Transcription
I'm a linguist. I'm a revivalist. I usually say I'm an endangered languages professor. So endangered that I'm the only such professor. I have many thoughts of modern universities that are negative. So I'm not kind of a an admirer of the modern university or some of that. Absolutely not.
Musicality, mathematism, an outstanding memory, um, high EQ, high IQ, shamelessness, and motivation. [Music] What's going on? How are you? And uh, thanks for being here, cuz give us give us a bit of your your background. Obviously, we're here to talk about languages, but you know, languages, what it can do is give you this massive cultural shift in experiences. So, it would be awesome if you could give us your background within the language world and without.
So I was born to a survivor father from Italy. I was born in Israel. My mother was born after the Holocaust. She was much younger than my father and she was born in Israel. I uh was exposed to Italian when my father spoke to my grandfather. So I just understood, okay, there is a different language, another language. Then when I grew up in Eilat, the southernmost city, but Sinai at the time was ours. So when we went to Sinai, we used to speak to the Bedouins in Sinai, not in Israel. So I mean now they live under Egypt, these Bedouins. And I noticed already very early on, for example, that sometimes they say God, God, God, for them means go there. Yeah. Like go. But of course, the Arabs in Israel would say, "Not," and of course, when I studied Arabic as in Fus, the um, Arabic I studied, IHab. So I remember already at the age of 10 asking myself like, why did the Bedouin say God? I mean, he's an Arab. Yeah, he speaks Arabic. Why did the um Arab that we met in Rafia at the time? It's kind of funny to talk about it now because I actually went to Rafia, which is kind of near Gaza at the time. It was we we went there to eat falafel and there and then you have IHAB in the in the in the language that you read. So I was very interested in dialectology. So the different dialects. I was also very interested from very very from a very early stage of my life in playing with language. So it was very ludic, ludic with a meaning of playful. So I I would write palindromic stories that you can read from the end to the beginning the same way, very long ones in my mother tongue, which I now call Israeli, but at the time I call Hebrew. I called Hebrew, you know, I mean, um, but also in English, which was my maybe we started learning English at the age of 10. So, probably after Arabic, after Hebrew, and my mother tongue was Israeli. So, I make a distinction between Israeli and Hebrew. That's a a big topic per se.
But what I'm trying to say is that I was playful, ludic. I wrote a poem that you could read in Italian and in Israeli at the same time. It is homophonic, but it means something completely different. So, so I mean, you know, I can I can recite some verses for you, but what is interesting is that it is independent in Israeli and it's independent in Italian, but it sounds the same. So, things like that. I I met my girlfriend from the age of seven, eight, and she said, "Oh, I knew you would be a professor of linguistics already then because you were always looking at words from different angles," and I was under the impression that everybody was like that, like, you know, it's a little bit like you're born into a reality and you don't realize that uh it's different from others. I thought everybody looks at words from all sides and everybody kind of um, you know, when when you write "fly" in English, I thought everybody sees that in Hebrew script it's which means fly, so it's it's kind it's kind of a homograph, I mean it looks the same, but I thought everybody would would see it, but it turned out that it was unique, and that's when I practically started my um love story with uh languages, and it was not only about learning as many languages as I can. Uh, that was not the goal. I was always interested in, you know, how one word moves from one language to another and then suddenly changes the meaning. And so I I I've had like the most amazing etymologies that I then proved to be the case. Incredibly fascinating.
So then to make it even to make it simpler, what would just for the people, and I know this is not necessarily the most important thing, what would what's your title? What what sort of title do you hold? How would you you were teaching at Oxford and Cambridge. What did they call you?
