The Pandemic's Effect on Language

Turns out that some languages are less intelligible through a mask than others, and, believe it or not, it all depends on how often you use certain consonants. It’s called the McGurk effect and it’s the closest that linguistics comes to actual magic. * FULL TRANSCRIPT * From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language. I'm John McWhorter and you know, in line with the fact that the Booksmart version of Lexicon Valley is going to be somewhat more topical than the Grand Old version, I want to discuss something that I've tried not to get too much into because of my motto that life is always happy in the valley and that is the pandemic, especially since it could be argued that we're coming out of it. And I feel a little better about referring to it at length. And I want to discuss language and the pandemic and beyond the level that some people started asking back about a year and a half ago. What about all of these new terms? And, you know, the answer is, well, you know, what about them? So social distancing, you can't do a show about that. Yes, we learned a bunch of new words and expressions. But still, the question is — especially, you know, a year and a half out — what kind of effect has there been on language from all of this stuff that we've had to go through? And, you know, one of the first things that you might think about is these God-damned masks. What kind of effect does it have? For example, someone very near and dear to me was talking about how when she goes to a store and she has to tell them whether or not she's going to use credit or debit, well, when you're in there and everybody's masked, the cashiers have told her that it's hard to understand whether people are saying credit or debit because those two words differ only in their initial consonant, as we call it. So is it cr- or d-? There is no problem with that at all in normal life. But when you've got a piece of cloth in front of your mouth, it can be somewhat muffled and you can't make up for that by looking at people's mouths and doing a little bit of passive lip reading as we all do, whether we're conscious of it or not. So credit, debit, what did you say? And so, my sweetheart tells me that she walks into the store and she has to actually enunciate or shout credit or debit. What's going on with that? THE McGURK EFFECT Do these masks actually muffle speech in that way? Do they create a kind of a confusion? And, you know, we would expect that they would. They certainly are. And one way that we know it is that linguists are aware of something called the McGurk effect. And the McGurk effect is one of these things where you can have fun in a class showing people that linguistics can be magic. And what it is, is that if you show a video clip of somebody saying gah, but then what you play them saying is not gah, but bah — you have those two things going on — the person is with their mouth saying gah, but you play them saying bah, what an Anglophone does when they see that is they could swear to God that the person is saying dah. You watch somebody mouthing gah, you play them saying bah. Well then what you hear is not bah and you don't hear gah, what you hear is dah. And what's especially fascinating is that those consonants, the b, d and the g, have a certain relationship in terms of how pronunciation actually works. So forget the order that those things come in in the alphabet. It's not about b first and then d and then g. It's actually more interesting than that. And the alphabetical order is actually only accidentally consonant, haha so to speak, with how this works. B is with your lips, d is when you put your tongue on that alveolar ridge, that thing that you burn if you drink your hot cocoa too fast, then g is the soft palate. So front, middle, back, b front, d middle, g back. So what happens is if you see somebody speaking the back, gah, and then what's played is them doing the front, bah, you end up correcting it to what's actually in between, dah, which the person didn't say and you didn't hear. That is called the McGurk effect. Absolutely fascinating thing. It's funny with McGurk, I always find myself having the most random thought when I hear that. Does anybody remember that sitcom Dear John? This is way back about 30 years ago. Judd Hirsch is off of Taxi and Dear John was supposedly based on a British show, but really Dear John was a shameless attempt to put Judd Hirsch in Taxi again. And they had characters that almost all corresponded to the Taxi characters. And as you can imagine, the show was pretty good. It wasn't quite a keeper, but because it was more Taxi and because the actors were good, I must admit that back then when there was less to do because there wasn't really any internet yet, I watched it. And I remember Jere Burns had this character Kirk, and Kirk is this sort of Guys and Dolls-ish vernacular person. And the running joke was that he'd introduce himself as “Gurk.” My name's