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Linguists seek the 'mother of all languages'

usatoday.com — A controversial research project is trying to trace all human language to a common root. Many scientists think that fully modern human language enabled a "great leap forward" 50,000 years ago. And because scientists surmise that language arose only once, they believe that before leaving Africa to colonize the world, all humankind spoke as one.

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  • BillyWells, on 10/11/2007, -7/+117"But then, "almost overnight, everything changes very rapidly," says Merritt Ruhlen"

    Oh yes, I'm sure this is how it went:
    Scene: Four cavemen are sitting around a makeshift table in their cave.

    Caveman # 1: "Ah yes, I do believe it was a good thing to have developed this language overnight, hmm, it is quite nice to be able to communicate my ideas to each of you fine chaps now."
    Caveman # 2: "Yes, quite...quite.
    Caveman # 3: "I say, how about we get started on mathematics tomorrow? What do you say, fellows?
    Caveman# 1: "What a splend-"
    Caveman# 4: "UGGGG UGGHHH OOGA BOGGA RAHHHHHH!!!"
    Caveman# 1 "Damn it, Steve, get with the program! You lazy bastard."
    • Phyltre, on 10/10/2007, -7/+21Never call a caveman lazy or stupid.
      • ebcreasoner, on 10/10/2007, -7/+5Everywhere I go
        There's always something to remind me
        Of another place in time.
        • OGTL, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Yeah, cavemen had more initiative, intelligence and ability than anybody alive today. Go out into the wilderness with only stone tools and animal hide clothing and see how long you last.
  • flashboy131, on 10/10/2007, -13/+48cunning linguists.
    • b3mus3d, on 10/10/2007, -6/+9master debaters.
    • MadOtaku, on 10/10/2007, -8/+3I wasn't at all interested in this story; I saw that title and knew that someone would make that joke. I had to confirm my suspicion.
  • thelastcivilian, on 10/10/2007, -3/+24This might actually turn out to be quite interesting. The Wikipedia page on the Indo-European language family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages) has an interesting map showing a basic linkage of most of the world's common languages; it's a well accepted theory.
    • crazybugger, on 10/10/2007, -10/+1It is not well accepted. It is imposed by the imperialists.
    • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I'd not say that Indo-European languages are the worlds most common in a typical sense, simply the most well studied. Also, the people who speak Indo-European languages have been the most adept at conquering the rest of the world, and subjugating/getting rid of their languages.
    • steelmaverick, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2The link is broken......
    • BridgetDS, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2IE is very well accepted as a family, as are several other families around the globe. It's when people start trying to connect families that most linguists get worried about timescales and methodology.
  • crazydiode, on 10/10/2007, -11/+6""Lithuanian has many words that almost exactly match Sanskrit, which was spoken 3,500 years ago. "
    inaccurate.It is common knowledge that Sanksrit has been spoken more than 8000 years. Vedas which are written in Sankrit are that old. To write that in such an advanced language would have required time to develop the language, right?
    • crazybugger, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2Why did u even bother to tell sanskrit. For the west, if it does not happen in europe or america, it does not happen any where.
  • hockyfight, on 10/10/2007, -20/+17I wonder if the "mother of all languages" will match up at all to the supposed "unified" language described in the bible in regards to the tower of Babel

    1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_babel
    • uninvolved, on 10/10/2007, -7/+16When I actually believed in this nonsense. That block of text right there from the bible always perplexed me. It's almost as if God is intervening in our advancement because he is scared of our potential. Of course, that was when I believed. Now I'm comfortable with the fact I don't have to hold that ridiculous belief.

      On a side note, why is it that God refers to himself in the plural. Oh riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight... The trinity. w/e, looks pagan to me, or at the very least just polytheistic.
      • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Yeah, it was the aliens. There's your plural.
      • kodax, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2The Garden of Eve story is basically God getting upset because humans learned how to talk at all...the apple represents language which in turn represents self awareness/sentience.
        • aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4The bible says that Adam and God conversed multiple times before this rebellion...
        • Sdiggmatism, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I've read a few possible explanations to what the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" did but learning to talk wasn't one of them.
        • Esstee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The tree of good and bad was a beacon to establish obedience under God. The rules were simple... Here God created humans and gave to them superiority over all the other living creatures of the earth. Adam and Eve(per say) had the highest possible ranking authority on earth as the seed of all living beings and exercising authority over them. Also notable in the beginning. was that God did not flood A&E with rules and regulations. It would seem that beyond betraying God they were quite free in establishing there own boundaries.
      • aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Ill explain for you (though I will obviously be dugg down).

