.
Hedvig: Oh, nice.
Daniel: Neat, neat, neat.
Hedvig: Smart.
Daniel: Well, we’ll be on tenterhooks to figure out what’s new, what’s coming down the pike.
Hedvig: Yeah.
[music]
Daniel: Let’s go on to Words of the Week, and PharaohKatt has sent us some really great words. One of them, crikeycore.
PharaohKatt: This one is so fun. [giggles]
Daniel: [laughs] I love this one.
PharaohKatt: This is not something that I’d even considered to be a thing until it got pointed out on Twitter. So, it was basically someone on Twitter who was saying, “Let’s talk about other cultures the way that Western cultures speak about Asia.”
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
PharaohKatt: So, they’ve posted a picture of fairy bread and said, “Ugh, this reminds me of Bluey Season 2, Episode 3 so bad. Imagine growing up Australian and having fairy bread and pass the parcel at birthday parties. It’s so crikeycore.”
Daniel: “Ah, it’s so Crikey core” and all the Americans were like, “What’s pass the parcel?”
PharaohKatt: [laughs] Like, all great Twitter things, this originally came from Tumblr, because that’s where all the Twitter things come from.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: But yeah, someone on Twitter took a screenshot and reposted it with things like, “This is crikeycore,” and it’s stuff like fairy bread and Vegemite and Steve Irwin. It’s basically all that Australian stuff that we might feel is a little bit cringe. [giggles]
Hedvig: Yeah. People say G’day… but Flying Doctors. Oh, my god, Flying Doctors.
PharaohKatt: Yeah, flying doctors.
Daniel: We’re always a bit cringe about our culture though, but we got a lot of great stuff.
PharaohKatt: Feeling cringe is crikeycore.
Daniel: You know what I say? Don’t kill the part of yourself that is cringe. Kill the part of yourself that cringes. For the breakdown of the word, we know that core is that thing that we append to every sort of movement, like-
Hedvig: Every aesthetic pick.
Daniel: …fairy core or every aesthetic.
Hedvig: That’s the correct term.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. Cottagecore and… [crosstalk]
Hedvig: Gen Z people, please love me. I know your terminology.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Then, crikey being what Steve Irwin, the natural guy said a lot.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: I really like crikeycore, because it used to be that there was this… Australians of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s really struggled to get their own identity and they did it usually through language. Whole bunch of Aussie slang, some cultural habits, some modes of dress. But this was an attempt by Australians to distinguish themselves, and then that kind of went by the by, because we don’t use a lot of those terms anymore. I can’t think of the last time anybody said that somebody else was a cobber or something like that. But when we see crikeycore, this is like Australians trying to pinpoint those things that are Australian. I’m thrilled that when we got the list, it was bluey and buttered bread with sprinkles on it.
[laughter]
PharaohKatt: And lamingtons.
Daniel: And lamingtons-
Hedvig: Could have been a lot worse.
Daniel: …which nobody ever eats except as part of a… You never just sit down and make some lamingtons with the sponge cake dipped in chocolate with the coconut on it. You always make it for school things as a money raiser or something. But it’s still good.
PharaohKatt: You never just eat fairy bread either. It’s always as part of a birthday party. Specifically, a kid’s birthday party, unless you’re doing that Australian thing where we’re going to have kids’ food today. Is that crikeycore?
Daniel: Yeah.
Hedvig: Can I ask, is crikeycore what outsiders think is typically Australian or what Australians think is typically Australian?
Daniel: I think the list is open.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: I don’t know.
PharaohKatt: I think it started with what outsiders thought of, but we’ve grabbed it and we’re like, “No, no, no. Milo is crikeycore. Thongs are crikeycore. Mullets are crikeycore.”
Daniel: Mullets?
Hedvig: Mullets, definitely. Because there’s the whole Steve Irwin throw a shrimp on the Barbie version of Australia. Then, there’s what Australians… like the cute things. I don’t know. Living in Australia as a non-Australian also seems like Australians love to think of themselves as cute and nice and sort of lower middle class or working class, in contrast to British poms who are all about class and stuff like that. Those things are true. There’s also… like we were talking about, there’s a lot of indigenous people in Australia and immigrants in Australia, and they don’t tend to get to be part of the Australian culture nation building, right?
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: Spring rolls are not crikeycore, I think. Yeah.
