Once upon a time, a long, long long time ago in fact, according to the Holy Bible, God created Adam then produced a partner who he called Eve.
Now obviously God was able to speak to his creations and vice versa in a spoken language (or was it ?).
So if we all can have our ancestry traced back to these two people, how come there are are so many diffecernt languages, let alone dialects in the modern world today ?
Why would people start to invent a different language?
I dont know about other religions but I assume (rightly or wrongly) that they have a similar start to history…if I’m wrong, no disrespect intended…i’m just ignorant…with an all powerfull being creating copies of him / herself to populate the World
Any thoughts…typed in English please (cos I aint multi-lingual)
cheers
Gary
By: GZYL - 14th January 2003 at 15:48
RE: Languages
Everything in the Old Testament is not to be taken literally. It’s mostly parables… that’s what my Religious Education teacher told me anyway. So we can not trace our roots back to Adam and Eve… but Adam and Eve are symbolically the human race, so we can have many different people created at the same time… all represented in the bible by Adam and Eve. Each of these people can have various languages!
Prof that the old testament can’t be taken literally…. Adam and Eve had 2 sons… Cain and Abel… How did these guys produce offspring??
By: Arthur - 14th January 2003 at 12:03
RE: Languages
…yet a lot of language groups have similar ancestral languages. The Latin, Hellenic, Slavic, Germanic, Persian and some Indian (Sanskrit) languages can all be traced back to the Indo-European. A similar common ancestry exists for languages in the Turkic, Finn-Ugric (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian), and Mongolian languages. A small language branch is the Semitical one which only has Arab, Hebrew and Maltese.
Unfortunately i don’t know too much about language families beyond those, but i am absolutely sure there are more diverse language groups which are linked together.
By: Hand87_5 - 14th January 2003 at 09:08
RE: Languages
Well , I just assume that in the early days the social organisation was based on tribues.
Those groups hadn’t contact between them. Therefore the language developed separately and evolved in different direction.
By: frankvw - 13th January 2003 at 23:04
RE: Languages
Ach, redet mal menschlisch!
By: Snapper - 13th January 2003 at 22:33
RE: Languages
Zut alors. Je ne sais pas. Eet eez not so eezee zees week.
By: geedee - 13th January 2003 at 20:40
RE: Languages
Ehhhh, su thets vhy its beee qooeete-a oon zee furoom fur zee pest foo deys ?. Ooh vell, I’fe-a dune-a thees in svedeesh joost fur yuoo mete-a. by zee vey, vhee ere-a ve-a next oon zee CFS2 veb fur a thresheeng ? cheers Gery
By: Snapper - 13th January 2003 at 20:12
RE: Languages
So we could pretend we were Finnish so you wouldn’t talk to us.
By: frankvw - 13th January 2003 at 18:31
RE: Languages
Well, for the christians, you have the “Babel tower” tale: the humans wanted to build a veeeery high tower because they onsidered themselves as gods. To punish them, God made them speak different languages (around one per level 😉 ), so they couldn’t understand each other anymore, and the tower was never finished.
A more rational answer would be that the language is adapted to the environment, and what the ppl live everyday. Somebody who lives in a desert will not have the same problems than someone who lives in the tundra. And besides of that, sometimes, language differed from one place to another just to avoid that the neighbour (and often enemy) could understand you!
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January 13, 2003 at 6:02 pm