        The tower of babel and the ideas there were a direct rebellion to God's command to "fill the earth and subdue it", humans were knowingly rebelling. Faithful men such as Abraham did not take part in this, and may have had their original language left untampered. The others were given different languages so that they would naturaly form groups and separate. In this way the earth would be filled and God's will done.

        As for God "referring to himself as plural" he is obviously talking about the angels and perhaps his son. God would not literally go to earth (no man has seen God and lived) but would be there in spirit, his angels would do the actual confusing of language.
        • ostracize, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3* "he is obviously talking about the angels and perhaps his son" - The Bible doesn't say this anywhere let alone make it "obvious" as you say.

          * Abram was not born until long after this tower of Babel was supposedly being built.

          * Moses supposedly saw the back of God and lived.

          * To grandparent: The tower of Babel, if there is one as described in the Bible, would have to be less than 6000 years ago. This research is going back 50,000 years so this universal language would not be related to any such tower of Babel.
        • aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's called context. Moses saw the presence of God (likely his holy spirit), and I didn't bring up the tower of Babel.
        • aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1oops forgot to address the Abraham thing, I meant Noah. Dieing 2 years before the birth of Abraham he saw this take place. (it wasn't exactly "long before" but you were right)
      • rogue780, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1FYI, in languages such as Persian and ancient Hebrew it is common to place a plural on a name in order to infer reverence and respect for the individual. Instead of saying "him" to refer to a king the word "they" would be used.
      • aristotle0dude, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Wow dude, your name should be changed to unresolved since you appears that you have a number of unresolved issues concerning religion. Judging from you confusion over the nature of the trinity and the tower of babel, it sounds like you only had a passing familiarity with the bible before becoming an atheist in your teen years.

        God was concerned about the potential of man for evil. Look at the news of today and see how man has not evolved at all socially or mentally. The only difference between ancient man and our society today is the thin veneer of laws holding back anarchy and our technology. If human civilization had not faced setbacks like the collapse of the Roman empire and the black plague, do you think we would be here today or would we have destroyed ourselves or the environment thousands of years ago?

        Try out a thought experiment for a moment. For arguments sake say that you accepted a tower of babel incident occurred. Now given what you know of human nature, do you think this planet would still be intact today had such an event not occurred?
        • uninvolved, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Get help.... Seriously... get help... Man... Seriously... A tower to heaven? God ***** with our speech? Dude... seriously... I mean come on... I don't have to read the bible to call ***** on that.

          By the way, I was raised a baptist. I am familiar with the bible. I have read pieces of it that equal to cover to cover. I came to a mature rational decision. This was not an adolescent rebel decision. This was the right decision. I don't choose my beliefs, my beliefs choose me. I highly doubt I will ever skid off the road of rationalism.
      • Esstee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1@It's almost as if God is intervening in our advancement because he is scared of our potential.
        There are numerous recordings of God intervening with things in order to uphold a timeline. Human potential was never in question, since God stated in a sense that mankind had developed rapidly and changes had to be made in order to uphold his own agenda so to speak. The tower of Babel was one of them.

        @On a side note, why is it that God refers to himself in the plural. Oh riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...
        The trinity aspect is as much a literary translation issue as a religious enterprising one. While the older Greek and Hebrew documents do not support the notion of a triad God, many modern religions continue to uphold it. I doubt however that the aspect of God's ability to extend his own powers into transient spirits has any bearing on the Bible initial message. These aspect have become more of a religious branding than anything else.
    • Syric, on 10/10/2007, -9/+11I've always thought that was kind of a dick move on God's part.
      • Ragix, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1lmfao
      • CryptiniteDemon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I dunno, killing off all of humanity except one family seems pretty dick to me. Oh and smiting a loyal follower's family and burning his crops and house just to prove a point to the devil. Oh and sending his only son to earth so he could be maimed and ridiculed. Oh and sending you to eternal torture and damnation even though he loves you with all his heart. Oh and killing the first born son of every family in egypt. Do I need to keep going?
        • InferiorWang, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2he didn't say it was the ONLY dick move God made
        • aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Clearly you have never read the bible, not even once.
    • n0gnuz, on 10/10/2007, -7/+3"On a side note, why is it that God refers to himself in the plural. Oh riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight... The trinity."

