Mathilde Hutin : Je viens de Paris. Je parle le français, qui est ma langue maternelle. Je parle aussi allemand et anglais et un petit peu lâitalien, le nĂ©erlandais, et, de maniĂšre gĂ©nĂ©rale, je peux lire les langues romanes et les langues germaniques. Et je parle un petit peu le LSF aussi, la langue des signes française. Bienvenue sur le Fluent Show.
[music]
Kerstin Cable: Welcome to The Fluent Show, a podcast all about loving, living, and learning languages. Hello, fluent fam! Hello, Fluent Show listeners. My name is Kerstin Cable from fluentlanguage.co.uk, and here on the show, we talk about anything and everything interesting from the world of learning another language, and what more fun thing to have on The Fluent Show than a linguist? Thatâs it. Today on the show, I have got a very special interview with a linguist, Mathilde, from Elles Comme Linguistes, which is a French YouTube channel dedicated to linguistics pour tous. Mathilde visited The Fluent Show to talk about what linguistics is all about. We chatted a little bit about being PhD students Ă Paris (in Paris), and then we focused on the big topic, which is all about loanwords, loanwords like âchampagneâ, mousepad (yes, that's a loanword in French) and kartofel in Polish and Beamer in German. Every language â every language â has loanwords, but why do so many of them come from English, and what decides why some words come into our language as loanwords, and what influences how many loanwords a language takes on, and should you even use them? If you're a native speaker of English and you're going somewhere, is speaking Denglish some kind of cop-out? There are so, so many questions, and I love the way that Mathilde covered them all in today's interview. Itâs a really, really good one. Iâm so happy to introduce this to you. Before we crack on, of course, it's time for a few news and announcements.
The first one, as so often, is my reminder to you that this show is sponsored and supported by a wonderful sponsor, Yabla. Yabla.com/fluentshow is the place to go to get a free trial on the Yabla video database. It's available in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese, so if you're learning any of those languages and you want to get videos, the subtitles are super souped up and really help you learn a language. That is the place to go. There is just so much more that you can do on Yabla. You can play a really cool sort of fill in the gap from listening game. Itâs called Scribe, and it's patented (thatâs how good it is) and you can loop the subtitles, which is probably my favorite part. In Chinese, where I've been struggling to understand to hear exactly the connections with words, and I really wanted to kind of get in there, this has helped me so much with my listening comprehension, because this great little feature just lets you put a little loop on a piece of audio, on something that people are saying, and you can just watch it and hear it over and over again. You don't have to sort of rewind, press play, rewind, press play. It just does it for you, and that saves you a lot of time and a lot of hassle, and (if youâre like me) a lot of frustration. Itâs definitely helped me, and I would recommend Yabla to all of you. If you are wanting to watch something entertaining but still get that language learning benefit out of it, it's all right there done for you, yabla.com/fluentshow, and thank you so much to Yabla for sponsoring The Fluent Show.
Like every week, I also want to give a big shout out to the patrons of The Fluent Show. These are people who have signed up to support us with a pledge from just two dollars a month, doesn't matter how much you give, but they support The Fluent Show, and it makes such a big difference to just know that there is, you know, a little community out there keeping the podcast going, and we're heading towards 40 of them. Itâs going to take a little while maybe, but we are heading up and up and up, and Iâm so pleased to be reaching more of you and for more of you to be finding us on Patreon. So if you're curious about what's over there, go to Patreon.com/FluentShow. Plenty of bonus episodes are available to the public, so you can still get something out of the page even if you choose not to be a Patreon supporter. A patron, that's what it's called.
Now, one last thing about this week's interview that I want to tell you, which is that today's interview is bilingual. Now, bear with me and don't panic. We mostly spoke English, but Mathilde is a French native speaker and I happen to speak French, so every now and then we switched into French, which is such cool listening exercise for those of you who are French learners. We also summarize what we said in English afterwards, so you're not missing out on any big part of the conversation, and remember, learning a language involves feeling a bit uncomfortable because you don't understand, so this is just part of that. If you're nervous about not understanding the French, don't worry about it. You will also notice that I didn't really say much in French, and you do hear me making mistakes. Itâs just part of real life, and I'll be fully honest with you, we recorded this I think two days after we moved house in a lockdown, so bear with me. I did my very best. Mathilde was very gracious, and she is a native speaker. So if you're listening out for linguistic perfection, listen to her and not me. That's it, really, for my intro.
Oh, there's one final thing I wanted to remind you that is, today is PodRevDay. PodRevDay is a day where podcasters encourage their fans to leave a review on a podcast that they enjoy. So if you've been listening to any podcast (could be this one, could be a different one) and you want to show them that you've been enjoying the show, why not head to podchaser.com or wherever you listen to podcasts (could be Apple; I think you can now review on Spotify) and leave a review? If they're anything like me, they read them and they are touched by them, and it makes a massive difference and it keeps them going. So if you want to participate in the PodRevDay community, share your review on Twitter afterwards with the hashtag #PodRevDay. It really makes a difference to us podcasters.
Time? Time. Letâs go for it. Here is the interview this week with Mathilde Hutin from Elles Comme Linguistes.
And here I am with Mathilde Hutin, my guest of the day. Mathilde is a French linguist who specializes in phonetics and phonology. She did her PhD at Paris 8 [huit]. Is that how I say it, Mathilde?
Mathilde Hutin: Yes, yes, exactly. Paris 8 [huit].
Kerstin Cable: So Paris 8 [eight].
Mathilde Hutin: Paris 8 [eight].
Kerstin Cable: Paris 8 [huit]. She worked on languages in contact, in particular loanwords and second language processing, and Mathilde is now a researcher at the LIMSI lab in Orsay and a professor at New York University, Paris centre, and she is the co-creator and co-host of a YouTube channel together with one of your friends and co-linguists, and that channel is called Elles Commes Linguistes. Salut Mathilde. Hello, Mathilde.
Mathilde Hutin: Hi. Very nice to be here.
Kerstin Cable: Welcome to The Fluent Show.
Mathilde Hutin: Thank you. Thank you very much. Very happy to be here.
Kerstin Cable: I am curious, right at the start, to hear a little bit more about your YouTube channel. Who are you doing it with, when did you start, and what's it all about?
