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Author | Topic: Creation of the English Language | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
Hi Akhenaten!
English has undoubtedly changed over time. However, much like post-Flood biological evolution, post-Babel linguistic evolution has only occurred within the divided kinds created there (Gen. 11:9). English is a good example, in fact. Only 2.4% of world languages make use of the interdental fricatives (the 'th' sound). In the OE text shown in the post above, we see the same sound (represented by ,), which demonstrates that English has always possessed the key characteristics that dene its kind, even if there has been slight changes within. Languages can add words, such as English did during the Middle English period from French, but only words that posses the characteristics of that language's kind. Imagine if you saw a dog that had all the characteristics of a human. It would not be improbable to assume that that 'creature' would be accepted into the human kind because of the similarities that it shared. Speaking of biological creatures, however, can be a bad example, since there would never be any cross-kind similarities because we know they were all created from separate kinds (Gen. 1-2), and have remained separate throughout history. But with languages, we know that they were all created from one language (Gen. 11:6), and we see that reected in that some of them share similar features. So, when words mimicking English features are found in French, it's not unlikely that they could be assimilated into the language, provided there was some sort of physical contact between the two languages (such as in the French invasion of English). Imagine that the Animal kinds all look like this:
|1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6| |1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6| |1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6| |1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6| (where cross-kind mixing is then impossible due to separate origins). And Language kinds all look like this:
|1|1:2|2|2:3|3|3:4|4|4:5|5|5:5|5|5:6|6| | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | : | | |1|1:2|2|2:3|3|3:4|4|4:5|5|5:5|5|5:6|6| (where each language kind has a strict column of features, but also 'shades over' a little into the other kinds, due to having the same origin). I hope this answers your questions, and Good Luck in your debate! Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
That's why they are called Romance Languages. You can't use the definition that's been given to the languages by evilutionists to credit your position of supporting evilutionists. Talk about going in circles! Edited by Jon, : Wrong prefix
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Jon Inactive Member |
What was that language? We simply cannot know, but it is unlikely to have been anything with which we are today familiar.
As I said before a Modern English speaker wouldn't be able to make neither heads nor tails of OE. This is one of an interesting question, and I, of course, agree. The thing is, however, if a newborn child were placed into an OE setting, he could learn the language with no problems. We know that all humans are descendent from a single man. Interestingly enough, humans all share a common gene that allows for us to acquire language 'naturally'. But, just as the gene is one derived from the original man, so to must be the language a language derived from the original language. This, then, makes even more sense when we realise that all humans can learn any language if born in any part of the world. This is because all languages have the same base (Gen. 11:1), and all humans have the same genetic predisposition to that base (Gen. 9:1). This information, of course, only makes sense if we recognise that all languages have a single common origin, that all humans have a single common origin, and that the split between the language lineages must have happened after the split in the human lineages. In other words, this information all makes sense in light of what the Bible tells us to be the truth. Edited by Jon, : Added some meat to the bones
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Jon Inactive Member |
I'm going to add this reply here, too, just because it took me longer than I thought it would to get that other one posted up there.
What was that language? We simply cannot know, but it is unlikely to have been anything with which we are today familiar.