      Well, The Trinity was a NT concept (or, when referred to as "The Trinity," a Catholic-Apostolic church concept). YHWH calling himself by different names, some of which indicate the stolen nature of the myth, are in the OT. What's sad is that this ancient Jewish hoax is still so influential today. How many European Americans and African Americans still make decisions based on a bunch of ancient pro-Semitic propaganda and Judaism's proto-communist offspring, Christianity? Also, the Chosen Race mythology undergirds the neo-Zionist ("neo-conservative") movement that has American troops killing and dying in the Iraq in order to protect Israel.
      • Esstee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1@YHWH calling himself by different names, some of which indicate the stolen nature of the myth
        IO am curious here, what names are we referring too and from what documentation where they found in? I have been researching the early biblical writings for several years now and I wonder what is implied by "different names" and "stolen nature of the myth".

        @American troops killing and dying in the Iraq in order to protect Israel.
        Try American troops dying in Iraq to protect oil supplies. I wouldn't say they are doing so personally since they are all following orders, however, the thought that there is an underlying religious force behind these activities is about as benign as the messages used to get them there.
  • DROWE859, on 10/10/2007, -5/+10Reminds me of one of my favorite books by Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)
    It deals with the Tower of Babel incident and the "mother language".
    • neodorian, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I came in to make the Snow Crash reference but you beat me to it.
    • ThePict, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I have nothing constructive to say, I just want everyone to know that I've read Stephenson's Snow Crash and wave around my epeen for some geek cred.
      Oh, and let me add a sentence to the end to 'prove' that I've actually read it and know somewhat how it's related (in a tertiary way) to TFA.
  • chancefavors, on 10/10/2007, -11/+3esperanto, anyone?
    • BizarroDavid, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8that's more like the bastard child that everybody hates. seriously, who uses esperanto? even the firefox spellcheck doesn't think it's a word.
    • The0, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2I was going to say the EXACT SAME THING. Incubus with Shatner!
    • HairyFotr, on 10/10/2007, -5/+5Lojban, anyone?
      • MadOtaku, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I don't know why they digg you down. Lojban rocks.
        • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Try learning a real living language instead. You'll find it allows you to communicate. With other people!
          • hfactor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3It´s more like an academic interest thing. Some people love language, even without people :)
    • Miche1987, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Al Bhed
  • interrelate, on 10/10/2007, -8/+3Babelfish
  • OlnyGuy, on 10/10/2007, -13/+1Viva la Bam
  • Drkboarder, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2Stanley Kubrick answers all questions of evolution and human behavior. Sheesh, linguists and their fancy science...
  • bytecolor, on 10/10/2007, -12/+6Oh c'mon now... any God-Fearing Christian knows this was already _fully_ explained in the Bible.
  • Jett3, on 10/10/2007, -9/+2Bull. Everyone knows about the tower of babel, dumbasses.
  • jwoelmer2, on 10/10/2007, -12/+6I believe that, although all languages possibly are common to a certain extent, the differences we see cannot be explained by the people separating and changing their languages to fit their own needs. There are just too many differences to suggest that we all divulged from one common language. I believe that there was a common language before the tower of Babel, some think Hebrew, but that God changed everyone's languages to scatter them and populate the earth more easily.
    • gill1109, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1Yeah. Was it Reagan who said "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me"? (on refusing to sign a bill allowing Spanish to be taught to Spanish speaking children in schools in California)
      • woody56292, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2rofl reagan would say that.
      • Quintessence, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5I am glad that he did not sign that bill. If you live in California or any other border state with Mexico then you will understand why.
    • WorldMaker, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Are you serious? Languages change all the time and at amazingly fast pace. It isn't just "seperation" or "fitting needs", there's all sorts of other reasons languages change, and change is a near constant for a "living" language.

      English alone is an amazing example of how quickly a language can change shapes or split into many disparate dialects. England is a small island and yet you can find a huge number of dialects and sub-languages even between nearby neighbors due to everything from socio-economic differences to political idealism. Watch a Guy Ritchie film like Snatch and watch how just about no two people in the film have the same accent. Just one example is ***** and it's rhyming slang that became almost an entirely different language over time:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*****#*****

      Sure, these are just "dialects" and "accents", but the line between what makes a "dialect" and what makes a language is a very fine line indeed. Sometimes the difference between a dialect and a language is solely political, even, with languages following lines on maps or governments in power more than differences with the neighbor's tongue.

