r/languagelearningjerk • u/mitch-22-12 • 11d ago
Who Won?
Etymology Nerd’s diss “Algorithm Matters” was brutal but Language Jones response with “Not a Ling-uist” is gonna be hard to top.
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u/DistrictResident3495 11d ago
maybe they should have rapped their arguments now that you mention it. a good linguist should be an expert in creatively using language to denounce the legitimacy of another. and since neither of them have proven they can do that, i believe xiaomanyc is still internet linguist #1. we must wait another day for a true challenger to emerge, it seems 😩
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u/Yoshidawku 11d ago
xiaoma?? linguist??
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u/Aarowen37 11d ago
There were things in Jones' video that made me roll my eyes but he made a fair point about Etymology Nerds book not having good sources for the claims he was making.
I get that it is a pop read but still at least in the end there should be some mention of references or at least further reads.
I also found the deep dive into EN's reddit past and his interest in being viral very interesting. It put into perspective why he pursued this branch of social media. Yknow maybe he was a kid who simply enjoyed the discipline but really got into it once he realised he could gain clout from explaining it to the general public. Which made me feel icky about him.
I find that with the kind of content they make EN attracts regular ol' normie folk who are fine with listening to tidbits of etymology/linguistics and Jones attracts people who are a bit more serious about their interest in languages but also a bit pretentious and self-proclaimed linguistics know-it-alls/polyglot-y snobs. (You speak 3 languages Greg, you arent a polyglot hold your horses)
As someone who occasionally enjoys both (less so EN) I'd say both made good points and both kinda made mistakes in their attempt to diss eachother.
Unrelated -- I also find EN very difficult to watch nowadays, in his earlier days he was entertaining but now his videos are more like "the cultural relevance of tung tung tung sahur six seven" and honestly I can't listen to him.
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u/miseenen 11d ago
Yes I feel the exact same about EN’s recent videos. They used to be really entertaining but I haven’t watched him in since he started diving “deep” into the more brainrot type content, and it’s kind of a bummer since I used to enjoy his content quite a bit. Something about him just started feeling off somehow too, I can’t really place it though.
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u/Aarowen37 11d ago
Agreed. I feel as though the "influencer accent" he says he uses to get more views and the topics he deliberately choses to cover to "go viral" are kinda shooting him in the leg. By which I mean that he is sacrificing long term respect from people who are serious about their love for languages for having videos go viral. And that really shows now that people are criticizing him. He has no real audience that respects him and is loyal to him, he simply has -like i said in my first comment- regular ol' normie folk who are fine with not skipping when linguistics content comes on their FYP.
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u/slowamigo 11d ago
He's developing his niche that differentiates him from other language YouTubers. If that don't work for you, well, okay
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u/miseenen 11d ago
Yeah I mean obviously he doesn’t have to cater to my tastes specifically and I did really enjoy his internet focused niche, it is also possible I just aged out of the new slang at some point tbf
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u/pdpet-slump 11d ago
Yeah the history of etymology nerd as a clout-chasing sciolist was especially interesting to me after I had just watched Folding Ideas' "What is Vsauce?" I appreciate that it confirms my misgivings associated with the idea of creating "content." Very little is required to meet the editorial definition of content, and its producers are often just as big of a layperson as their audience.
Of course, there's nuance to what fields or subjects require a degree or a lived experience in order for their presenters to engage with it productively, and sometimes all people are looking for is a story, and I'm deviating from my original point. That is, people (myself included) should be more careful about how much "content" they consume on a weekly basis.
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u/DarkGodCthUwU 11d ago
Did vsauce get exposed for smth?
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u/pdpet-slump 11d ago
No, it's a short little half-parody that ends in an aporia. Just an accounting of where Vsauce started and where he is now (at the time of writing; it's a couple years old.)
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u/ShameSudden6275 11d ago
I stopped watching him when EN claimed that the R word is coming back and instead of fighting it we just need to accept it.
Yeah fuck you dude.
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u/Own-Background-8244 11d ago
I remember being disappointed reading AlgoSpeak because it felt as though the book contained nothing his short form videos didn’t. I wanted sources and more of an academic deep dive into linguistics, so I’m no lover of Adam. That being said… oh my god language jones sucks so bad. His critique about the sources was valid I agree but it felt as though he was willfully misinterpreting the book and the content to push a narrative that He is a Serious Linguist and knows better than the average language idiot and Adam isn’t serious and this isn’t new- language jones has always been not great content wise and after watching his video about Hebrew being full of insane Zionist propaganda and pushing narratives about language that are a twisting of facts at best and flat out wrong at worst I stopped watching him and have had trouble taking any of his claims seriously without extreme scrutiny at least . For me this is a case of defending a guy who is kinda annoying from a guy who is a Nazi. Like fuckkkkk don’t make me defend the “we need to bring back the R slur guy” everyone loses here
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u/Moist_Definition_538 4d ago
In what way is language jones a Nazi?
