Where did language come from? Is it possible to know without traveling back in time? And how do babies learn to speak? Plus: We’ll hear how the word “silly” has evolved over the last several hundred years.
This episode was originally released on June 30, 2015. Listen to that version here:
Words don't fossilize: The origins of language
by Brains On!Audio Transcript
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SUBJECT 1: You're listening to Brains On! Where we're serious about being curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you know what your first word was, like when you were a baby? Do you know?
SUBJECT 1: Maybe bird.
MOLLY BLOOM: Bird. And what's your favorite word now?
SUBJECT 1: Mochi, because it's Japanese, like, sweet. And I like it.
MOLLY BLOOM: The reason I wanted to know your favorite word is that today's episode is all about words and language. Every time you talk--
SUBJECT 1: Or send a text message.
MOLLY BLOOM: --your brain is doing some really complicated stuff.
SUBJECT 1: And listening--
MOLLY BLOOM: Or reading that text message--
SUBJECT 1: Is equally complicated.
MOLLY BLOOM: Today, we're looking into where language came from and how we're able to learn how to use it today.
SUBJECT 1: Keep listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: You're listening to Brains On! From American Public Media. I'm your host Molly Bloom. And here with me today is 8-year-old E.D. [? Sangline ?] from Minneapolis. Hi, E.D. Thanks for being here.
SUBJECT 1: I'm happy to be here, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Today's episode was actually inspired by a question that E.D. Sent in to us. And E.D, what was your question that you sent?
SUBJECT 1: My question was, how does cavemen communicate?
MOLLY BLOOM: And you were kind of wondering like when you see cavemen in movies, like how do they talk?
SUBJECT 1: Cavemen want birdie.
MOLLY BLOOM: Exactly. [CHUCKLES] Exactly. So you were wondering how did early humans talk, and how did language evolve. Like a lot of questions that kids send to, us there is no easy answer to this one. So for help, we turn to linguist Arika Okrent, who writes for The week and Mental Floss.
ARIKA OKRENT: This is a really difficult question because language disappears after you make it. So after you say something, the words go off into the air, and then they're gone. So we can know a lot about how cavemen, what kind of tools they had, what they ate, what their activities were, their hunting. But we don't know much about their language because it doesn't get left behind. So we have to make guesses about what we think happened in the beginnings of language.
MOLLY BLOOM: In the 1800s, there were a lot of different theories about how humans language ability developed.
SUBJECT 1: Those theories were given some silly names.
ARIKA OKRENT: There was the bow wow theory, which was the idea that language started from people imitating sounds of things around them. So a dog would be bow wow. A cow would be moo, and then that developed into words.
[COW MOOING]
SUBJECT 2: Moo. Moo. M- moo. Moo.
E.D. There was the pooh-pooh theory, which is that they started from automatic vocal responses, like laughter--
[MAN LAUGHS]
--calls of alarm. And those were the first sounds, and then they turned into words. For a while in the 1800s, people were coming up with so many of these. And there was no way to tell which one was right that they actually banned all discussion of this question from language society meanings in Europe.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[CLAPPING]
[MAN CLEARS THROAT]
SUBJECT 3: Discussion of this topic has been banned.
ARIKA OKRENT: But the question keeps coming up because it's interesting. People want to know. People wonder. This is the thing that makes us human. How did it start? And there are some things we can do in order to guess. So we can tell whether early humans or humanoids had the right kind of structures in place.
Did they have big enough brain yet? Did they have the right kind of jaw, vocal cords to even produce speech? So for example, the closest relative to us, the chimps, their vocal cords, their larynx is in a higher position than ours. So they can't choke. But humans can because our voice box is lower.
MOLLY BLOOM: So our lower voice box made it possible to choke, which is dangerous. But being able to talk gave us such an advantage that the risk didn't matter.
ARIKA OKRENT: We know when our human form allowed us to have language just physically about 100,000 years ago when we became Homo sapiens. Did we have language yet then? Well, we don't know for sure, but the pieces were all in place.
SUBJECT 1: Do you know who invented speech? Or is that just how the world like, happened?
ARIKA OKRENT: There is the possibility that it started with one person. One person started making particular sounds or associations, but they also had to have someone who could work with them and understand them. So it might have grown up out of a small group or family. And then other people saw, oh, I want in on that. That looks useful. That's a possibility.
But we sort of assume that language is what it means to be human. Language is the thing that makes us human. So as long as we have been humans, we have probably had language.
MOLLY BLOOM: And E.D. wanted to know about how cave people are portrayed in movies and TV.
SUBJECT 1: Is that how early humans really talked?
ARIKA OKRENT: When we think about what an early language might look like, we think of it as a simpler language, right? So the language we have is very complex. We can make really complicated sentences that include things like hypotheticals.
Like, if it rains today, then I might go outside. This is very complex kind of thing that animals don't do. Animals communicate, but they don't do stuff like that. So we assume that if there was an earlier state of language, or just sort of proto language, then it probably had very simple words that it was one word at a time or maybe two. Instead of, I think you better go tend to the fire over there, it would be, fire, now, or something. Fire, warning.
When they do that in movies and have this very gruff two-word sentence idea, that's a pretty good way of looking at it. If there was something before we had full human language, it was probably a more basic kind of language, something closer to what chimpanzees can do now.
SUBJECT 1: Do you know if maybe singing came first or talking came first because I think it's singing because you can sing in all different languages. And you can hum. So that's something that you don't need to talk.
ARIKA OKRENT: Yeah, that's actually one of those theories. I think it's called the La-La theory. So that we didn't start by attaching words to ideas and talking. We started just by playing. We had this vocal apparatus that could make sounds. And we played with it, and we experimented with it.
And somehow, that then turned into language or turned into more abstract ideas. It's another possibility that we'll never quite know, but sort of a very romantic one that language came out of a aesthetic, creative impulse. And that's as good a place for it to come from as any.
