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Author | Topic: Creation of the English Language | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
IamJoseph writes:
quote: Not really. While writing is somewhat young, mathematics is not. We have counting sticks as old as 30,000 years. The roots of language are quite old. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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IamJoseph Member (Idle past 3697 days) Posts: 2822 Joined: |
quote: I can't see what was confusing - I mentioned english origins being traceable in context why original languages were not so. I never said language is subject to writings; in fact, I dismissed that writings are essential to prove language. Thus the claim that language being older than 6000 cannot be proved due to lack of writings being developed, is nonesense. There are numerous other indicators of a language, and here, I do not refer to mass burials, colored beads or semblances of fireplaces. A language can be evidenced without writings by the recalling of a NAME, A KING, AN EVENT, A FOLKSONG, A RECIPE: these do not require writings. Unless we are also saying the human brain was not developed - thus the case for a language becomees mooted!
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IamJoseph Member (Idle past 3697 days) Posts: 2822 Joined: |
quote: And that's hardly a proof of history. If you have proof of counting sticks [amazing!] from 30K years, you will have a thread of development of stick counting, observable every 500 years. My understanding is, that language emerged prior to maths, while both these faculties are inherent in humans. What I find amazing about otherwise science oriented evolutionists, is their science becomes suspiciously contraversial - even non-science, when they have to prove anything they say, and retreat to the most precarious form of counter evidence, with caveats and qualifications which are untenable: millions of years scenarios; virus dna; deviational paths of so-called speciation which remain untrackable; etc. How convenient.
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IamJoseph Member (Idle past 3697 days) Posts: 2822 Joined: |
quote: The Brits were not alone here: france, spain, norway, the moguls, the arabs - all engaged in conquests and exploration. English won.
quote: Firstly, I'm not conversant with many dead languages, but can see those ancient languages could have been very elaborate and possessed many fine traits. We know that older languages were far more complex and sophisticated; Hebrew is a fine example here, and we can see first hand the magnificance of the OT as a 'literary' work, its expressionisms and axioms utilised by the greatest writers, far more than any other. However, these are apparently not the factors which made english the global language, even while english has a very disproprotionate and dislocated grammar, with almost no conformity of rules. Here, one can understand the problems faced by one learning english late in life - he will have to just take some things for granted, w/o rules, and learn them by heart. It appears, the world took to english because it is a true microcosm of all languages, thus its pliability. English has a cadence of europe, the M/E, asia and china; english also possesses more sounds, and with its vowels not separated; interestingly, the vowels were part of the alphabets in the hebrew, as were the numerals - it was the greeks which separated the vowels and numerlas from the hebrew, when they begat the greek alphabets from this source. Now, its back again to the original format, namely the vowels are back within the alphabets - this gives a greater flexibility and pliability. Anther reason is that the world is moving away from the complex, to a fast track communication mode. We see this in the new PC & mobile 'text' language coming into sway, indicating that even english will fade to the new, faster writing mode. Thus english represents a worldly mix, more pristine [less baggage], greater menu of sounds, and a more refined sound [less gutheral].
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Jon Inactive Member |
Thus english represents a worldly mix, more pristine [less baggage], greater menu of sounds, and a more refined sound [less gutheral]. Gutheral? C'mon! What a joke.
Firstly, I'm not conversant with many dead languages, but can see those ancient languages could have been very elaborate and possessed many fine traits. We know that older languages were far more complex and sophisticated; Hebrew is a fine example here, and we can see first hand the magnificance of the OT as a 'literary' work, its expressionisms and axioms utilised by the greatest writers, far more than any other. Irrelevant.
English has a cadence of europe, the M/E, asia and china; english also possesses more sounds, and with its vowels not separated; interestingly, the vowels were part of the alphabets in the hebrew, as were the numerals - it was the greeks which separated the vowels and numerlas from the hebrew, when they begat the greek alphabets from this source. Now, its back again to the original format, namely the vowels are back within the alphabets - this gives a greater flexibility and pliability. Honestly, did you write this whilst intoxicated? English has at least 13-15 vowel sounds. Count the vowels in the alphabet and tell me how many you nd. In case you forget, it's: A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z.
it was the greeks which separated the vowels and numerlas from the hebrew What? That is nonsensical jabberwocky. Please type your posts in English.
English has a cadence of europe, the M/E, asia and china; english also possesses more sounds, and with its vowels not separated; Again, utterly meaningless gibberish. I noticed you quoted large portions of my message, as if you were going to address the points therein, but then went on talking about Greek and Hebrew and, yes again, writing. All completely unrelated to English. Do you want to address this one here (the major blow to your position):
quote: If you can't address that point, your position has not backing. Jon__________ "English World-Wide in the Twentieth Century" Tom McArthur in The Oxford History of the English Language Ed Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford:2006) 379.
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IamJoseph Member (Idle past 3697 days) Posts: 2822 Joined: |
quote: Exactly. Why do you think knight is spelled that way? Because it was pronounced that way in the past, but the gutheral sound was dropped.
quote: Why - it shows how languges are made less burdersome and its ancient complexities dropped.
quote: six or seven. My point was, these vowels were originally part of the alphabets, then they got separated, and english has them back to the original format.
quote: No nonesense. Vowels were added to hebrew later, subsequent to the greeks translating of this language in 300 BCE. They also got their alphabetical writings mode from here [The Josephus Documents]. Ancient hebrew had the alphabets as numbers also, and was able to make cencus in their millions, w/o separate alphabets {the cencus of the israelites/Book of Exodus
quote: Not really. English developed using 100s of french and other european language words. Its not irrelevent, but in context to english being a true microcosm of all languages. Kismet, is an Indian word, but incorporated in english; same with pattisserie, croissaunt, castle, chutzpah, etc - these are imported words.
quote: Check yourself - I did reespond. Briton was not the only nation which conquered, so this is not the main factor.
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akhenaten Junior Member (Idle past 5930 days) Posts: 26 Joined: |
IAJ writes: We can trace english's emergence, because this is observable from a certain period, and did not exist before then. Oh no, not this again. It is true that we can trace English's emergence. We can similarly trace the emergence of many other languages, and evidence was presented to support that. It is not true that there is any period in history that marks a point before which English does not exist, and after which English exists. Old English emerged slowly and gradually from Anglo-Frisian roots, Middle English emerged slowly and gradually from Old English with added French-Norman words, and Early Modern English emerged the same way from Middle English. The Anglo-Frisian precursor would have itself emerged slowly and gradually from something else. English emerged gradually, just like autumn emerges gradually without a clear defninite break from summer. If you disagree, if you think that there was a point in history that marked a clear definite break when English came to be, then you must present the evidence -- not just a suggestion of something you remember. Otherwise you should concede that English emerged gradually, just as many other languages did.
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IamJoseph Member (Idle past 3697 days) Posts: 2822 Joined: |
quote: This is silly. Gradually with english, is not gradually as all languages do. That english has a definitive and observable development period, and this being different from the host of original, national languages which development is not definitive - is not disputable. It does not mean we have a specific date when english occured; rather, it means the period of its development and rise to a real, new language is known. We do not know the same about Greek, Indian or Hebrew - these were outside of observable history: their origins are mysterious and untraceable.
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akhenaten Junior Member (Idle past 5930 days) Posts: 26 Joined: |
IAJ writes: We do not know the same about Greek, Indian or Hebrew - these were outside of observable history: their origins are mysterious and untraceable. What about French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish. etc.? (All of these histories were referred to by kuresu in his earlier post)
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Of course we know much about the origins of Hebrew.
Origins of Hebrew Hebrew is a Semitic language, and as such a member of the larger Afro-Asiatic phylum. Within Semitic, the Northwest Semitic languages formed around the 3rd millennium BCE, grouped with the Arabic languages as Central Semitic. The Canaanite languages are a group within Northwest Semitic, emerging in the 2nd millennium BCE in the Levant, gradually separating from Aramaic and Ugaritic. Within the Canaanite group, Hebrew belongs to the sub-group also containing Edomite, Ammonite and Moabite: see Hebrew languages. Another Canaanite sub-group contains Phoenician and its descendant Punic. A lot is also known about the origins of Greek and many of the Indian (whatever that means) languages. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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kuresu Member (Idle past 2542 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
We do not know the same about Greek, Indian or Hebrew
Um, ookay. Greek:Proto-Greek language - Wikipedia Greek language - Wikipedia Indian:oh wait, which indian language do you mean? a map of native languages in India: File:States of South Asia 1.png - Wikipedia a general source: Indian languages - Wikipedia Hebrew:Hebrew language - Wikipedia Can you honestly do no research of your own? Something tells me this is impossible bor you. Not only have I found your king from ca 800 c.e. who standardized Old English, but I've also found the histories of all these languages, and these histories include the origins.
That english has a definitive and observable development period
Try telling that to linguists. They will laugh at you. Again, look at the histories I posted for 13 plus languages. We know there development periods, they have definite (as definite as can be) periods of development. Really, stop pulling this shit out of your ass and do some reading.
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IamJoseph Member (Idle past 3697 days) Posts: 2822 Joined: |
Yes, he did post histories, and how most N. Europe languages are germain related hybrids, as well as many other european languages having inter-connections. Here, one has to look whether german is one of the original languages which original source is unknown, my premise being that languages did not originally emerge from grunts of cave people. The adaptation factor relates to their development and refinement, not their causation.
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kuresu Member (Idle past 2542 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
In 2003, tentative evidence was found at —/— Jih, an archaeological site in the Hénán province of China, for a still earlier form of Chinese writing. Some symbols were found that bear striking resemblance to certain modern characters, such as m "eye". Since the Jih site dates from about 7000 to 5800 BCE, it predates the earliest confirmed Chinese writing by well over 3,000 years. The nature of this finding”in particular, whether it represents true writing (that is, a general mechanism for expression) or simply proto-writing (which comprises a limited set of symbols)”is still disputed. Written Chinese - Wikipedia The big question, it seems, is whether this writing is the direct ancestor of modern chinese. More evidence is needed, but I would say that a form of writing dates back 8,000 years, at least. Given that we were drawing 30,000 years ago, it's not a stretch to imagine a written language to develop is the need arose.
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kuresu Member (Idle past 2542 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
The source of german is known, though.
That would be the indo-european language. And even that has an origin hypothesis--proto indo european. By the way, I highly doubt that anyone proposes that languages derived from grunts of cave people. The biggest reason being is that cave people really didn't exist--they are the popularization of modern culture, not a historical fact (yes, people lived in caves at times, but I highly doubt hunter-gatherers did so on a permament basis). Second, grunts can mean anything, from a morning groan to an expression of pain or discomfort. Linguists and others try to be more precise.
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