Language

[Moocow4u2]

It's interesting

it's all just a bunch of noise but somehow we've decided some noises are more meaningful than others. Then there's the words themselves... What made people name things the way they did?! At some point some guy must've seen a cat and out of nowhere shouted "CAT" and that became its noise. Then another saw a dog and just out of nowhere thought "oooo dog". But then somewhere else in the world some guy saw a dog and somehow decided gou was a better name O.o（狗）

And then another neat thing would be writing and languages words like "I" for example. Some guy thought it was best represented by I.. But somewhere else a guy thought no, 我 (wo) is better and somewhere else, я (ya) is better.

That's all. I just found the concept of language kind of interesting how people came up with it, how it ended up, the many variations of it

[5/9 Turtle]

That reminds me of how the brain named itself

[Moocow4u2]

Haha wow I guess that's kinda true xD and how the brain decided it was the most complex part of a human

[Gorzo]

I watched a NovaScienceNOW about language. Super interesting, and I highly recommend Nova (especially ScienceNOW) to anyone who wants to increase their understanding of the world.

Apparently, crafting stone tools activates the language center of the brain. Even today. There's no speech involved whatsoever. But this leads us to believe that our old cave-buddy ancestors used tool crafting as the earliest form of language, and it still exists in our brain coding today.

<3 ScienceNOW. I miss Neil DeGrasse Tyson as the host, though. He's one of my favorite people on the planet.

[Steerpike]

English major here

Yeah the generation of language is something no one is entirely knowledgable about. Organized thought can't really precede language, so there are a lot of old wacky theories about how words were created.
Like some people threw around the idea that certain words were born from onomatopeas (which would basically mean that certain feelings produced certain appropriate grunts or whines). I forget some of the others, but many are just as groundless.

[Edit: That tool theory is pretty interesting, Gorzo. Did the program mention anything about the things they would use the tools on? Like is the language part of the brain activated when doing cave drawings of the animals they'd hunt with those tools?]

Then you have neologisms being created all the time with things like 'tweet' as in to use twitter and acronyms like 'yolo' (as much as I hate it). English is really really good at making up new words whenever it wants.

[Mlerner12]

How do you explain "duffel bag", though? Lol

[Steerpike]

OED says Duffle (or the American use anyway) means the personal effects of a sportsman or a camper-out.
As in, "everyone has gone to their chosen ground with too much impedimenta, too much duffel" (G. W. Sears, 1884)

But it probably comes from Duffel's more British use as a low-grade fabric. Certain bags probably used this material when doing things outside.
It apparently has some relation to Duffel, the town in northern Belgium where it may have been made first.

Which brings another reason why we have some words. We borrow them from other languages

[Steerpike]

Moral of the story being that there are lots of ways words become words

[Moocow4u2]

I really had no interest in this before xD but I started learning a few languages and it was kinda cool:) another cool one I found too are some words like there their they're. They all sound the same but generally we can tell what we mean by which one we use when we speak and I noticed it A LOT MORE when I started learning mandarin almost every word has many meanings (sometimes depending on the tone of your voice, sometimes by the context) but for example zhu... Depending on the tone of your voice (there's 5) you could be saying many things... To eat, bamboo, pig.... So you could go to a Chinese restaurant and ask for zhu rou (pork) but with the wrong tone, ask for bamboo meat lol

[Moocow4u2]

And it's very amazing how they can tell their own words apart O.O I use to try over Skype(i don't study it anymore) and its very very difficult to notice the tones when they talk normally but kinda cool because again almost every word has many many meanings

[Gorzo]

Context. It's important. Same way we English-speakers know the difference in verbal communication immediately when people use homonyms. (there - their - they're, your - you're, etc.)

[Silent1236]

Context. It's important. Same way we English-speakers know the difference in verbal communication immediately when people use homonyms. (there - their - they're, your - you're, etc.)

Unfortunately, typing it out is apparently very difficult to do

[Moocow4u2]

Lol

[PapaBudz]

I watched a NovaScienceNOW about language. Super interesting, and I highly recommend Nova (especially ScienceNOW) to anyone who wants to increase their understanding of the world.

Apparently, crafting stone tools activates the language center of the brain. Even today. There's no speech involved whatsoever. But this leads us to believe that our old cave-buddy ancestors used tool crafting as the earliest form of language, and it still exists in our brain coding today.

<3 ScienceNOW. I miss Neil DeGrasse Tyson as the host, though. He's one of my favorite people on the planet.

Looking into it.

I love this community. Ya'll are a good source of knowledge 

[rarehuntertay]

And what's interesting, they cannot determine how spoken language came about. There is no evolutionary trail for it. Some think it was genetic engineering by a higher power. I don't know.