Daniel: No matter how long I live here, I will never be considered Australian, because Australianism for many people is tied to how you sound. What’s up with that? Not that I’m hurt by it or not that it bothers me or anything. It bothers other people a lot more. I’m coming from a place of privilege. It’s not easy to pinpoint. You mentioned springrolls. It’s like, “What’s Australian food?” 20 years ago, I don’t know if I could have told you, because we just had this kind of fusion of lots of other things, but now I’m just thrilled that maybe some things are emerging and we’re going to be keeping a list. Too bad it’s Milo and Vegemite, but you know.
PharaohKatt: Wheat, big sausage sizzle, meatpies. Hey, Vegemite.
Hedvig: Vegemite.
Daniel: There you go. I’m in my pantry. So, I’m surrounded by all these things. Salt that comes in a slightly conical container.
PharaohKatt: You should get the green one instead of the red one.
Daniel: Because it has iodine?
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Daniel: I agree with you.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Why does this even exist still? I don’t know.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] Some people hate iodine. I don’t know.
Daniel: I’m just trying to avoid Big Iodine. That’s all I’m saying. Let’s go on to an event that I’ve been ignoring.
Hedvig: I have one thing more about core-
Daniel: Oh, you [crosstalk]
Hedvig: …which is a question for people, because I have seen this around, and I want to get people’s guess. I’ll post it on Discord as well, and then maybe next episode, I’ll see what it means. What do you think core-core means?
Daniel: Okay, I have a guess.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Core-core. My guess is there must be an aesthetic that is about aesthetics. It must be a meta-aesthetic. People who like talking about aesthetics and it’s their way of life. That’s a terrible guess. That is not what it is.
Hedvig: Okay.
Daniel: PharaohKatt, you could do a better job.
PharaohKatt: Oh, can I? Core-core?
Daniel: Is it about apples?
PharaohKatt: Is it about trying to find the definitive version of something? Like it’s the core of something and that’s your aesthetic?
Hedvig: Like the most prototypical…
Daniel: It must be a different sense of core.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: It seems where I’ve seen it to be similar to normcore, or mainstream, or basic. Not cheugy.
Daniel: No, no.
Hedvig: But it seems to be like… I think it means mainstream.
Daniel: Okay. So, normcore.
Hedvig: Like, what most people… [crosstalk] Yeah, but normcore is not mainstream. Normcore is… But I am exploring it. We’ll see. But I’ll take guesses for core-core.
Daniel: I am several generations too old for this, I’m going to tell you right now.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] I think I’m too old for this.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Quick one. SPY BALLOON. We’ve had some events in the last month where spy balloons were floating over the USA, because the Chinese were being the Chinese. Was that offensive? Because people in the Chinese government decided they wanted to be sky trolls.
Hedvig: Yes.
Daniel: Did they get anything useful? Maybe not. Then, we discovered that during the Trump administration, there were spy balloons floating all over the place. Nobody shot them down. Nobody noticed at all. Do I care about this? Not really.
Hedvig: Oh, no.
PharaohKatt: No.
Daniel: But you did bring to us, PharaohKatt, an article by Ebony Nilsson in The Conversation. Dr. Nilsson is a research fellow from the Australian Catholic University. Yes, there is one.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] Okay. It’s because it’s about cats that caught my attention, and I do love my cats. [laughs]
Daniel: That’s the part I noticed. Okay, cool.
PharaohKatt: [laughs] But it’s just going into the history of different spy craft and how animals had been trained to spy on humans, basically using listening devices.
Daniel: Yep, because they’re everywhere. This is a brilliant idea, because everywhere you look, there’s a cat watching you somewhere.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. There’s that conspiracy that birds aren’t real. They’re actually spying devices. So, I thought that was funny.
Daniel: That’s right. Yep.
PharaohKatt: But there’s things like trained ravens, because ravens and crows are very intelligent. So, you can get them to go to certain places, and just stick a listening device on their leg. And trained cats, which I had never heard of before until reading this article.
Daniel: There you go.
PharaohKatt: So, yeah.
Daniel: Dr. Nilsson says, “The CIA trained and surgically implanted cats with transmitters and microphones, to send them to listen in on people’s conversations.” But I think they just spent most of their time up in trees waiting for people to rescue them. Also murdering lots and lots of wildlife.
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Daniel: Unfortunate.
PharaohKatt: Keep your cats inside.
Daniel: Yes, please.
