The Original Human Language Like Yoda Sounded.....

Link to the Story

Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They've found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original "proto-human language" might have sounded. New research suggests that it sounded somewhat like the speech of Yoda, the tiny green Jedi from "Star Wars."

further on the article says....

There are various word orders used in the languages of the world. Some, like English, use subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering, as in the sentence "I like you." Others, such as Latin, use subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, as in "I you like." In rare cases, OSV, OVS, VOS and VSO are used. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used SOV ordering ("I you like").

"This language would have been spoken by a small East African population who seemingly invented fully modern language and then spread around the world, replacing everyone else," Ruhlen told Life's Little Mysteries.

Pretty interesting this article is !!!!!!

reply to post by dominicus


Like yoda they talked, yes? hmmm.

Find an ancient digital recording so that this theory can be verified, hopefully we will.

reply to post by dominicus


Sounds like the German language kept all of that Yoda grammar.


Khar

Originally posted by Kharron
reply to post by dominicus

 

Sounds like the German language kept all of that Yoda grammar.

Khar

Got a problem with the German language?! Come out of your House and fight like a man

Originally posted by Kharron
reply to post by dominicus

 

Sounds like the German language kept all of that Yoda grammar.

Khar

I was thinkin the exact same thing

Originally posted by SkullAndBeats235

Originally posted by Kharron
reply to post by dominicus

 

Sounds like the German language kept all of that Yoda grammar.

Khar

Got a problem with the German language?! Come out of your House and fight like a man

Dont you mean Out come from your house you will, man fight you can.....mmmm?

German language is still a child of a previous forerunner. Perhaps a marriage between two others.

Lets not get all Nationalistic here. The are say the original language may have come out of East Africa, so if anyone has bragging rights ......

Still I think its fascinating how all these different languages came to fruition in different parts of the world. Its very interesting.

I think it would be cool to go back to the original and have that as the 1 worldly language.

Perhaps there is something to the tower of babal story

reply to post by dominicus

click click bloody click pancakes ...

This is interesting. In the movie Prometheus, the android David spends two years getting to the root of all earth languages in the hope he can speak to the "creators" once they find them. Looks like Ridley didn't miss a beat in the making of this film.

reply to post by dominicus


Just had to say ...

Gen 11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
Gen 11:2 As men moved eastward, [fn] they found a plain in Shinar [fn] and settled there.

From East Africa it would make sense for them to move East into the Middle East region.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04


Not to be picky but Shinar if if stands for Mesopotamia is to the northeast of East Africa, east of East Africa is the Indian ocean

reply to post by Hanslune


North East is still East. Since North East is the only possible direction I would imagine it less likely to be specified, though even if you could go North and South East I would not say it has to be specified. It is East nonetheless.

Originally posted by OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Hanslune

 

North East is still East. Since North East is the only possible direction I would imagine it less likely to be specified, though even if you could go North and South East I would not say it has to be specified. It is East nonetheless.

The bible uses the word northeast, southeast, northwest and southwest a number of times. Considering who was writing this, and that they were probably in the location of Palestine/Canaan - they wrote east meaning east to point to Shinar and Mesopotamia. East of them without any consideration of 'East Africa' which at that time they would have known nothing about

reply to post by Hanslune


As you probably know the Bible was passed down as an oral tradition. Which means they could have passed down by word of mouth they went East. Simply because North East is used in some parts of the bible does not mean they could not have gone North East and passed down to the next generation they went East (especially if it was a 45 degree angle). Also if they were on the coast line of Africa it would have been almost a direct Easterly path, not North East. Since Shinar can only be assumed to be a certain location it is pointless of you to argue worthless semantics. Just in case you wish to use semantics, if I was traveling to Baghdad from Alexandria I would say I went East, not North East.

Originally posted by OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Hanslune

 

As you probably know the Bible was passed down as an oral tradition. Which means they could have passed down by word of mouth they went East. Simply because North East is used in some parts of the bible does not mean they could not have gone North East and passed down to the next generation they went East (especially if it was a 45 degree angle). Also if they were on the coast line of Africa it would have been almost a direct Easterly path, not North East. Since Shinar can only be assumed to be a certain location it is pointless of you to argue worthless semantics. Just in case you wish to use semantics, if I was traveling to Baghdad from Alexandria I would say I went East, not North East.

edit on 27-6-2012 by OccamsRazor04 because: (no reason given)

East Africa has a specific location in the modern world, you are taking that modern connection and applying it to a book that was written down thousands of years before that geographical label was applied.... it is considered to be south of Egypt, the Soudan and Abyssinia. Your assuming your intrepretation is correct, I'm pointing out that that it may be incorrect, if you start to 'assume' what the Hebrew gentlemen meant - you might as well do as Mohammed and Smith did - write your own holy book

Originally posted by SkullAndBeats235

Originally posted by Kharron
reply to post by dominicus

 

Got a problem with the German language?! Come out of your House and fight like a man

I think German is probably the single most hideous language on the planet. I can also say that in perfect safety, because I'm on the Internet.

Originally posted by Kastogere

Originally posted by SkullAndBeats235

Originally posted by Kharron
reply to post by dominicus

 

Sounds like the German language kept all of that Yoda grammar.

Khar

Got a problem with the German language?! Come out of your House and fight like a man

Dont you mean Out come from your house you will, man fight you can.....mmmm?

No, he means to say "From your house come out, and like a man fight."

It is supposed to be SOV, not a VSO....

you, the word order, understand?

By the way, this is the same way Japanese and Korean people form their sentences...

As for other people talking about "The Oldest Language", well, the oldest written language is Sumerian . The Sumerian language is the oldest in terms of writing. It is even older than ancient Egyptian, by a couple of thousands of years in fact, almost 10,000 years ago.

reply to post by Hanslune


Correct me if I am wrong but they do not specify their starting point if I remember correctly, so they not state they start in Africa, go East, and end in Shinar. I am also not saying this is "proof" of anything, simply making a statement. It's entirely possible they left Africa and travelled elsewhere before then traveling to Shinar. My point still stands though, if they started in modern day Egypt along the coast and went East they would reach possible locations of Shinar. I think I have aptly demonstrated this is a possibility, I am not stating it as fact as what occured.

Originally posted by OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Hanslune

 

Correct me if I am wrong but they do not specify their starting point if I remember correctly, so they not state they start in Africa, go East, and end in Shinar. I am also not saying this is "proof" of anything, simply making a statement. It's entirely possible they left Africa and travelled elsewhere before then traveling to Shinar. My point still stands though, if they started in modern day Egypt along the coast and went East they would reach possible locations of Shinar. I think I have aptly demonstrated this is a possibility, I am not stating it as fact as what occured.

you could say that, but it is just speculation.
the text itself generally makes it sound like they were starting in canaan or jorden and going east or south east, given that shinar is babylon.

reply to post by demongoat


The location of Shinar is unknown. The starting point is equally unknown. Although it would stand to reason that if they had already left Africa before this trip to Shinar then they had the same universal language either way.