The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Karen Lichtman and Carmen Lynch

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Dr. Lichtman is a Professor at Northern Illinois University. She holds a PhD in linguistics.    Carmen Lynch is a Spanish-American comedian, actress, and writer based in New York City. Her multiple television appearances include Fallon, Letterman, Colbert.  

This is Live from the Table, recorded at the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Natterman here with Noam Dorman, owner of the Comedy Cellar. Present. Perry Lash and Brandar producer, quote-unquote, because there is some controversy as to whether she really is a producer. She books the show I'm not sure what else she does so Noam had some issues with whether she lost a file

this week but we'll talk about that later go ahead anyway she is not here she is still really really upset about it she is still in Israel she will be back for the next show like Periel you downloaded it how is it if you downloaded it. How is it? If you downloaded it to send it to me at one point, it has to be, you must

have downloaded it onto your computer. You're talking to me or Perrielle? She's like, rather than saying, you're right, I must have deleted it. She goes, yes, that's odd. We'll hash that out when she's back in town. I don't want to get into that when she's not here. Carmen Lynch is here.

Who's Carmen Lynch? You ask what she if you're a comedy fan, you must know her. She's a comedy seller, regular her her special vertically challenged, vertically obese, but very obese. I'm so I'm vertically challenged. She's vertically obese. She's what we call a tall drink of water. Her podcast, Human Centipod, nothing to do with the movie, but sent to pod because you're long and thin.

Is that why you chose that? Well, no, because it's about people being stuck together. My boyfriend and I were stuck together during the during the pandemic. So we started a podcast about life stuck together as a couple. I said to Pete, but I don't know the centipede. I don't understand. The human centipede is a is a really bad movie. It's a really bad horror. I don't understand the play on words. The Human Centipede is a really bad movie. It's a really bad horror movie.

Oh, I didn't see that one. Okay. Carmen Lynch can be found at Carmen Comedia and across all the social networking platforms. My parents have been married for 50 years. It's crazy. Crazy. I don't know how they do it. They make it look so hard. My father lost his identity I think when you're with somebody dominating like a Spanish woman you just get swallowed up

years ago because I know he's gone because I call them and I'm like, how are you? And he's like, your mom's in the kitchen. What's your social media? Google Carmen Lynch. Go ahead. Yeah, just Google Carmen Lynch dot com to find out where she's playing. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You're right. We give too much stock to these intros, but that's my thing.

I like that. I drag them out because that's my kind of my thing. Karen Lichtman is here. Who's Karen Lichtman? Professor at Northern Illinois University, researcher in linguistics. Her main area of research is age and second language acquisition. And people that listen to this podcast regularly know that that's kind of an interest of mine, you know, is language acquisition. I should point out, Karen, hello, first of all. Hi. Karen is coming at us from her, I guess, from her office.

My ugly cinderblock office at Northern Illinois University. It does look very scholastic, but she's made time between office hour visits to come join us. And we're grateful to her for that. Thanks for having me. Just by way of explanation, Carmen Lynch is not just a comedian. She's a bilingual comedian. She's done comedy in Spanish and English because her mother is from Spain and she grew up speaking Spanish as

what we call an L1, I believe is what you call it in the linguistic field, meaning it's her native. She has two native languages, English and Spanish, but English is dominant. I have a second language as well, French, but I acquired that starting at the age of 31 and have been studying it for the past 20 years. And I've also done comedy in French. So that's the tie-in. And I grew up with two parents who spoke a foreign language and can't speak it at all. So you're an L3. But that's very, very common.

That's very, very common. But it's very, very common her parents that's very very common but it's very very common parents people come to this country and they leave the the the maternal language behind what did your parents speak my parents both spoke hebrew but they only spoke it when they didn't want me to understand yeah well that can be motivating yeah so you talk about age and language acquisition so a big question in the field is everybody assumes that kids are better at acquiring languages.

We all acquired our native tongue with no effort at all. We just sort of started speaking it one day. And most of us who have studied foreign languages realize that it was a real pain in the ass. So it would seem to me that, yes, obviously kids are better at learning foreign languages. Is this true?

Is it all that we think it is? Is there any nuance? It's not really true. There is a grain of truth to that, which is if you want to get really good, you have to start young. So if you want to become absolutely native-like in every way, you should probably start studying before age four. That's not really studying, but immersed in it. Right. Yes. You should probably. So, you know, Carmen would be native, like in both languages. She started that young. So if you start after age four, you can get everything except for

the accent. You're never going to get the accent, just give it up. But if you start before like eight or 12, you might be able to become native-like with the grammar and vocabulary. So if you sort of think of like the tortoise and the hare, like kids can get to a higher level ultimately, but they're really slow and not that great in week one of learning a language. But what about the fact that kids do it with zero work put into it and that when adults learn a language, it's studying, it's vocabulary list, it's figuring out the grammar? Yeah. I mean, that's mostly a function of just how much time they're spending and you're spending. So kids are spending, you know, 16 hours a day learning language

if they're immersed in that setting. But you're probably only spending like one, right? I spent 16 hours a day. I actually probably spent two hours a day in some sort of French related activity. But is it more? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Is it more about like children? They just don't seem like their brain has anything in it yet when they're young, like we're so busy as we get older, our brains are full of worries and fears. And and it's like children, you always hear children are a sponge children. Is it just because their brain is just so much more accessible because it's just still learning so much? Is it that? I mean, their brain is more plastic. Um, I guess you could say it's more empty. You're saying they have more space to put the language in. I think if you're willing to forget your first language,

you can do amazing things with your second language. So Dan, if you would just stop speaking English, your French would like really take off. Well, that's a high price to pay that I don't think I'm willing to do. It is, yes. So you're saying, by the way, you said that the reason kids can learn without effort is at least in part because they're immersed 16 hours a day and adults typically are not. Are you saying that could we duplicate that

with an adult? And I actually had a joke about this years ago about learning language in prison and how if you went to prison in Spain, rather in Mexico, because I said Mexico is funnier than Spain. A Mexican, right? I mean, the word Mexican is funnier than Spain. Yeah. Anyway, would you agree with that? Turkish is funnier than Spanish. Dr. Lichtman, are you a doctor?