PharaohKatt: But I just thought it was funny, because it was called Operation Acoustic Kitty.
Daniel: [laughs]
Hedvig: That is cute.
Daniel: Which is a fantastic album name. We’re dropping that one next week.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: But don’t surgically… This is a bad idea.
Daniel: You’re right. Surgically, eww. Sorry. I read right through that and thought it was a collar thing, which would be so easy to do, but no.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. The only surgical thing in your cats, unless they need some sort of specific care, but really, just give them a microchip and you’re fine.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: That’s fine. Last one. This one’s from me and it’s something that I have done, and then I heard the term for it. Verbal blinkering. Verbal blinkering. Does anybody have a guess?
PharaohKatt: Is it when you are speaking in a certain way to make people think a certain way? Like you’ve got your blinkers on?
Daniel: It is not that sense of blinker.
Hedvig: I have.
Daniel: I have to know that… Do you know the sense of blinker that I mean, Hedvig?
Daniel: I have a guess.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: Is it like when you’re in a car and you blinker to the left to show people that you’re going left?
Daniel: That is the sense of blinker that I mean. Yes.
PharaohKatt: Indicator.
Hedvig: Yeah. Is it when you signpost in a conversation, when you’re trying to funnel people gently to be like, “I’m about to change the topic. How do you feel about talking about apples?”
Daniel: Yeah. Okay. I think you’re getting very close. So, I’ll tell you the story. This has happened a bunch of times. I’m walking home from the gym, and it’s getting dark, or it is kind of dark, or I’m getting to my car or something. Walking along a little further up the path is a lone person, a lone woman.
Hedvig: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: And I’m coming on the same path. I’m going to pass them pretty soon, but it could be very threatening for a lone man to suddenly loom up behind you. So, what I’ve started doing is just verbal blinkering. I’ll say, “Hey, just coming up on the right side. I’m going to pass you here.”
Hedvig: Oh, just like bikers do.
PharaohKatt: Oh.
Hedvig: I am not loving it.
PharaohKatt: [giggles]
Daniel: Uh, okay. But I’ve heard it referred to as verbal blinkering. What would be a better thing to do to make my presence known and to say, “I’m just going to be passing you on the right here”? I guess, I could just get away from the situation and go way far away, but what’s a good thing to do?
Hedvig: Just pretend you’re talking on the phone. Just do what women do.
PharaohKatt: That’s what I was going to say. Like, pick up your phone and… [crosstalk] .
Daniel: Really?
Hedvig: Don’t address them, because if you say something like, “Hey, I’m coming up on your right…” Canberra bikers do this, because they all think they’re in Lycra, Tour de France lifestyle. So, you’re biking along in a park and someone’s like, “Hey, coming up on your left.” And I’m like, “Whoa.”
Daniel: Yeah.
Hedvig: That makes me more shocked than them coming up on my left. But I know, I know, I know.
Daniel: Okay.
PharaohKatt: You could just use your bell, but… [laughs]
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Okay. So, I have done the phony phone call. It’s like, I pick up my phone, I say, “Hey, hon, yeah, just coming back from the gym.”
Hedvig: That’s what you should do.
PharaohKatt: Yeah.
Hedvig: Yeah, I think so because I think Americans underestimate how much people from some other cultures get stressed by being addressed in a public space.
Daniel: Yeah, okay. You don’t mind that it’s a little deceptive? Because I’m not really… I guess I could make a phone call.
Hedvig: I don’t think it’s deceptive at all.
Daniel: “Hey, babe, I just called you because I’m coming home and there’s a person up and I want to signal to them.”
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: No.
Daniel: “I’m mostly just calling you because I’m verbal blinkering. Okay, bye, babe.”
Hedvig: No. Just literally say like, “Hi.”
PharaohKatt: You don’t need to do that.
Hedvig: “So, I picked up the dog at daycare and they said he has fleas,” like whatever.
Daniel: [laughs] Okay, thank you. What do you think? Let’s hear your comments. Especially if you’re on Discord, jump on it. Get to the episode stream where I’ve posted this episode. Tell me what you think. Is my original suggestion better? Is their suggestion better? What do you prefer? If you’re not a woman, what do you prefer? What’s your preferred vibe? If you’re a man who wants to be less threatening, what do you do? We want to hear it. Also, you can get in touch by lots of other ways, which we’re going to tell you about. But I guess, it’s time to wrap this up. So, crikeycore, spy balloon, verbal blinkering, our Words of the Week.
