113. Damian Blasi: Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science, linguistic diversity, how to study a language you don't speak

Mar 10, 2025

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Damian Blasi is a professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. We talk about his article 'Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science', linguistic diversity, how to study across the world's languages, his career path, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps

0:00:00: Why Damian studied physics

0:06:31: How to deal with small, sparse, incomplete, imbalanced, noisy, and non-independent observational data

0:09:38: Evolutionary advantages of different languages

0:14:01: How Damian started doing research on linguistics

0:20:09: How to study a language you don't speak

0:28:58: Start discussing Damian's paper 'Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science'

0:48:25: What can experimental scientists do about the vast differences between cultures, especially of difficult to reach peoples? And how different are languages and cultures really?

1:10:15: Why is New Guinea so (linguistically) diverse?

1:17:34: Should I learn a common or a rare language? And where?

1:29:09: A book or paper more people should read

1:32:31: Something Damian wishes he'd learnt sooner

1:33:56: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
BlueSky: https://geni.us/pod-bsky

Damian's links

Website: https://geni.us/blasi-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/blasi-scholar
BlueSky: https://geni.us/blasi-bsky

Ben's links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
BlueSky: https://geni.us/bjks-bsky

References

World Atlas of Languages: https://en.wal.unesco.org/world-atlas-languages

The Andamanese group that's hostile to strangers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese

"the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast

Bakker (2022). The sounds of life.

Blasi ... Neubig (2021). Systematic inequalities in language technology performance across the world's languages. arXiv.

Blasi ... Bickel (2019). Human sound systems are shaped by post-Neolithic changes in bite configuration. Science.

Blasi ... Majid (2022). Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science. Trends in cognitive sciences.

Everett (2023). A myriad of tongues.

Floyd ... Enfield (2018). Universals and cultural diversity in the expression of gratitude. Royal Society Open Science.

Gordon (2004). Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from Amazonia. Science.

Hossenfelder (2018). Lost in math.

Koyama & Rubin (2022). How the world became rich.

Nettle (1998). Explaining global patterns of language diversity. Journal of anthropological archaeology.

Pica ... Dehaene (2004). Exact and approximate arithmetic in an Amazonian indigene group. Science.

Skirgård ... Gray (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances.