Languages Don't Begin with Grunts

Reading The Evolution of a Creationist

Lemme type this up real quick
=================================
"The study of language has developed into a complex field of scholarship. Linguist tell us that languages get more and more complex the farther back they trace them. The older ("more primitive") a language is, the more complex it appears to be. This is powerful evidence against evolution.
If evolution is true and man gradually evolved from more primitive creatures, language should get more and more simple the older it is said to be. Prehistoric man should have communicated first with grunts; then with single syllables; then with mutli-syllabic words (ba-na-na); then, with setence fragments, developing into sentecnes ("I want banana"), etc. What is found is just the ooposite. early languages such as Sumerian are so complex that only a handful of the most brilliant scholars can decipher them. The Tower of Babel incident explains the races and the problem of complex "primitive" languages. God created the languages instantly and fully mature. Evolution offers no good explanation for the complexity of the earlist known languages! Linguistic researchers from around the world have published their ideas concerning the geographic location of our "primitive" mother tongue. Linguists call this language Proto-Indo-European. Two Russian linguistic experts, Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov, have offered evidence "...that Indo-European originated in an area known as Anatolia, which is now part of Turkey, and from there spread throughout Europe and the sub-continet." (see U.S. News and World Report, Nov. 5, 1990, page 62)
U.S. News and World Report was not the first publication to report that language can be traced back to Turkey. The Bible records fro us that Noah and his family had their post-flood beginnings in Turkey: And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat
(Genesis 8:4).
Scientists trace Language back to a particular place on earth, the Bible would describe that place to be the mountains of Ararat in Turkey. The linguists agree!
===================================


[Edited on 1-5-2003 by Lysergic]

Interesting ... But Summeria was also one of the first to even have a written language, so how are we to know the FULL evolution of human language? We can just start with summeria only because that's the earliest coherent language available ...

LoL this is the dumbest thread I've ever seen.

The two most complex languages the world has ever seen are English, and Mandarin. Mandarin because it has what, 1000 characters?

The English language, because it is a "spoken langauge".

Just because people today use 50,000 words and say "yo" and "hommie" more than anything else, doesn't make english any less advanced than it was in the 17 and 1800s.

The English language is a mastery of exactitude. With it you can convey any emotion, any idea, any thought, concious or unconcious, any color and any concept or philosophy or feeling or flavor or smell or sound.

English can explain the world better then almost any other language on earth, my learning russian showed this, you have NO idea how restricting russian is as a language.

And I'm sure people who are coming from other languages can see how much freedom English allows when you master it.

Ancient languages are not more complex than English.

For instance the babylonians had no concept of "zero" for anything that was "zero" didn't exist and so they never spoke of it, never concieved of it.

Well I feel I've said enough, looks like we all can go back to English Class, we all need a refresher.

*EDIT* Oh and I forgot to mention but there are plenty of languages that do not stem from Indo-European. The Bushmen speak a language consisting of Clicks and whistles. The Aboriginees have their own language too as do the Chinese and other oriental peoples.

[Edited on 2-5-2003 by HKoT]

HKoT,

I think you may have missed the point of the article he posted ... The point wasn't a matter of one language being more complex than an other today as you pointed out. The point was how since recorded history, language has and alway's was complex. There is no record of language starting out as 'baby talk' or something like that. But, as I pointed out, the evidence for this is rather slim as summeria was one of the first civilization's to develope a written language for us to understand. If prior civilization's never had a written language, then there is no way we can possibly know the full evolution of the human language's of today.

Lysergic nice thread. I think that the languages appear fully formed because there are basically about 100,000 years of the unrecorded evolution of language, which we may never know. The apparent complexity of the architecture of the Eygptians is another bone of contention like this, their Pyramids appear as if from no-where, yet there they are. Again there is a long period of development we are simply not able to see.

To all concerned I suggest you take what HKoT says with a pinch of salt. He has called this the dumbest thread when it is actually worthy of disussion.

THE DUMBEST thread I have seen for a while is this little gem by HKot,

www.abovetopsecret.com...

"Feminism is stupid, Political Correctness evil, and when WW3 comes you women will understand you are in over your heads."

" (Do you really think a Male POW would get even half the attention that bum Jessica got?)"

Sorry for putting this in thread Lysergic but It puts this muppet into context.

