Have you ever thought what is language?
From the very beginning
of the life on the Earth, people started communicating even though they didn’t
know about it. Actually, there was nonverbal communication while first
inhabitants started using gestures and drawings on the wall. Generation by generation
people developed their type of delivering information. As the result, now we
have about 7000 languages in the modern world (www.bbc.co.uk
). But what exactly is the language and how it appeared?
An early stage of the
development of language was verbal communication. Spoken language appeared
approximately 150.000-50.000 years ago (Yule, 1996). Afterwards, people turned
to develop the written language. First, they wrote on the walls of the caves
and then on the papyrus papers. The development of the written language is
crucial component of the history of one nation or the country. That is why
there are lots of legends in the history of different nations as well as the
countries, societies and folks.
Actually, there are
millions of versions about the appearance of the languages. One and the most
famous is the legend about the Tower of Babel from the book of Genesis. In
short, the story is about how people of the land Shinar wanted to build a tower
with its top in the sky in order to get an access to God. However the plans
were destroyed by God who confused the language of that people because they
spoke only in one language. From the story, that is the reason why we have
thousands of languages. The construction has been stopped because of the
different languages.
Language is changing
and developing process of the nature. Words
of all languages are associated with the nature or the products of the nature. Not
only human beings but also animals and insects have their own language of
communication. For example, according to the investigations of Noam Chomsky, who
found the human language as a “species property”, the closest example for the
human language is the communication of bees, known as the “bees’ dance” (Chomskyi,
1972).
Each of species of the
Earth has their own language and there is some ways to understand each other
between the species. There are some gestures, body languages and facial signs
that could show danger, happiness and many other emotions. For example, hissing
of a cat means that something is not on a right way or when a lion growls, it
means that it decided to eat you. According to these facts from our daily
observations, it might seem that there is no connection between human beings
language and animals or insects, so we will never understand each other. However,
if one pay attention to the situation in the circus while a circus actor can
easily manage a big lion and elephant, we can find that there is a way to
understand each other. There are many examples in the world, when visa versa,
human being was adopted by animals. A great example is the case of Amala and
Kamala, two Indian girls who were adopted by the wolves, proves that there is a
link between the languages and behaviors (21st century children
raised by wild animals, www.io9.com
).
To conclude, I would
like to append with words by N. Chomsky “Language
serves essentially for the expression of thought”, that it does not
really crucial who we are and what language exactly we speak, it is really
important that we express our feelings, thoughts, needs, minds and emotions and
we understand each other like: between two people, between an animal and
people, between insect and animal etc. It is like religion on the Earth, there
is one God, but it is different for each person and simultaneously we have the
similar way to understand our Creature.
References
21st
century children raised by wild animals, retrieved from http://io9.com/5866140/21st-century-children-raised-by-wild-animals
Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and mind (Enl. ed.).
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Yule,
G. (1996). The study of language (2nd ed.). Cambridge [England: Cambridge
University Press.
Zhynar, thank you for this interesting and informative blog! I appreciate your opinion, but I cannot support the idea that animals have a language. I personally believe that only human beings have a language. Animals use gestures, body languages and mimics in order to inform other animals about their intentions. Certainly, they can produce some sounds but they are just sounds such as growling, barking and etc. They cannot share their thoughts and feelings. They just demonstrate their emotions. Moreover, only human beings have vocal apparatus which is developed to produce speech. Also, I would like to say that non-verbal language was the first language which early humans used in order to communicate with each other. A verbal language is the result of evolution. Therefore, I cannot agree with you that verbal language was the first language of early humans.
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