What is Digg?146 Comments
- 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." - flashboy131, on 10/10/2007, -13/+48cunning linguists.
- 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. - 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.
- Phyltre, on 10/10/2007, -7/+21Never call a caveman lazy or stupid.
- 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. - 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/+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.
- YoctoYotta, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8the pen is mightier.
- 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 Cockney and it's rhyming slang that became almost an entirely different language over time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney#Cockney_speech
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. - 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". - smackywentz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7With your comment we are one step closer. Jesus Christ man!
- 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. - revenge7, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6I have a huge penis.
- 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.
- 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.
- HairyFotr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You two are both crazy.
- 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.
- b3mus3d, on 10/10/2007, -6/+9master debaters.
- 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.
- 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.
- aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4The bible says that Adam and God conversed multiple times before this rebellion...
- hfactor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3It´s more like an academic interest thing. Some people love language, even without people :)
- polymorphist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Wrong! Fortran is the first high-level language.
- judolphin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I'll take The Penis Mightier for $500, Trebek!
- 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.
- inactive, 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? - 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.
- revenge7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeah, the stereolith taught us language.
- MadOtaku, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I don't know why they digg you down. Lojban rocks.
- neodorian, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I came in to make the Snow Crash reference but you beat me to it.
- aceallways, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Clearly you have never read the bible, not even once.
- 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. - Syric, on 10/10/2007, -9/+11I've always thought that was kind of a dick move on God's part.
- 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.
- 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. - 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. - drachemorder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well, considering that the snake spoke to Eve in the garden of Eden, and Eve understood it...
- Miche1987, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Al Bhed
- 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.
- msergeant, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Egg scientists laugh, they know which came first !
- 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.
- pyry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I say "Wanna come with?" and I'm a linguist. Yay, Minnesota.
- DesiGUY, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Answer found: "Sanskrit: The Mother of All Languages"
http://www.thevedicfoundation.org/valuable_resources/Sanskrit-The_Mother_of_All_Languages_intro.htm - 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.
- dinobot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Bah weep granah weep ninni bong. *offers energon goodies*
- 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.
- 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. - NiX0n, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Buried for using all caps (IN THE FIRST POST NO LESS)
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