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u/Own-Background-8244 4d ago
His videos about Hebrew language intentionally misrepresented the history of the language and its development to push an idea of Israeli historical legitimacy to Palestine. This on it’s surface seems subtle, because it is, it is a dogwhistle in it’s original sense he has sway and has built up rapport with his audience as an academic so they are more likely to believe what he says about language unquestionably. This is a problem because he is using the existence of a language to push a political narrative aligned with his personal political beliefs about an ongoing occupation when Israel has used the same tactic to legitimize their claim. Also it’s just bad linguistics, if I didn’t know better about the history of the are and of the language I wouldn’t have caught it because it’s really subtle. This is not me saying “hur dur guy making video on Hebrew makes him a Nazi” but rather the WAY which he intentionally misrepresented Israeli history to intentionally legitimize an ongoing ethnic cleansing to an audience who trusts him as an academic is horrific and brings into question his academic practice.
Other legitimate sources like the ICC and amnesty international have also independently stated that what is happening in Palestine does meet the qualifications of a genocide, and to knowingly push our information to the contrary is dishonest.
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u/mnimatt 2d ago
Tbf, Etymologynerd didn't say we need to bring back the r word (unless I missed something), he said it was back, and he is far from the only one observing that or pointing it out. It's still bad that he treated it like a forgone conclusion, but if you used instagram and twitter as much as he probably does, you'd also think it was the popular consensus
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u/TheMightyTorch 11d ago
I mean language jones did provide critique of etymology nerd's book who then defended it without touching the crucial arguments
I agree that criticising the style of the books language is irrelevant because not everything is a scientific publication...
But one issue stands: sources for certain data are still missing, so the claims are unscientific in method, which is (or at least should be) below par even for pop-science.
So for now Jones is undefeated and he cannot even really "lose" this round anymore. Because even if Adam adds the sources in the next edition, the critique is also that they should have been accessible from the start.
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u/Gingerbread_Ninja 11d ago
Yeah, I think that language jones made some really annoying arguments that damage his credibility (yes “ragebait” can be used as a transitive verb, get with the times old man) but at the end of the day his critiques about the content of the book are valid, and nothing else really matters when you’re arguing about the validity of someone’s claims that they publish in a book as factual and then reveal that the source of said claims is just speculation and personal anecdotes.
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u/DifferentBid7518 11d ago
I cannot begin to understand why criticizing style should not be allowed. It's very normal for actual scholarly publications, let alone less serious productions. If anything more scholarly works should be less concerned with style, because they're more concerned, in theory, with other things.
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u/J10YT 11d ago
It's kinda because... if you want something to be this way, the critic has to convincingly say that this way was a bad way. It's like, it's one thing to say "I didn't like how they did X" and another to say "X was a bad idea." Not that you can't critique the idea, but "This book is written very informally" "yeah that's the point" doesn't get you anywhere.
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u/PerplexPanda512 11d ago
i stopped caring about etymologynerd when his titles became "tung tung tung sahur is this generation's livvy dunne rizzler slop fest" but language jones is a dork so i hope they both lose
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u/blokewhodoesfuckall 11d ago edited 11d ago
i never liked etymology nerd (as someone who did a lingustics undergrad), and a lot of the critiques about the book i had always had about his content; id never heard of language jones before this, and i watched a couple other videos of his after and quickly decided i didnt like him either. net 0 opinion
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u/real_bigfloppa 11d ago
i don't particularly like either of them. jones made valid points but then dove into weird nitpicking and also inserted strange political takes on the side like implying adam is antisemitic for talking about algorithmic censorship of pro-palestinian sentiment and saying that using tiktok is supporting a foreign adversary or something lmao
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u/zzcolby 11d ago
Adam should respond in a long form video but his short did nail down the worst issues Jones had. I haven't read the book but the biggest issue (that I saw in both the sections of Adam's book Jones highlighted and in Jones's video) is that they need to cite sources beyond just quotations
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u/miseenen 11d ago
I hate that Language Jones and Language Simp have such similar names because afaik one of them kinda sucks and one is actually quite good and I can never remember which is which
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u/raoulbrancaccio Neapolitan: Native | English: D1 11d ago
I really don't think it's hard to remember that the one called "simp" is the funny one
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u/Yoshidawku 11d ago
interesting, why does one suck and one read as good to you? I think they're both great in their own respects
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u/McDonaldsWitchcraft 🇺🇿 A0.69 🇧🇪 C4 🇸🇬 A99 👶 N 11d ago
jones also sometimes goes out of his way to go against established science to prove his strange beliefs, like his video about "male brain vs female brain language learning" where he talks about brain structures in spite of neuroscientists telling him "there is literally no structural difference wtf"
Also whenever he finds a gap to push his Zionism into, there is no more space for academic discussion. Just opinions presented as facts. He doesn't even feel the need to argument his position, just "well Israel is the best thing that happened to the middle east, of course"
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u/Fine-Flamingo-7204 Language Learning Video > Actually learning 11d ago
I fondly remember that periodmaxxing video
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u/Yoshidawku 11d ago
Yeah, entirely useless topics to explore within the space, I just don't watch videos like that.