Yeah. Yes, I am a doctor. Would you agree that Mexican as a joke is funnier than Spain? Careful. I do. But I think going to prison in Spain kind of sounds fun, like that there might be some wine and tapas. But that's also why that's also why a Mexican prison sounds funny, because you just imagine it's worse.

But I had a joke about learning language in prison because it would seem to me that the only time an adult could truly be immersed in a language would be if they were in another country in prison. Well, immigrants, immigrants. But immigrants are with their families and with their community. You know, you're sometimes. But if you're being immersed, you just wouldn't get the accent down. But is there any academic literature on language learning in prison?

And there should be if there isn't actually. Yeah, that's that's a great idea. But, you know, you'd have to you'd have to convince someone to send you to Mexico. But you could just study people that are in prison abroad. Why don't you do something horrible in Mexico? Check yourself into prison. Like, just knock on the prison door in Mexico and be like, hi, can I be a prisoner? Well, Jane Goodall dedicated her life to living with the chimps, Dan, for science.

You should just go to Mexico. Well, I thought we could just ask Dr. Lichtman. But apparently I have to do everything myself as usual. Yes, I do think that you could. But do you think an adult is similarly immersed? Yeah. Would pick up a language as well as or almost as well as or as effortlessly as a baby? So adults can still learn language effortlessly.

We just don't. So a lot of it is the classes, like the classes tell you to study all this grammar and study all this vocabulary that's really above your head. Like it's it's too hard for you. That's why it's work. That's why it's studying. But if you could just get a language class where people just talk to you and they made it really comprehensible. Like if you think about how you talk to a toddler, I have a two year old. She's almost three. And like when I talk to her, a lot of times we're talking about like what's right there. Like we're talking about the toys that are right there. We repeat everything a lot. We talk about exactly what she's interested in. And so, yeah, if you could get a class that's

a little bit more like a parent talking to a child, then you could learn more effortlessly as an adult. I have a few questions. Sure. So first of all, I know adults who are immersed, who just will not learn. I don't know why, but I, I, I was terrible Spanish student in high school. I just had no interest, but I found that whenever I would meet a girl that I was interested in who was from a foreign country, boy, I mean, most of the foreign vocabulary I have in various languages was to try to flirt with various girls. So, so, so just to say that. I actually have a phrase book for that right over on my bookshelf.

Interestingly enough, you have what? A phrase. Oh, just to say that actually a phrasebook for that right over on my bookshelf interestingly enough you have what a phrase oh for all the phrase girls yeah i'm married now but um uh but for damn no no but just getting to the science of it first of all uh in no particular order my my middle son manny is uh he started speaking at nine months old and i'm not exaggerating it. And by and by 22 months, he could identify all the instruments in the symphony orchestra, all of which is to say he clearly had some sort of aptitude for language that we didn't had nothing to do with the way he was raised. And it's carried over. He's in third grade now.

And he was like, Dad, I would not relinquish control like he just spits out big huge adult words without even trying so I just my daughter's kind of like that too she can like sing entire songs for Woody the Pooh that she has no idea what they mean

yeah so clearly that's there's something going on there with this kind of fertile brain. Okay. But I mean, your son was, was very early with language, right? So it's, it's not a magical thing that all kids have. It's like your son was particularly good at that task. And it continues through to him. So what's your, do you have a question?

Yeah. So, but like I said, nobody goes, I'm just thinking, I'm just dividing this, the kind of the thing in my head as at first glance. So accents to me are not really language in the sense that it's similar to me, like musical styles. If,

if you grow up in an Arabic country, you can, you can play Arabic music and understand it. But if you try to acquire it after like seven or eight years old, Arabic people will always be able to tell, oh, you're not quite, you're not actually Arabic. So I think that's kind of what accents are. And obviously you can learn a language without ever speaking it. So, but then grammar, I noticed that my kids very early on, they start making grammatical mistakes by taking the words that they're learning and forcing them into the grammar that kind of programmed into their brain. Yeah, like over-regularizing them. So like I singed instead of I sang. Yeah, exactly. I noticed that. So that makes me think that

grammar is actually something different than vocabulary that you could have. Totally. Yes. You can have a talent for grammar and a talent for vocabulary and they're not the same thing. Yeah. So the other thing is that vocabulary is not age dependent. So you guys can learn new words every single day. It's easy, right? COVID, social distancing are R-naught, we didn't know those words a couple of years ago. And you can still learn new words when you're 99. It's totally easy. Grammar is a little bit more age sensitive. So it's hard to learn a grammar as you get older. If you already have one, it's working for you. Learning a different one is

harder. So vocabulary, super easy to learn grammar a little harder. Is that good news for Carmen Lynch? Because you're great. Your Spanish grammar is kind of baked in, but your vocabulary, you would suggest, is more infantile. Well, I grew up the right word. No, but that is the right word. I I lived in Spain until I was eight. So when I one of my jokes in Spanish is that I speak like an eight year old girl. And I do, I speak, I,

I speak what I knew back then now to learn the slang and like the words that are like cool and hip. Like I have to learn those when I go to Spain and see family, like, I don't know there. Those words. Yeah. But it's interesting to watch.

Like I, my mom is from Spain and my dad's from New York and my mother only spoke to us in Spanish and my dad only spoke to us in English. So I kind of grew up thinking, well, that's like, I had to, like, I didn't even know they were like tricking us. I just looked at my mom and spoke in Spanish. Cause I thought that's just, it was just programmed. Did you know that it was a different language you just thought mommy you speak to mommies like this no i think i think i just i eventually i knew it was a different language but it wouldn't even cross my mind to speak to my mother in english but hilarious you just started speaking spanish right now like like anyway

a really good strategy one parent one language because that means that you get the consistent language input in both languages. But it almost wasn't even a choice for them because my mother's English was so bad and my dad's Spanish was so bad. They they literally went out four times and got married. So they barely spoke to each other. They just, and then watching my sister marry a Spanish guy and them doing the same thing to their daughters was interesting because I was watching things that I used to do that my nieces do now.