As I said before a Modern English speaker wouldn't be able to make neither heads nor tails of OE. This is one of an interesting question, and I, of course, agree. The thing is, however, if a newborn child were placed into an OE setting, he could learn the language with no problems. We know that all humans are descendent from a single man. Interestingly enough, humans all share a common gene that allows for us to acquire language 'naturally'. But, just as the gene is one derived from the original man, so to must be the language a language derived from the original language. This, then, makes even more sense when we realise that all humans can learn any language if born in any part of the world. This is because all languages have the same base (Gen. 11:1), and all humans have the same genetic predisposition to that base (Gen. 9:1). This information, of course, only makes sense if we recognise that all languages have a single common origin, that all humans have a single common origin, and that the split between the language lineages must have happened after the split in the human lineages. In other words, this information all makes sense in light of what the Bible tells us to be the truth. Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
Do you mean that the child learns the language he is immersed in, or that all languages must have one common root? If the later, how do you precluded more than one language invention event? Both are correct, in fact. Children learn the language they are a part of, no matter where they are originally born or what language their parents spoke; they can learn any language so long as they grow up with the language, and they will sound like any other native speaker when they do. As for your second question, it pretty much rules itself. If language has one common root, then there could only be one language invention event (the invention by God when He rst spoke”Gen. 1:3). Edited by Jon, : preposition confusion
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Jon Inactive Member |
The key word, though, is learn. It has be taught, and if you encounter a different language, you have to go through the learning process again. Sort of, but not quite. Most linguists would agree that there is a certain innateness about the ability to use language. The process of learning when we are children is not the same as when we become adults. There is a Critical Age at which a child must be exposed to language if they are to ever develop it properly. This is usually during the period where the right and left brains are beginning to specialise at certain tasks. The left brain does language, and if it is not stimulated during these crucial times, it will not properly develop, and the person may never learn language. Further proof that language is a part of us; a part of what we do naturally, and not merely something we've developed.
Your use of the word "invention" suggests you think it was human activity more than divine that was responsible for the English language much like we describe the growth of a fetus in the womb through natural processes and not divine actions. No, invented by God (see my reply to Jar), when God spoke. It was then altered, by God, to form the different kinds of language we see today. Perhaps we need to realise that it is important to look at the intent behind the actions in the story. God's purpose for scattering the people was so that they could not get together in large enough groups to build something to reach to heaven again. It is entirely plausible to expect God to intervene further, here and there, when groups of people speaking the same language get too large, splitting them up and creating two or more new kinds of language. This makes good sense when we look at the data, which show that new languages come about when the population increases, and the creation of different languages seems to correspond directly to the splitting up of groups of people. Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
I cop. I'm not a creationist. I can't keep this up. Babel is the most ridiculous idea in the history of linguistics.
Sorry, but you seem rather informed on these matters, and I'd prefer to talk to you in science terms about linguistics instead of trying to keep up this charade Sorry to have strung you along, but I need to be honest and tell you that no Creationist will ever answer your question. They don't ever present evidence to support their position. Instead, they try to saw away at the evolutionary anvil using soft-tooth saws. Then, they look at the metal lings on the oor from their saw, and conclude they are actually from the anvil. I hope to see you in chat so we can talk some real linguistics! Jon Edited by Jon, : No reason given. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Philosophy] stands behind everything. It is the loom behind the fabric, the place you arrive when you trace the threads back to their source. It is where you question everything you think you know and seek every truth to be had. - Archer Opterix [msg=-11,-316,210]
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Jon Inactive Member |
I've been thinking a little bit, and I am wondering what others think on this one: would it be technically accurate to refer to Modern English as a creole language?
Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
alphabetical phonations You really have no clue what you're talking about, do you?
the difference of english strikes all european languages, but the same factor does not exist inter-european languages.
phonation
After all, if one does not know a word and its meaning, one cannot think in terms of that word; this impacts one's thinking.
I understand that evolutionists would not take such thinking as imperical, Evolutionists wouldn't care!
they have not a clue how the universe came about, and appear in a path which will not yield any answers. Would that be the path where they study biological entities as opposed to star clusters?
It is thus a question of perspectives, whether language is a force of its own, same as light, heat, energy, etc. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Philosophy] stands behind everything. It is the loom behind the fabric, the place you arrive when you trace the threads back to their source. It is where you question everything you think you know and seek every truth to be had. - Archer Opterix [msg=-11,-316,210]
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Jon Inactive Member |
Also, many languages are dead, or not spoken outside its own; many european nations were, like Briton, conquering states. France tried desperately to make french a global language, but was felled by english. Felled by English? C'mon! Do you have any grasp on history prior to, oh, the last 20 minutes? There's a much larger player in the story of English-language domination; let's see if you can guess who it is.