      Basically, everything about language is "in our heads" and it doesn't take some mystical event to explain the beautiful variety of human languages over the course of thousands of years... You can watch the language change in your own backyard if you are paying attention. Languages change fast, we just don't notice it because we keep up with the changes...

      Also, Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language (coming out of the languages now referred to as Canaanite and Semitic) and unlikely to be the "mother tongue" as it dates back only to somewhere around the 3rd millennium BCE.
      • cbfreder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0im in ur stfu, loling ur Proto-language theory
        • cbfreder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0"You can watch the language change in your own backyard if you are paying attention"
    • slaveboy2203, on 10/10/2007, -8/+2The prediction is that you'll not be able to trace back all languages to a single common language, because the original language was confused at Babel. So far the evidence appears to support this prediction.

      Evolutionists: 0, Creationists: 1. :p
      • hfactor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3No. You can´t say "You win if evidence for your theory is found, I win otherwise." Not scientific.
      • slaveboy2203, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Theories can be tested on their predictions. One predicts that a common language should be found, the other predicts that a common language can not be found. At the moment, the evidence supports the latter prediction.
      • revenge7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Isn't it crazy how language has evolved over the years?

        Evolutionists: 123456789 Creationists: 1
  • BrapAllgood, on 10/10/2007, -7/+1'But then, "almost overnight, everything changes very rapidly," says Merritt Ruhlen, a lecturer in the Anthropological Sciences Department at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Humans began making much better stone tools. They started burying their dead with accouterments that suggested religion. And perhaps most telling, Homo sapiens, the "wise" apes, began creating art.

    "People started having imagination at this time much more than they had earlier," says Dr. Ruhlen.'

    http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biggestsecret/biggestsecretbook/biggestsecret.htm#contents
  • scecilio, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1For some reason, I'm reminded of Monkey Island where Guybrush Threepwood was told to learn the primal language.
  • syaorankun, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2the malleability of language makes it very hard to trace. even now, the english language is evolving within the country, where accents and inflections of speech (like chicago, for example) might ultimately become an entirely new language.

    we've been lucky that linguists have access to old english manuscripts which are sadly absent for other languages. i think we've stretched as far as we can in terms of grouping languages into families and tracing lineage. any further and it almost becomes mythical and based on good faith, not science.
  • TJATL, on 10/10/2007, -7/+4One common language? That had to be one weird freaking language to spawn english and asian offsprings. I can "hear" words in most euro languages, but asians talking just sounds all the same, until they laugh. The click click african tribes are kind hard too.
    • hfactor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3That´s just because English is quite closely linked to "most euro languages", not because asian languages "sound all the same". In fact, words are (phonologically) a lot more distinct from each other in esp. south east asian languages than in most indoeuropean languages.
  • bobbknight, on 10/10/2007, -12/+9I smell taxpayer monies being ***** away at an alarming rate.
  • rabidsnail, on 10/10/2007, -7/+5It was the monolith. Duh.
    • Tippis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That was toolmaking, not language.
      • revenge7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeah, the stereolith taught us language.
  • Prodigy1990, on 10/10/2007, -8/+0LSD anyone?
  • thevanillaspy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+34as a graduate student of linguistics who has been studying it for over 5 years now, i feel that i am able to say that most reputable linguists do not believe that this kind of a research project will actually lead to any real discovery.

    that is, i don't think many linguists would argue that all human languages have a common ancestor. furthermore, few linguists (if any) would argue that we cannot postulate information on languages that have no record. we can do such a thing, through processes known as the comparative method and reconstruction. one of the most felicitous uses of this method has yielded a pretty good idea of what proto-indo-european (aka PIE, the mother of most of the languages spoken in europe and the middle east, among others) sounded like. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language)

    however, this project is flawed in that it relies on comparing and reconstructing proto-languages from languages that have only been HYPOTHESIZED (e.g. PIE). furthermore, the article mentions another critical flaw, that the meaning-sound connection that these kind of people postulate are "too loose" and could easily be otherwise explained as accidents of the limit of the number of combinations of sounds you get in one and two syllable words.

