Hey all, i'm not sure this belongs here but i'm going to post it anyway.

I have been wondering for quite some time. At the very start of mankind; how did we get our first language? How did we communicate? Did our creator just give us this language at start? I have no idea
So I would love to hear some of your opinions about this!

Edit: miss-spelled languages >.<

Great thought . Fascinated me for years , too.

In some holy texts , God taught Adam " all the names ".

.....and then , much , much later.... - late 19th century -... a prominent Swiss linguist called "Ferdinand de Saussure " said :

" Every language is a complete system of signs " .

An interesting debate would be wether languages "form " naturally .

Remember " Esperanto " the "artificial " global language "....Never worked !

Sama

Hey Fenzo ,

Aren't you surprised ( too !! ) , that there haven't been many reactions here ? I did certainly not expect any philology experts , but some wonder at least !

Well , I would very much like to dicuss this further . As a matter of fact , there is this French word " Langage " ( as opposed to language ) that has always intrigued me .
"Langage " is explained as :

Quote:

"Web definitions for Langage
The strange words in which the Loa are sometimes addressed, and which traditionally have been used also in oracular utterances from divine sources. Some meanings appear to have been handed down as priestly knowledge, but some appear to have been lost. A part of the vocabulary may be made up of lost or garbled African words, part from other sources; but both African and Amerindian traditions exist of a secret oracular speech, different from that of the people.
www.folkart.com/voodooshop/glossary.htm - Definition in context "


However , the French use "Langage" ( instead of language ) when they mean "Communication "...bees , body"Langage " etc ..

Both words : language and langage definitely root in "lingua " =tongue ... ..Now bees dance to communicate , I don't even know , IF they have tongues .

Sama

Yea it surprises me! I want to know



:-)


cool never knew any of that
but what i`m really wondering is how the first language ever made was made up. I don't see how some people could like gather up and without words make a new language. Or another theory; maybe that god taught Adam all the names as you said before.

anyway really would like some wise answers ^^

Well , I don't know , if this post will be "wise " . but I know , that linguists assert that all languages "form " from each other .
Which still leaves us with the problem of : How did the very first language "structure" start ?

If you take the main lingual origines of most geodemographically existing languages , you will end up with lots of "dead" languages .
I personnally don't like the term "dead" language ".. as they still exist , under other forms.

But back to how a language forms.. I would tend to believe , that some "mutual " communication sparked ... maybe after Adam was taught the names .

Actually "words" must have formed before semantics .

So , it must all have started with sounds .

Sama

And I recommend to read the very related short story " A table is a table" by. P. Bichsel , reference to many linguistic research on the subject .
Of course to read it in its original language _German_ " Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch" would be much more ...ideomotoric !

My german isn't really good
But i'll read the story later when i got the time. Thanks alot :-)

Language origin can not be proven however there are many hypothesis' check out the link below, i quite like the Ding Dong hyp' . I do quite a-lot of bird watching when i am out walking the dog, and one of the things i do notice, is how similer the sounds that birds make are to our words. The is one "tweet" that sounds just like "hello" and there is another that sounds just like a "woot woo" whistle, except natural (unlike parrot call). The alarming sound of the Gull when it is scavaging is similar to noises we make when we denote a deduction.."aHHhhh" and so fourth. These sounds that we make are called phonetics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

I wonder how God told him that . well probably not in words.

Thanks for the link ^^;
Don't have time right now so I will read all of it tomorrow :-). I'll get back to ya.

Ok, i've been reading the wikipedia links you gave me. It's really interesting! I never really knew about those Linguistic hypotheses.
There's no doubt that a lot of words were created that way (imo). But ofcourse to use these ways such as Ding-dong could not explain the origin of the first language ever I think. First of all as wikipedia itself says;
But I have no doubt that it explains hell of a lot of a words

Second of all I think that some of these hypotheses can only be used incase there is already another way of communicating. Ta-ta; This one means that we use hand gestures, ofcourse this is a good way but how did they know what meant what? Also the part of imitating animal sounds. If humans were imitating animal sounds does that mean they didnt have a language before they started doing that?
Did the humans ever live without a language at all?
Another question that interests me

I doubt all these Linguistic hypotheses together could even create a language. But I'd love to hear more about this .

And to Sama; I didn't find the time to search for A table is a table yet

Excellent topic, Fenzo!

Must admit - I have had only a mild curiosity about how language developed, but this has sparked more interest.

Did a little browsing and found this article - not saying it's what I think happened (I don't have an opinion yet) vis-s-vis the genesis of language but it's an interesting read.