Like in Spanish, you can use double negatives. But then I came to America. I was like, I don't want no broccoli. And my dad was like, don't talk like that. And I was like, but it's totally fine. I can say that in Spanish. It's fine in prison too, by the way. But then what I was going to say is watching my little niece, Nicole, she, we taught both of my nieces and the older one picked it up instantly. She was five years old and she's like, I want candy. And the little one wouldn't speak in English.

It's almost like, are you ashamed? She would only speak Spanish. And then one day it just all came out. Like it was like there was a dam and it just broke open and she had all this English, but she wasn't speaking it for so long. It was really weird. Their first language was Spanish? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's really common for whoever's the oldest sibling to speak the language best. And then the younger siblings all fall off from there because they just have more of the majority language in their lives. What was I going to say? Okay. That makes sense because my sister speaks Spanish better than I do.

She's older. Yeah. That makes sense. Cause my sister speaks Spanish better than I do. She's older. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I'm sure yours, if you left at age eight, you should be pretty solid. I feel pretty, I can understand everything now. Catalan is a different language in the North of Spain. And that was a different experience because we didn't speak that at home, but my cousins, they spoke it to each other. So I mostly understand it. But when I speak, I sound. The north of Spain, by the way, is where Brandy's locket was made. Remember Brandy wore a braided chain from the finest silver from the north of Spain? Oh, for the song.

From the song. Anyway. Do you speak a second language, Dr. Lichtman? Do I? Yeah. Spanish is my best second language. And then I know a little bit of German, less of French. I'm currently doing Duolingo in Dutch.

But as far as language is concerned. I don't do Duolingo. I have my own method, the Natterman method. But we'll discuss that another time. I have a question. How do you explain the fact? I know I don't have kids, so I don't get to watch them learn languages up close,

but it seems to me from my own memory and from my limited interaction with kids, limited ever since the trial. I'm kidding. We're trying to get some comedy in here, you know, because it is a comedy. We have a prison theme going on. Yes, we do. It seems to me that that kids, at least on a vocabulary level, no one was talking about grammatical errors. Kids don't seem to make vocabulary mistakes the way adult learners do.

I've never heard a kid say hot when they mean cold. But adult learners will make those kinds of mistakes. I've never heard a kid say, I wrote this down just so I get it, just so, you know, I've never heard a kid say, or say cold when they mean told. In other words, just get one letter off.

They never do that. That's interesting. I've never seen it. I don't know if that's true. Well, I've never seen it. You've just never observed it? I've never observed it. And I don't, yeah. Because like- I've never seen it that's true well i've never seen it but you've just never observed it i've never observed it and i don't yeah because like i've never seen a kid say tomorrow and they mean yesterday but in in a foreign language you might an adult learner could easily do that uh i think they do sometimes so i know my niece says ask instead of tell all the time

um and i think your niece needs to see somebody about yeah it's it's really adorable because she'll be like oh wait wait wait i need to ask phoebe something before i hang up and we're like okay what do you want to ask her and she's like i love you oh yeah um so yeah i do think kids make mistakes another thing that kids do little kids that adults don't do is over generalize so if they learn dog they might call every single animal a dog you know when they're only like one um because they're like oh i know this word dog that'll work for everything um which adults don't really do well because adults wouldn't do that because an adult when an adult learns the word dog they learn it in conjunction with their native language word they wouldn't hear somebody call

an animal a dog and because that makes sense you call an animal a dog and it could mean like it couldn't mean all animals it could yeah on the other hand my husband considers sheets to be blankets so maybe adults do over generaleralize, but I don't know. I'm going to have to disagree with your observation and say that kids do make mistakes. I think there has to be a grain of truth to what I'm saying, though. I don't think they make the same kinds of mistakes as regularly. Well, are kids as tired as adults? Like, have kids had as much coffee as adults do kids have as many

song lyrics stuck in their heads as adults like maybe these are factors well these are things we need to study um this is what i meant by empty brain space yeah i have more space also do kids ever forget a word like i don't like the kids ever like look at a tree and say fuck i remembered it what the hell was that again? Maybe they don't use the F word, but they might, they just might not verbalize that they might just say nothing. And that's actually one of kids advantages with language learning is that kids can just say nothing. Whereas you can't,

you feel socially obligated to say something. I'll tell you one mistake the kids do make. They have trouble with pronouns. They're like, give it to she instead of like, yes, give it to. That's true. My mother has a huge problem with pronouns in English. Even at her age, she's lived in America for 40 years. She's still like, give it to her and she'll be pointing at you. And I'm like, mom, that's him. What I want to know about you. That's because you don't have to in Spanish. It's just like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Carmen, are you doing anything to up your.

Wait, wait. She did what you just said was interesting. That's because you don't have to in Spanish as if that pattern controls her even 40 years later in English. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you say he, she, he speaks or she speaks, you don't have to say the, he or the, she in Spanish because the verbs are conjugated. So. If you say he, she, he speaks or she speaks, you don't have to say the he or the she in Spanish because the verbs are conjugated. So you can just say habla and that's it. Oh, yeah.

Because I was thinking more like el and ella. They still have that. Yeah. But do you want to say she speaks and we don't know if it's a he or a she. You have to say ella. You would use the word just to to clarify the ambiguity. Yeah. But in French, you have to say the pronoun right in French. You say the pronoun. Yes. Yeah. Because it's ambiguous.

That's like English. That's interesting, though, too, because like we just say the cat, the dog. But when you say L and law and all that is almost confusing the opposite way for us. Like, yeah, it's what what is gender marked on and what is it not marked on? I have one other question along Dan's lines. I know you want to say something else, but some languages are said to be harder to learn and easier to learn. But no language is hard for a child to learn. Right.

