Verb Based Only Language

[petemcewan 27]

What would a   Verb based only language :sound .read like ? No Nouns allowed.

 

 

[Mister M 1,627]

It would sound like there were lots of actions.

[petemcewan 27]

Mr M.

I came across the idea whilst reading the Festival of Debate  magazine.

The lecture being delivered by the Festival is  called ,"Verbs Not Nouns: Scaffolding Alternative Future.

 Allegedly,there are some indigenous languages which are 80% verb based. 

It appears to me to be an attempt  to politically  undermine the place in the world held by  written  English.

So it goes.

Edited March 19, 2023 by petemcewan

[Padders 2,879]

In't it a funny old thing the English language, 

I must admit it does baffle me at times..

Take the Sheffield Forum for example, some of the posts made, you need an Enigma machine to decipher em!

Lets take a closer look.

British prisoner's of war in some of the more barbaric Japanese camps were not allowed to speak to one another, So, to get round the problem, they developed a new language that featured no Bs, Ms, Ps, Vs, or Ws.

This meant they could at least whisper, without moving their lips, and thus avoid arousing the suspicion of the guards...

People in certain villages in North Wales perform a similar trick even today:

When an English person walks into their local pub, they switch to a version of English in which the A, E, I, O, and U are replaced by the letter L.

Then, of course, there were the eighteenth-century plantations where slaves, often from different parts of Africa, conversed in English.

But not the sort that their English master would have a hope of understanding. and that language has lasted, I've literally no idea how the courts work in Barbados since the defendant invariably answers all the questions by speaking in a way that is undecipherable to anyone in a suit.

"Dah you own?" for example means "Is that yours?" Not guilty is "Ah'n do dah" which is literally "I didn't do that"

 

So, there have been good reasons in the past for using language as a device for not being understood.

But today people seem to mangle language just to make themselves sound more important.

This began in about 1840 with the birth of Cockney rhyming slang and is practised extensively in the World of light aircraft..

Instead of speaking to the tower in a manner the passengers can understand, the pilot chooses to say things that make the task look more difficult than is actually the case...."Whisky Oscar Tango squawking on niner niner two decimal seven, requesting basic service ILS Echo to outer beacon"  What's that all about ?

We see a similar problem with the practitioners of business who now talk about "Quantum " instead of money.

It's like footballers coming up with a million new words for "Goal"

 

Lawyers are also annoying, never using one word when several thousand will do, and then several thousand more, until the reader has completely lost the point, and sometimes the will to live.

You think you have just about got to the end of a sentence but then there's a colon, and you know that there's at least another fortnight to go before you get to the next verb.

I once signed a legal document some time ago, not because I agreed with what it said: I was bored.

 

Then there is Golf, a nice walk ruined,

Some bloke I've never heard of, was 4 under Par, another one got an Eagle, what on earth is a Birdie, do they play Golf in an Aviary,

And the strangest one is the chap who got a Bogey, it's more like a game of scrabble.

No other sport does this, even if were not interested in football, we understand who has won when somebody tells us Manchester Utd, scored 3  and Chelsea 2.

But in Golf, you need the decoding powers of Bletchley Park..It's almost like a secret code...

Which is why, since the early days of Golf, it was played almost exclusively by Freemasons , and Freemasons do not make a habit of speaking openly, they use funny words and handshakes..

It's a strange old language is English.

 

[cressida 1,575]

Very interesting,

 

 

British prisoner's of war in some of the more barbaric Japanese camps were not allowed to speak to one another, So, to get round the problem, they developed a new language that featured no Bs, Ms, Ps, Vs, or Ws.

 

I wonder if that could help some people with speech problems.

[Organgrinder 1,946]

39 minutes ago, cressida said:

Very interesting,

 

 

British prisoner's of war in some of the more barbaric Japanese camps were not allowed to speak to one another, So, to get round the problem, they developed a new language that featured no Bs, Ms, Ps, Vs, or Ws.

 

I wonder if that could help some people with speech problems.

Bit off topic but I wonder if it would have helped B Johnson.  He could have lied without anyone knowing.

 

 

[hackey lad 3,991]

2 minutes ago, Organgrinder said:

Bit off topic but I wonder if it would have helped B Johnson.  He could have lied without anyone knowing.

 

 

[cressida 1,575]

They wouldn't let it lie

 

😄

[petemcewan 27]

Padders.

Thank you for that very interesting contribution.

I've always found written English and grammar puzzling.

 

However, at my Secondary Modern school the teachers hammered into  our tiny minds, the rudiments of :spelling,grammar ,sentence and paragraph construction

Subject.verb,compliment. That is the way it goes.