This book as a lot of interesting topics in it, as for the language even as a kid I always wondered how a spoken language came to be. I would ask my grandfather why do we say Yes, and not something totally different, who created the word and why and why did they want it to sound that way and when they first spoke it was the other person automatically able to understand it. You see how would one person that never spoke before be able to create a word and another person who never had a spoken language be able to know what it ment? Because if we were monkeys grunting I just don't see how it changed over you know. Grunts would be more of pitch and lenght i would guess if you took monkeys and how they scream but most of the time they communicate through body language.

HKoT u really have troubles with the threads on this forum, thx to sumerians and old civilizations we have more than 200 languages now in the globe,
2nd Don�t say non-sense about the 2 most difficult languages in the world, because is the opposite, english is one of the easier languages to learn, and that�s why is choosen as the universal language in airports, tourists, or ppl that doesn�t speak the same language, don�t u think is pretty stupid to put "the 2nd most difficult language" as a official talk language of the world??
Please HKoT in almost all your posts u have the same attitude, and as cassini shows u are the one "starting dumb threads".
I don�t like to be aggresive with anyone, but your attitude shows ignorance everywhere...
Btw the first 2nd and 3rd most difficult languages are

Chinese
Japanese
Arabic

He likes to disagree with anything I say, he is like my own personal forum troll. Atleast he entertains me sometimes.

Actually, Cold, English is one of the harder languages to learn because of the irregular verb forms. While it's tempting to be quite tacky, here, the sad truth is that you can easily see for yourself that even native English speakers don't have a good grasp of spelling and grammar. Just read any set of writings on Usenet for a prime example of just how poorly many of us function in our own language.

English and Mandarin Chinese, linguistically speaking, are two of the harder languages to learn.

The reason English is so "popular" is that (if you will remember your English classes) Great Britain ruled the seas for several centuries and colonized (or conquered) much of the world, forcing English to become a standard. It's the same way that Latin became the universal language back 2500 years ago and stayed the universal language till English took over.

[Edited on 2-5-2003 by Byrd]

Are you serious? Even today, we can see the evolution of language. Hell, just get a dictionary of every year, go back just a few years, and you'll see the addition of new words every single year...evolving into what we speak today. Was there a word for computer 100 years ago, or rocket? Please...

The earliest languages were spoken, not written, and as such, there is no record. However, if you study cultures (such as tribal ones), that rely more on verbal than written language, you'll easily see how their language is more primitive and evolved as they learned more about the world. The proof of the evolution of language is seen everyday (so is evolution in general). Languages just "popped" into existence fully formed...uh-huh, sure...

Interesting thought though...but too easy to disprove...

The author is making some rather biased points, and they don't really fit in with modern research.

Originally posted by Lysergic
Reading The Evolution of a Creationist
If evolution is true and man gradually evolved from more primitive creatures, language should get more and more simple the older it is said to be. Prehistoric man should have communicated first with grunts; then with single syllables; then with mutli-syllabic words (ba-na-na); then, with setence fragments, developing into sentecnes ("I want banana"), etc.

As others have pointed out, this is a fairly bogus argument. We have no clue what prehistoric man said. They forgot to invent the record player during the ice ages.

What is found is just the ooposite. early languages such as Sumerian are so complex that only a handful of the most brilliant scholars can decipher them.

Argh! Bogus! The reason they're hard to decypher is that they vanished and there are few records in multiple languages so we have to piece out what they say by a lot of detective work. Until the Rosetta Stone was found, we couldn't translate ancient Egyptian.

The Tower of Babel incident explains the races and the problem of complex "primitive" languages.

Only if you ignore other evidence.

God created the languages instantly and fully mature.

Uh... no. WE created languages from other languages and can actually trace them backwards. As societies get isolated, they devleop "family" and "slang" words that turn into a language different from their mother tongue. We can trace British English and American English and Australian English (which all sound different and have unique words) back to a common Old English and that to still older languages.

Languages are like family trees. Your grandparents didn't just suddenly show up out of thin air. They had parents and so on and so forth. Languages show the migration of people and the technology.

Evolution offers no good explanation for the complexity of the earlist known languages!

The author doesn't understand evolution.

Linguistic researchers from around the world have published their ideas concerning the geographic location of our "primitive" mother tongue. Linguists call this language Proto-Indo-European. Two Russian linguistic experts, Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov, have offered evidence "...that Indo-European originated in an area known as Anatolia, which is now part of Turkey, and from there spread throughout Europe and the sub-continent."

Well, they did get that much right. That's one theory.

The Bible records fro us that Noah and his family had their post-flood beginnings in Turkey: And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4).

...a location which has never actually been identified. There are several contenders for the title in various locations.

Scientists trace Language back to a particular place on earth, the Bible would describe that place to be the mountains of Ararat in Turkey. The linguists agree!