    one of the biggest problems is just that we don't have data. human recordings of language do not go back very far (in the scheme of things). if we assume that language has been around since about 55,000 BCE, we have less than 15% of linguistic history recorded (generously assuming we have 9,000 years of written language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Proto-writing). furthermore, the earliest texts do not even necessarily correspond directly to a language.

    finally, if we have difficulty getting to understand PIE (which most mainstream theories place as being spoken somewhere between 3000 and 7000 BCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language#When_was_PIE_spoken.3F), how are we supposed to go back another 50,000 years? especially lacking any real linguistic data from within that time frame.

    in conclusion, this kind of research is, while well intentioned with good reasons to want to conduct it, almost certainly untenable.
    • thevanillaspy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9arg! i just looked back at this and was horrified to see that i made a HUGE mistake. i said "i don't think many linguists would argue that all human languages have a common ancestor". what i meant was "i don't think many linguists would argue AGAINST THE IDEA that all human languages have a common ancestor". entirely the opposite. i believe many linguist probably DO BELIEVE in a common ancestor of language.
      • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Regardless of whether or not there is one common ancestor, it is simply impossible for a historical analysis to be able to trace things back far enough to be able to tell us for sure what the linguistic situation was when language arose. It can only go so far, and really, all historical linguistics have come up with are estimates at best of what languages were like. Just think, if you took French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and the other romance languages alive today in Europe, could you reconstruct the same sort of Latin as once existed and is attested in the wealth of writings that are around? Doubt it. Good luck going back further, much less to the time of the birth of language.

        Some assumptions can be made about what linguistic abilities earlier humans had, but no one will ever actually "find" the mother of all languages. Heck, we can't even find the "mother" of Basque, Burushaski, or Japanese.
        • thevanillaspy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1actually, yes. you can very successfully reconstruct latin (vulgar latin, which makes sense if you understand what vulgar latin is and how language change should work) by using the comparative method and reconstruction! if you're intersted, you can check out Indo-European Language and Culture: an introduction by Benjamin Fortson. it's a text book that goes through how this is definitely the case.

          but, your point remains valid. attempting to find the mother of all languages is a futile task.
      • 6ixed, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You need to stop using brackets for the links, because the right-end bracket gets tucked into the link and thereby breaks the link.
        • enginbeering, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1A space will work wonders here...
    • GiggleStick, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2So your a linguist, but you admit that you wrote the exact opposite of what you meant, and seem to have an aversion to the SHIFT KEY except when emphasizing certain words. Sounds like you have a ways to go in your studies there, kiddo.
      • Gwyddyon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Linguistics is not the study of how to perfectly write or speak a language. I know a lot of linguists with distinct Minnesota-isms that would make a 10th grade English teacher cry.
        • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I say "Wanna come with?" and I'm a linguist. Yay, Minnesota.
      • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2And your understanding of linguistics is lacking. Linguistics isn't about speaking "perfect" English, it's about the study of what language is and what makes up language. We aren't language perfectionists, but rather describers. So, things that you view as incorrect or correct, we view as just a kind of variation, and possible in language-- we don't really issue judgements on what is "wrong" to say. Certainly there are speech mistakes, but that's a different issue all together.
      • butbutz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0you're.

        learn english (the mother of all languages)
    • hiscity, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Why would it be any less plausible to speculate on what happened linguistically 50K years ago, than it is to speculate on:

      a. biological origins millions of years ago
      b. universe origins billions of years ago
      c. extra-solar astronomic phenomena, however far away
      d. sub-atomic forces and "particles" that take massive detectors and oceans of data to sift through to "find"
      e. emergent "intelligence" in trillions of neural clusters
      f. all species diversity branching as rearrangement of basic DNA+RNA programming
      g. universal field theories to consolidate supposedly all observed forces into a single model

      Models are useful -- even as they later prove to be less applicable or exact. The whole point is to propose a model (no matter how odd) and then try to apply it to see what it reveals of the phenomena under study -- not what remains of the the model as it proves to be no more than just that, a model.

      Science is not about protecting pet theories. The symbol is not what it symbolizes (*).

      (* - except of course for "The Word" ... a topic for another thread)
  • fredkreuger, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3FORTRAN, duh.
  • monkbot1, on 10/10/2007, -10/+4"great leap forward" 50,000 years - not possible the earth is only 10,000 years old
    • annonimality, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Right... and a guy named Samson derived super-natural strength from the length of his hair.
      • Botanicus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Right... and I came from a monkey
        • Ndiggnation, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1When did any scientist say we came from monkeys? We certainly didn't descend from lemurs, but way back may have a common ancestor.