So I'm a professor of so I I usually say I'm an endangered languages professor. So endangered that I'm the only such professor. So endangered qualifies both the languages and the professorship. I'm a linguist. I'm a revivalist, a language revivalist. And I so these days I see myself as an independent player, you know, I don't I don't want to be under any burden of a specific agenda, or I have many thoughts of modern universities that are negative. So, I'm not kind of a an admirer of the modern university or something like that. Absolutely not. But, you know, I I'm a paradox. Paradox means pair of docks. So, I have two doctorates. One is from Oxford, a real one, and one is from Cambridge, which is in a kind of a an honorary one. You just need to publish some articles, publish a book, etc. So my title, I guess a human, a mensch, you know, in Yiddish, you know, Yiddish mensch. Yeah. Mench. Yeah.
And on a more technical way, when you're when you're doing what you do and let's say reviving or keeping alive these endangered languages, you must have to also learn quite a bit. And so because we have a focus here and so many people that are watching are going to have such a focus on how they can improve their language learning. Yes. What have you found that's helped? I mean, we all everyone is, I think, fairly well aware that there's no one way of doing this thing. And I think especially if you at such a young age had such a playful approach to it, you probably had the opportunity to discover different things that helped you. So how how has your position then helped and if you could maybe even bring us through what you do or what you might do in order to to learn something, to learn a language.
That's a very good question, and I would say the following. Firstly, we must make a distinction between mother tongues or native languages, which are acquired automatically. So you don't need to learn anything. It just comes naturally, and you can be a native speaker of as many languages as you're exposed to. So obviously there is there might be a an empirical limit in the sense that your mother is Serbian, your father is Israeli, your grandmother is Chinese, you know, like, but you don't have like an infinite number of people surrounding you, and you don't you don't have an infinite number of hours in the day to be exposed to them. But I have friends who are native speakers of five languages. So this is not a big deal. This is just an automatic uh um acquisition. It doesn't require any talent. It doesn't require anything. I am now talking about foreign language learning. So foreign language learning, which is usually I mean, you know, the argument is that before puberty, if you're exposed natively to you you can be a native speaker of many languages, but after puberty it's very unlikely that if you move to Japan then you know after 10 years everybody will think you were Japanese if you speak on the phone, I mean because they will not see us that we do not look it's very unlikely that after puberty you will be able to do so, so I do actually as a generalization by and large adhere to this idea that puberty is a very important point, and you can see it when you look at Jewish migrants from Poland to America. You see that the brother who came at nine is a native American speaker. He speaks like an American, but the one who came who came at 14 has a very strong uh, you know, like very strong uh Polish accent, etc. So I mean you can actually look at the same thing. I discovered through the years that in order to be a good foreign language learner you need seven characteristics, and the characteristics are musicality. So I was lucky, I was born very musical. It's not you don't need to be a a pianist. It's not like my friend Yifghani kissing, you know, I have a friend in in Prague. He's a pianist, very good pianist. I mean, you don't need to be of, but you need to be musical in the sense that you know what it is to be musical, to be able to sing songs that you hear and etc. So, uh musicality is very important. Mathematicity. So, um in my own case when I was four, you know, they discovered that I was very kind of good in mathematics. So, I had a special professor. Oh, wow. You know, you can you can do the mathematical exam um at the age of eight, you know, the matriculation exam, etc. Mathematicity is very important, and this has to do with the fact that the languages are very systematic, so it's kind of information, and by the way, I mean if you look at the DNA, you know, ACTG, you have actually letters that are very kind of uh ordered, and it's it's all information technology. So it's kind of interesting what came first, the DNA I guess, so or or so the the way we analyze the DNA or the language, some people might argue that we analyze our DNA as a language because we speak a language, but I think actually that our language reflects a genetic kind of not artificial but rather natural intelligence, which is how how you put things together as an information technology. So mathematicity for language learning, foreign language learning is very very important. So musicality, mathematicity, you need to have an outstanding memory. So for me it was photographic; for for other people, you know, they have a kind of more audio audiographic memory