Mathilde Hutin: Okay, so it's a YouTube channel on linguistics, really on linguistics. I started it, oh, a few years ago, something like four or five years. I don't remember exactly. And I, we did it with a friend of mine. She was a PhD student at the same time when I was, and then she finished before I did, and we had the same supervisor. And so now she's a researcher and professor at the University of Nancy, of Lorraine, in France and she's more specialized in⊠So her name is Samantha. She's an Italian researcher, but she did her PhD here in France on French, and she's more into acquisition, language acquisition, but more first language acquisition. And now we live in two different cities, which is why it's sometimes difficult to have videos regularly, but yeah. So we try to have a channel that is scientifically accurate. The idea was really to have videos that were as accurate and correct scientifically as much as we can on linguistics, because in linguistics you have a few channels in French that are like vulgarization, somehow, but really scientific mediation, maybe a little less, and, well, maybe we are three or four on that kind of subject on YouTube in French, so it's really not a lot. And, well, it all started because Samantha was about to finish her PhD. She wanted to do something about it with what she had learned, and well, I was a very, a huge fan of scientific YouTube channels already, and then we decided to do that together, and it's really been a great adventure together. We're very close friends, so itâs been really nice.
Kerstin Cable: And when you say âscientificâ, I've looked at a few of your videos and while it is scientifically accurate and all that kind of stuff, you certainly don't make it boring.
Mathilde Hutin: No, I hope not. Yeah, the idea is to always have references and to cite our sources, to have... We have always a very, very important reference section in the description, in the description box below the video. There's always all the references we used, and it's, most of the time, they're like scientific papers from very serious journals, and, you know, so we really try to sum up things on a subject with scientific information. Really, information that are accurate, that have been published in peer-reviewed papers, that kind of thing.
Kerstin Cable: And the other thing that shows through is just your love and enthusiasm for linguistics. Where does that come from? Why are you into linguistics?
Mathilde Hutin: [laughs] I don't know. I have absolutely no idea. DNA? I don't know. I don't know. I just know that I've been into linguistics probably since I can talk. I remember⊠Well, I mean, I remember the steps of my own first language acquisition, and Iâm not sure that's something that most people do remember that kind of things, so yeah, I've always been a linguist, I guess. Which was a problem, because in France there is no⊠Up until the baccalaurĂ©at, there is no way for you to really be a linguist. You can study languages, but it's always from a literary point of view. So I've had to study more literature and philosophy than math and science because I wanted to study languages, and that was a problem afterwards, because obviously linguistics is a science, and you need to know math, and statistics, and science, and biology, and physics. You need to know all that to be a proper linguist, and, of course, I had to learn that very, very late in my own education, soâŠ
Kerstin Cable: It's certainly something that I have seen expressed in linguistics, and linguistics and language learning are ever so slightly misunderstood quite often, so that you really need to make sure that you're clear on what it is that you want and what you want to cover. And certainly for me â being particularly interested in language learning, but not in language acquisition, you know, in childhood or anything like that; it really is the active learning that fascinates me â there isn't a clear way in the way that you might be able to say, âIâm into physics, but I am particularly into aeronautical engineering,â or, âIâm particularly into electronic engineering,â whereas if you're into languages, what traditional education does, it just kind of goes: âOkay, languages.â
Mathilde Hutin: Yes, exactly. Well, traditional education, wherever you go, is about languages and not about linguistics, the science behind languages. It's never about that until you go to the university and there you have linguistics courses and you can finally study linguistics or languages as scientific objects, but up until the baccalauréat in France or probably, well, the end of high school in most countries, everything that has to do with languages will be languages, and it's never going to be really appreciated as a scientific object that you can study with the tools of linguistics. And that's obviously very different. I mean, you don't teach a language the same way you teach linguistics, and you don't learn a language the same way you learn linguistics. They're two very different things.
Kerstin Cable: I think there's something really interesting there that Iâm thinking about for Fluent Show listeners. If a listener is kind of just getting into languages, perhaps as an adult who is coming to language learning and they've never been presented with thinking about language in this way before, or perhaps a few of you guys, a few of you listeners, might be at a stage where you're thinking about future careers and you're thinking about what might be open to you with languages, and certainly what my experience has been (and I have talked about this before) is essentially, there are three career choices that language lovers are presented with on average are: interpreter, translator and teacher. There is, however, this linguist option of becoming a language scientist, and Mathilde, I want to know from you: How would somebody⊠What do you think, what kind of questions come up in your mind when you become interested in linguistics? Like how can you tell, âIâm really into linguistics,â and then where can that lead you?
Mathilde Hutin: Well, that is a very difficult question. [laughs]
Kerstin Cable: Thatâs what weâre here for! [laughs]
Mathilde Hutin: Yeah, yeah. So to answer the first part of what you said, it is true that to be a linguist is a professional opportunity for people who like languages, obviously, and there is more and more a need for people like us not only as in academia, but also in the industry. I mean, Google, Facebook, they all need linguists. I mean, of course, it's a very specific kind of linguist which we call computational linguists. So technically, you're both a linguist and an informatician at the same time, a computer scientist at the same time. So obviously, that's an opportunity for people who like languages to work with languages all the time. So thatâs really something you need to think about if you want to work with languages.
And how do you know that you want to, that you can or want to be a linguist and that you're into linguistics? Well, I'd say it's probably when you realize that what you like in learning a language is to discover how a language works. So I would say that when you like learning a language because you can discover how a specific kind of pattern works, whether a phonological pattern or a syntactic pattern, and when you like, maybe, comparing the languages you know with each other, and when you do that kind of things, when you like to uncover what is beneath the language, what is hidden, then I'd say you're pretty much into linguistics, probably.
Kerstin Cable: I love that, this idea of what's hidden, and the more you learn languages, the more you're naturally drawn into linguistics. Something Iâve found here on The Fluent Show that we've been doing, that's really been building up over the years is the ways that â the many, many, many different ways that languages reveal who we are as people, and I find it incredibly fascinating. That goes from minority languages, to language attitudes, to all the way into, you know, even phonology and all that kind of stuff. It is fascinating, like I get so many questions about accents, for example, and there are 12,000 different ways of answering that question, and you really want to come at it kind of talking about, talking about it from the scientific point of view, but acknowledging that thereâs always something that you want to achieve when you want to acquire a certain accent.