          Sorry, the whole "I didn't come from no monkey" joke gets under my skin, and I grew up in church.
  • vtel001, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3TELUGU words in HEBREW Literature

    A 1794 BC stone tablet established that the Sumerian-Assyrian culture had its roots in Andhra Pradesh state of India

    http://www.hindu.com/2007/06/04/stories/2007060414170100.htm

    Telmun language Telugu
    http://www.telugutanam.com/telmunlanguage.htm

    Telugu is the most widely spoken language of the Dravidian family of languages in Southern India. It also the main language used in Carnatic (South Indian classical) music.
  • IntensePuppy, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3The first language was probably parseltongue from my recent studies.
    • drachemorder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well, considering that the snake spoke to Eve in the garden of Eden, and Eve understood it...
    • revenge7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Harry Potter is a warlock, and warlocks are enemies of god.

      NAME THAT QUOTE.
  • txtphile, on 10/10/2007, -5/+2Aliens. Or magic mushrooms. Or... aliens with magic mushrooms invented language. They also build the pyramids.

    /serious
  • crazybugger, on 10/10/2007, -5/+2c is the first language.
    • polymorphist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Wrong! Fortran is the first high-level language.
  • schrutefan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Reminds me the origin of dance:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxhJ0lX4xVM
  • montezumamike, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Tower of Babel, huh.
  • satx, on 10/10/2007, -5/+5I wonder how to say "I don't give a *****" in this mythical proto-language...
  • roprot, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0Too late .. Szukalski already found it. Its called PROTONG, and you have to become a ZERMATIST to learn to speak it and use it as the true mother language ...

  • existent, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Breaking: Scientists seek to discover first chicken
    • msergeant, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Egg scientists laugh, they know which came first !
  • rootneg2, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5I've often wondered why the (colloquial) references to mother and father always sound so similar. Mama is nearly universal; baba, dada, papa, are all remarkably similar even in languages as diverse as german, russian, chinese, or romanic.

    Similar for "yes" and "no", although with quite a few more exceptions. it seems as though the "n" sound is universally used for the negatory, whereas ja, da, ya, are used for positives.

    mother, father, yes, and no are all extremely basic concepts....

    I'm actually quite suprised that this example wasn't brought up in the text; especially since so often these are a child's first words. Are these sounds somehow "hardwired" into our brains? or are these somehow a remnant of the "mother tongue"? or is it merely a fantastic coincidence?
    • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2There may be similarities. A lot of them could just be Eurasian though. Even then, hard to say. The Finnish word for 'mother' for instance, is 'äiti', and father is 'isä'. The colloquial words for those, at least in Helsinki Finnish, are faija and mutsi-- but don't freak out yet about that m-, because these are all results of Swedish, or Indo-European loans. There is a word in that works though for that m-, that I think may be Finnish in origin: 'maamo', but I wouldn't bet my life on it. I realize you said "nearly" universal, but it's important to point that out.

      There's similarities in the first person pronouns in a lot of eurasian languages having an M- in them (me, minä, moi, mim, I am), and T-/D-/S- in second person (THou arT, du, sinä, te), but those aren't "universal". Using that word is somewhat loaded. There are some cool similarities though, indeed inspiring, but nothing to go on. You could also say that "fire" is a basic concept, so there must be some similar sounds that represent this in a lot of languages, but not the case.
    • WraythX, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Well - that argument is dispelled in part by one of the very common ancient languages Greek: ouk = no, nai = yes.
    • JonLatane, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1In Arabic, "La" is "no" and "nam" is "yes." My girlfriend is an Arabic minor and whenever she says "nam" meaning yes, I still get confused thinking it's negative instead.
      • GiggleStick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"My girlfriend is an Arabic minor..."

        Dude, be careful. That stuff may be legal in Arabia, but here we got laws against it, unless you're a minor too.
    • GiggleStick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I think that's a combination of a couple things. The mama thing is because that's one of the simplest sounds and one of the first that a baby can make when learning to talk because of physiology.

