Genocidal Organ Page #5

While Czech is a Slavic language,

like Russian or Croatian,

it takes their trademark inflection-heavy

nature to quite an extreme.

The "over 200 inflections

for one word" thing, right?

That's the most drastic example.

But in my experience,

the difficulty seems to lie in its

free word order and its pronunciation.

People like you who move here for work

all seem to struggle with pronunciation.

I see.

Lucie Skroupova makes her living

teaching Czech to foreigners.

Students learn the language from her

right here in this living room.

Your English is impeccable, ma'am.

English is the hegemonic language, after all.

Where did you learn?

In America. I studied linguistics there.

So you're a word pro, then!

Where in America?

MIT.

Wow, that makes you an elite.

--"Wow, that makes you an elite!"

--There was something I could only study there,

so I went. --"Wow, that makes you an elite!"

--There was something I could

only study there, so I went.

That's all.

What did you research at MIT?

Hmm... You could say I studied the effects

of language on human behavior.

"A man's language

molds his perception of reality"...

Like the thing about Eskimos

having twenty words for snow?

Ah, the good old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

No, not like that.

Are you familiar with the

inherent ability to generate grammar?

No...

This goes back to the era

when slavery was legal.

People from different tribes

kidnapped from different places in Africa

were forced to work together without

understanding each other's languages.

In time, they picked up broken versions

of their masters' languages.

These were grammatical messes,

and any literary technique was impossible.

First-generation systems

like that are called "pidgins."

When children of those slaves

grew up speaking the pidgin natively,

a lively, natural syntax arose

that the rigid pidgin didn't have.

The children acquired a complex

grammar that didn't exist before!

The only explanation is that our brains

have a faculty for generating sentences.

An inherent ability

to generate sentences...

It's a mechanism hardwired into our DNA.

An organ that gives birth

to language, if you will.

When you say "organ," is it like

our internal organs, or arms, or eyes?

That's right.

Well, you two enjoyed

a very cultured conversation.

Leave it to a Lit major.

It just happened to play out that way.

Oh yeah? Looked to me

like you steered it that way.

Jealous of my single status?

Hey, I've still got it, I'll have you know.

That teacher lady

would've been putty in my hands.

As if you're capable

of cultured conversation.

I'd talk about Eskimos.

Or Kafka.

Knowledge gaps are key. Gotta leave

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