MOLLY BLOOM: Arika says scientists are still investigating the question of where language came from, and there's basically two different ways of looking at it. One is that there was a mutation in our genes that gave us the ability to have language.
ARIKA OKRENT: We can compare gene expression over time and see when this might have occurred and how it might have spread. So that's a piece of evidence that we can use in trying to answer this question.
MOLLY BLOOM: The other is the idea that lots of different changes in humans came together at once that gave us all the tools we needed for language to begin.
ARIKA OKRENT: We got the vocal apparatus. We got the memory. We got the social cooperation, the ability to look from other points of views. And once all those things are in place, you're able to do language.
MOLLY BLOOM: But again, there are still many different ideas.
ARIKA OKRENT: It's still very contentious. It's very hard to get all scientists to agree on anything in this arena.
SUBJECT 1: And the cool thing is that language is not done evolving.
ARIKA OKRENT: Language didn't develop and now we're here, and now it's done. It continues to develop, and it continues to change. And it'll be different in a few hundred years, and it'll be different a few hundred years after that. What we are doing right now is all part of what's making language, language.
MOLLY BLOOM: So when you use an emoji or talk to your friends, you're shaping the way our language will be in the future.
SUBJECT 1: Amazing. Thanks, Arika, for talking to us today.
ARIKA OKRENT: Thanks E.D. Thanks.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: That's a lot of amazing information to ponder. E.D, where do you think language came from?
SUBJECT 1: I think it came from one person started language, and then other people kept following it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, we still don't know the answer to that question, but let's turn to something that we know has an answer. It's time for the mystery sound.
SUBJECT 1: Mystery sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here it is.
SUBJECT 2: Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ah. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ah.
MOLLY BLOOM: Any guesses?
SUBJECT 1: A baby.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's a good guess. What makes you think it's a baby?
SUBJECT 1: Because that sounds like-- a baby sounds like a tone of it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, that is an excellent guess. And we will be back with the answer in just a little bit.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, are you ready for the next Brains On! debate? We are. And our next match-up is a very exciting one, one that we can't wait to share with you. It is going to be great. It is a match-up between two incredible underwater creatures. The debate is going to be dolphins versus Octopuses.
This is a big one. For this versus episode We Want to Know, which is cooler, which is smarter, dolphin or octopus? We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think and why you think it. Please send your dolphin or octopus arguments to hello@brainson.org.
Drawings of either species are welcome, too. You can also send your mystery sounds and questions to that same email address, hello@brainson.org. That's what Zachary did.
ZACHARY: Hi, Brains On! My name is Zach from Redmond, Washington. My question is, why is red blood pure as blue in our veins?
MOLLY BLOOM: We're going to answer that question in a brand new moment of um at the end of the show. Plus, we'll have the latest installment of the Brain's honor roll. That's where we thank the kids like Zachary who send in questions, mystery sounds, drawings, and ideas. It's our audio high five.
You're listening to Brains On! for American Public Media. I'm Molly Bloom.
SUBJECT 1: I'm E.D. [INAUDIBLE] [? Sangline. ?]
MOLLY BLOOM: Brains On! producer Mark Sanchez is here to show us a little bit about how our language has kept evolving. Hi, Mark.
MARK SANCHEZ: [MIDDLE ENGLISH].
MOLLY BLOOM: [SNICKERS] So what did you say?
MARK SANCHEZ: [MIDDLE ENGLISH].
SUBJECT 1: What kind of language is that?
MARK SANCHEZ: It means hello in Middle English. Have you ever heard of Geoffrey Chaucer?
SUBJECT 1: No.
MARK SANCHEZ: No? Well, he's known as the father of modern English. He wrote poems and stories way, way back in the 14th century. He's most famous for his stories in The Canterbury Tales. So you might think, OK, father of modern English. I should be able to understand this, right?
But like, when I say [SPEAKING MIDDLE ENGLISH], it makes no sense, right?
MOLLY BLOOM: Did you understand that?
SUBJECT 1: No.
MOLLY BLOOM: No. Me either.
MARK SANCHEZ: I can barely say it. Now, I'm going to play you part of one of Geoffrey Chaucer's poems. It's called The Parliament of Fowls. Then, I want you guys to tell me what you think it's about.
NARRATOR: "New welcome summer with thy sunne soft, that hast this winter weather's overshake and driven away by the long nightes black. Saint Valentine, that art full of high on loft, thus singen smalle fowls for thy sake. New welcome a summer with they sunne soft, that hast this winter weather's overshake."
MARK SANCHEZ: OK. [LAUGHS] What is he talking about?
SUBJECT 1: That did not make sense.
MARK SANCHEZ: Did you understand any words there? Did you pick out any words?
SUBJECT 1: I thought it was something about color or weather.
MARK SANCHEZ: I think. That's a good guess.
MOLLY BLOOM: I heard the word summer.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah. I heard the word summer, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: And maybe winter.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah, I could pick out a few words here or there, also, but I couldn't really understand it, especially the first time I heard it. It sounds like an alien talking or something and does not sound like English, that's for sure.
I called up Paul Strohm, who teaches medieval literature at Columbia University. And he actually just wrote a book about Geoffrey Chaucer. He helped explain Chaucer's poem for me.
PAUL STHROM (ON THE PHONE): It's a poem about birds choosing their mates. And they gather together on Valentine's Day, and that's the day that every bird chooses his mate. And it's welcoming the coming of spring. "New welcome summer with thy sunne softe." Now welcome summer with your soft sun. "That hast this winter's weather overshake." That has overshaken these winter's weathers, or has replaced these winter's weathers. You may have noticed that the word summer was used, but the summer meant spring in middle English. So this is a poem in praise of that event.