      Yes and no, although not as universal as you think, is probably more of an effect of influence by another common tongue, Latin. Of course, you might be surprised to know that there wasn't really any word for yes in Latin.
    • BridgetDS, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Mainstream historical linguistics tends to discard "baby talk" words precisely because, as GiggleStick mentions, there are physiological reasons for why words like "mama" show up so often. But long-range reconstructionists like the people in the article tend to take the opposite view, that seeming near-universals like "mama" are exactly what they're looking for.
  • WaltDismal, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1If they want to find the mother of all languages, they're looking in the wrong place. Go to Mars and poke around the ruins...
  • rygoody, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3"But then, "almost overnight, everything changes very rapidly," says Merritt Ruhlen, a lecturer in the Anthropological Sciences Department at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Humans began making much better stone tools. They started burying their dead with accouterments that suggested religion. And perhaps most telling, Homo sapiens, the "wise" apes, began creating art."

    This was when mankind found psychedelics.
    • Ndiggnation, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I've read theories that even religion may have come from early man's use of psychedelics.
  • ollj, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3All languages except Japanese which clearly comes from outer space.
    • Spankmesilly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0As a student/speaker of Japanese for 25 years, let me assure you: it's Just Another Language. Unrelated to European languages (well, maybe they're related if you go back far enough; that'd be the point of the article), but closely related to Korean, and in no way some bizarre moon-speak. Just normal human stuff.

      Yes, I figure you're just tossing out a wacky comment. But there are impressionable types reading.
  • franksands, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I am not a Linguist, but I think this is a very western way of thought. I've being studying Japanese for 1 year, and I have to tell you, I found no comparison for any Latin or Anglo-Saxon language. I think that instead of One Language to Rule Them All, we might have a few language families, that lead to the plethora of languages we have today.
    • pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There are more different languages families in the world than just "western" and Japanese, but linguists know this. The people who are looking for the "One Language" are certainly aware of this, but they're jsut persuing one of the possible theories in existance about how language came to be. On the other hand, can't say I agree with them ;) I wouldn't say this is a "western" idea though, by any means.
  • shitforbrains, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Everyone knows it was the language the proto-humanoids (you know the guys that looked like greys who seeded the whole galaxy) spoke on STTNG. Either that or Latvian.
  • edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Most people speak this language before they have their morning coffee
  • gboone, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1It's called esperanto and, it didn't catch on.
  • dinobot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Bah weep granah weep ninni bong. *offers energon goodies*
  • aggrazel, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Zug Zug!
  • butbutz, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0last i checked English was the mother of all everything
  • psygnisfive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2One of the problems with this sort of endeavor is that language could easily extend back over a hundred thousand years or more. We can barely find Proto-Indo-European, let alone Proto-World, and the Indo-European languages are all relatively similar in the grand scheme of things. Trying to fit in the extremely isolating languages of East Asia and the polysynthetic languages of the Caucasus, North Asia, and the Americas is going to be even more difficult.

    Furthermore, Nicaraguan Sign Language indicates that it's atleast technically possible for a full language to emerge from nothing over the course of a generation or two, meaning that could very easily have emerged a multiple times historically. Whether or not it did is something we will likely never know, and if it did, we'll never be able to find a Proto-World or even realize that it's a futile effort to do so.
    • thevanillaspy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1but if language can emerge from nothing except some biological/neurological impulse, and if biology and neurology are genetic, presumably the genetics that lead to such an impulse emerged at one point in human history. this would make us think that there is one common ancestor to all language.
      otherwise, we would have to suppose that the genetics for language predisposition occurred by chance in more than one place at one time.
  • judolphin, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Language: so easy, a therapist can do it!
  • mahdaeng, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Very interesting subject, but not news. Linguists have ALWAYS been trying to find the "mother of all languages".
  • hiscity, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Then there's the search for the primal alphabet....

    Take the english alphabet. Place it in a 5x5 array (courier font). Let the "z" dangle midway below the array.
    Make the following swaps, (somewhat like a chevron)...
    Swap k & q and p & v. Swap o & s and t & x. Swap w & z.

    By folding the array, note the similarities of overlapping letters (row 1 to row 5, and row 2 to row 4).
    In particular, note the placement of vowels, semivowels, dentals, stops, labials, nasals, sibilants, etc.

    Try to convince me that someone hasn't been intentionally messing around with phonetics and "alphabetics" beyond what's been recorded in linguistic history books.

    abcde
    fghij
    klmno
    pqrst
    uvwxy
    z

    abcde
    fghij
    qlmns
    vkrox
    upzty
    w
  •  

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