From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter, and this week I want to talk about what it's like,
what it involves to learn another language,
to wrap your head around even the basics of another language,
because I want my listeners to understand that most languages aren't like English.
I worry about us English speakers sometimes
because I think that it's easy to suppose that the way a language works is pretty much the way ours works,
which is frankly not that hard.
Now remember, I'm not talking about the spelling system.
I'm talking about what we say.
What you say, as opposed to the crazy way that we happen to write it,
in English is fairly straightforward and not just because we speak the language.
What I mean can be illustrated by, of all things, what a great, warm,
wonderful way to open up the show, Ella Fitzgerald singing the classic Standard, How High the Moon.
This is a song written in 1940 by the witty Nancy Hamilton,
who's actually not being witty in this song.
And Morgan Lewis is the music.
Just listen to, well, whatever you want to listen to, but in particular, the nature of the lyric.
Somewhere there's music, how faint the tune.
Somewhere there's heaven.