or, you know, a phonological memory, so they can they hear something and they remember it forever, etc. But memory is very good, very important. The fourth is high EQ. So EQ is emotional intelligence. You need to understand the other side, which is interesting because I'm not I mean you you need to have the seven, but it's okay if you if you lack some because, for example, I have met some Aspies, whatever they they call it now, on the spectrum whose uh int emotional intelligence was kind of zero. um I mean to to be simplistic, but their mathematicity was extremely good. So actually they were very very good at some parts of language. Interestingly, empathy was very very high. So you know, I mean you have, but it's not it's not the same as emotional intelligence. So sometimes you can have compensation if if your emotional intelligence is not high, but still you have an an kind of a photographic memory, it can compensate for that. Mhm. So then you need high IQ, high intelligence, as in good brain. That's a fifth. The sixth is shamelessness, which is a problem again, I'm generalizing in youth in Asia. So, for example, when I teach in China, people are afraid to make mistakes. They're afraid of kind of losing face, you know, should I ask this question? If I ask this question, maybe the professor would think that I'm stupid. No, that's not good for language learning. You need to be shameless. So it doesn't matter if you have guilt, but you should have no shame. And this is something very, very important. And the seventh characteristic is motivation. If, for example, you have a girlfriend, I mean you're male and you have a girlfriend who and you know that she told you that if you don't speak Russian you will then you go for it. I mean, so what I'm trying motivation can be any any type. You want to be a doctor, a medical doctor, you are not accepted in your country but you need to go to Hungary and you must speak Hungarian. I know they have some English programs, but let's say or you must speak Italian or so motivate if you don't have motivation it doesn't actually matter if you have all the rest because I mean you will not I mean you will not remember something you don't you don't care about, you need to remember. Now, by the way, I have to say something because I I noticed instead of saying sorry for generalizing, I just need to tell something about language; language is a generalization, so facto, let me explain. So if you tell me you're generalizing, I said, of course, I'm a linguist. I mean, a linguist must generalize because there is no such thing as language. What do I mean? A language is an abstract ensemble of lect, idiolect, sociolect, ethnolect, dialects, many many types of lect. Ethnolects. So like according to your age. So, for example, your language would be different from a native speaker of English who is 20 years older than you. And of course, your language will be different from the language of another person from the same from the same place where you're coming who is say of uh a specific ethnic background, etc. And dialect, I mean, you know, like you don't speak the same in Minnesota as you speak in California, you know. So, so we are generalizing when we speak about language. When I when I say, for example, I'm going to teach you Bangala, which is a language that I'm reclaiming in peninsula. I'm going to teach you a generalized type of Bangala because of course there were dialectal variations between Port and Portagasa. And for example, the word for the sun, sun in Port Lincoln was yo, but in Portagasa was a dindo. Yo. But I'm going to teach you yo. If you want me to teach you dialectology, I'll teach you dialectology. No problem whatsoever. But as a standard, you know, we need to simplify. I'm going to choose. And this is the generalization that we are talking about. So how do people communicate? Because they don't speak the same language, through accommodation or negotiation. So I negotiate with another native speaker. And this is how language shifts, language changes. So if I send two people to the moon and I come back after 1,000 years, a male and a female, they're the the the descendants would speak a totally different language. Why? Because you negotiate all the time, resulting in kind of it's a little bit like viral replication. It's like an orgy, you know, like of of characteristics of traits, you know, if you know about viruses, this is so what I'm trying to say is that I generalize because I'm a linguist. So when I tell you, for example, that uh you know like you need seven characteristics, I don't need to say I'm generalized because it's obvious because I'm a linguist. So this is a caveat that we need to to include. And if there is a linguist who tells you I never generalize, you say he's not a linguist. He's a spy because it's impossible. You must generalize. But coming back to musicality, mathematism, and outstanding memory, um, high EQ, high IQ, shamelessness, and motivation. Let us assume that your memory is not that good. You know, some people are better at memorizing, some people are less good. When I teach a language, and it does I've taught many languages. I mean, you know, I'm uh I've taught so many languages. Some languages I taught are tell us about some, I'm actually very