MARK SANCHEZ: So you guys were right. You guys heard summer.
MOLLY BLOOM: But it didn't mean summer. It meant spring.
MARK SANCHEZ: Paul said there are lots of words like summer where the meanings have shifted over time.
PAUL STHROM (ON THE PHONE): In the 14th century, the word silly meant blessed. If you wanted to praise someone as being deeply religious and devout and sort of touched by God, you would say that they were silly or [MIDDLE ENGLISH] in Middle English. And another example, I suppose, would be the word nice. The word nice in Middle English actually means rather foolish. The word-- a nice person is somebody who isn't quite in touch with reality.
Whereas, now, that word has evolved in the other direction. And nice with us has become a compliment. When we say somebody is quite nice, we mean to speak well of them and not to say that they're out of touch with surrounding reality. And so, similarly, we can see words migrate from middle English to modern English.
SUBJECT 1: I heard lots of the words that he said is kind of opposite of our language.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah. We start out with a word meaning one thing. And over hundreds and hundreds of years, it changes, and totally different. Yeah, nice, meant foolish. [CHUCKLES] And now it means nice. Who knows what it'll mean in another 200 or 300 years?
MOLLY BLOOM: Maybe it'll mean someone with like purple hair.
MARK SANCHEZ: I like your haircut, nice. Anyway, Paul's point is really that words and language are always in motion. He also let me in on a little secret, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh, what is it?
MARK SANCHEZ: Well, since no one was around to actually hear what people sounded like in the 14th century, when Geoffrey Chaucer was around, everybody, including your teacher and your professors, they're just faking it.
PAUL STHROM (ON THE PHONE): We're all just guessing. And nobody exactly knows what middle English sounded like. We've got the words on the page, and we've got our ideas about what it probably sounded like. But generations of teachers have bluffed generations of students by suggesting saying there might be such a thing as a kind of a standard middle English pronunciation that they ought to know. And in fact, it's a pronunciation that we've just kind of imagined for ourselves and we think comes pretty close, but it's not exact.
MARK SANCHEZ: So when I say, [MIDDLE ENGLISH], it's really just a guess, but I'm going to-- you know--
MOLLY BLOOM: It sounded good to me.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, thanks for sharing some of Chaucer's language with us, Mark.
MARK SANCHEZ: No problem. [MIDDLE ENGLISH]
SUBJECT 1: What does that mean?
MARK SANCHEZ: [MIDDLE ENGLISH] means goodbye.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh. [MIDDLE ENGLISH].
SUBJECT 1: [MIDDLE ENGLISH]
MOLLY BLOOM: Before we go on to our next question, it's time to go back to the mystery sound. Here it is.
SUBJECT 2: ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ha. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ha.
MOLLY BLOOM: So do you have the same guess? Any other guesses?
SUBJECT 1: I was thinking a baby for my first guess, but now I think maybe some kind of animal, which I don't know which.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Well, here is the answer.
TRENT: I'm Trent, and I'm from Santa Clarita, California. That was my sister trying to talk. I think she was trying to say bananas 'cause she was-- 'cause she likes bananas.
MOLLY BLOOM: So you were right. You got it, baby. It was a baby. And Trent actually sent that mystery sound in, along with this question.
TRENT: How do babies learn how to talk?
MOLLY BLOOM: To find out, we talked to Sudha Arunachalam from Boston University.
SUBJECT 1: She studies how children learn languages.
MOLLY BLOOM: It turns out babies are learning something about language before they're even born.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: They actually can hear even before they're born in the womb. And this isn't particular sounds or particular words, but they can hear sort of the up and down, the intonation of the language. When we speak, there's sort of a musical quality to our language.
So when you ask a question, your voice goes up at the end. You might say, what did you have for breakfast? If I'm making a statement, I would say, I had cereal for breakfast. And my voice goes down at the end.
So there's these ups and downs in language, just musical patterns, that lie on top of what we're actually saying. There is some really interesting studies showing that even newborns cry differently, depending on what language they have been exposed to. So this study was with babies who are three, four, or five days old. And they had French newborns who cried with sort of rising intonation patterns.
[BABY CRYING]
Whereas, German babies tended to cry with a falling intonation pattern where the pitch decreased from the beginning to the end.
[BABY CRYING]
And this goes along with the sound patterns of those languages, the musical qualities that are present in French and German, more generally.
SUBJECT 1: Then in the first couple of months, they start to make vowel sounds.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then at four to six months, they start what is known as vocal play.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: So this is adding lots of different sounds, adding some consonants like ga and ka, ma pa, right? Lots of mama and papa, dada, things like that at this age.
[BABY BABBLING]
And then we start to get into really interesting babbling sounds, usually about six months.
[BABY BABBLING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Pretty universally, the sounds that tend to be easiest or things like ma and pa and da. And the ones that tend to be hardest or things like er and ul. Pa and the ma you make with your lips closed. And the er and the ul, you have to put your tongue and kind of funny places.
And it's much easier. Babies start right away with making those raspberry sounds, the [BLOWS RASPBERRY]. And that's really good practice for moving your lips in the way that you need to move them in order to make the ma and the pa and the ba.
SUBJECT 1: Then at seven to eight months, they start to put more vowels in consonants together.
MOLLY BLOOM: About 10 to 12 months is when you might hear them say their first word. So this is often a name for a person or an object that's interesting to them, like ball or book or mommy or daddy or dog.
BABY: Mama. Papa. Mama.
MOLLY BLOOM: What's really interesting is that babies understand a lot more than they say. So even at six months when they're not saying any words, we do know that they understand the meanings of some everyday words like milk and nose and banana.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: And before babies can talk, they can sign-- either simple signs taught to them by their parents or more basic ones like pointing.
SUBJECT 1: And bilingual babies are learning two languages at once.