All languages are not equally pliable. First: dene pliable. Second: provide evidence showing that English is more pliable than other languages. Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
The earliest writings I can find are 8,000 years old (Chinese). There are potentially older writings. Huh? Are you sure? According to whom?
As to the 50K date, you might be thinking of the emergence of culture. Some hypotheses put the emergence of culture at roughly the same time H. sapiens came into being--180,000 or so years ago. One part of culture is language. Some, including myself, would say that language probably goes back to even earlier forms of H. sapiens, such as H. sapiens neandertalensis, or (even) H. sapiens erectus. That's at least 1.5 MYA! Of course, like you say, one thing is certain; language goes back at least 2KYA. Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
The earliest writings I can find are 8,000 years old (Chinese). There are potentially older writings. Huh? Are you sure? According to whom? I remember hearing of an archeological find in the south Nile area. Small tiles with a hole in one corner and pictograms on them. They appear to have been tags attached to containers and could represent a precursor to hieroglyphs. Yeah, but since when was China part of the south Nile area?
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Jon Inactive Member |
Accents are about phonology and phonemics and metalanguage, not alphabetics.
Furthermore, our brains learn to identify those phonemes and to distinguish between different phonemes (eg, between the voiced and unvoiced apico-dental plosives as demonstrated by the minimal pairs of "bitter" and "bidder" and "latter" and "ladder"). Some of us pronounce those minimal pairs the same , like with a ap, an allophone of both /t/ and /d/... so without context we wouldn't know which phoneme to 'translate' it into. And that, folks, was my 'I-just-nished-my-phonetics-exam' show-off post Jon
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Jon Inactive Member |
I am going to throw out some information that I would like IAJ to address. From The Oxford History of the English Language re the globalisation of English:
quote: quote: quote: Such status, however, was not always given English, as Richard W. Bailey (same book) points out about the English of the 14th Century4:
quote: From this I think IAJ needs to address the following points:
Until IAJ can do these things his ideas will not be anything more than existing in fanciful dream worlds, and he will have failed to have demonstrated why 'his insistence that English is somehow fundamentally different' adequately provides the information asked for in the OP: "Who, when, where, how and in what form was it created?" In other words, he will need to either directly answer these questions”provide a straight-up creation model”, or explain how the 'pliability' of English demonstrates a creation scenario instead of being a result of the facts listed within this thread. Jon__________ "English Among the Languages" Richard W. Bailey in The Oxford History of the English Language Ed Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford:2006) 340. "English World-Wide in the Twentieth Century" Tom McArthur in The Oxford History of the English Language Ed Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford:2006) 379. McArthur 369-70. 4 Bailey 337. _____ * The bracketed information in this quote appears in the original text in which it is also in brackets. ** I've decided to use the term 'pliable', in the same way as IAJ, to mean 'the characteristics of English, both in linguistic and cultural anthropological terms'. Edited by AgamemJon, : -/= _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Philosophy] stands behind everything. It is the loom behind the fabric, the place you arrive when you trace the threads back to their source. It is where you question everything you think you know and seek every truth to be had. - Archer Opterix [msg=-11,-316,210]
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Jon Inactive Member |
We can trace english's emergence, because this is observable from a certain period, and did not exist before then. In contrast, an ancient, primal language is not traceable: we can point to its oldest existence, but not how it got there. This is made more enigmatic that languages are not evidenced more than 6000 years: the reason of no writings is not relevent here, while the evidences of older civilizations by a small period can be allocated to carbon dating being unreliable for small margins. The operable factor here is, we have no writings in a copious supply, over grads of transitory periods, older than 6000; not in hard copy. We have no history per se pre-6000! If you want to argue for how good the English language is, could you perhaps start to speak it in your posts? You string together 'smart-sounding' words in such a way as to make your message almost as indecipherable as members like CrazyDiamond (no offence to that member ). Would you mind telling us why writing is necessary for having a language? As for the rest of your message: Jon
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