curious. People find it fantastically interesting. What have you taught? Like what do you what what do you I don't think we uh I mean I taught Morse code, you know. Morse code. It's a language. It it it's not only a transcription. So, for example, uh let's say your name is Will, right? W I L. So in Morse it would be Da D. You can see that there was Da D L double. Yeah. So D is W I D. So will W I L L. But then I will tell you D, you know, I will tell you QSA. Do you hear me? Okay. So I mean like it's doesn't mean QSA and then uh Da, you know, Q are you like what's new with you, how are you? I mean you might say it's are you from from from American English, but what I'm saying it's a code, it's a language, it's not just transcription because you can also speak Morse, you can also speak English in Morse code, so when you teach Morse code, I remember this is actually technically something which is beyond belief, and I wish I could show it to you, but we don't have half a year. I will play for you a a recording, and it will sound to you nothing. Then I will teach you for 6 months Morse code, and after 6 months you will hear what you had heard as and you will hear an entire story. Now this is remarkable because it's not only that you hear, you know, like you you go to Japan, you don't understand, but you you you realize that she's she's changing her syllables here, you just hear nothing, and then you suddenly you hear a world. I mean, this is beautiful. I remember when it happened to me as a student and then when I taught it, so this is like Morse code. I mean, so then I taught say Arabic, you many Arabics, there are many types of Arabic. I mean, it's kind of a myth that there is only one Arabic, then you know Italian, then English, then Latin, then Bangala. Bangala is a is an aboriginal language that had been died unfortunately due to linguicide. Linguicide means language killing, somebody k I mean somebody, the government told people, well, we need to take you from from your homes, we need to put you in a kind of schools, you know, so it was kind it was not it was linguicide. So language killing, not not not genocide but linguicide. But look, according to some definitions, linguicide is a type of killing a nation cuz you don't you don't allow to speak the language. So if you don't allow Aboriginal people to speak the language in a way, you anyway, but coming back to Bangala. So I teach them the word say yoga. Yoga in Bangala means black yoga, and they don't remember because they don't let's say my my friends they don't have a photographic memory, and then I decided, and I do it a lot, I can tell you so many, I decided to use mnemonics. Mnemonics are exactly the playfulness that you were asking me about, so I was thinking about it when you asked the question that you said, okay, maybe because I am playful, ludic, as in ludicrous, but l u I see it means playful. Maybe I use some you know playfulness in teaching a language and in learning a language. Absolutely. Because I told them, let's think of Mahatma Gandhi. They all know Mahatma Gandhi. I said, what was he? Was he white or was he black? Said, oh, of course, he was black. I mean, he was Indian. Yeah. But I mean, you know, he was he was dark. And tell me what was he doing? I said, well, he was doing peace. Oh, he was doing yoga. You know, he was kind of always almost doing yoga like like that, you know, you you know this, so yoga now in Bangala there is no o, every o is oo, so for example, I will give you a hint if you need to say horse, if you needed to say the word horse in Bangala, there is no h, there is no s, and there is no o, the word would be woodi. So this is how you say horse would because there is no h, it becomes w, there is no o, it becomes u or double o, double o as in u, there is no s, so it becomes j, and then you must also have an um a vowel at the end, so it's would like there is a place near Brisbane, Brisbane is in uh Queensland, Australia, it's called Toowomba. No white fellow would know; you can ask an Australian. Tell me, do you know where Toowomba comes from? Probably it's an Aboriginal word. No, it's the way the Aboriginal people said the English word swamp. They couldn't say swamp. They changed the s to t and the and the w. So, and of course, you need between the to, you know, you know, you understand it's it's a phonetic adaptation. So, coming back to yoga. So he did yoga. Why? Because he's black. So black yoga. Now they have a visualization of the word yoga. And you can now go to Port Augusta, Wya, Port Lincoln, and ask them, "How do you say black?" They will say, "Oh, we remember Gilad talked to us about Mahatma Gandhi yoga." So what I'm trying to say when I teach Israeli, mah mah means quickly quickly. But of course, I have so I go to the wind. I go and my hair is becoming I said quickly quickly my hair is all over the place, you know, so quickly my hair, oh my hair is burning, you know, my hair my my hair my hair my
Hair is burning, so people remember. Oh yeah, Mahel quickly. Oh, you know, oh hell. There is a raccoon in my tent. You know, oh hell. In Israeli, "tent" means "tent," and I remember when I was in Canada where there were raccoons always in the tent. Oh hell. So I, in 1993, I made up this: "Oh hell, there is a raccoon in my tent."