Mathilde Hutin: Yeah, well, from what you're saying, I'd say you would be pretty much into sociolinguistics.
Kerstin Cable: Oh, must be, yeah.
Mathilde Hutin: There are, there are several kinds of linguistics, and sociolinguistics is when you study a language as a part of, or⊠How could I say⊠As a, if you, in a social environment, I mean, you study language in social environments, and, of course, it's about how a language reveals things about our community and vice versa. And so yeah, of course, so that would be sociolinguistics, and it's very different from, obviously, things like psycholinguistics or formal linguistics or computational linguistics. Those are all the different areas you can study languages and linguistics into. And I'd say that it's very important here to remind us that the important thing about languages, and linguistics in particular, is that it's a science, and so as a science, we are all about observing how it really works, and we never tell people how they should do things. We are not prescriptivists; we are descriptivists. We describe how it works, but we are never going to tell people how they should talk or how this and how that. I mean, that's not our job, and thatâs the important part, because you talked about the accents, and for us what's interesting is how it works that there are people with accents when they talk, but whether they have an accent or not, we are not going to tell them whether it's good or bad. There is no notion of good or bad in science.
Kerstin Cable: Thatâs a really important statement there as well, so there's no notion of good or bad in science, and this is often something I say to language learners who are listening to the show is that, in a way, even the mistakes that you make, look at them neutrally. Don't look at them as a signal that, you know⊠People make it mean big things, but you got me very correctly as well is that if I read about languages, I tend to read about psycholinguistics or sociolinguistics. My favorite, I think my favorite academic piece of work is teaching and researching motivation, so there's a big dose of psychology in there as well.
Mathilde Hutin: Yes, yes. Well, second language acquisition is definitely a big part of psycholinguistics research, and I actually, in the lab where I did my PhD (so in Paris 8, as you said), there was a whole team dedicated to second language learning, and it's really⊠Well, itâs a very, very proficient area in linguistics, because obviously there is an immediate, direct way of putting things in real life. Itâs easier to understand why we would research about this than why we would research about the deep phonological patterns of whatever language hidden somewhere. I mean, there are direct applications. We can do things with it almost immediately, and it's directly interesting for society to have knowledge about that kind of things. So obviously, there is a lot of researchers who work on that.
Kerstin Cable : Okay. Alors, Mathilde, en français. Jâai prevenue ? Preveni ? Preveni aux Ă©couteurs et Ă toi aussi que je vais essayer parler un peu français avec toi parce que toujours les Ă©pisodes bilingues, câest quelque chose trĂšs intĂ©ressant pour nos Ă©couteurs et parce quâil y a beaucoup de personnes qui apprennent le français partout sur le monde et quelques fois, ils Ă©coutent ce podcast aussi. Aujourdâhui. Si vous Ă©coutez maintenant, vous Ă©coutez aujourdâhui. Alors, on y va. Mathilde, jâai une question concernant le nom de votre chaĂźne YouTube. En particulier, vous ĂȘtes Elles Comme Linguistes.
Mathilde Hutin : Oui.
Kerstin Cable : Vous ĂȘtes des femmes. Vous ĂȘtes desâŠ
Mathilde Hutin : Oui. Alors, le nom de notre chaĂźne YouTube, câest un jeu de mots. En fait, on sâappelle Elles Comme Linguistes parce que « elles » (âtheyâ, e-l-l-e-s), ça se prononce [?l] comme la lettre L, et en français quand on dit Elles Comme Linguistes, Ou comme Octave ou V comme Veronique, en fait, ça permet dâĂ©lucider la lettre, en fait. Et donc, en fait, câest un jeu de mots lĂ -dessus, et on lâĂ©crit⊠Au lieu de dire L (avec un L, avec une lettre L) Comme Linguistes, on Ă©critâŠ
Kerstin Cable : Dâaccord. Je comprends.
Mathilde Hutin : ⊠e-l-l-e-s parce quâon est deux femmes.
Kerstin Cable : Et pour toi, est-ce quâil est inconventionel, est-ce quâil est diffĂ©rent ĂȘtre une femme dans ton mĂ©tier, ou est-ce quâil y a beaucoup des femmes et câest toujours normale ?
Mathilde Hutin : Alors, câest⊠La linguistique, câest un mĂ©tier qui se fĂ©minise beaucoup. Il y a Ă©normĂ©ment de femmes en linguistique. La plupart de mes collĂšgues directes, les personnes avec qui je travaille le plus souvent, sont des femmes. Alors aprĂšs, malheureusement, ça reste quand mĂȘme un milieu dans lequel il y a beaucoup de sexisme. On remarque notamment quâil y a beaucoup, beaucoup de femmes qui font des thĂšses. Il y a plus de femmes que dâhommes, mais ensuite quand les personnes sont titularisĂ©es, il y a plus dâhommes, ou autant dâhommes que de femmes, alors quâils ont Ă©tĂ© moins nombreux Ă faire des thĂšses, par exemple. Donc ça reste un milieu un petit peu sexiste, hein, comme tous les milieux scientifiques et tous les milieux en gĂ©nĂ©ral, mais au quotidien, non, câest pas quelque chose quâon ressent. Et de toute façon, moi, je travaille essentiellement avec des femmes, puisquâon est trĂšs nombreuses dans ce milieu. MĂȘme lĂ oĂč je travaille actuellement, je suis dans un laboratoire qui sâappelle le LIMSI et câest un laboratoire pas de linguistique, câest un laboratoire dâinformatique et de mĂ©canique et de sciences dâingĂ©nieurs et jây travaille parce quâon travaille sur de la reconnaissance vocale, sur des technologies du langage en gĂ©nĂ©rale et mĂȘme mes collĂšgues en informatique, les personnes qui travaillent avec nous en informatique, en informatique, etc., sont beaucoup de femmes aussi.
Kerstin Cable : Ah. Ăa me surprit un peu.
Mathilde Hutin : Oui. Alors, aprĂšs, il y a un peu plus dâhommes aussi de leur cĂŽtĂ©, mais moi, dans les personnes avec qui je travaille directement, câest plus des femmes.