And I suppose part of that reason, if there's some I mean, I guess if you were to give to a study of like just English speakers in their 30s and tried to teach them 10 different languages, I believe you would find that certain languages are harder than easier to learn. Totally. Is that just the grammar, which really is the delineation or just I guess as I'm thinking about it, I guess in Chinese, the sounds, everything is different. The phonetics. It's probably a measure of like how far apart the languages are. So English takes a ton of its vocabulary from French. So you have this huge advantage as an English speaker where you can be like, well, the teak in Texas and like, you know,

you can just sort of put a French accent on things and chances are it might be a French word. So Chinese wouldn't have that, you know. The only cognates would be- So there's no languages that are intrinsically more difficult. It's only more difficult because you come from a language

that is nothing like that is far, far away from it. Yeah, so most languages that we deal with a lot are indo-european so any anything from english like geographically over to india is um they're all related so if you try to learn one of those languages which includes french includes german includes hindi you know you have a huge advantage but our language has nothing to do with Chinese. It has nothing to do with Basque. So like you try to learn one of those, you're going to be hurting. I tried to learn Hungarian, just like a few phrases, like just to order coffee and stuff could not do it. Hungarian's not related. So it's, it's really just sort of how far apart the two languages are.

What's a pigeon language? That is when people get thrown together in a prison, for instance, and they make up their own language just by throwing a few words of languages together. So they get like me want coffee. They just sort of make up their own communication system by blending together the different languages that they speak. Is Yiddish a Pidgin language? No, that's a dialect. Or gibberish.

Not the mix of German and Hebrew and English. No, Pidgin is like literally kind of a prison type atmosphere. Because what happens if if those people stay in the prison for a few generations is the language sort of gets fixed by the kids and it becomes a Creole. So you've heard of like Creole in Louisiana. You know, that used to be a pigeon, but now it's a whole language, which is a Creole. And it came out of prison? No. She's talking about people thrown together.

Yeah, so like slavery created a lot of pigeon languages. So it's really... So then Yiddish could be a pigeon language at root. It could have been back then. Yeah, I mean, what did they put together? Like Hebrew speakers with German speakers or something? I don't know how, but it's an interesting language. Are they still, are pigeon languages still being created in the present? Is that still a thing? Do you think? That's a good question. Not that I know of. Maybe like in refugee camps or something.

I want to know if Carmen is, as a question I was asking a few minutes ago is Carmen making an effort to up her vocabulary in Spanish because if you're doing comedy in Spanish I would assume you want to yes and that brings me to another question but I will when I do stand up in Spanish and when I do stand up in English

sometimes it feels like I have two different personalities is that because I learned it from a very passionate Spanish woman versus a kind of deadpan American man? Like both languages were taught to me by different. A lot of people have different personalities in two languages. I can't remember what the, you know, research explanation for that is, but. That's fascinating. I can only tell you that I'm for that is, but. That's fascinating. I can only tell you that I'm less when I speak French to somebody because it still feels foreign to me.

It doesn't feel as real. It doesn't feel as immediate that there's a kind of a wall and I'm less the words have less of an immediate impact. And so there's a little there's actually less timidity. Yes, it's a little more. I agree there. It's a little more playful to do jokes in Spanish because it almost feels like, well, I got my base. I got my English stand up. I got my job. Let me play a little bit with this one, which, you know,

obviously I still play in English, but it almost feels like you're a little more free to play. I think we're talking about two different phenomena. I'm just saying when I hear a word, when I say a word or hear a word in French, it doesn't have an immediate impact. Yeah, like if you hear like a woman was mangled by a

tiger, like if you hear that in French, you might be like, oh, okay. But it might be more forceful to you in English. Yeah, it would be more forceful to me because it just, the meaning is more immediate where it's not being, because there's still like I have to. It takes a second or a half a second or a tenth of a second for me to translate the word in my head.

It's not, you know, many of the words are not immediately like curse words in French probably don't mean as much to you. Yeah, as right as English ones. Yeah, yeah. They wouldn't have the same impact. But anyway, back to my question to you is how are you improving your vocabulary? I'm playing Wordle in Spanish. Does that count?

Yeah. I don't read books in Spanish. It's almost like Do you read books in English? I do. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Need to know the null hypothesis. But I do a lot of crossword puzzles in English because I constantly, I've always had this complex of not being English enough because I you know, if you have to share your languages,

if you have two, it always feels like you don't have enough of one of them. So I've always had this complex that I don't speak. I think you got the English down. Now you need to you need to get that Spanish up to speed. I'm trying. I'm doing more shows. What do you want from me, Dan? I'm just saying I got to get input. So you have to be taking in by either listening or listening to or reading Spanish. Well, what does help? And I know this isn't like enough, but like if I do jokes in Spanish, I sometimes will

ask the audience for the word that they like best. And I will get four different responses because someone's from Mexico. Someone's from Venezuela. Someone's from Barcelona. So so I do learn a little bit that way. But but yeah, I should probably be. Oh, I do watch movies sometimes in their original language. Now, Netflix, every movie on Netflix, almost every movie on Netflix has a Spanish audio track. But very few of them have a French audio track. But very few of them

have a French audio track and it pisses me the F off. Demographic. Because the only, the only movies with a French audio track are those Netflix made. All the Netflix made movies

have an audio track in French. You know, the movie with the N, with the red N on the upper left hand corner. And they all stink mostly. Yeah, but there's all kinds of French cinema. I don't want to watch that garbage. French movies stink.

I like America always. Isn't your friend? Yeah, but I don't like that crap. I like I like American Maverick. And, you know, and how are you improving your French? I'll tell you how I'm doing. I'm watching those god awful movies on Netflix, sitting through them, enduring them. If I if I read a book, I'll always read it in

French if it's available in French. And a lot of YouTube videos. There's got to be a way to get these movies with French soundtracks. They're distributed all over the world. They must have French soundtracks. Well, if I had a French Netflix account, which is probably not available in the United States, I probably could. So I have to watch whatever movies are available. So I'm stuck with, I'm stuck with, like I saw a movie with Brooke shield where she like married, uh, Carrie Elwes and they inherited a castle. And it was,

it was a Christmas. I've been finding like a really long TV show. So Carmen, have you ever watched grand hotel? No, but I've heard of it. I've heard about it. Yeah.

