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How did translations come to be?? | ||
Tags: History | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| johntothea Senior Member United States Joined 6631 days ago 193 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Polish, French | Message 1 of 6 16 March 2007 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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How did the first bi-lingual people exist? How did countries with different languages interact? I've just always wondered...kind of curious :P.
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| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7018 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 6 17 March 2007 at 4:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Probably with a lot of pointing and gesturing initially. Then, as people slowly learned each others' languages communications must have improved. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6694 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 6 17 March 2007 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
That makes sense. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justinwilliams Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6692 days ago 321 posts - 327 votes 3 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Italian | Message 4 of 6 19 March 2007 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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He Dances with Wolves (the movie) knows it all!
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6705 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 5 of 6 19 March 2007 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have to admit that when I first read this question I thought it was a little strange. Since there is no way to trace the origin of language itself, how would you trace the origin of bilingualism?
If you think that language started with one group of speakers and spread out to humanity from them, bilingualism has probably existed since the time you could distinguish between two languages, because the grousp probably had some sort of contact. Back in primitive times, each tribe would have its own particular dialect. If there was any intermarriage or slavery, the people taken into the new tribe would naturally become bilingual since they were living in the new language environment. Like patuco said, it would start with a lot of hand waving and pointing, but after a time they new members would learn the new language. When tribes settled and founded villages, each village would have its own particular dialect, and the villagers might be able to communicate with people on neighboring villages. What would happen when the people were of another language group? Either war or bilingualism. Oh, and incidentally, I've heard that one ancient trading custom was that if sailors wanted to trade with people on the land they were passing, they could land on the shore not too far from the village (and not too close), light a fire and set out the goods they had to trade. Then they would go back to their ships. The villagers would come and take the items they wanted, and leave other items in trade. This way they didn't even need to use language at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6473 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 6 15 April 2007 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I love participating in such a situation with my characters in the online society simulator Cantr II. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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