Kerstin Cable : Et dans ta⊠Je veux dire, dans ta carriĂšre, dans la croissance de ton mĂ©tier, est-ce quâil y a beaucoup de chances, beaucoup dâopportunitĂ©s de devenir, dâavoir un bon mĂ©tier comme linguiste ?
Mathilde Hutin : Je dirais que ça dĂ©pend ce que tu veux faire comme type de linguistique et puis ça dĂ©pend dans quel pays. Malheureusement, les mĂ©tiers acadĂ©miques sont toujours trĂšs, trĂšs difficiles dâaccĂšs parce quâil y a beaucoup, beaucoup de personnes qui veulent un poste et trĂšs peu de postes qui sont vraiment ouverts. Donc, malheureusement, câest pas toujours trĂšs facile, mais il y a certains domaines de la linguistique⊠Par exemple, si tu tâintĂ©resses Ă lâacquisition des langues secondes ou Ă lâinformatique ou ce genre de chose, tu peux trouver des emplois dans lâindustrie, donc, par exemple, chez Google ou chez Duolingo, ou enfin, ce genre de chose, quoi. Tu peux trouver aussi dans lâindustrie de plus en plus et aprĂšs, si tu es prĂȘte Ă faire des concessions et pas faire que de la linguistique, tu peux trouver dans pas mal dâautres domaines aussi. Tu peux trouver dans la communication. Tu peux trouver, enfin, voilà ⊠Tu peux toujours trouver quelque chose, mais qui fasse de la linguistique vraiment pure et dure, ce sera plutĂŽt les mĂ©tiers acadĂ©miques ou, Ă la limite, la recherche dans lâentreprise, dans lâindustrie, comme chez Google ou ce genre de chose, quoi.
Kerstin Cable : Et enfin, faire un PhD, un doctorat, Ă Paris, est-ce que ça coĂ»te cher ? Est-ce que câest difficile Ă entrer ? Comment est-il ?
Mathilde Hutin : Alors, câest un sujet un petit peu difficile, effectivement. Alors, dĂ©jĂ , vivre Ă Paris, câest trĂšs cher. Câest vraiment, la vie Ă Paris est trĂšs, trĂšs chĂšre, mais en fait, en France, on est pas absolument obligĂ© dâhabiter dans la mĂȘme ville que lĂ oĂč on fait sa thĂšse parce quâen fait, il y a quelques sĂ©minaires un peu obligatoires, mais dans les choses vraiment oĂč il faut ĂȘtre prĂ©sent il y a peut-ĂȘtre trois parents, et puis dans les autres choses, il y a beaucoup de choses quâon peut faire en visioconfĂ©rence, donc en fait, câest jouable dâhabiter ailleurs et de pas forcĂ©ment habiter Ă Paris. Par contre, pour faire une thĂšse, en fait, en France, les thĂšses de linguistique sont considĂ©rĂ©es comme des thĂšses de science humaine et sociale.
Kerstin Cable : Dâaccord.
Mathilde Hutin : Et, Ă ce titre, on nâest pas obligĂ© dâĂȘtre financĂ©. Donc en fait, nâimporte qui peut s'inscrire en thĂšse et commencer une thĂšse, et voilĂ . Ce qui est trĂšs difficile, câest de commencer une thĂšse sous contrat doctoral (câest-Ă -dire, payĂ©) pour faire la thĂšse. Et ça, câest beaucoup plus difficile. Il y a trĂšs peu de postes. LâannĂ©e oĂč jâai passĂ© le concours, il y avait trois ou quatre places et on Ă©tait une dizaine Ă postuler. Et donc voilĂ . Donc ça peut ĂȘtre un peu difficile. Moi, câest pas le pire. Il y a des endroits ou il y a beaucoup moins de places et beaucoup plus de personnes qui veulent faire la thĂšse, mais donc oui, ça peut ĂȘtre difficile de trouver un financement, mais il y a beaucoup de gens aussi qui travaillent Ă cĂŽtĂ© qui ont pas eu le financement pour la thĂšse et du coup, ils travaillent Ă cĂŽtĂ©. Ils donnent des cours ou ce genre de chose, ou ils travaillent en entreprise. Il y a un systĂšme pour ĂȘtre payĂ© aussi qui sâappelle une Cifre. Câest un systĂšme oĂč, en fait, on est payĂ© pour faire la thĂšse, mais on nâest pas payĂ© par lâuniversitĂ©. On est payĂ© par une entreprise qui, du coup, nous paie pour faire de la recherche Ă condition que la thĂšse ait un rapport avec, Ă©videmment, ce que lâentreprise veut faire, enfin, le type de recherche quâelle veut avoir pour pouvoir amĂ©liorer sa production ou mieux comprendre certaines choses, etc. Donc parfois on peut ĂȘtre payĂ© par une entreprise pendant la thĂšse, mais câest trĂšs difficile aussi parce que du coup on est obligĂ© de⊠Câest un peu comme si on avait deux emplois, en fait. Il y a lâemploi la thĂšse et puis il y a lâemploi oĂč par ailleurs on travaille pour la boĂźte. Donc ça peut ĂȘtre beaucoup de travail aussi.
Kerstin Cable: Je comprends. Et alors, pour quelquâun ça peut ĂȘtre vivre la rĂȘve. Sheâs living the dream. So in French, you mentioned several times the word thĂšse, so we were talking about (for all the listeners who just sat through that, I always admire you so much; it's so cool) she mentioned la thĂšse. We were talking about what it's like to do a PhD in Paris and also what it's like to work in linguistics and a few of the available careers that are out there even if you don't want to become an academic. Now, Mathilde mentioned la thĂšse. Can you just give the listeners a really quick summary in English so we're clear on what it means?
Mathilde Hutin: Sure. So, basically, a PhD in Paris, you can do it whether you are paid for it or not, so you don't have to be paid for it. You can be just like a regular student, or you can be paid for it and you're like a salaryman or woman for three years. For three years. Never more, never less. And so there are several possibilities for you to get money to be paid for your PhD. And yeah, I think that's basically everything I said. I don't know why it took so long in French.
Kerstin Cable: Now, let's come to the reason that you're on The Fluent Show (apart from being awesome and to be able to tell us about what it's like to be a linguist in Paris, which is pretty cool in itself). We met on Twitter, I think because I posted an appeal to linguists to help me out with a listener question, and you put your hand up, virtual hand up, and just went: âOh, my God. Iâm into loanwords,â because my question is about loanwords. So I'd love to talk about loanwords in a little bit more detail, and there's a question that I have from a listener that is fairly generic, so we can perhaps use it to start entering this subject, but, first of all, loanwords. What are they? Does every language have them?
