language

[Agua]

where does it come from? i believe it's a gift given to mankind by god/allah/jahwe/who-or-whatthefuck.

[TheSheriff]

Language does, of course, fit snugly into Darwinian philosophy.

[Agua]

Language does, of course, fit snugly into Darwinian philosophy.

elaborate.

[bLaDe]

Very interesting post Auga.  I think all languages come from other languages.  Many english words are derived from latin for example, there are more than one thousand languages in India, many of them are extreamly similar.  Its only logical that man needed a means of communication, so he invented language.  Language emerged from cultural evolution, it keeps evolving and changing as man looks for more words to articulate himself.  Everything changes.  Did it come from God?  Well If you are religious or believe in God, you know everything comes from God lol.  Language came from humans, who were created by God.

p/s KingMac, I have the authoirty to edit/delete your posts.  You can warn me all you want, but im just saying, its easy to get banned if you come in threads and start posting bullshit for no reason.  Take your beef with Auga elsewhere.

  -{bLaDe}

[TheSheriff]

elaborate.

Language is seen by neo-Darwinists as a tool of survival. Enhanced communication helps more than it hinders.

[bLaDe]

elaborate.

Language is seen by neo-Darwinists as a tool of survival. Enhanced communication helps more than it hinders.

Yeah good point, without language and communication, we would be killing each other lol.  So i guess it is a tool of survival in a sense.

  -{bLaDe}

[TheSheriff]

without language and communication, we would be killing each other lol.  

with language and communication, we are killing each other

[bLaDe]

without language and communication, we would be killing each other lol.  

with language and communication, we are killing each other

Yeah but atleast now we know what exactly the other guy thinks of us lol.  Really though, you can blame voilence on virtualy anything, but it always originates from the same source, its crazy.

  -{bLaDe}

[Agua]

ok, imma tell you what i was aiming at: today i attended a course on the different schools of linguistics. ironically, from 100 a.d. to the renaissance people thought that hebrew was the original - ie the first - language and that it was god's gift to mankind. a german philosopher named herder disagreed and stated that language isn't perfect and thus cannot come from god.
my point: i disagree with herder's point of view. he's definitely right in saying that language isn't perfect, but does this necessarily mean that language isn't god-given?

[TheSheriff]

ok, imma tell you what i was aiming at: today i attended a course on the different schools of linguistics. ironically, from 100 a.d. to the renaissance people thought that hebrew was the original - ie the first - language and that it was god's gift to mankind. a german philosopher named herder disagreed and stated that language isn't perfect and thus cannot come from god.
my point: i disagree with herder's point of view. he's definitely right in saying that language isn't perfect, but does this necessarily mean that language isn't god-given?

*sits with Plato*

"What the Gods, or God, gives us, can only ever be a pale reflection of their true form"

Humans are not perfect, by Herder's logic, we do not come from God-was he Christian?

[Quakaveli]

Very interesting post Auga.  I think all languages come from other languages.  Many english words are derived from latin for example, there are more than one thousand languages in India, many of them are extreamly similar.  Its only logical that man needed a means of communication, so he invented language.  Language emerged from cultural evolution, it keeps evolving and changing as man looks for more words to articulate himself.  Everything changes.  Did it come from God?  Well If you are religious or believe in God, you know everything comes from God lol.  Language came from humans, who were created by God.

p/s KingMac, I have the authoirty to edit/delete your posts.  You can warn me all you want, but im just saying, its easy to get banned if you come in threads and start posting bullshit for no reason.  Take your beef with Auga elsewhere.

  -{bLaDe}

All languages don't come from each other...initially there was Latin and all the European languages, Arabic, and Sanscrit(its like the Latin of Indian languages) came from it...but shit like the languages American Indians spoke and Eastern languages(japanese, korean, etc) didn't come from it.

[bLaDe]

ok, imma tell you what i was aiming at: today i attended a course on the different schools of linguistics. ironically, from 100 a.d. to the renaissance people thought that hebrew was the original - ie the first - language and that it was god's gift to mankind. a german philosopher named herder disagreed and stated that language isn't perfect and thus cannot come from god.
my point: i disagree with herder's point of view. he's definitely right in saying that language isn't perfect, but does this necessarily mean that language isn't god-given?

Interesting, I dont think there is a "worlds oldest language", probably the worlds oldest 'written' language though.  Like many say 'Sumerian', or 'IndoHittite' was the oldest language, and stuff like that.  There were probably languages spoken before the first written language, jus cuz we have no records of them does not mean they did not exist.  Its really complicated, I said all languages probably came from one language, which I'm still not 100% sure of, its just an assumtion.  This monogenetic origin perspective COULD be true, if it is than all languages that now exist are descendants of that first original language.  That "original" language was probably not a 'fixed', 'official' language, probably just a buncha words which people kept modifying over and over as man evolved.  Then slowly, a group of the speakers of some daughter branches developed cultures that invented writing earlier than others.  The growth of these languages are probably coeval to each other.  We cant really determine the exact AGE of the languages.
Now to the point where u talked about that guy who said "languages are not perfect, therefor they cannot come from God"....Neither are humans perfect, but we have the ability to.  I beleive God gave birth to the universe(say, he started the big bang, and you know the rest), so basicly humans invented language, and God invented them, so in a sense ofcourse God invented language, but he doesnt control humans or anything on purpose because we grow ourselves, with his help ofcourse, but we have free will blah blah.  Ok, damn that stuff was confusing lol, again, great thread, the nicest i've seen in a while, peace

  -{bLaDe}

[TheSheriff]

Very good thread, agreed.

The first language was Oggish.

"UG OG FUG DUG OG!!!" *whacks with club*

[Kaidy]

There's an argument from some linguists that one of the human brain's main functions is to learn language, that it's inherent from birth for a child to learn to communicate. Obviously the actual learning depends on stimulus, but I vaguely remember studying how babies learn to speak and how it fits in with the development of the brain.

[Jay ay Beee]

Language is so important.

Look at the three countries who sent troops to Iraq for instance.  USA, Britain and Australia.  It's not co-incidence that these three all speak the same language.  They are easily more open to the others ideas and culture.