Gurk. And so I always think of “Gurk” when I hear about the McGurk effect. You know, why am I imitating this obscure character? Listen, everything's on YouTube. Here is Jere Burns. The first time, this is the first episode where he introduces this “Gurk” character. KIRK MORRIS: The name's Kirk.JOHN LACEY: Oh, hi. John. Nice to meet you.KIRK MORRIS: All right, stick with me. You're gonna make out like a bandit. The McGurk effect. And guess what has actually been shown in research that's now coming out in the wake of the height of the pandemic. It turns out that when people have these masks on their faces, young people are good at compensating. They stop relying so much on that passive lipreading and they get better at just distinguishing consonants based on hearing them. However, people who are older don't do that nearly as well. The ability atrophies. And so the masks have been less of a problem with the young than with older people. This was demonstrated by a very interesting paper in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and it was by Czech researchers. And to tell you the truth, I don't know much about Czech and I can't pronounce their names. But it was in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. It was recently. And if you want to check it out, you should check this out. You'd predict it. You wouldn't necessarily predict that there would be an age issue. But yeah, these masks make it harder to understand what people are saying, sometimes in really graphic ways. But just in general, we don't get to do that lipreading. The way we learn to deal with human language is that you don't have to see the person's face. We know that from, you know, the radio, et cetera. But it certainly does help. And if we've got people in front of us watching their face is part of how we accomplish comprehension. With the masks that's muffled, and so you have to adjust and we can. But adjusting, as with just about everything else, is harder as you get older. IS THE McGURK EFFECT MORE PRONOUNCED IN ROTOKAS? And it's interesting, you think about other languages. The McGurk effect happens in lots of languages, more in some than in others. Although within a given language, the results are almost bizarrely consistent. But you can imagine there are places where these masks must have been more of a problem. And so, for example, I'm not aware of any article about how people are dealing with masks in the language Rotokas, which is spoken on an island off of New Guinea. But Rotokas is famous for one of the languages with the fewest sounds, period, of all. So there are languages that have like 148 different sounds. One of the click languages has that many because there are many, many, many clicks and then many, many other consonants and vowels. But then there are languages that have the fewest sounds and Rotokas is one of the ones with the very fewest. And so, for example, with consonants all Rotokas has — if we're going to be technical, it's the central Rotokas dialect — but all central Rotokas has is p, t, k, b, d and g. Now you can hear that as a pattern. So it's the b, d, g — front, middle, back — and then p, t, k have the exact same relationship. Really p and b are the same thing but different; t and d are the same thing but different; and k and g are the same thing but different. Feel it? So, p, b, and you're thinking well one is a B and that's close to the beginning of the alphabet and then P is somewhere in the late middle. No, that's completely irrelevant. P and b — b is just p with kind of some belly in it. So all Rotokas has is b, d, g and the related p, t, k. Nothing else. No nasal sounds. The way Rotokas speakers make fun of speakers of other languages is they start going mmmnnn, because that's how speakers of other languages seem to them. Now that doesn't mean that they have any problem with making themselves understood in normal conditions. But imagine if all you've got is p, t, k, b, d, g and now you've got these masks on, and there is this effect that you have where you are likely to hear a different consonant if you don't get to see the person's face. The McGurk effect must be a real pain in the ass on Rotokas in particular, in any language with that few consonants. IS THE McGURK EFFECT LESS PRONOUNCED IN CAMBODIAN? But then there are places where you would assume that it would be less of a problem. And that's because this issue is with consonants, not with vowels. The vowels come through the cloth pretty darn well. So that's not an issue. And that would mean that if you are a language with lots and lots of vowels, then this sort of thing isn't going to be as much of a problem in terms of comprehension. And I think, for example, of Cambodian. I'll just bet — and if any of you are Cambodian you can please let me know, I would genuinely like to know — I'll just bet that the masks aren’t as much of a problem in Cambodian. And that's because, this is a factoid that doesn't get around as much as that certain cl