Mathilde Hutin: Okay, so loanwords are basically words that are borrowed from a language (which is called the target language) from another language (which is called the source language). So, for example, in French, you have a lot of loanwords from English, obviously, like in many other languages, and in this case the source language will be English and the target language will be French. Itâs important to note that loanwords mean that the unit that is being borrowed are words, but you can actually borrow anything from a language. You can borrow sounds. You can borrow phonemes, morphemes. You can borrow metrics. You can really borrow practically anything, and yeah, so to answer your question, most languages (except languages which are completely isolated) will borrow words. Itâs really, it's something very natural that occurs when two languages enter in contact with each other.
Kerstin Cable: You've already mentioned a lot of languages loan or take words from English, so we'll come to that later, I think, in a little bit more detail, because that's quite interesting in itself, and you've just mentioned isolated languages. So do we think of this as societies where there isn't much contact with other speakers of other languages, or do we think of it as a language isolate? So does Greek have fewer loanwords than French?
Mathilde Hutin: Oh, no. No, no, no. I really meant⊠So there are two sides of the questions here. So first, a language can be an isolate language, but for a diachronic reason. So it's the evolution of the language that made the language being alone in its family, right, like Basque or something, and then you have isolated languages which are isolated because the culture is isolated from a synchronic point of view. For example, on an island, obviously, a society won't have as many contacts with the outside world than on the continent, for example. So, for a long time, for example, in Japan, you had fewer loanwords because it's an island. You see what I mean?
Kerstin Cable: Absolutely, yeah. So it's more about whether the society itself and the speakers have got more contact with other speakers.
Mathilde Hutin: Exactly, and it's actually a part of a branch of linguistics which is called contact linguistics, so where you study all that kind of things, like loanwords, code-switching, bilingualism, that kind of things.
Kerstin Cable: Now, tell me more about why so many languages take their words from English.
Mathilde Hutin: Well, nowadays, it's English, but before, it was other languages. It's been French a few centuries ago, and in some other cultures, even nowadays, English is not the language from which you borrow the most, but in the world, worldwide, nowadays, it's mostly English, because English is a language that is considered as a prestigious language because of the economical and cultural prestige of the United States, mostly, and of course of other English-speaking countries. And this is why most loanwords come from English. But there are a few societies where the contact is more important with another language than English, and then they will borrow more to that other language than to English.
Kerstin Cable: Do you have any examples of loanwords that French takes from English?
Mathilde Hutin: Oh yes, there's a lot of⊠I mean, nowadays, there's at least... I mean, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of known words from English in French, like, for example, all the words in -ing in French are going to be loanwords or simili-loanwords (like fake loanwords) from English like jogging, marketing. Then you have, of course, all the words that are borrowed with the objects that come from the U.S., so for example, technology, of course, like iPhone, or, I don't know, like a mousepad or I think that kind of things. And there's also a lot of loanwords from cultural objects like clothes or food, that kind of things.
Kerstin Cable: Now, in German, we⊠Obviously, Iâm a German native speaker, and we do this thing where a word comes from English and people use it, and you can see what made them think that this would be an English word, but it's not actually a word that is used in English at all. So, for example, a classic example that many people know is that mobile phones in German are called Handys, and it's⊠With a Y. With a Y. Itâs not a German word. Itâs totally like, it sounds English. And I think it's because it sounds kind of cool, but I don't really... I don't have any data for that. Itâs just people are weird, right? And then there's another example is the⊠Oh, a projector (you know, when you want to project a film onto the wall or something like that), thatâs called a Beamer in German, and I can imagine why that might have happened because âbeamâ came into use, became into popular consciousness, in the German language because of dubbed episodes of Star Trek where people get beamed about. Right? So people wouldn't necessarily know the word âprojectorâ, and also it doesn't really make as much sense of why you would replace the word Projektor with âprojectorâ. That doesn't make sense, but you can make it into Beamer, and it makes it sound cooler and shorter as well.
Mathilde Hutin: Yeah, thatâs very important, what you're saying right now about sounding cool. Thatâs exactly the point when you borrow a word from a language. You have actually two kinds of loanwords. You have what are called cultural loanwords and intimate loanwords. Cultural loanwords are the words where you borrow the word because you're borrowing the object, so like, for example, iPhones, they come from the U.S. The object was invented in the U.S. So when we took the object in France, for example, we took the word with it, which is iPhone, so those are cultural loanwords, but then you have also intimate loanwords. And the distinction comes from Bloomfield in the â30s, and intimate loanwords are the words you're going to take despite the fact that you already have a word for that in your own language. So, for example, in French, now you can say Jâai un date âI have a dateâ instead of Jâai un rendez-vous. So we have a word for that, but we are going to use the English word because it sounds cooler, as you said. And why does it sound cooler? Well, because, obviously, language is very intimately linked to our sense of community and our conscience of prestige and how and where we are in society, in a community. And, of course, when you use the language of a prestigious culture, then you act as if you were prestigious yourself.
Kerstin Cable: Oh, my gosh, no way!
Mathilde Hutin: Well, yes way.
Kerstin Cable: When it's spelt out like that, you feel like a right idiot for saying Beamer, don't you?
Mathilde Hutin: Yes. Yes. [laughs]
Kerstin Cable: Great! [laughs] People are like that, right?
Mathilde Hutin: Yeah, actually, itâs completely⊠Yeah, itâs completely reasonable to think that... Well, with Beamer, it's a bit different because the object was not invented⊠Well, it wasn't invented in Germany, so there wasn't any reason for the Germans to keep their German word because there wasn't a German word before, but when you borrow a word, most of the time, when you borrow an object most of the time you borrow the word with it. But it's not true for every culture, though. For example, in French we have a very, very famous example, which is ordinateur. It's âcomputerâ, and for some reason, the French word that was invented, the innovation, the innovative word that was invented to avoid the loanword worked as hell. I mean, ordinateur is really the word you are going to use. âComputerâ just doesn't exist in French, and it's the case for this word in French, but it's also the case for many words in various societies. I think Finnish, or that kind of language, is famous for avoiding loanwords, but it's going to borrow other things or sometimes just a very few words. But yeah, in general, you don't have to take the word with you, with the object, but most of the time you do. And that's actually what makes purists afraid, because, you know, like purists, they want the language to be pure, to be perfectly, like very French or very German, whatever.