MOLLY BLOOM: People used to think bilingual babies were behind because it seemed they knew fewer words. But it turns out they the same amount when you look at the two languages combined.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: What we used to think of as a disadvantage for being bilingual or multilingual-- because it seemed like the babies were behind-- now, we think that, in fact, if anything, they're ahead. They're much more sensitive at picking up on these differences because they have to be and figuring out, oh, mommy speaks this way, and daddy speaks this way, and trying to sort out how those two languages might differ from each other.
SUBJECT 1: By about 18 months, babies are putting two words together.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: Mommy play or baby shoe. But notice that these aren't complete sentences yet. So at this age, they're leaving off a lot of the little words like the. They're leaving off the little endings on words like ing or ed, past tense. And so this is really just basically a sentence. They're just leaving off some of the smaller, less important pieces of information. And from there, they kind of take off. Then they slowly add in those little pieces.
MOLLY BLOOM: First comes ing.
SUBJECT 1: Like, mommy driving.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then, comes in and on.
SUBJECT 1: Milk in cup our dog on couch.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then, we get plurals.
SUBJECT 1: Like, cups and dogs.
MOLLY BLOOM: And more little parts of speech are added until we get to what's called the contractable auxiliary.
SUBJECT 1: Like, kitties drinking water.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: Pretty much, they are talking like adults by the time they're four or five.
MOLLY BLOOM: And remember, if there's a baby nearby, that baby is learning from you.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: They are listening very, very carefully. And they're trying to look for patterns in what you say. And they're picking up on so much. So it's important to remember that they're listening, and they might even understand a little bit more than you think they do.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: At this point, we don't know the answer of where language came from.
SUBJECT 1: It doesn't fossilize, so we can't dig up the first word.
MOLLY BLOOM: But scientists have many theories and new tools.
SUBJECT 1: Like, being able to look at genes.
MOLLY BLOOM: And that's helping them dig deeper into these theories.
SUBJECT 1: And babies are listening and learning about language all the time.
MOLLY BLOOM: Even before they're born.
SUBJECT 1: And there's a pattern to how they pick up what they need to know.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's it for this episode of Brains On!
SUBJECT 1: This episode was produced by Marc Sanchez, Sanden Totten, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: Many Thanks to Kathleen Wermke, Tom Weber, Eric [? Brigham, ?] Martin [? Geeson ?] [? Librivox, ?] Elizabeth Scott, and James Houston.
SUBJECT 1: You can hear past episodes of Brains On! at our website--
MOLLY BLOOM: Brainson.org.
SUBJECT 1: --or in your favorite podcast app.
MOLLY BLOOM: And if you're a fan of Brains On! consider leaving a review in iTunes.
SUBJECT 1: It really helps other kids and parents find out about the show.
MOLLY BLOOM: And you can keep up with us on Instagram and Twitter.
SUBJECT 1: We're at Brains_On.
MOLLY BLOOM: Now, before we go it's time for our moment of um--
[RANDOM VOICES SAYING UM]
I'm here at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. Hey, it's Lulu. Can you say, Hi?
LULU: Hi.
MOLLY BLOOM: And lucky enough, my dad happens to be someone who can answer a question for us.
STUART BLOOM: My name is Stuart Bloom, and I am a hematologist and oncologist at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A hematologist is somebody who takes care of people who have issues with their blood.
MOLLY BLOOM: You're also my dad.
STUART BLOOM: Yes! Yes, I am.
ZACHARY: Why is red blood pure as blue in our veins?
STUART BLOOM: That is a great question. I think to really get to the heart of it, we have to think about what blood is and what it's made of. Blood is this-- we just think it's this liquid. But the truth is blood has a lot of liquid in it, but it also has a lot of solid things in it, too.
And the most important one in blood is the red blood cell, and that's the thing that gives blood its color. Now, what is the purpose of blood itself? It's going all through your body. It's swirling around everywhere.
It's in your fingers. It's in your nose. It's everywhere. What is the job of blood? Well, the job of blood is to transfer things from one place in your body to another. There's a really special job for red blood cells, and that's to carry oxygen.
So when oxygen hits the red blood cell, there's this protein inside of it called hemoglobin. And when hemoglobin has oxygen, it changes the whole blood's color to a kind of a bright red. Then when oxygen gets dumped off at a tissue, and the oxygen is gone, and the carbon dioxide comes into hemoglobin, then the blood changes its color, and it becomes kind of a deeper purple.
So when you look at your veins, you see this kind of bluish stuff. And that's because those veins are full of this purplish kind of blood. And you know it's not really blue because many kids listening to this probably had some blood drawn at one point.
They stick a needle into a vein, and there's a tube attached to the needle that goes from the vein right into a tube where there's a big vacuum in the tube. So there's no air in that tube. So you can see exactly what blood looks like without any exposure to air. And when it comes into that tube, it's kind of this darker red purplish type of color, maroon.
Blood that has tons of oxygen in the red blood cells is bright red. Blood that doesn't have much oxygen, it's actually kind of a darker red and kind of a maroon. I'm looking at my hand right now. And gosh, my veins sure look bluish. But the truth is that if we were inside that vein right now, the blood would not be blue. It would be this kind of darker red.
MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks, Dad!
STUART BLOOM: Oh, Molly, it's my pleasure.
MOLLY BLOOM: Let's go eat some turkey.
STUART BLOOM: Yum, I'm excited.
MOLLY BLOOM: Happy Thanksgiving.
STUART BLOOM: Same to you. Thank you for including me in your process.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS] Yay!
[RANDOM VOICES SAYING UM]
This list of names is red hot. It's time for the latest group to be added to the Brain's honor roll.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's easy to get your name on the Brain's honor roll. Just send your questions, drawings, and mystery sounds to hello@brainson.org. We'll be back next week with more answers to your questions.
