PickVidsBest Language & linguistics Videos
The 84 Language & linguistics videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 1 introductory, 3 intermediate, 80 for a general viewer, and 0 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are an explainer. What they share is that one picture or analogy is used to supply a missing concept. Channels you will keep seeing include Tom Scott, TEDx Talks, CGP Grey.
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Word Crimes (Official 4K Video)
Weird Al Yankovic's 2014 parody of 'Blurred Lines' that scolds common grammar and usage errors, with a kinetic typography video.
Tiffany: The Name That Cheats Death
CGP Grey investigates why the name Tiffany spiked in popularity and then faded, with help from onomastics experts.
The odd accent of Tangier VA - American Tongues episode #3
A clip from the documentary American Tongues about the isolated Tangier Island, Virginia, whose dialect is among the most unusual in the US.
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz (HD)
A colorized clip from the 1970 Polish comedy film 'How I Unleashed World War II' in which a character must pronounce the tongue-twisting name Grzegorz Brzeczyszczykiewicz for a Gestapo officer.
How big is a billion? - Numberphile
Numberphile explains the long and short scales for naming large numbers, covering millions, billions, trillions, milliards and the Greek myriad, with James Grime and Tony Padilla.
Does the language you speak change how you think?
Tom Scott, with linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl, examines whether the language you speak changes how you think.
The Hidden Rules of Conversation
Tom Scott explains Gricean maxims, the unwritten guidelines that shape how we understand each other.
Stephen Krashen on Language Acquisition
A 15-minute clip of linguist Stephen Krashen discussing language acquisition, drawn from the 1980s.
Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 32 Actors' Accents | WIRED
Dialect coach Erik Singer analyzes how accurate the accents are of 32 well-known actors, including Brad Pitt and Will Smith, in WIRED's breakdown.
How English sounds to non-English speakers
'Skwerl' is a short film by Brian and Karl made entirely in fake English, imitating how English sounds to people who don't speak it.
No Béarla Series 1, Episode 1.
The first episode of the Irish TV series No Bearla, in which native Irish speaker Manchan Magan travels around Ireland trying to get by using only Irish.
why typing like this is sometimes okay.
Tom Scott makes a short descriptivist argument that language keeps changing and that casual internet writing conventions, like lowercase typing and dropped full stops, are legitimate.
Stephen Krashen: Language Acquisition and Comprehensible Input
A lecture from the 1980s by linguist Stephen Krashen on how people acquire language.
Original Pronunciation - Hamlet | To Be, or not to be... | Ben Crystal
Ben Crystal performs Hamlet's 'To be, or not to be' in Original Pronunciation, the reconstructed accent of Shakespeare's time, on a London balcony.
Politics and Language | Noam Chomsky | Talks at Google
Noam Chomsky gives a Talks at Google lecture covering his work on politics and language.
Appalachian English
An excerpt from the documentary Mountain Talk on Appalachian English.
Can GPT-4 translate literature?
Tom Gally, a former professional translator and University of Tokyo professor, discusses in March 2023 whether GPT-4 and similar models could translate literary and popular fiction.
What do translators think about GPT?
Tom Gally, a former professional translator and University of Tokyo professor, discusses in April 2023 how GPT-4 and similar models may affect translators' careers.
Captain Literally: Part 1 - Studio C
A Studio C sketch in which Captain Literally, a superhero who takes the word literally in its strict sense, causes absurd and painful outcomes.
Monty Python - Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook
The Monty Python sketch in which a man uses a mistranslated Hungarian phrasebook with absurd results, followed by the courtroom scene.
Nicolas Doesn't Understand The West Country Accent | Hot Fuzz | Screen Bites
A Hot Fuzz clip in which Nicholas Angel struggles to understand the West Country accent of locals.
Interslavic Language | Will Bulgarian, Polish and Croatian understand a CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE? | #1
A Polish linguist tests whether speakers of Bulgarian, Polish and Croatian can understand Interslavic, a constructed language built from Slavic languages.
Mongrel Nation - Brown cow
A comedy segment where Eddie Izzard travels to Friesland to try speaking Old English, claiming English originated in Holland and buying a cow to prove it.
Why Does Portuguese Sound Like Russian?! (or Polish)
A Langfocus video examining why Portuguese, especially European Portuguese, sounds like Russian or Polish.