Kerstin Cable: Yeah.
Mathilde Hutin: And so they invent words to avoid using a loanword. What they forget most of the time is that actually, a loanword by definition is used by monolingual native speakers. So, for example, a mousepad or un date are words that you can use in French. Even if you are a native language, a native speaker and a monolingual speaker, you don't speak English, but you're still using that word, which means that in a way, in a sense, date and mousepad or that kind of things, they are French words.
Kerstin Cable: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mathilde Hutin: And that's something purists tend to forget.
Kerstin Cable: We get this in Germany as well, whereas from what I've noticed from, say, what is it, La société française ?
Mathilde Hutin: Mm-hmm.
Kerstin Cable : Alors, la sociĂ©tĂ© française, ils font des choses commeâŠ
Mathilde Hutin : LâAcadĂ©mie française.
Kerstin Cable : ⊠crĂ©er⊠Ils font la crĂ©ation des nouveaux mots français et je me souviens de lâĂ©cole, apprendre ordinateur, apprendre courriel, mais courriel, ça ne marche plus en France. Alors, jâai entendu quâil est souvent utilisĂ© encore au Canada.
Mathilde Hutin : Oui.
Kerstin Cable : Et peut-ĂȘtre parce quâau Canada on a plus de lâintention, il y a plus dâĂ©motions concernant la langue française et peut-ĂȘtre il y a un sentiment que tout le monde doit protĂ©ger la langue française ?
Mathilde Hutin : Oui, câest exactement ça. Le français au Canada⊠Enfin, les francophones au Canada sont dans ce quâon appelle une situation dâinsĂ©curitĂ© linguistique et donc ils se sentent beaucoup plus investis de la mission de protĂ©ger leur langue quâen France, par exemple. Mais en France, il y a aussi, Ă©videmment, des institutions qui inventent des nouveaux mots pour Ă©viter les emprunts. Câest le cas, par exemple, de lâAcadĂ©mie française. Câest le cas de la DGLFLF, de lâOIF aussi peut-ĂȘtre parfois (je suis pas sĂ»re). Et au QuĂ©bec (enfin, au Canada), il y a lâOffice quĂ©bĂ©cois pour la langue française qui est chargĂ© aussi de crĂ©er des mots, de proposer des mots « bien français », entre guillemets, pour Ă©viter dâutiliser des emprunts parce quâeffectivement, au Canada, ils se sentent beaucoup plus menacĂ© par lâanglais quâen France.
Kerstin Cable: Quelques fois, les emprunts, alors, ils signifient une menace, un menace.
Mathilde Hutin : Non, pas vraiment, en fait. Toutes les langues sont le rĂ©sultat de contact linguistique. Une langue pure, ça nâexiste pas. Câest un mythe. Et donc, en rĂ©alitĂ©, une langue, si elle emprunte, câest parce quâelle a la capacitĂ© de le faire. Câest une incroyable propriĂ©tĂ© qui revient Ă pouvoir emprunter des mots, utiliser des mots, les amĂ©liorer, dĂ©jĂ les adapter. Câest-Ă -dire quâils sont jamais prononcĂ©s dans la langue d'accueil quâil le sont dans la langue source. Elle les adapte et ensuite elle les fait siens, donc elle se les approprie, et câest une propriĂ©tĂ© des langues qui est absolument incroyable et en soi, câest une richesse. Ăa veut dire quâon peut ajouter autant de mots quâon veut dans une langue. On peut supplanter des mots qui sont devenus trop vieux, trop usĂ©s, avec des nouveaux mots. En fait, elle se rĂ©gĂ©nĂšre toute seule, la langue. Câest ça qui est incroyable. Donc en soi, câest pas du tout un danger. Câest plutĂŽt une force des langues dâemprunter des mots. Mais Ă©videmment ça fait [unclear 46:55]
Kerstin Cable : Une langue avec des emprunts, câest une langue vivante.
Mathilde Hutin : Exactement. Oui, bien sĂ»r. Une langue qui nâemprunte plus alors quâelle entre en contact avec dâautres langues, a priori, câest quâelle est plus assez utilisĂ©e, en fait, quâelle est en train de mourir.
Kerstin Cable: It strikes me that when we talk about what, you know, loanwords really are and how much loanwords come from contact with other languages, the extent to which language (again, and this is something I keep finding again and again with the every interview that I do, whether it's been about emoji or minority languages), languages are such a mirror of society, and perhaps that's my sociolinguist leanings there.
Mathilde Hutin: [unclear 47:38]
Kerstin Cable: I find it fascinating.
Mathilde Hutin: Yes. Yes.
Kerstin Cable: It totally gets me. Letâs stay in Europe for a minute. I have just an example that I want to share with you that I thought was really interesting from Gosia. She's one of the listeners, and she's a Polish native speaker, and she says, âOne of my favorite loanwords in Polish is kartofel.â As you might guess, âpotatoesâ. And then she says, âIt's been recently used less than when I was a kid. Nowadays, everybody says ziemniaki. They've always been ziemniaki, that's the Slavonic word, but kartofel used to be more used in the past.â And I said to her, âOh, yeah, Iâm aware that kartofel and kartoshka is in Russian as well, so for some reason, potatoes, just in Eastern European linguistics, seem to be German.â But then she talked about how words like âinfluencerâ and in particular âbus passâ â apparently, Polish has a word buspas, which again is a bit like Beamer, like there's no actual Polish origin for this word â and how they really bother her. So the reaction to the different words from different languages can be different depending on when they came in, or what is that all about?
Mathilde Hutin: Well, obviously, it's all about the cycle of life of a word, so to speak, so words are being used in the language, and the more they're used, the more they are the normal usage, the basic word that you are going to use for a specific object or concept or whatever. And obviously, at one point, if you want to reinforce the word, if you want the word to be, or the object, to have a new name because it's not strong enough anymore, then you are going either to borrow it or to use a former word that had been abandoned before for the exact same reason, and you're going to reuse ancient words or to borrow new words. And so a single word is never going to have always the same meaning across time. Itâs evolving as well, and some words are just losing their meaning. For example, rendez-vous in French, which has been used, which has been borrowed in English as âdateâ for a long time, a ârendezvousâ was a romantic encounter.