And because of that, people whose memory is not that good, they actually learn how to make stories themselves, on their own, in their own house, without even any other person being part of it. Of course, it's funner, it's more fun to, to, you know, to, in, in my view, I mean, for me, yeah, I can only speak for myself. It's more fun to learn a language together with other people, to go to a cafe, to, you know, in Adelaide there is a French cafe where you go and you speak French, you know, like even though it's most Australians, they do not learn another language, but there, if you want to practice your French before you go to Paris, you go to this. So the same, it's funner, but even if you're at home, there is Covid, there is a new pandemic, and you don't want to see anybody, you can actually make so.
Recently, I've just made like 100 um reals, reel, you know, like videos of how to remember words in revived Hebrew, in Israeli, with English. Okay? So, it's like, for example, I, I, I went to a church from the inside, and I, and I said, "Okay, I will, I'll do this one." The priest decided to leave God, and the followers in the church said, "You cannot betray Christianity." And then I say, "Leave God," in Israeli means to betray. "Leave God" to betray, because it just serendip, it's a serendipity. It happens that "leave God" means to betray. I mean, it has nothing to do ethmologically with "leave God," but it's just, it just sounds like that. It's homophonic. So I decided to make it, and then I received like, people, "Wow, that's amazing. Now I will always remember 'leave God,' you know."
So this is, this is how truly fascinating, because this is the thing, you know, there are so many, there are so many ways to learn, and to learn words, you know, and vocab is a big portion, clearly, of language learning, and we've devised all sorts of things, from apps to, you know, flashcards to, to things like this. Pneumonics are great, especially because, you know, many of the approaches that I've used, and also that I, I have my discussions with polyglots and, and language, language learners with, number one, like you said, this, I guess motivation and fun also get can get tied together a whole lot, right, you know, because most things are not fun, you know, and yes, and are motivated to further do things that are fun, but with, with, with vocab, you know, being, being let's say a barrier to an upper level or higher level conversation, and as well as you need this for the extreme upper level, for to be eloquent or to sound elegant, you know, in that sense. What do you think?
And now you just, you just mentioned pneumonics, but what role does reading play in your vocab building for you? What would you say for that portion, for what? I think that reading, the basic part of language learning, is extremely helpful. However, I noticed, because I've, I've taught tens of thousands of people, usually, I teach linguistics, not necessarily language. I noticed that fewer and fewer people enjoy reading. So I don't know if it has to do with computers, and I don't know whether it has to do with the span of attention. So whether it's, uh, I remember when I made a MOOC, a massive open online course about language revival. I was taught, I was told I was kind of, uh, sit, never have anything more than seven minutes, you know, like, uh, every after seven minutes you need like, it's almost like, uh, people, people, you know, I remember on the other hand that when I watched some, I don't know, news or whatever, they, they had the commercials. Oh sh, for God's sake, why do we have com, but now it, it sounds like people cannot, cannot, I mean, they must have the commercial just in order to kind of, not because of money for the, for the station, but rather for them to kind of get a coffee and to continue to be attentive. So if, if I'm right in this observation, which I guess I'm not the only one who observes it, then we need to find other ways. But if you ask me the basic question, is reading helpful? Absolutely.
