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Origin of every human language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 9 of 77 16 April 2011 at 1:44am | IP Logged | |||||
I could be wrong, but I am willing to bet the forum creator didn't have epistemology in mind when designing the layout :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 10 of 77 16 April 2011 at 2:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Egyptian hieroglyphs have been attested from a thousand years before that, not to mention Sumerian script predating it. Surely you're not suggesting that two different writing systems represented the same language? R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 11 of 77 16 April 2011 at 2:59am | IP Logged | |||||
I would agree with you, but perhaps Francois could opine? I would guess that he used the tower in the banner as it is a universally recognized symbol of the multiplicity of languages. For example, the European union has issued this poster: 
And the European Parliament building in Strasbourg was designed based on a 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel, which is, incidentally, the same painting used in our forum banner:   Edited by JW on 16 April 2011 at 3:00am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 12 of 77 16 April 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged | |||||
As I said, I certainly would not be dogmatic about the date. However, I would be interested to know the method of dating used in the attestations you mention. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5108 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 77 16 April 2011 at 3:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Method of dating:
Archaeological,astronomical events, statigraphy,typology and artifacts found at same time. Radio carbon dating, King lists of the Akkadian empires... The Venus Tablet of Ammi-saduqa - which recorded the first and last appearance of Venus each year. I googled all this and it's all explained in this (very long) link: This explains it, I think: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9veK7E2JwkUC&pg=PA44&lpg= PA44&dq=dating+ancient+sumerian+scripts&source=bl&ots=B7uK3i QVk-&sig=RNLEFHo7K5aTmErD6v84sKWfzu4&hl=en&ei=bfWoTY-XL4nx4Q ac3s3OCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AE wAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 14 of 77 16 April 2011 at 4:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting. I will take a look. Additionally, I found this (also very long) paper that some may find interesting: http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/0 1-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely_Babel_WTJ.pdf I have not read it but may do so (not sure I want to invest that much time). I skimmed it and did see some support for a 3500 BC - 2400 BC date but there is much there to digest. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5108 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 77 16 April 2011 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Pages 12 & 13 of that (interesting) article put a very good argument against the notion that there was only one language before the tower of Babel was built. Also, a very valid point worthy of note is explained: During the time of Genesis, the world was not considered as big as we actually now know it to be.
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 16 of 77 16 April 2011 at 4:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Language development is likely a process that includes both abrupt breaks (i.e. the tower of Babel) and slow
linguistic evolution. It is obvious that the Indo-European languages all evolved from one mother tongue. It is not so obvious that Indo-European is in any way related to Papuan languages or that Sino-Tibetan is related to Nilo- Saharan languages. JW: I mostly agree with you but disagree on the original language being Semitic. It is true that much of the present Middle East is Semitic, but most linguists agree that Sumerian wasn't even Semitic (nor was it Indo-European, it was an isolate). Elamitic, spoken very near Mesopotamia, is possibly related to the Dravidian of India. And the Hattian language spoken once in Turkey is believed by many to be related to present Pontic languages on the other side of the Black Sea, like Circassian. So it is very tricky to say the ancient tongue was related particularly to any currently existing language. Perhaps there is no modern offshoot of the ancient language and all were re-created from Babel onwards. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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