Kerstin Cable: In German too, when I was growing up.
Mathilde Hutin: In German too. And actually in French, it was the word for a romantic encounter, but it was also the word for any kind of meeting. And so at one point, if you wanted to say that you had a romantic rendez-vous, you had to have either an ancient word somehow (which we don't have in French, I don't think so), or you use a borrowing, you borrow another word, and you borrow it to English, because it's the prestigious language. And so you say Jâai un date. And probably in a few years, or a few decades maybe, date as a French word is going to be used, overused as well, and we are going to need a new word to say that particular thing.
Kerstin Cable: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Mathilde Hutin: And so at that point, maybe we are going to reuse rendez-vous, or maybe we are just going to borrow another word from another language, whatever prestigious language there is at that time. We don't know.
Kerstin Cable: Well, you can have Verabredung, thatâs fine.
Mathilde Hutin: For example.
Kerstin Cable: Itâs not particularly⊠It's not... I don't know. Itâs funny as well, because with the different words, like if I think about Date versus Rendezvous in German, we have used both at different points in time, and I think of Rendezvous as the kind of thing where you go out and have a three-course meal with candlelight and wine, and that might just be because Rendezvous was more around when I was a kid and I had romantic ideas about what that might be like, whereas with Date I think more about, yeah, you know, you meet on Tinder and there might be some action after. [laughs]
Mathilde Hutin: Well, yeah, actually, thatâs the other reason why ârendezvousâ is not used so much anymore, either in English or German or French or whatever. Thatâs because also the reality of what a rendezvous was actually changed. Today, like, as you said, rendez-vous, in French it could still be something with a candlelight and everything, and it can still be also what we call a âdateâ in English. But obviously, the fact that it changed in German is because the reality of it changed. A romantic encounter is not going to be the same thing today as it was 20 years ago, so obviously, that's also one of the reasons why we had to switch words. Thatâs because the reality changed, so we have somehow a new thing, a new habit, which needs a word, and since the former habit hasn't disappeared completely, we need a new word, because otherwise there will be confusion.
Kerstin Cable: Oh, my God, mind blown. This is amazing. This is amazing. Now, we've talked for so long about loanwords, and the psychology, and the sociology and everything, all the parts of loanwords. We haven't even touched on localized pronunciation, which I think in most languages with the English loanword doesn't really happen so much? But Iâm thinking of Japanese language, for example, where there's quite a bit of English that comes in and is quite Japanese-ised.
Mathilde Hutin: Yeah. That's a phenomenon which we call phonological adaptation. So basically, when a word enters a language, it comes from a language with a particular system where there are a particular set of phonemes, a particular set of words or grammatical constructions, etc., and when it's borrowed into another language, that other language doesn't have the same phoneme inventory, for example, so most of the time we adapt the word for several reasons, the first one being that we don't hear the actual word correctly, and so we are going to pronounce it Ă la French or Ă la Japanese or Ă la whatever, so you're going to adapt it to your own phonology. So in Japanese, for example, when you have two consonants in a row, that's something that the Japanese language can't do, and there are actual studies that show that when you have two consonants in a row in Japanese, Japanese speakers tend to hear an illusory vowel between the two, because it just can't be otherwise. And so that's one of the reasons why in Japanese, when you have two consonants in a row in a loanword, it's going to be broken up by an u vowel. Like, I don't know, like âmilkâ is going to be called miruku, because in Japanese you can't have two consonants in a row, and you can't have final consonants.
Kerstin Cable: I see. So the conventions of Japanese need to be applied to the English word that comes in.
Mathilde Hutin: Yes, exactly, and forâŠ
Kerstin Cable: And we see it in English, right, with... Iâm thinking âchampagneâ.
Mathilde Hutin: Yes, yes, and itâs true for every language when the society is not bilingual, when there is not a situation of diglossia, then you have to adapt the word. Itâs almost never the case that the word enters the language with its original pronunciation. Never.
Kerstin Cable: That's fascinating. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Now, that brings me to the question that triggered this whole discussion, which came to me on Instagram, and it's a good kind of question to conclude, now, having learned this much about loanwords, there is a question for the language learner, you know, especially perhaps the English native language learner who's learning another language, and that's kind of what triggered or what prompted the question came to me, which goes like this. âSomething I've been grappling with lately is the notion that using English words in different language equals modern, educated.â So we've spoken about prĂ©stige, Mathilde. âI can understand how that idea may have come about, but I personally feel almost uncomfortable with it because, as you've mentioned already, there are the same-word equivalents within the language that mean using English isn't really necessary. So I wonder, why not use the available word? I am Korean and on a regular basis I come against the issue of, do I use the Konglish word or do I seek out the Korean original?â Now, as a language learner who is learning, say, Korean, and Korean uses the word, I don't know what⊠âTram stopâ or whatever, whatever Korean uses, âskateboardâ, is it best to use the word, even though you are a native speaker of the language where that word originated from?
Kerstin Cable: Well, there's a twofold answer to that. The first one is that the Korean speaker you're talking about who asked the question, he says (or she said; I don't know) that somehow it didn't feel necessary to use the English word or the Konglish word, and I would say that it's not entirely true. The fact that they entered somehow the Korean language means that at some point they were necessary. I mean, not in the sense, obviously, that the language didn't have a word and needed a word, because obviously it already had a word in the case of intimate borrowings. But it's necessary in the sense that the language takes everything it can to renew itself and to become more prestigious, and obviously the fact that Korean borrows so much to English is partly due to their history. They still have a lot of Americans in Korea, and it's due to the fact that, worldwide, the U.S. is considered as a prestigious culture. So in a sense, they're not unnecessary. If they happened, it means that at some point they have been necessary.