We’ve got some comments, one from Jenna via email. Jenna says, “I absolutely love the show. I admit that when you changed your name from Talk the Talk and started veering away from pure linguistics, I was a little bit skeptical. But as with many things in my life, getting out of my own head and listening to other people’s opinions was ultimately in my best interest. I am glad to listen to you podcasting so educationally and so anti-conservatively.” Do we do that? Is that what we do?
Hedvig: We do that. You in particular do that.
Daniel: Really?
Hedvig: Yes.
Daniel: I didn’t realise I was so raging. I don’t mind but okay.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: No, I know you don’t mind. That’s why I’m telling you.
Daniel: You actually identify as a socialist, Hedvig. I’m a capitalist. Am I more hardcore than you? I don’t think so. Wait, do you identify as a socialist?
Hedvig: I mean, I do, but I find that you tend to be a bit more polarised.
Daniel: Awesome.
Hedvig: Kitty is a listener. We can ask her.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Yeah. What do you think? [laughs]
PharaohKatt: It feels like the opposite of conservative, honestly, because you’re taking all of the language changes that conservatives are like, “No, stop, don’t.” And you’re like, “Actually, let’s do this.”
Daniel: Oh, okay. We both do that.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah. So, in that sense of conservative, yes. I don’t believe in-
Daniel: That was a dodge.
Hedvig: …being stodgy.
[laughter]
Hedvig: But in terms of general politics, I feel Daniel is more likely to squeeze things into Democrat-Republican American universe.
Daniel: I want to talk about this for a second, because remember, Hedvig, how when I did your intro, it was like, “What is Hedvig Skirgård primarily known for?”
Hedvig: Witcher.
Daniel: I did the same thing with, “What is Daniel Midgley primarily known for?”
Hedvig: Uh-huh.
Daniel: I’ll just read a little bit of this. “Through his research and teaching, Midgley has made important contributions to our understanding of how language works, how it’s learned, and how it’s used in different contexts. He has also been a strong advocate for the importance of linguistic diversity and the preservation of endangered languages.” That’s how you know, folks, that ChatGPT is making shit up, because I do not feel like a strong advocate at all. But I’m like, “Is this what the corpus has got for me?” That’s super interesting. Am I super hardcore?
Hedvig: No. I think it’s just compared to a lot of other people, linguists, in general, talk more about language endangerment than anyone else. Most people don’t even know that there are more than hundred languages in the world, right? That’s the base level we’re starting from. And that’s okay. There’s a lot of things to know in the world. Not everyone can know everything.
Daniel: True.
Hedvig: That’s reasonable. But anyway, what else does Jenna say?
Daniel: Jenna has a comment about our last episode where we talked about the names for girl chicks and boy chicks, and cows, and-
Hedvig: Oh, yeah.
Daniel: …widowers, and things like that. Jenna says, “I think I need to become a patron, because I have many thoughts about your discussion of male and female names for animals. I think one key point that one of the patrons alluded to is that farming animals is a system which hijacks the reproductive system of those animals. In that context, it’s very important to distinguish between those that are biologically female and those that are biologically male. You want to know if your animal is going to be able to give milk or eggs or if its meat is going to start to taste funny after the hormones start coursing through its body.”
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Editing a little bit. “Taking this whole discussion one step further, I wonder if the gender binary that is such an integral part of historically agricultural Western society is influenced by this pattern of dividing animals into male and female based on their usefulness to the culture. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us plebes. Jenna. P. S. What if you’re lying in bed on your stomach?” Do you guys get that one?
Hedvig: I’ve heard that that’s bad. It’s the thing about left and right side of the bed.
Daniel: Yes, it is.
Hedvig: I tried to call it the liver and non-liver side… [crosstalk]
Daniel: Stomach side. Yeah.
Hedvig: I still think it’s good.
Daniel: Whereas we said, bed left if you’re lying in it and it’s on your left side. But maybe if you’re facing the other way, maybe it’s bed right. I don’t know.
Hedvig: But about the thing about the gender binary, did you want to talk about that or not?
Daniel: Yes, please. Let’s give a comment.
Hedvig: Just that a lot of mammals that are living in socially complex ways, like humans or a lot of herd animals and stuff, are able to do things that don’t have to do with solely reproductive roles. So, grandmothers, or uncles, or people who aren’t even related to the child in question can help rearing it. In a lot of those socially complex mammal structures, child raising takes a very long time, right?