No, they don't. Turkey is not a specific small location on and around a mountain. Turkey is a rather large country. And Babel was located in IRAQ -- not Turkey. So if we got all those 'mature languages' we wouldn't see languages of different ages and with different roots -- they'd all spring up with no precursors in one location in Iraq.

Here's a better web site on languages:
www.krysstal.com...

Cold said something as laughable as Lysergic did in Bush's regiem thread.

"english is one of the easier languages to learn, and that�s why is choosen as the universal language in airports, tourists, or ppl that doesn�t speak the same language,"

No it is THE hardest language to learn to speak. Mandarin being the hardest language to write *for a general sumation*.

This is why you see so many mexicans on our streets who can't speak a word of english.

Why is english the language of the skies? Because America and Britain still dominate the world, economically, and militarily.

What was that old phrase? Please think before you post.

e-nonymous makes a valid point though that the article is simply saying language has always been complex, I didn't feel this way when reading it, it seemed to try to say the most complex languages were like linear B or such.

However, I think you would find that ancient languages like Ancient Greek and Sumerian are actually quite primitive as they are.

But you must realize man has ALWAYS had the ability to speak, and he didn't suddenly choose to do so 4000 years ago.

In fact many animals can speak, and even speak in context.

So proof of evolution comes from that right there, we speak like any other animal can with a clipped tongue, we merely evolved to beable to comprehend and convey thoughts, and emotions.

Just for the record, I've had quite a few people from other countries tell me that English is 'the' hardest language to learn. People from Russia, Mexico, and Somalia to name a few.

I'm not claiming to know more than anyone else, just thought I would say what I've come across in life.

Originally posted by DClark
Just for the record, I've had quite a few people from other countries tell me that English is 'the' hardest language to learn. People from Russia, Mexico, and Somalia to name a few.

To whoever told you that, ask them how many languages they are speaking.

If English was their 2nd and only foreign language, how the heck can you say it's the hardest?? Of course it seems harder than your mother language, because you have to learn it.

As for me, my mother language is Bosnian or "serbo-croatian", my 2nd language being German, and 3rd English. I understand and speak all of them fluently.

When I analyze my own language, Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian, it is VERY complicated and the grammar is extremely difficult along with everything else.

I still consider English to be a lot easier than German however. That's me though...

[Edited on 3-5-2003 by another_one]

In the words of the greatest philosopher ever, Homer
-"D'oh"-

What are you talking about?

Russian is my 4th language, Spanish and German were easy as hell, and I never spoke a word of either for almost 10 years now. Now I take up russian, and I don't open the book or anything.

Just an hour a day 4 days a week and it's fine, granted I've just about finished my 2nd semester and could work on vocab but I've got another year to work out all that.

English however, I can't tell you what the hell a verb is or why I put a comma after "however".

And I doubt many can.

English is a language that must be mastered like an art, for its true beauty to be expressed, what language do you think Shakespeare is writting in? It sure isn't Greek.


Another_one, you don't have a clue what english is. It's not "Can I have another hot dog?" What we speak in most of the world is a bad form of Cockney. Elizebethan English blows away the minds of even the well learned.

[Edited on 3-5-2003 by HKoT]

Originally posted by HKoT
English is a language that must be mastered like an art, for its true beauty to be expressed.

You are you and I am I.

English, for me, was the easiest language to learn. To you, it seems to be "extremely difficult".

Honestly, I've never heard somebody say that in my entire life.

My point to you another_one is that you speak "cockney el crappo"

So don't be thinking you have any clue what english can do as a language, until you speak like William F. Buckley.

Haven't you read any of William Shakespeare?

Originally posted by HKoT
My point to you another_one is that you speak "cockney el crappo"

Thank You =D

And yes, I've read Shakespeare quite a lot. One of my favorite works is "Titus".

But are you saying that there are no "good" writers of the GERMAN language?

English was easy to learn.... for MYSELF. To you it seems to be extremely difficult. Though it is no reason to try to throw insults.

Everyone is different. =)

No not that there are no GOOD writers of any other languages.

But that a Good master of English can convey more thoughts, more ideas, more feelings and emotions, more occurances, more circumstances, then any other language on earth.

That a Master of English shows that it is a pinacle of language.

And that's why you can't compare yourself to thinking English is easy...it really isn't, you just like the rest of us speak a very rudamentary form of it. As if we were all peasants, and if you ever listened to a "noble" talk, you would understand half of what he said lol.

And even less understand why he said it the way he did.