I remember when I studied Italian, you know, I mean, I, I did, um, it was Machiavelli, *The Prince* by Machiavelli. I had to check so many words. I remember because I was kind of, you know, I mean, it's very easy to have basic Italian, but it's, it's hard to have intellectual, scholarly Italian. And I wanted to have it too. And I had, you know, and if I get an old book in, in English like *The Great Gatsby*, or was it, I will, I'm sure you will find so many glosses in whatever language I came with. I mean, cuz sometimes I, I study a language, a new language with another language, not necessarily with my mother tongue, but of course, mother tongue for me is, so I would, I would have so many glosses. So look, I'm sure that if you look at my own books when I was a learner of these languages, you would find many, many glosses. So I did a lot of reading, and it was great. And I also noticed that a lot of, I mean, for me as a non-native speaker, oral English, colloquial English and written English are more kind of similar in a sense. Uh, you might hear in my colloquial English some words that say a native speaker would not use really, really colloquially, they would just put it in an essay or, because when you're a non-native speaker, so there is no much difference, you know what I mean, like don't forget another thing, the oral, the, um, oral language is something we were all born to do. Every Homo sapiens sapiens, almost every Homo sapiens sapiens is a speaker of a language. If you don't expose Homo sapiens to language in the, in the years, this person would be kind of imbecile, because without language he or she would not be able to kind of function cognitively, but it's an automatic, uh, thing. However, to write and to read is completely above and beyond Homo sapiens sapiens, because in fact, I know personally many people who are illiterate. When, you know, when I ask in South Africa and in Namibia some people to sign the contract, you know, like that they agree that, uh, our interviews will be, uh, used. They could not even do it with a, with a cross. Some, some people couldn't even, even hold the cross, you know, like the, the pen just to do the cross, the cross was very hard. It was kind of.
So I remember, oh wow. So there, there are many, um, and, and you know, like, and also in, in Italy, I mean, at the generation of my grandmother, many people did not read, did not write. So we need, we need to remember that. What I discovered, however, in my Aboriginal language revival work is that although Aboriginal languages were oral, to which means only oral, there was, they never wrote down anything before colonization. Many Aboriginal people are happy to have books, uh, and you can see, you can see some of, some of the books behind me here that we have written. So like in Aboriginal, so for example, this one, for example, this one. So we have written books in order to assist the reclamation of a non-written language traditionally. So in other words, reading is helpful even when the language is oral. Now when I say reading, of course, it also means an app. So, uh, we have an app, and I think that technology is extremely important. So for example, I'll show you the app that we devised for Bangana. So there is an app, an app here. Yeah. And then it comes here. And then there is a traditional, uh, you will see in a second there is a traditional, uh, and then you can search, I mean, like 3,000 words, and then let's say you, oh, I don't know if you will be able to hear, but, uh, say tree, baloney. Uh, so I mean, it just, it just teaches you all these words, and this is something that I noticed with kids, with Aboriginal kids. They love having the book, and the book is kind of big, and but also they love playing with the app, and we are, of course, working, I mean, I work with many other Aboriginal tribes, um, in order to have games, so to try to gamify the learning. I mean, I, I am a believer in alternative, uh, teaching methods. I'm sure there are people out there in the world who, um, like you who come up with amazing new ways of learning. So I love going to the bush, to the outback and looking for animals, and then when we find the animal, which is beautiful on its own, then the child has to say the name in the Aboriginal language, and then if we find another animal, then of course, so we, you never know how it will end up, right, it's a living, so it's kind of, I like learning that is unexpected, and, and this is something which is in total contradistinction with the modern, you know, like a university of everything is, you need to say in advance what you will do on week 12 at, uh, 1:00 ET, because there is a phone for everything. So I, I now correspond with what I said about the bureaucracy. I think exactly the opposite.