Like people get murdered in like every episode. It's just it's sort of like down Navi, but trashier. Is it a Spanish show or you're watching with a Spanish audio? No, it's Spanish. I mean, everything in its original language, like Money Heist, La Casa de Papel, I think it's called.

That was really good. But I'll watch like I mean, I'll watch like soap operas in spanish sometimes just for the practice the first thing i was able to understand was the news because the news they speak slow you know the news and this they speak slowly they speak uh crisply and a lot of vocabulary is is is more formal and there's a lot of proper names but actually sometimes i have trouble with those because i don't know if that's a word that i don't know or somebody's name yeah but in the news they're saying a lot of things they're not using

slang and and they're saying the word in a crisp way so but but, does do you ever get to the point where you're perceiving the language without realizing it's a second language? Yeah, but moments here and there, moments here and there. But usually it feels like a second language to me. It's even after 20 years of study. Now, I don't know if this is because I've never lived in a French speaking environment, but even after 20 years of study, it still feels foreign to me. And if they talk really, really fast, sometimes I don't get it. Have you read Me Talk Pretty One Day? No, that's what's his name? Sedaris. Yeah. Yeah. It's about learning French like in France. I think you'd like it. Well, what what, what does he have anything to say about the question that I just

posed? Oh, like if it'll ever... If it's ever possible, if it's possible for me, even at middle age right now, to get to a native or near native level where I don't even realize that I'm

speaking a foreign language. Not really. I mean, his book is mostly about how awkward he feels in France and how he'll just like buy stuff just to have the storekeepers be nice to him and talk to him in French um so he would definitely say no you will not ever be native like and um yeah I don't think you can unless you either live in a country where it's spoken, have a partner that speaks that language, or forget your English. Well, I don't want to leave America

and I have trouble with relationships. So it looks like I speak it quite competently. But I haven't hit that stage where, as Noam suggested, is it ever like you don't even realize. But aren't there apps where you can talk to French people? Well, there's also French people that you can talk to.

But I mean, that are not here. If you can't find a French person in New York, there is a website called conversationexchange.com. You find somebody that wants to learn English and if you want to, and you like, I'll type in learning French. Okay. Speak English, learning French, and it'll list. And then I'll say,

and then I'll filter it. I'll say women. Cause I'm really trying to get laid. And then, and then, you know, it never worked, but you know what? I'll tell you what I didn't, but you know, dove actually had sex with one of the women I met on that. Don't embarrass the professor. Come on. I have more questions. I'm sorry, but this is a you know, you were the comedy side, but you got to admit. I have a phrase book for picking up chicks in other languages. So but you got to admit, we're asking good questions for a bunch of comedians.

Totally. Yeah. Oh, no. I listened to one of your podcast episodes. It was on economics and you went into this huge tangent on language learning. I was like, wow, these people are really into language learning. Well, I am. No one wants to have a better vocabulary in English, which is a very, very, I think, I mean, who gives a shit? downloading and exporting everything I know about language that I've ever learned my whole life. Where is the science on this whole Chomsky thing about universal words? Universal grammar? It's supposed to be mother in every language or something. I don't remember. It's sort of like that language has different settings that it's supposed to explain why kids can learn language so fast uh so there's

some people who say they don't you know it takes them years like that's a long time but it is true that kids can do amazing things with language before they can you know tie their shoes um so yeah i mean it does seem like kids do these amazing things with language so i guess chomsky saying that like our brains are ready for language. So your brain knows that either the adjectives are going to go before the noun or the adjectives are going to go after the noun. Then all you have to do is listen to English and be like, okay, big cat,

the adjective goes before the noun. So that's how my language is going to be. As far as where the science is on it, I mean. Is he the greatest linguist of all time considered to be the. He's the most famous. He's terrible in Israel. But so I'm sorry I interrupted you about the science. I interrupted you.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, some people some people see it that way. I think a lot of people now just consider it like pattern detection. Like Chomsky thinks language is like special and magical. And other people are like, no, the human brain is just really good at detecting patterns. And whatever input we get, you know, we'll notice patterns. So it's just our general intelligence that sort of helps us learn language. It's not special.

Is there such a thing people talk about? They the term around has an ear for language uh is there a special kind of intelligence some people obviously can learn language better than others i assume is that just because they're smarter in general or is there a particular kind of intelligence wherein one can learn a language more easily. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, it's a specific aptitude. Like you can be great at language and not at math, as many of my colleagues like to say all the time that they're like, I don't understand math. So, yeah, I mean, I do think you can be like better at language. But the really cool thing is that you think if you think of everybody in society, so even really dumb people basically speak English as well as you, like anyone who can

communicate in English, like regardless of how smart or dumb they are, they basically have the same mental system. And that's kind of cool. Now, is there such a thing as teaching a child too many languages if they had access to like six? I don't know how, like just say school, neighborhood, parents. Would that be like too confusing for a child or would you be like, no, just go for it? I mean, I think what would happen is the child would probably latch on to two or three. I don't really know of a lot of examples of people learning four or five or six languages all at the same time. They probably wouldn't get enough exposure to each language either. Although we have a good friend of ours. He hasn't been on the show in a long time. Tim Doner. You

know who Tim Doner is? He's a polyglot. He speaks like 23 languages. Right, but he doesn't speak them all at anywhere near native level. He would say would admit that some languages he can have a basic conversation. Some he can. Yeah, but we called it. We ordered Chinese food on the on the podcast and he spoke to the to the Chinese delivery guy. But he doesn't. But there's levels and always levels. And so one could learn 20 languages, but can one learn 20 languages to native level fluency? Or three or four? What's the maximum if there is a maximum?

