and whose videos nevertheless share one particular flaw. I’m talking about Julie Maksimova, better known as Julingo, and Dr. Taylor Jones, better known as Language Jones. You can see what they’ve both done there with their noms, but that has nothing to do with their flaw, which I will reveal in a minute. First, though, I need to mention their strengths, so I don’t leave you wondering why I say they are “worth listening to.”

Julingo introduces herself this way:

Hi everyone! My name is Julie and I am passionate about languages. On this channel I am doing profiles of different languages of our planet in order to inspire you to look deeper into them and maybe even to start learning some of them! I think that in the world where everyone tends to speak only one global language it is very important not to forget all the other languages as by learning them you understand the history and the mindset of people who speak them. If you think the same then it’s a great reason to subscribe to this channel.

Julie is being a bit modest when she says that she does “profiles of different languages of our planet,” although that is indeed true. Among her most popular are Sumerian, Welsh, Persian, Amharic, Tamil, Navajo, Basque,… Not the usual list, is it? And it goes on and on. If you look at her index page, you will notice that she always wears characteristic clothing in each case; what you can’t notice from the index page is that she not only profiles each language but also gives you relevant information about the history and culture. Even though she doesn’t actually speak more than a handful of languages, she does it all with verve and — as far as I can tell, which often is not very far — accuracy.

So what’s the common flaw? You’ll have to wait some more. Let’s first turn our attention to Language Jones:

Dr. Jones, who is a professor at Penn, prefers to go deep rather than wide. Let’s see how he introduces himself and his videos:

This is a place for all things language: insights from linguistics, language learning tips, and facts from linguistics that might flip what you thought you knew about language on its head. I draw on my background as a PhD in linguistics (sociolinguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, 2020, where William Labov – yes, that William Labov – and Robin Clark were my advisors). I’ll discuss language learning, but also sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, linguistic ideologies and discrimination, and real-world applications

Here are the titles of some of his most recent videos:

• Uncovering a conspiracy
• The memorization trick you’re probably not using to remember language
• The hidden music of language
• The death of an accent
• Male versus female language learning
• Is 67 just brain rot?
• Totes

Quite different from JuLingo, n’est-ce pas? The only solution is to follow both of them!

Oh, I almost forgot! What is this flaw of which I speak? It’s simply that both of them speak much too fast!!! When I’m listening to an interesting speaker, I want to be able to hear every word — and to think about what I’m hearing. That’s especially true when there’s a lot on the screen and it’s all unfamiliar to me. In these cases, with both presenters, I have to keep pausing in order to digest what I’m hearing and/or slow down the playback speed. Oh well, at least the technology permits that. A small price to pay!

Categories: Linguistics