SUBJECT 1: Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you know what your first word was, like when you were a baby? Do you know?
SUBJECT 1: Maybe bird.
MOLLY BLOOM: Bird. And what's your favorite word now?
SUBJECT 1: Mochi, because it's Japanese, like, sweet. And I like it.
MOLLY BLOOM: The reason I wanted to know your favorite word is that today's episode is all about words and language. Every time you talk--
SUBJECT 1: Or send a text message.
MOLLY BLOOM: --your brain is doing some really complicated stuff.
SUBJECT 1: And listening--
MOLLY BLOOM: Or reading that text message--
SUBJECT 1: Is equally complicated.
MOLLY BLOOM: Today, we're looking into where language came from and how we're able to learn how to use it today.
SUBJECT 1: Keep listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: You're listening to Brains On! From American Public Media. I'm your host Molly Bloom. And here with me today is 8-year-old E.D. [? Sangline ?] from Minneapolis. Hi, E.D. Thanks for being here.
SUBJECT 1: I'm happy to be here, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Today's episode was actually inspired by a question that E.D. Sent in to us. And E.D, what was your question that you sent?
SUBJECT 1: My question was, how does cavemen communicate?
MOLLY BLOOM: And you were kind of wondering like when you see cavemen in movies, like how do they talk?
SUBJECT 1: Cavemen want birdie.
MOLLY BLOOM: Exactly. [CHUCKLES] Exactly. So you were wondering how did early humans talk, and how did language evolve. Like a lot of questions that kids send to, us there is no easy answer to this one. So for help, we turn to linguist Arika Okrent, who writes for The week and Mental Floss.
ARIKA OKRENT: This is a really difficult question because language disappears after you make it. So after you say something, the words go off into the air, and then they're gone. So we can know a lot about how cavemen, what kind of tools they had, what they ate, what their activities were, their hunting. But we don't know much about their language because it doesn't get left behind. So we have to make guesses about what we think happened in the beginnings of language.
MOLLY BLOOM: In the 1800s, there were a lot of different theories about how humans language ability developed.
SUBJECT 1: Those theories were given some silly names.
ARIKA OKRENT: There was the bow wow theory, which was the idea that language started from people imitating sounds of things around them. So a dog would be bow wow. A cow would be moo, and then that developed into words.
[COW MOOING]
SUBJECT 2: Moo. Moo. M- moo. Moo.
E.D. There was the pooh-pooh theory, which is that they started from automatic vocal responses, like laughter--
[MAN LAUGHS]
--calls of alarm. And those were the first sounds, and then they turned into words. For a while in the 1800s, people were coming up with so many of these. And there was no way to tell which one was right that they actually banned all discussion of this question from language society meanings in Europe.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[CLAPPING]
[MAN CLEARS THROAT]
SUBJECT 3: Discussion of this topic has been banned.
ARIKA OKRENT: But the question keeps coming up because it's interesting. People want to know. People wonder. This is the thing that makes us human. How did it start? And there are some things we can do in order to guess. So we can tell whether early humans or humanoids had the right kind of structures in place.
Did they have big enough brain yet? Did they have the right kind of jaw, vocal cords to even produce speech? So for example, the closest relative to us, the chimps, their vocal cords, their larynx is in a higher position than ours. So they can't choke. But humans can because our voice box is lower.
MOLLY BLOOM: So our lower voice box made it possible to choke, which is dangerous. But being able to talk gave us such an advantage that the risk didn't matter.
ARIKA OKRENT: We know when our human form allowed us to have language just physically about 100,000 years ago when we became Homo sapiens. Did we have language yet then? Well, we don't know for sure, but the pieces were all in place.
SUBJECT 1: Do you know who invented speech? Or is that just how the world like, happened?
ARIKA OKRENT: There is the possibility that it started with one person. One person started making particular sounds or associations, but they also had to have someone who could work with them and understand them. So it might have grown up out of a small group or family. And then other people saw, oh, I want in on that. That looks useful. That's a possibility.
But we sort of assume that language is what it means to be human. Language is the thing that makes us human. So as long as we have been humans, we have probably had language.
MOLLY BLOOM: And E.D. wanted to know about how cave people are portrayed in movies and TV.
SUBJECT 1: Is that how early humans really talked?
ARIKA OKRENT: When we think about what an early language might look like, we think of it as a simpler language, right? So the language we have is very complex. We can make really complicated sentences that include things like hypotheticals.
Like, if it rains today, then I might go outside. This is very complex kind of thing that animals don't do. Animals communicate, but they don't do stuff like that. So we assume that if there was an earlier state of language, or just sort of proto language, then it probably had very simple words that it was one word at a time or maybe two. Instead of, I think you better go tend to the fire over there, it would be, fire, now, or something. Fire, warning.
When they do that in movies and have this very gruff two-word sentence idea, that's a pretty good way of looking at it. If there was something before we had full human language, it was probably a more basic kind of language, something closer to what chimpanzees can do now.
SUBJECT 1: Do you know if maybe singing came first or talking came first because I think it's singing because you can sing in all different languages. And you can hum. So that's something that you don't need to talk.
ARIKA OKRENT: Yeah, that's actually one of those theories. I think it's called the La-La theory. So that we didn't start by attaching words to ideas and talking. We started just by playing. We had this vocal apparatus that could make sounds. And we played with it, and we experimented with it.
And somehow, that then turned into language or turned into more abstract ideas. It's another possibility that we'll never quite know, but sort of a very romantic one that language came out of a aesthetic, creative impulse. And that's as good a place for it to come from as any.
MOLLY BLOOM: Arika says scientists are still investigating the question of where language came from, and there's basically two different ways of looking at it. One is that there was a mutation in our genes that gave us the ability to have language.
ARIKA OKRENT: We can compare gene expression over time and see when this might have occurred and how it might have spread. So that's a piece of evidence that we can use in trying to answer this question.