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Hedvig: You don’t just pop out your babies or the babies eat through your gut and are born. You actually have to spend time with them and teach them stuff. They’re pretty useless.
PharaohKatt: Especially humans.
Hedvig: Especially
PharaohKatt: Yeah, because of the way our brains develop, we have to be born before we’re fully mature.
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Otherwise, the human pelvis would look like a bowling ball return machine.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Hedvig: I’ve heard some philosophers of biology say you can see it as a tradeoff, because to genetically encode things is very expensive evolutionarily. But to encode things culturally… To start with a malleable plastic brain and then encode important information culturally is like a quicker path to get better at things than to hardwire behavior. Because also, if you hardwire behavior, if your environment changes, you’re screwed.
Daniel: Yep.
Hedvig: And in that cultural, social child rearing, you don’t need to be raised by the people who are your direct parents. There’s less need to be so rigid about family and gender structures, I think.
Daniel: I think so too. All right, thanks, Jenny, for that comment. Linda via email says, “Love your podcast. Your discussion of tricky language issues reminds me of this one. ‘She gave her dog biscuits.’ How many meanings can you find?”
Hedvig: She either gave her own dog, or someone else’s dog biscuits, or she gave a person dog biscuits and that person is a her. So, I’ve got three.
Daniel: So, three?
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: I can think of three.
Daniel: Yeah. So, SHE and HER doesn’t co-refer, or it could co-refer. What’s that one? Every girl thinks she is a genius, which could mean that every girl thinks she herself is a genius or thinks that there’s another she that is a genius. “She gave her dog biscuits.” Yep, three.
Hedvig: I think three.
Daniel: But then again… [crosstalk]
Hedvig: And we are fine.
Daniel: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Nope, because dog biscuits could mean multiple things as well.
PharaohKatt: Okay. So, she gave her own dog biscuits.
Daniel: Yep.
PharaohKatt: She gave her someone else dog biscuits.
Daniel: Well, that was Hedvig’s first two.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. She gave someone else’s dog biscuits. So, that’s our three.
Hedvig: Yeah.
PharaohKatt: She gave her dog, her dog over there.
Daniel: Then I was saying, biscuits has multiple senses.
PharaohKatt: Yeah. There’s the dog biscuit sense, there’s the English biscuit sense, and then there’s the American biscuit sense.
Daniel: Yeah. So, we got six more. No, wait, we multiply, right? We got at least five going on, because dog biscuits is a unit, [unintelligible 01:31:33].
Hedvig: I don’t know why, but I don’t think Linda… The way she could say the multiple meanings of dog. Like, “That man is a dog.”
Daniel: Yeah, okay, because that is a thing that people do. Okay. Well, that is fun. Thank you, Linda, for that little brain teaser. Somewhere between three and five is my answer. A big thank you to PharaohKatt. Thanks for coming on the show and giving us all your stuff.
Hedvig: Yes.
PharaohKatt: No worries. I had a great time, and I would love to be on again at some point.
Daniel: Well, alrighty-right. Thanks also to Dustin of Sandman Stories, who recommends us to everyone. Thanks to the team at SpeechDocs who transcribes our every, every word. And most of all, you, our patrons, who give us so much support and make it possible to keep the show going.
Hedvig: We had a nice message from SpeechDocs, didn’t we?
Daniel: We did. Let’s see if I can find that. What did they say?
Hedvig: I think SpeechDocs sent the transcript from the latest episode and said that they are very happy to be the Guardians of Ben’s Fragile Ego.
Hedvig: Yes.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: Ben’s fragile ego was all in capital letters as though it was an entity.
Hedvig: Yeah. Loving it.
[music]
Daniel: If you like the show, here’s what you can do. Number one, you can send us ideas and feedback like PharaohKatt often does. There are lots of ways to do that. You can follow us, we’re @becauselangpod on just about every conceivable social platform. Leave us a message with SpeakPipe. That’s on our website, becauselanguage.com. You can also send us an email at hello@becauselanguage.com, just like Jenna and Linda did.
Another thing you can do is tell a friend about us, because we like it when word of mouth happens. Word of mouth or word of sign, that’s very good too. You can leave us a review in all of the reviewy places. iTunes is where a lot of people do, but don’t neglect the pod format that you’re… the pod catcher that you’re on. Podchaser.