So with AI, I remember many, many years ago I, uh, saw for the first time, um, it was many, many years ago. I mean, it was like before AI or anything. So it was, I, I was a kind of, um, um, it's kind, I don't know how you call it. It's like practical shooting, uh, sport, you know, like you with a handgun. Practical shooting. Yeah. So, so I was in, in competitions and stuff like that. Um, I remember once my friend took me to a, to a place, it was a shooting range, but, and you have a movie, you have a film for an American, a movie, and then you need to kill the bad guys and to save the, the good guys, the, the hostages, and the film would actually develop differently according to your shot. So if you killed the bad guy, then he's dead, and then the movie will, but there were like 100 possibilities. See, and I remember that it was so advanced. I couldn't believe it. This was like, I don't know, 30 years ago or something. It was so, you know, from, from another world, but of course these days, I mean, this would be nothing for AI. I mean, like, so, so, so what, what I'm saying is that with, with learning as well, you can be unexpected, because the, the, the a robot teacher would know how to kind of change according to your own learning. So it will be completely tailored, completely tailored, and, uh, this is something which, of course, is above and beyond my expertise, and this is where are we going to head in AI? Are we going to see, for example, people going to a cafe with their human-looking AI robot, and they're speaking to the robot in the language that they need to learn, cuz they're about to go to Vietnam? And the robot, of course, knows how to speak in all languages, and he knows how to, or she knows, or they know, or whatever. They know how to answer every question because they're connected to the, to the internet, to, to whatever. And then, and then people say, "Oh, that's crazy. What a crazy idea." It's not such a crazy idea, because many people might, might prefer to go with that robot than to go with their friend who might require them to ask for cappuccino. The robot just, you know, just.
And then I told them, 200 years ago, how many dogs would you see in a cafe? I mean, well, firstly, there were no, not so many cafes, but to bring a dog to a cafe would be kind of crazy in some places. And nowadays, if you have a cafe without kind of outside the dog area, especially in Australia, it's like something is wrong with the cafe, you know. So, I mean, these are all, whatever sounds ludicrous today would sound beautiful, sublime tomorrow, you know. So, I very much look forward to seeing these shifts. You know, in linguistics, I always say, "Shift happens." Shift happens, with an s. Shift happens. Uh, there is in my, in my book *Revivalistics*, I have, um, a very lovely chapter. I'll show you. Uh, it's here. I don't know if you can read. "Shift happens." Can you read? Oh, it's up. Yeah, it's like, it's like the, the other way. "Shift happens." Yeah. Uh, "Shift happens." Tarbutonomics. Tabutomics, Israeli culturomics. So "Shift happens" is why you have linguists, because think about it, if a language were stagnant. I mean, I, I usually, you know, like, you know the story of Babel, the, the from the Bible. So what is the story? I mean, the, the people spoke in one language and built a very, very huge skyscraper, a little bit like in, in America or in, in Shanghai and China, and then God said, "Oh no, they are about to see what I'm doing here, I'm going to confuse their languages." God created the linguist, but several centuries ago there was a philologist, a linguist who looked at the Bible, at the Hebrew Bible and said, "Oh, look, this, this was written in a different dialect." There is a mistake here. There is, this is how the linguist killed God. So God created the linguist, but the linguist killed God. Because the moment you look at all these scriptures from a scholarly perspective, you know, like from the perspective of an academic analysis, linguistic analysis, you know, this is when you get, it's a little, it's kind of funny because, um, I had a friend who gave a speech and he said that in Arabic, in the Quran, the Arabic of the Quran, it was influenced by Hebrew, by Greek, by, and then he told me that some very fanatic Muslim said, "Excuse me, this is unheard of. The language is pure, uh, and it was written by God." So my friend, very clever. He said, "Are you saying that Allah does not know Hebrew, does not know Greek, does not know, you know, so from," Oh, so of course they had to be put to silence, because this is the beauty of language. Language absorbs from everywhere, and English is the number one example of how you have only 26% of the lexicon Germanic, you