I mean, there isn't a maximum. It's just sort of like diminishing returns. So I have heard. So I don't do a very good job of exposing my daughter to Spanish. There's just a lot of other things going on. We have jobs. She has some, you know, different communication issues. You're feeling guilty about it, aren't you?

You have all these, if you're looking to, if you're looking to be reassured that you're not going to find it here. Yeah. No, I just, we would encourage you to expose her more to Spanish. I'm letting that girl go. I'm going to try to take her somewhere next summer. Cause she's going to be like almost four and hopefully COVID will be mostly over. Is your baby's daddy a Spanish speaker?

No, he took it for years and years and years. And we consider him novice high on the proficiency scale with lots of potential. So he's taking a lot of Spanish classes. I think you've got an uphill battle then if you want your child to be a Spanish. Exactly. Anyway, where I was going with this is if I wanted to really be serious about getting her to speak Spanish, I would have to try to get a third of her day to be in Spanish. That's just sort of a rough ballpark estimate. So, you know, if I was able to get her a Spanish-speaking nanny

instead of putting her in English-speaking daycare, then I'd have a shot. My town doesn't have Spanish daycare, though. They have all English daycare except one is Chinese. And even that one's, like, mostly in English with, like, some Chinese. We have a Spanish-speaking nanny. I was hoping that that would, but it turns out now the nanny's English has improved.

I was going to say that's very New York. I have friends who have Spanish-speaking nannies. We've had Brazilian, Filipino, now we have a... Is there any particular reason why you've chosen Spanish

as the language that you've pursued? That's your best second language, you said. Is there any particular reason why you've chosen Spanish as the language that you've pursued? And that's your best second language, you said. So is there a particular reason? It's kind of a dumb reason because I made the decision at age 12. But there was a Spanish teacher and a French teacher. And the French teacher was just too happy for my taste. She just like every day she'd go to the class, she'd be like, she was just super enthusiastic and i was a little bit more morose and i was like i don't like that teacher i'm gonna take spanish and uh yeah it turned out to be a great life decision just because were you goth oh goth just sort of nerdy like you know books about like witchcraft and stuff.

But I didn't like wear black. Did you play Dungeons and Dragons? I totally did. She she looks a bit like Camille Theobald, don't you think? Come, you know, Camille, the comedian. No, I don't know. Well, then you wouldn't be able to answer that question. But my son, my son, man, we put up a picture of Camille Theobald, Nicole.

And oh, I think I know who you're talking about. I can Google it. I need to see the photo. It's very it's very risky to tell a woman or anybody. But I'm a sexist, especially when she looks like someone else. And I say, I'm going to put the picture up. There's a there's a butterfly in her stomach now. Just hoping I can see it a little bit.

Yeah. The hair is about the same length. Are you are you looking at her? She Googled. I just Google image. Oh, OK. Anyway, my son, Manny, is dying to play Dungeons and Dragons now. And so what's that?

Because the stranger. And I'm like, yeah, I listen to some podcasts. And then I said, well, listen, I'm not going to play Dungeons and Dragons with you. I'm too busy. I said, why don't you get some of your friends in school to play with you? He goes, Dad, you want to embarrass me? I'm like, why are you embarrassed? Dungeons and Dragons is not cool. I can't tell my

friends that I want to play Dungeons and Dragons. I'm like, millions of people play Dungeons and Dragons. Especially now after Stranger Things. All of those people are not cool. You know what I've noticed, by the way, Dr. Lichtman, to get back to our main topic. Here's something I've noticed, and maybe it could be a subject for a paper.

I don't know if you have tenure yet. I do. But you're about to go. Oh, okay. Now I can just sit around doing nothing. When I dream in French, I have noticed the following phenomenon. Now, when a person dreams, there's different characters in your dream. You might dream that you're arguing with your mother you might dream that you're uh may have on a date with a

boy so there's your there's you in the dream and then there's your mother or the boy or whomever a hot dog chasing a bagel through the lincoln tunnel okay i have noticed the following when i am dreaming in french i speak french as I speak it in life. But the other characters speak to me in French. But it's actually just it's actually just what's the word? Gibberish. In other words, the I can. In other words, it seems like different parts of my brain control different characters in the dream.

The me in the dream is controlled by one part of my brain more conscious i guess and the other characters are controlled are kind of unconfident they don't speak french they speak gibberish very interesting uh you know anybody notice this phenomenon besides me your therapist about but what's that i said something to talk to your therapist about i'm offering you tenure on a silver platter. Of course you already have. Oh, like do it, do a paper about it. Well, okay. I think it's fascinating. Two parts of my brain control my dreaming. This could apply to all dreams. That is not what happens when I dream in Spanish. So when I've been in immersion situation,

it's like when I studied abroad or I did the Middlebury College they do a summer program where you could go be immersed in French for like six weeks um so when I'm in those situations I dream in Spanish but the cool thing is you know my parents in real life don't speak a word of Spanish and in the dream they just speak to me in Spanish just like it's comprehensible spanish yeah and and carmen what carmen mine is completely different and i'm i don't have volume in my like people always ask me do you dream in english and spanish i'm like i don't know they're like visual they're like images and pictures most of the time things are happening but not a lot is

being said so i actually was going to ask you can you actually dream in two languages because it doesn't feel like you really can unless i dreamt that way when i was young and now i'm just i don't know so but you dream in one language or i don't i honestly don't there's not a lot of talking there's a lot of action running and action they're like scary and they're not scary. They're active subtitles. I don't know. You guys are going to have to find like a dream professor to have on.