MOLLY BLOOM: The other is the idea that lots of different changes in humans came together at once that gave us all the tools we needed for language to begin.
ARIKA OKRENT: We got the vocal apparatus. We got the memory. We got the social cooperation, the ability to look from other points of views. And once all those things are in place, you're able to do language.
MOLLY BLOOM: But again, there are still many different ideas.
ARIKA OKRENT: It's still very contentious. It's very hard to get all scientists to agree on anything in this arena.
SUBJECT 1: And the cool thing is that language is not done evolving.
ARIKA OKRENT: Language didn't develop and now we're here, and now it's done. It continues to develop, and it continues to change. And it'll be different in a few hundred years, and it'll be different a few hundred years after that. What we are doing right now is all part of what's making language, language.
MOLLY BLOOM: So when you use an emoji or talk to your friends, you're shaping the way our language will be in the future.
SUBJECT 1: Amazing. Thanks, Arika, for talking to us today.
ARIKA OKRENT: Thanks E.D. Thanks.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: That's a lot of amazing information to ponder. E.D, where do you think language came from?
SUBJECT 1: I think it came from one person started language, and then other people kept following it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, we still don't know the answer to that question, but let's turn to something that we know has an answer. It's time for the mystery sound.
SUBJECT 1: Mystery sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here it is.
SUBJECT 2: Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ah. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ah.
MOLLY BLOOM: Any guesses?
SUBJECT 1: A baby.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's a good guess. What makes you think it's a baby?
SUBJECT 1: Because that sounds like-- a baby sounds like a tone of it.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, that is an excellent guess. And we will be back with the answer in just a little bit.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, are you ready for the next Brains On! debate? We are. And our next match-up is a very exciting one, one that we can't wait to share with you. It is going to be great. It is a match-up between two incredible underwater creatures. The debate is going to be dolphins versus Octopuses.
This is a big one. For this versus episode We Want to Know, which is cooler, which is smarter, dolphin or octopus? We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think and why you think it. Please send your dolphin or octopus arguments to hello@brainson.org.
Drawings of either species are welcome, too. You can also send your mystery sounds and questions to that same email address, hello@brainson.org. That's what Zachary did.
ZACHARY: Hi, Brains On! My name is Zach from Redmond, Washington. My question is, why is red blood pure as blue in our veins?
MOLLY BLOOM: We're going to answer that question in a brand new moment of um at the end of the show. Plus, we'll have the latest installment of the Brain's honor roll. That's where we thank the kids like Zachary who send in questions, mystery sounds, drawings, and ideas. It's our audio high five.
You're listening to Brains On! for American Public Media. I'm Molly Bloom.
SUBJECT 1: I'm E.D. [INAUDIBLE] [? Sangline. ?]
MOLLY BLOOM: Brains On! producer Mark Sanchez is here to show us a little bit about how our language has kept evolving. Hi, Mark.
MARK SANCHEZ: [MIDDLE ENGLISH].
MOLLY BLOOM: [SNICKERS] So what did you say?
MARK SANCHEZ: [MIDDLE ENGLISH].
SUBJECT 1: What kind of language is that?
MARK SANCHEZ: It means hello in Middle English. Have you ever heard of Geoffrey Chaucer?
SUBJECT 1: No.
MARK SANCHEZ: No? Well, he's known as the father of modern English. He wrote poems and stories way, way back in the 14th century. He's most famous for his stories in The Canterbury Tales. So you might think, OK, father of modern English. I should be able to understand this, right?
But like, when I say [SPEAKING MIDDLE ENGLISH], it makes no sense, right?
MOLLY BLOOM: Did you understand that?
SUBJECT 1: No.
MOLLY BLOOM: No. Me either.
MARK SANCHEZ: I can barely say it. Now, I'm going to play you part of one of Geoffrey Chaucer's poems. It's called The Parliament of Fowls. Then, I want you guys to tell me what you think it's about.
NARRATOR: "New welcome summer with thy sunne soft, that hast this winter weather's overshake and driven away by the long nightes black. Saint Valentine, that art full of high on loft, thus singen smalle fowls for thy sake. New welcome a summer with they sunne soft, that hast this winter weather's overshake."
MARK SANCHEZ: OK. [LAUGHS] What is he talking about?
SUBJECT 1: That did not make sense.
MARK SANCHEZ: Did you understand any words there? Did you pick out any words?
SUBJECT 1: I thought it was something about color or weather.
MARK SANCHEZ: I think. That's a good guess.
MOLLY BLOOM: I heard the word summer.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah. I heard the word summer, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: And maybe winter.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah, I could pick out a few words here or there, also, but I couldn't really understand it, especially the first time I heard it. It sounds like an alien talking or something and does not sound like English, that's for sure.
I called up Paul Strohm, who teaches medieval literature at Columbia University. And he actually just wrote a book about Geoffrey Chaucer. He helped explain Chaucer's poem for me.
PAUL STHROM (ON THE PHONE): It's a poem about birds choosing their mates. And they gather together on Valentine's Day, and that's the day that every bird chooses his mate. And it's welcoming the coming of spring. "New welcome summer with thy sunne softe." Now welcome summer with your soft sun. "That hast this winter's weather overshake." That has overshaken these winter's weathers, or has replaced these winter's weathers. You may have noticed that the word summer was used, but the summer meant spring in middle English. So this is a poem in praise of that event.
MARK SANCHEZ: So you guys were right. You guys heard summer.
MOLLY BLOOM: But it didn't mean summer. It meant spring.
MARK SANCHEZ: Paul said there are lots of words like summer where the meanings have shifted over time.