have 29% from French, 29% from Latin, so together, together it's 58% of the vocabulary of English is Romance, it's French and Latin, only 20, only a quarter is from Germanic. I mean, it's crazy if you think about it. I mean, I love, I love all of the, the things from etymology. It's, it's really, it's fascinating when you start to, also. It's so useful. It's funny because it's so useful when you're learning a language. I guess when you start to see where these words pop up in other languages and how, you know, it's funny because I obviously spent a lot of time in Croatia, and if you know, which you, you do know, and you've spent some time in that part of the world, if you talk to somebody from the Balkan area, specifically from former Yugoslavia, as well, is a word that you are going to run across, but it was hilarious to me when I was in Istanbul and I'm hearing "hadi," and they're saying, they're using the same way, and, and then you're going, "How? What is that, the same thing?" You know, and then you go, and you go look, and you see the, the relationship between the Turks and not just the Croats, but that, that region there, and you see how the, and then you just go look at other things, and it's just, it's everywhere, and then so like that will help, it does help, because since we've had a focus at least on vocab, at least a little bit today. Yes. You know, and pneumonics, and it's like whenever you can truly elicit emotion, that's at least what I've seen, truly eliciting emotion, and when it's attached to those things, it's very hard to forget. You can almost, you can almost not forget. Uh, you know, and, and so in any case, it's been a tremend, it's very expressive. It can be okay. It can be, "Come on." It can be so many different things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just wonder whether, um, whether it deres from, from Arabic, or whether, you know, like, uh, I bet it has a. Yeah. If you keep pulling on the string, you're going to keep going back and back and back and further and further out. Yeah, because, uh, "come on." Is there, is there an equivalent in, do you feel that there's an equivalent? Well, uh, "hadi" as in "guide." Well, I'll need to check it. But it's very interesting. So, so you're saying that this word is very commonly used in, it may be the, it may be the word, I, I, amazing. You can't go there and not learn that word basically is what I'm saying. Right. Right. Right. It's funny because in, in Israeli we use the word "hide." "Hide" means "let's go hide there." So that's same thing. I will, I, I will look at it because "hadi," yeah, I remember "hadi" in, in Turkish, um, and in, in Istanbul, and of course it sounds coming from Arabic. You have to realize that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 1928, wanted to get rid of all Arabisms and Persianisms because he wanted to kind of align himself with Europe. So he wanted Frenchisms. He loved French. So "meep," which means school, he didn't like, so he wanted "oku," which is like "Ecole Normale Supérieure," so "oku" is to read, so it's a reading place, you know, "okul," but what is funny is that he did not manage to get rid of all the Arabism because they're so entrenched, so "hadi" might be one of them, you know. In Hungary, I discovered a pro-ludic that the word for scissors is "olló," and it's written "o l l ó," and it looks like scissors the way you write it. I mean, the, the, the "o" here has a little bit of an a grav, but it's "o l l ó." And then people said, "Wow, no, no Hungarian I had known noticed that that it looked like, like this." But then I discovered it was actually a Turkic word. So, it's just total serendipity. Total serendipity. It's a Turkic word that was kind of, um, manifested itself phonetically in Hungarian as "olló," but actually it has nothing to do with a, with a force, you know. Um, those things happen, and when they do happen, yeah, you think that they're, you know, the fact that it happens like that. So, makes you think about things. But yeah, in any case, I appreciate this has been, it's so fascinating all these things. I mean, obviously me as a, as a language learner and someone who's into these things, I find it incredibly fascinating. I know everybody will here, but where should we, as the, the final, no, where should we send people if they want to, kind of, obviously we'll, we'll, we'll put links to your book or books potentially. Yeah, look, I will send you some, uh, I'll send you some what they call links so you can tag me. So like Facebook, Instagram, you know, like website. So it, it'll be good. Yeah. And, and of course, if you have anything else you would like to ask, I mean, just let me know. It was a pleasure to, to talk to you.