I was talking with a friend today about this subject and we never really got to any conclusion. Why do we say the words we do - in this 'english' language? Why are there so many languages and why does each country have its own??

I'm just intrigued about the actual history of the vocal sound made to describe a thing, situation, feeling etc...

When you talk to someone, it's just your vocal chords making noises that are patterned by your mouth, lips and tongue into the words that we know as the english language....BUT - who made up all the words we say?

There must have been a point in history when certain words were made up to signify certain things, but can you imagine the time when humans actually started to teach each other these words! what must they have sounded like!

For example, just say the first word that comes into your head out loud...now think - who made that word sound like that and why...and when!?

This might help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#Origins_of_human_language

fascinating subject isn't it?

This might help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#Origins_of_human_language

fascinating subject isn't it?

Thanks for that link Titian, it still doesn't answer the question really though LOL!... I guess we'll never really know when we humans started to use noises intelligently to communicate. :confused: the mind boggles!

From answers.com:

transformational-generative grammar, linguistic theory associated with Noam Chomsky, particularly with his Syntactic Structures (1957), and with Chomsky's teacher Zellig Harris. Generative grammar attempts to define rules that can generate the infinite number of grammatical (well-formed) sentences possible in a language. It starts not from a behaviorist analysis of minimal sounds but from a rationalist assumption that a deep structure underlies a language, and that a similar deep structure underlies all languages. Transformational grammar seeks to identify rules (transformations) that govern relations between parts of a sentence, on the assumption that beneath such aspects as word order a fundamental structure exists. Transformational and generative grammar together were the starting point for the tremendous growth in linguistics studies since the 1950s.

But angle20 - we already know that!:)

What that quote is saying is that every language has a deep understructure but it doesn't tell us anything else - whoever wrote it was just trying to be clever but wrote nothing of significance...big words with no depth.

Spoken language came about a long time before written language. We know that our nearest surviving relatives, chimpanzees, don't have the right body parts to make speech as we do. So it must have been relatively recently in our development that we started tying calls to things, such as a noise to say "I've found something to eat". Then when warnings were invented for specific things such as "don't eat that!" or "lion!" and others could differentiate the difference, that's when language started. Then I suppose it expanded to "lion on the right" as opposed to "lion ahead", "two lions behind" etc.. Then ways to differentiate tenses such as "we found berries yesterday over there".

Why language is so different across the world is because language is always developing. But to start with, the only way to travel was by foot. So as people spread further apart, their language developed differently as they got isolated by distance and physical barriers such as seas and mountains. Plus people started growing things to eat which meant they could no longer go roaming about but stay in one place and tend their crops. One side effect of this was probably contact with less people but more often. Less widespread communication resulted in the language developing more locally as we changed from hunter-gatherers to farmers.

As the world finds more ways of communicating more so we are for the first time in history starting to converge again. 500 years ago, no Africans would have spoken English, now hundreds of thousands can (and do) everyday.

English is the result of invasions from all parts of Europe so it borrows from Celtic, Nordic, Germanic, Gallic, Roman and home-grown languages.

Chomsky is the leading linguist, look up a few of his papers. Amazing stuff.

I am reading a book called Moral Minds, thats also touches out born abilities to learn language. It seems we are born with a unconsious knowlege of language structure. There has been some amazing work on this subject in the last 20 years, and now we know a whole lot.

good thread subject, its one of those things you should never discuss, stoned.

ash

Thanks for that link Titian, it still doesn't answer the question really though LOL!... I guess we'll never really know when we humans started to use noises intelligently to communicate. :confused: the mind boggles!


Here's a starting point for your quest. Babies, no matter what country they live in or the language of their parents, all make the same babbling noises when learning to speak.

As the world finds more ways of communicating more so we are for the first time in history starting to converge again. 500 years ago, no Africans would have spoken English, now hundreds of thousands can (and do) everyday.

I suppose you're right in a way, there are over 10,000 people putting their views across on SF. Some angry, some funny, some sad and some curious. . . the thing is though - no-one has actually opened their mouth!!:D

I don't know much about this topic but I do know that dolphins have a sophisticated language and can differentiate calls to mean different things.

However, despite most language developping differently, and naturally, I found it interesting that back in the middle ages, a French council actually decided to change the pronunciation of words using 'oit'. Now how do the rest of France get on with that?!