PAUL STHROM (ON THE PHONE): In the 14th century, the word silly meant blessed. If you wanted to praise someone as being deeply religious and devout and sort of touched by God, you would say that they were silly or [MIDDLE ENGLISH] in Middle English. And another example, I suppose, would be the word nice. The word nice in Middle English actually means rather foolish. The word-- a nice person is somebody who isn't quite in touch with reality.
Whereas, now, that word has evolved in the other direction. And nice with us has become a compliment. When we say somebody is quite nice, we mean to speak well of them and not to say that they're out of touch with surrounding reality. And so, similarly, we can see words migrate from middle English to modern English.
SUBJECT 1: I heard lots of the words that he said is kind of opposite of our language.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah. We start out with a word meaning one thing. And over hundreds and hundreds of years, it changes, and totally different. Yeah, nice, meant foolish. [CHUCKLES] And now it means nice. Who knows what it'll mean in another 200 or 300 years?
MOLLY BLOOM: Maybe it'll mean someone with like purple hair.
MARK SANCHEZ: I like your haircut, nice. Anyway, Paul's point is really that words and language are always in motion. He also let me in on a little secret, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh, what is it?
MARK SANCHEZ: Well, since no one was around to actually hear what people sounded like in the 14th century, when Geoffrey Chaucer was around, everybody, including your teacher and your professors, they're just faking it.
PAUL STHROM (ON THE PHONE): We're all just guessing. And nobody exactly knows what middle English sounded like. We've got the words on the page, and we've got our ideas about what it probably sounded like. But generations of teachers have bluffed generations of students by suggesting saying there might be such a thing as a kind of a standard middle English pronunciation that they ought to know. And in fact, it's a pronunciation that we've just kind of imagined for ourselves and we think comes pretty close, but it's not exact.
MARK SANCHEZ: So when I say, [MIDDLE ENGLISH], it's really just a guess, but I'm going to-- you know--
MOLLY BLOOM: It sounded good to me.
MARK SANCHEZ: Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: Well, thanks for sharing some of Chaucer's language with us, Mark.
MARK SANCHEZ: No problem. [MIDDLE ENGLISH]
SUBJECT 1: What does that mean?
MARK SANCHEZ: [MIDDLE ENGLISH] means goodbye.
MOLLY BLOOM: Oh. [MIDDLE ENGLISH].
SUBJECT 1: [MIDDLE ENGLISH]
MOLLY BLOOM: Before we go on to our next question, it's time to go back to the mystery sound. Here it is.
SUBJECT 2: ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ha. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Ha.
MOLLY BLOOM: So do you have the same guess? Any other guesses?
SUBJECT 1: I was thinking a baby for my first guess, but now I think maybe some kind of animal, which I don't know which.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Well, here is the answer.
TRENT: I'm Trent, and I'm from Santa Clarita, California. That was my sister trying to talk. I think she was trying to say bananas 'cause she was-- 'cause she likes bananas.
MOLLY BLOOM: So you were right. You got it, baby. It was a baby. And Trent actually sent that mystery sound in, along with this question.
TRENT: How do babies learn how to talk?
MOLLY BLOOM: To find out, we talked to Sudha Arunachalam from Boston University.
SUBJECT 1: She studies how children learn languages.
MOLLY BLOOM: It turns out babies are learning something about language before they're even born.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: They actually can hear even before they're born in the womb. And this isn't particular sounds or particular words, but they can hear sort of the up and down, the intonation of the language. When we speak, there's sort of a musical quality to our language.
So when you ask a question, your voice goes up at the end. You might say, what did you have for breakfast? If I'm making a statement, I would say, I had cereal for breakfast. And my voice goes down at the end.
So there's these ups and downs in language, just musical patterns, that lie on top of what we're actually saying. There is some really interesting studies showing that even newborns cry differently, depending on what language they have been exposed to. So this study was with babies who are three, four, or five days old. And they had French newborns who cried with sort of rising intonation patterns.
[BABY CRYING]
Whereas, German babies tended to cry with a falling intonation pattern where the pitch decreased from the beginning to the end.
[BABY CRYING]
And this goes along with the sound patterns of those languages, the musical qualities that are present in French and German, more generally.
SUBJECT 1: Then in the first couple of months, they start to make vowel sounds.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then at four to six months, they start what is known as vocal play.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: So this is adding lots of different sounds, adding some consonants like ga and ka, ma pa, right? Lots of mama and papa, dada, things like that at this age.
[BABY BABBLING]
And then we start to get into really interesting babbling sounds, usually about six months.
[BABY BABBLING]
MOLLY BLOOM: Pretty universally, the sounds that tend to be easiest or things like ma and pa and da. And the ones that tend to be hardest or things like er and ul. Pa and the ma you make with your lips closed. And the er and the ul, you have to put your tongue and kind of funny places.
And it's much easier. Babies start right away with making those raspberry sounds, the [BLOWS RASPBERRY]. And that's really good practice for moving your lips in the way that you need to move them in order to make the ma and the pa and the ba.
SUBJECT 1: Then at seven to eight months, they start to put more vowels in consonants together.
MOLLY BLOOM: About 10 to 12 months is when you might hear them say their first word. So this is often a name for a person or an object that's interesting to them, like ball or book or mommy or daddy or dog.
BABY: Mama. Papa. Mama.
MOLLY BLOOM: What's really interesting is that babies understand a lot more than they say. So even at six months when they're not saying any words, we do know that they understand the meanings of some everyday words like milk and nose and banana.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: And before babies can talk, they can sign-- either simple signs taught to them by their parents or more basic ones like pointing.
SUBJECT 1: And bilingual babies are learning two languages at once.
MOLLY BLOOM: People used to think bilingual babies were behind because it seemed they knew fewer words. But it turns out they the same amount when you look at the two languages combined.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: What we used to think of as a disadvantage for being bilingual or multilingual-- because it seemed like the babies were behind-- now, we think that, in fact, if anything, they're ahead. They're much more sensitive at picking up on these differences because they have to be and figuring out, oh, mommy speaks this way, and daddy speaks this way, and trying to sort out how those two languages might differ from each other.