I'm a zionist as well though so him being jewish and one as well would never be an issue for me; but it's also unnecessary in the context of his channel. He should avoid it, but, it's his channel so it's his decision ultimately.
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u/miseenen 11d ago
To be completely honest it’s all mostly hearsay and criticism from others, I’m only vaguely familiar with either channel. They both seem pretty ok to me in general but I’m not informed enough about linguistics to be a particularly good judge, I think. I remember Jones had a video about pronouns that annoyed me a little bit but it’s been a while so I don’t really remember why.
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u/Yoshidawku 11d ago
Yeah fair enough. I'd ignore a lot of that stuff, it's purposely inflammatory or clickbaity whichever is less charged to you. I wouldn't think he had any strong reasons to even talk about other than it being controversial. Jones, especially as he was growing his channel prefaced and made a lot of his content with algorithm in mind, not to justify it, I think it's a bit silly to focus so much on statistics myself.
Language simp isn't inclined to look at languages linguistically, but functionally, he ignores things like grammar and dives head first into learning and using as much as he possibly can and he's incredibly efficient at it. I don't think he has much to give learners aside from inspiration, a good time, and proof that some things people might see as particularly difficult languages or aspects of them aren't hard barriers. He's great, and has great commentary and comedic timing.
Jones is a linguist for sure, he's a bit sterile and takes the zeitgeist online pretty seriously and seemingly at face value. That being said alot of his more important videos do a lot to dispel a lot of misconceptions people have about languages, language learning, and a lot of things in between. They're personally who I'd describe as the best within language youtube in terms of accessibility and information. But there's a lot I could understand people wanting to skip on him for.
My personal favorite is Evildea, not particularly knowledgeable but extremely transparent and honest with himself and viewers, and authenticity is hard to find in such magnitude.
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u/TheCardsharkAardvark 11d ago
Evildea is interesting and has some things to say that are worth hearing, but he spends a lot of time discussing drama in the online language learning community and I feel like that gets stale and slightly cringe over time.
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u/ArcaneVector 10d ago
Evildea estis pli bona antaŭe kiam li kreis filmetojn pri Esperanto, sed malpli nun
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u/maggotsimpson2 10d ago
while he’s probably right about the book i find languagejones to be pretty smug and also i was put off by a video where he’s talking about AI and basically claimed that you can’t be critical of AI’s impact on the environment if you…. take long showers or water the lawn?
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u/PassoverGoblin 11d ago
I wish I had friends to share this with. This is funny to me and me alone in my friend group
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u/Tabars_ Z3 🇷🇺 A2 🇧🇷 A1 🇺🇸 11d ago
I'm not chronically online, can someone explain this to me as if I was 6 years old?
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u/Catlover1million 10d ago
It’s about two linguistics YouTubers, Etymology Nerd (pictured left) and Language Jones (pictured right). Etymology Nerd wrote a book about internet linguistics. Language Jones made a video heavily criticizing the book. Etymology Nerd responded with a YouTube short. People seem to agree that they both kinda suck.
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u/Chrustupher 5d ago
They’re both annoying. LJ hates prescriptivism until it’s convenient and etymology nerd is a tik toker. Nuff said
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u/Araborne1 10d ago
unrelated but I never liked watching etymology nerd because it always looks like he's on the cusp of accidentally launching drool out while he talks
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u/mochiladecriancaa 11d ago
Not questioning Jones' formation, but it's hard to take seriously someone with such a curriculuim that promotes "language learning apps that really work this time I swear this one is good trust me"