Hedvig: Oh, yeah.
Daniel: It’s very good.
Hedvig: No, Podchaser, I think, is just an app. It’s just a place for reviews. Pod catcher is a unique… It’s a name for all of your apps on your phone that can subscribe to podcasts.
Daniel: That is correct.
Hedvig: Either way, leave us a review in lots of places. If we spot the review and we like it, we’ll probably read it out on the show like we have. We got a nice review from Hedwin on Twitter, who did a long review of all podcasts that relate to linguistics and English. She said very nice things about us. And also, I think we share part of a name. So, she was Hedwin, right?
Daniel: Yep.
Hedvig: I think that’s the same Hed as Hedvig.
Daniel: Oh, the fight? Battle?
Hedvig: Yeah. I don’t know. I might look it up and be disappointed.
Daniel: Remind me, what are the bits, because the hed means battle and vig means battle, fight, battle. So, you’re fighty fight girl is what you are, [laughs] which is good.
Daniel: There’s slightly different kinds. One of them is more like a duel and the other one is more like a battle.
Daniel: So, you’re just an all-rounder.
Hedvig: Apparently. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel: What about jousting?
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: You know?
Hedvig: Yeah.
Daniel: Okay.
Hedvig: I suspect that Gwen is the same one as in Gwen… Gwen… Anyway, we’ll find out.
Daniel: Ooh.
Hedvig: Maybe, we’ll see.
Daniel: And therefore, Wendy.
Hedvig: Maybe Wendy.
Hedvig: Wendy is a completely concocted name from Peter Pan.
Daniel: Yes, it is. J. M. Barrie made it up. But wouldn’t we say that Gwendolyn, an older name, was inspiration for Wendy, really?
PharaohKatt: No, it was based on friendy Wendy.
Daniel: Really?
PharaohKatt: Yeah. She’s my friendy Wendy.
Daniel: I had not heard that part of the story. Thank you.
Hedvig: That is so strange.
Daniel: See, this is what I’m talking about. this is what I’m talking about.
PharaohKatt: [laughs]
Daniel: This is what I’m talking about. Hedvig, I’ve got a Ben bit, but since Ben’s not here, you want to take it from here?
Hedvig: Exactly. That’s what I was trying to, but you guys keep interrupting me.
Daniel: Well, this Wendy thing is interesting.
Hedvig: This Wendy thing is interesting. We should stop talking over each other. I think listeners don’t like that. Besides leaving a review in lots of places, you can support us by becoming a Patreon supporter on Patreon and you’ll become a patron on Patreon, which is a tongue twister. You’ll get things like nice bonus episodes like the one you’re listening to right now. You get to hang out with us on Discords and you also get to sleep well at night knowing that you gave us money that made us be able to do nice things like pay SpeechDocs to make transcripts so that you can search and read our shows.
We have a bunch of lovely people who have done so, including our lovely cohost of this show, PharaohKatt. But there are loads of other of our top patrons. And now, I’m going to read out their names. Their names are Iztin, Termy, Elías, Matt, Whitney, Helen, Jack, PharaohKatt who’s here, LordMortis, gramaryen, Larry, Kristofer, Andy B, James, Nigel, Meredith, Kate, Nasrin, Joanna, Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Margareth, Manú, Rodger, Rhian, Colleen, Ignacio, Sonic Snejhog, Kevin, Jeff, Andy from Logophilius, Stan, Kathy, Rach, Felicity, Amir, Canny Archer, O Tim, Alyssa, Chris, and now, Laurie, who has bumped up to the supporter level.
We also want to welcome our special new patrons at the listener level, Aliona and Annika. We also have Jillian, who has bumped up to the listener level. Thank you to all of our wonderful patrons.
PharaohKatt: Our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who’s a member of Ryan Beano and of Didion’s Bible. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you next time. Because Language.
Hedvig: Pew, pew, pew. Well done.
Daniel: Yay. [clapping] That was great. Wow, there’s a lot of news coming all the time, isn’t there?
PharaohKatt: Yes, there’s like 12 other articles I didn’t send you because you were like, “No, no. We’ve got a run sheet.” [giggles]
Daniel: [laughs]
PharaohKatt: They just keep coming.
Daniel: They just keep coming.
PharaohKatt: Yes.
Daniel: And we’ll be there on Because Language.
[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]