Well, I don't know if anybody else has any more linguistic questions, because if not, we can we can inquire as to Dr. Lichtman's life, not her personal life. But if he has any any interest in stand up comedy and if so, who her favorites might be. And by the way, stand up comedy in Spain is, you know,

is I think becoming a thing as as Carmen knows, maybe you can watch some Spanish comedians and that could. But actually American New York City comic comics here and the cellar. No joke. They are so big in Spain. Like I'll talk to people and they'll they'll just like be like,

da, da, da. Mark Norman, Sam Morrell. Like, it's just crazy how many some comics out there only watch American comics. Interesting. That's American comics. Interesting. It's just a thing. Yeah. Well, because comedy is, was born here. And so I think people perceive this English,

it's like watching opera in Italian. It's considered, well, if you're going to watch opera, you might got to watch it in Italian. Stand-up is, English is considered sort of the language of stand-up. Yeah. I honestly don't watch a lot of comedy, but I also don't watch a lot of comedy but i also don't watch a lot of tv or movies or anything um i just look at facebook all the time because i don't like to

like commit to a whole you know show um so yeah that's a waste of time but um do I have interest in stand-up comedy? I do. I don't have any, like, favorite particular people. But they had this program for people at my university where they could train professors in doing stand-up comedy. And so we had to, like, write and revise, I don't know, five minutes or something about our field of study. And so I did that and I'm completely blanking on what the name of it was, but I assumed that you found me because I did this like standup comedy for professors thing. No, not at all. I found you because I just stumbled on you because I Googled Camille Theobald. No, I, I was just, I had a question in my mind about language acquisition, age and language acquisition. And well, wouldn't you know it?

Dr. Lippman pops right up there. And. Oh, I have a question for you. Is, is it controversial at the university? When like an example, like Latinx, when they try to impose the order of one language on another or say that a language is sexist because it has gender and any thoughts related to that that you can give us? Yeah, I mean, it is controversial. Like most Latino people don't say Latinx. It's kind of a thing that like upper-class woke people say. Was it actually controversial at universities? No, because they just embrace the whole woke thing. So, but yeah.

Spoken like a woman with tenure. What's that? Spoken with slight contempt, like someone who has tenure, like, you know, I could, like you can, you can put it out there. Tenure is actually terrible. We should get rid of tenure. Like people don't use it to actually do something that's politically risky. Like they just are so burned out by the time they get tenure that they just want to, you know, sort of be dead wood and like maybe actually watch some TV and stop working 24 7.

So, yeah. And tenure creates no mobility. Are you young to have tenure? You had mentioned, I won't mention your age, but you had mentioned it prior to the show. Yeah. Is that young, that age that you had told me, is that young for tenure? It's not super young. No. So like, if you think about it, like say you graduate college at 21, a PhD would take like five years if you're really fast so you could actually be 26 and get a job and then you could be 32 and get tenure so let's say 32 is like the youngest anyone pretty much gets tenure um the thing is there's no tenure track jobs anymore like universities just hire adjuncts

because they're cheaper and you can fire them um so the whole the entire ship of academia is slowly slowly sinking like jobs like mine tenure jobs are evaporating there's there's no tenure of course in the world of stand-up comedy and i've been working here since the 90s and i feel like i'm about to be shown the door well i i think that this whole it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out. But this loan forgiveness that they did, regardless of how you feel about it or whether you think it's legal and all that stuff,

it shined a big spotlight on a question which wasn't being considered, which is, is college worth it? Is every major worth it? I mean, when you need a federal intervention to forgive loans for something that was considered to be a no-brainer investment in your future, and now it's being compared to a fraud, this is not going to go away overnight. And this is in some way has to change the whole. I predict a complete. Overturning of the whole system.

And I do think people are going to stop going to college. I think people are going to do more learning online that. Yeah, I mean, I think they already are. Yeah, it's already happening. I mean, there's so many ways, even for kids like to get rich or become famous once. I mean, I've been in places at shows where I'm like, what do you want to they're like, what do you want to be? Or I ask them or whatever. We're talking about the future. And they're like a YouTuber. And I'm like, what? OK, not everybody can be a YouTube, but you can't pick if you're going to be an influencer. But

that's just where they're going. They're like, I don't need to go to college. I can just be an influencer. Well, whatever it is in the future, I think it will be fair to say now, listen, if you want to get a loan, you got to pick a major that that we know is likely at least to be a return on that investment. I actually train foreign language teachers like to be foreign language teachers in the public school. And 100% of our graduates get jobs every year. This summer, it was like faster than ever. So, you know, mostly it's Spanish teachers, but even when we have French and German teachers, they always get hired. So I do not have to worry about my graduates not getting that career.

Yeah. So, so that, and, and, well, I mean, we've said it all, but there's something wrong with people. I mean, the example I saw was, and, and, but I don't mean it to be flippant. It's just, it stuck in my mind. It's like gender studies. Like people are majoring in gender studies and they, they go into Hawk for gender studies and then they get out like, well, how do you get hired? Who's hiring people with gender studies degrees? It's, um, you, that's gonna, that's, it has to stop. If you want that, pay your own rent. Yeah. I don't, I don't really think that majoring in, in gender studies is a thing that prepares you for any job other than just, you know, having a BA. Yeah. I mean, it's fine. It's to study it. Knowledge is, look, I'm a big believer in knowledge is its own reward. And I, I only

admire people, no end who delve into something. And but when you start borrowing money for it and then don't want to pay it back and you want that, it changes everything. Yeah, that's that's another problem with 10 years. Like, let's say gender studies is really hot right now and you hire three professors. And then in 20 years, no one wants to do gender studies. Well, you're still stuck with three professors. So you can't you can't change and become modern because there's so many systems for. I was as I was saying earlier, contrast that with a comedy show where they'll cut you right off at the knees. I mean, if you're not getting those laughs, I got to compete with these young people. Nicole, any thoughts on today's show?

Wait, I just want to say one thing for For anybody who's interested in this tenure issue, and maybe you'd be interested in it, Professor, there's a riveting interview with Glenn Lowry and Amy Wax. Now, Amy Wax is this very controversial professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School. They're trying to fire her now, despite the fact she has tenure. That's the thing. Tenure doesn't really protect you.

Yeah. From getting canceled. And she and they I'm not going to go into it. They're trying to fire her for some things, which she said, which you could see why they want to fire her. You could totally see why they want to fire her. On the other hand, her defenses of herself are pretty damn compelling. And I would just I would recommend this podcast.