And so to answer the question of that person, I'd say that, as I said at the beginning of the talk, there is no notion of good or bad in linguistics. Iâm never going to tell people how they should speak. Iâm just observing the usage of how words are being used and that's it, and trying to understand how it functions, how it works. But what I would like to say is that if that person feels, obviously, uncomfortable using Konglish words, then he or she shouldn't use them, obviously, but then she or he has to understand that he is part of this particular type of people we call purists. And obviously, well, itâs not a bad or good thing per se; I mean, it's just like that. And the interesting thing here is that this person is asking herself or hisself â himself, sorry â whether it's better to use the native word or the Konglish word, which means that, which underlines somehow that people are aware that some words are not as Korean, maybe, than other words. And this awareness is interesting because it shows how the whole metalinguistic works in people's mind.
But as a linguist, I'd say there is no good answer to that. I mean, I use loanwords all the time. I think they're a beautiful way of renewing the language, of making it energetic again and very renewed and everything, and every language is⊠Even Korean, which is on a semi-island, so it's not really completely cut off from the continent, but it's still a bit apart, even there, even in what this person probably calls native Korean words, there's a lot of words that actually come from Chinese. So, I mean, every language, when... I mean, a pure language, as I said, doesn't exist, and the question then is whether you embrace the newness, you embrace the fact that your language is evolving, and you act and you're an actor of this evolution, or you prefer your language to stay as it is for as long as possible, and then you're more of a purist or something, but that's a personal question that you have to answer by yourself.
Kerstin Cable: Ah, yeah. So essentially, the answer to the question cannot really be categorical. You have to examine⊠If you're asking yourself the question you're already examining, I think, but the answer is really, you have to examine your attitude to language.
Mathilde Hutin: Exactly.
Kerstin Cable: But I can see how, especially with the prestige factor that we've talked about and the cultural dominance factor of, say, an American, that an American learner might learn Korean and feel like they are enacting some kind of unjust cultural dominance by using a loanword, but that is not the truth at all.
Mathilde Hutin: No, no, not at all. Thatâs actually the other question you asked, and I completely forgot to answer, but yeah, actually, loanwords have this great ability too that they help learning languages, because you can always grasp some things you already know. So, for example, if I try and learn Korean, it's going to be easier for me using first the Konglish words so that I can build my first sentences and try and communicate, and then at one point Iâm going to learn the native words. But it's a great entry door for learners thanks to what we call intercomprehension. So somehow, you better understand things you already know and you focus on the commonalities between two languages, and then at one point you refine your knowledge of the language.
I had a student who learned Japanese, and in Japanese, as you know, there are a lot of English and French words, and she said that when she didn't know a word in Japanese, she used the English word pronounced as a Japanese word and most of the time it would work, and that allowed her to already be able to communicate in this language which is very different from European languages, obviously, and she could communicate very quickly with other people, and then she could refine her knowledge of Japanese later. But she already had a good basis for learning for her knowledge of Japanese. So loanwords are actually a huge advantage. Itâs really great for people who are trying to learn a language, and especially if they already know English, because, as we said, English is the most borrowed language in the worldâs languages, so itâs an opportunity for people to already know some vocabulary in a language they don't know.
Kerstin Cable: Yeah.
Mathilde Hutin: And so it helps, obviously, learning that language, it makes things easier somehow.
Kerstin Cable: So there you have it, listener. âRelaxâ is the answer, really.
Mathilde Hutin: Yes. Yes.
Kerstin Cable: Relax and use the word that you need in order to help you express yourself, which is such a, I can tell you, Mathilde, that's a very Fluent Show type of conclusion.
Mathilde Hutin: Perfect.
Kerstin Cable: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's what we're here for. I like to give permission wherever I can. Alors, on conclut pour la derniĂšre fois en français peut-ĂȘtre un peu. Mathilde, oĂč pourrait une personne Ă la fin de lâentrevue, si nos Ă©couteurs ou si une personne voudrait savoir un peu plus de toi et de Elles Comme Linguiste et des doctorats et de La Linguisterie, comme tu dis, oĂč pourrait-t-on le trouver ? That was a complex sentence there.
Mathilde Hutin : No, no. TrĂšs bien. Alors, on est beaucoup sur internet. Alors, moi, personnellement, jâai une page LinkedIn et ce genre de choses et câest bientĂŽt un site internet aussi, mais uniquement professionnel, et par contre, tout ce qui est en rapport, vraiment, avec la linguistique, avec notre chaĂźne YouTube, etc., on est sur Facebook. On est un petit peu sur Instagram, mais pas beaucoup, et par contre, on est beaucoup sur Twitter. On publie beaucoup de choses sur Twitter. On essaie de diffuser des informations intĂ©ressantes sur la linguistique en gĂ©nĂ©rale sur Twitter et partager dâautres contes, dâautres linguistes, qui font des choses intĂ©ressantes aussi. Pas forcĂ©ment sur les emprunts, mais sur tout.
Kerstin Cable : Dâaccord. Je comprends. Alors, beaucoup de lâoccasion, de place ? Beaucoup de sites ? There we are. Beaucoup de sites pour trouver, pour lire plus sur Mathilde. Et Mathilde, est-ce que tu as un emprunt prĂ©fĂ©rĂ© ?
Mathilde Hutin : Un comment ?
Kerstin Cable : Un emprunt préféré ?
Mathilde Hutin : Ah ! Ah! Câest une bonne question. Je sais pas. Non, je les aime tous.
Kerstin Cable: Dâaccord. Dâaccord. So, listeners, you can find Mathilde, perhaps easiest just to go to her guest page on The Fluent Show website, which is fluent.show/guests/mathilde, or you can go to fluent.show/guests and actually browse the amazing range of guests that we have had here on the show that we've been lucky to have. You're in good company, Mathilde. And Iâm going to conclude today, of course, by signing off in the usual Fluent Show way. This has been an awesome conversation. Merci, merci beaucoup. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Mathilde Hutin: Thank you for having me.
Kerstin Cable: And Iâm going to sign off, as we always do, by saying goodbye from me, goodbye, and goodbye from Mathilde Hutin.
Mathilde Hutin : Au revoir !
Kerstin Cable: Thank you for listening to The Fluent Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by leaving a review in your podcast app or even becoming a member of our Patreon community, where our support perks include a secret feed full of added show notes and a VIP option where you can get priority answers to your listener questions on the podcast. Don't forget that you can send us your language questions and feedback to [email protected], or find us on Twitter @thefluentshow or Instagram #thefluentshow. We're always so excited to hear from you and read every message and review. See you next week!
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