SUBJECT 1: By about 18 months, babies are putting two words together.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: Mommy play or baby shoe. But notice that these aren't complete sentences yet. So at this age, they're leaving off a lot of the little words like the. They're leaving off the little endings on words like ing or ed, past tense. And so this is really just basically a sentence. They're just leaving off some of the smaller, less important pieces of information. And from there, they kind of take off. Then they slowly add in those little pieces.
MOLLY BLOOM: First comes ing.
SUBJECT 1: Like, mommy driving.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then, comes in and on.
SUBJECT 1: Milk in cup our dog on couch.
MOLLY BLOOM: Then, we get plurals.
SUBJECT 1: Like, cups and dogs.
MOLLY BLOOM: And more little parts of speech are added until we get to what's called the contractable auxiliary.
SUBJECT 1: Like, kitties drinking water.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: Pretty much, they are talking like adults by the time they're four or five.
MOLLY BLOOM: And remember, if there's a baby nearby, that baby is learning from you.
SUDHA ARUNACHALAM: They are listening very, very carefully. And they're trying to look for patterns in what you say. And they're picking up on so much. So it's important to remember that they're listening, and they might even understand a little bit more than you think they do.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MOLLY BLOOM: At this point, we don't know the answer of where language came from.
SUBJECT 1: It doesn't fossilize, so we can't dig up the first word.
MOLLY BLOOM: But scientists have many theories and new tools.
SUBJECT 1: Like, being able to look at genes.
MOLLY BLOOM: And that's helping them dig deeper into these theories.
SUBJECT 1: And babies are listening and learning about language all the time.
MOLLY BLOOM: Even before they're born.
SUBJECT 1: And there's a pattern to how they pick up what they need to know.
MOLLY BLOOM: That's it for this episode of Brains On!
SUBJECT 1: This episode was produced by Marc Sanchez, Sanden Totten, and Molly Bloom.
MOLLY BLOOM: Many Thanks to Kathleen Wermke, Tom Weber, Eric [? Brigham, ?] Martin [? Geeson ?] [? Librivox, ?] Elizabeth Scott, and James Houston.
SUBJECT 1: You can hear past episodes of Brains On! at our website--
MOLLY BLOOM: Brainson.org.
SUBJECT 1: --or in your favorite podcast app.
MOLLY BLOOM: And if you're a fan of Brains On! consider leaving a review in iTunes.
SUBJECT 1: It really helps other kids and parents find out about the show.
MOLLY BLOOM: And you can keep up with us on Instagram and Twitter.
SUBJECT 1: We're at Brains_On.
MOLLY BLOOM: Now, before we go it's time for our moment of um--
[RANDOM VOICES SAYING UM]
I'm here at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. Hey, it's Lulu. Can you say, Hi?
LULU: Hi.
MOLLY BLOOM: And lucky enough, my dad happens to be someone who can answer a question for us.
STUART BLOOM: My name is Stuart Bloom, and I am a hematologist and oncologist at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A hematologist is somebody who takes care of people who have issues with their blood.
MOLLY BLOOM: You're also my dad.
STUART BLOOM: Yes! Yes, I am.
ZACHARY: Why is red blood pure as blue in our veins?
STUART BLOOM: That is a great question. I think to really get to the heart of it, we have to think about what blood is and what it's made of. Blood is this-- we just think it's this liquid. But the truth is blood has a lot of liquid in it, but it also has a lot of solid things in it, too.
And the most important one in blood is the red blood cell, and that's the thing that gives blood its color. Now, what is the purpose of blood itself? It's going all through your body. It's swirling around everywhere.
It's in your fingers. It's in your nose. It's everywhere. What is the job of blood? Well, the job of blood is to transfer things from one place in your body to another. There's a really special job for red blood cells, and that's to carry oxygen.
So when oxygen hits the red blood cell, there's this protein inside of it called hemoglobin. And when hemoglobin has oxygen, it changes the whole blood's color to a kind of a bright red. Then when oxygen gets dumped off at a tissue, and the oxygen is gone, and the carbon dioxide comes into hemoglobin, then the blood changes its color, and it becomes kind of a deeper purple.
So when you look at your veins, you see this kind of bluish stuff. And that's because those veins are full of this purplish kind of blood. And you know it's not really blue because many kids listening to this probably had some blood drawn at one point.
They stick a needle into a vein, and there's a tube attached to the needle that goes from the vein right into a tube where there's a big vacuum in the tube. So there's no air in that tube. So you can see exactly what blood looks like without any exposure to air. And when it comes into that tube, it's kind of this darker red purplish type of color, maroon.
Blood that has tons of oxygen in the red blood cells is bright red. Blood that doesn't have much oxygen, it's actually kind of a darker red and kind of a maroon. I'm looking at my hand right now. And gosh, my veins sure look bluish. But the truth is that if we were inside that vein right now, the blood would not be blue. It would be this kind of darker red.
MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks, Dad!
STUART BLOOM: Oh, Molly, it's my pleasure.
MOLLY BLOOM: Let's go eat some turkey.
STUART BLOOM: Yum, I'm excited.
MOLLY BLOOM: Happy Thanksgiving.
STUART BLOOM: Same to you. Thank you for including me in your process.
MOLLY BLOOM: [LAUGHS] Yay!
[RANDOM VOICES SAYING UM]
This list of names is red hot. It's time for the latest group to be added to the Brain's honor roll.
[LISTING HONOR ROLL]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's easy to get your name on the Brain's honor roll. Just send your questions, drawings, and mystery sounds to hello@brainson.org. We'll be back next week with more answers to your questions.
SUBJECT 1: Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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