It's really riveting. Glenn Lowry and Amy Wax this week. And what's it called? The podcast. I'm not sure what name is podcast. We just Google Glenn. I'll send you the link. And Nicole, any thoughts on today's episode?

I thought it was really interesting. I've never once considered my life dreaming in another language. So I thought that was cool that you all had like experiences with that. Now, can you say that in German, please? Definitely not. I know a little bit of Spanish, but not much. As I said, Noam's dream is to have a bigger vocabulary. It seems like that's relatively easy and within your grasp.

What is your main way of doing that? Breeding or? It's not breeding. Breeding. I don't know where the B came from. No. Well, I mean, despite everything that we're hearing here, I find that the older I get, the harder it is for me to learn new words. I do try. And I think what got me into it, I read now on the Kindle most of the time as opposed to books. And the Kindle gives you something which I wish I had when I was younger, that when you don't know a word, you can press the word and it gives you the definition. And it'll also keep track of every word that you've pressed.

And you can even it'll even give you like a flashcard type quiz where it'll test you on all the words that you you haven't known. So, yeah, it's Yeah, so it's fun, but it really has shined a light on the fact that there's a lot of words I don't know, a lot of words I thought I knew that I didn't really quite know. And then some people I know, like our friend Coleman, who's half my age,

he just effortlessly uses not fancy words for the sake of being fancy, but exactly the right word. It's you know, it's more precise. It's it's it's narrow and exactly the meaning that he wanted, where I would fall back on a somehow a more general term, which is right, but it's not. Or you would use two words and you would get that precision. So where does he get that from? Upbringing, education? What where was the genius? Oh, and and he's he's, you know, and he's going to Columbia and he likes it. You know, he likes it. And I've noticed this just about life.

A lot of the things that I. I'm interested in now and wish I knew more about now, I had zero interest in these things when I was college, like zero. All I cared about was girls and the guitar. I don't know if it's full of hormones. I don't know what it was. I could not focus on things. I would just sit in college and I hated it.

And I'd sit through like Soviet foreign policy, like meant nothing to me. And then at some point in my about my 40s, I said, oh, my God, this is all fascinating. That's sort of the tragedy is that. And it was me the same thing. I had no interest in learning a language until one day I started studying French. And I'm like, for some bizarre reason, I like I'm enjoying this. And I had no interest in it previously. And it's kind of a tragedy that it seems like college is wasted on the not.

Youth is wasted youth and and, you know, I hated college. I liked it socially. I hated it. I, I, I liked it neither. I had no social or academic. I had only one happy year of academics. That was my first year in law school. For whatever reason, I enjoyed that. And then the second,

third year were miserable. Okay. Karen Lichtman, is there anything you'd like to plug? Do you have any books, key chains, bumper stickers? Yeah, I do. I have a short little book. It's on TPRS, which stands for teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling. So you guys were talking about, you know, as an adult, can you just learn language effortlessly like kids do? And this is a teaching method. It's been around for a long time since the nineties that tries to create those situations of talking, just actually communicating using like really basic language and repetition. And yeah, it's a really, really great way to start out learning a language.

This is what's a really great way to start out to teach. Okay. So it's teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling. So I didn't come up with this. This is, you know, been around since the nineties in my book to sort of it's it's a short thing that for language teachers that tells them, you know, how do people teach this way? And then also, like, why? So so so it's a book for language teachers. Yeah. By the way, the way they're teaching reading now is an abomination. Oh, without the phonics? Yeah. What the hell? the way they're teaching reading now is an abomination. Oh, without the phonics?

Yeah. What the hell? What are they doing? Mike, my son, the smart one, could not make heads or tails out of the way they were teaching him to read. They would give him the wrong answer because he didn't identify the picture as opposed to. And finally, I just sat him down and I taught him to read. And he's by far the best reader in his class. But I taught him the old fashioned way.

Did they do phonics or not do phonics? Say it again? Did they do phonics with him? No, they were not doing phonics. Oh yeah. They got to do phonics. Phonics is good. So this book is available. What's the name of the book? Okay. I should really just put it in the chat. It's like teaching proficiency through reading. Oh, that's actually the name of the book. Okay.

That's yeah. By Karen Lichtman. And then there's a colon and then it says an input based method for language teaching or an input based. I have to say that our demographic, this is, this is not exactly targeted marketing. So it's TPRS, right? Yeah. TPRS.

This is not a book for the general public is what I'm getting at. Just Google TPRS Lickman. If you're interested in language teaching or language learning, it would be for you. Like I said, it's short. I still say the best way to learn a foreign language, albeit not so easy, is to go to prison in a country where that language is spoken.

That is also a valid way. Because where else are you going to get that kind of 24-7 immersion? Get a girlfriend from a foreign country, Dan. A girlfriend from a foreign country. You could do that. But first of all, it's not necessarily 24-7. Second of all, I have commitment issues. I guess I also have being in prison issues.

And thirdly, women who speak, in my case, French, would be the target language. They want to learn English. It becomes a battle. They don't shave their arms. It becomes a battle. No, they do. Now, that's like a 60s era.

You have to find someone who does not want to learn English. It's very hard to find, especially in New York City. If they're living in New York, and they get insulted if you speak to them in French. They're like, wait a minute. We're in America. Let's speak English. Very difficult. It becomes it becomes a battle. We got around. I will always I will always give in first because that's my personality.

OK, thank you, Karen Lichtman, professor of Northern at Northern Illinois University. And by her book, which the name escapes me. TPRS, everybody. Here you go. Carmen Lynch, vertically obese. Thank you. It's her special. And look her up online, you know, and or go to her website, carmenlynch.com to find out where she'll be playing near you.

And do you have your Spanish dates on there as well? Miami, September 8th. In Spanish? In Spanish. A whole hour? Yes. Dios mio. Adios.

Thank you, everybody. Adios. Thank you, everybody. Adios. Bye.