Well if you have something especially funny I could use a good laugh too I guess. Well here it is. Do you bealive different Languages are the result of an evolution of language. Or are they the result of the Tower of Babble incident in the Holy Bible? BB
2007-01-21 06:40:49 · 19 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
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Dog Sneeze who thought I was talking about people evolving thanks for the laugh stupid. I'm only talking about language not people. You are just silly. BB Boop Oop A Doop!
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2007-01-21 07:18:19 · update #1
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Dog Sneeze who thought I was talking about people evolving thanks for the laugh stupid. I'm only talking about language not people. You are just silly. BB Boop Oop A Doop!
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2007-01-21 07:18:24 · update #2
I think they are most certainly the result of evolution. Languages change and evolve. One need only look at British English, Australian English, American English, etc to see how a language changes in different ways due to the separation of peoples. Even accents and dialects within the United States should prove that.
Check out a dictionary. Most English, Spanish, etc words have their roots in ancient languages. Yet that root evolved differently in each language.
2007-01-21 06:48:28 · answer #1 · answered by Sun: supporting gay rights 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well, different languages (alone) cannot be the product of evolution because they all have the same universal grammar, at least according to Noam Chomsky. He is an atheist linquistics teacher at MIT and probably the foremost authority in his field. Language may or may not be a product of evolution, but different languages are not different enough to constitute real evolutionary change in the traditional sense. In other words, English is not a more evolved language than Zulu, they are just different, but not structurally.
Another way to state this is that languages do not evolve, only language users, and there is no significant evolutionary difference between people who use language.
As far as the Tower of Bable, I can only see the objection being supernaturalism. Language users did not likely arise in different places simultaniously. They probably just splintered from a single source and their lexicon adapted and changed as needed.
[edit] Languages are not living organisms and cannot evolve by natural selection, genetic drift, or any other such mechanism. I didn't think the question was about people, thus ignorant. Rather, ignorant because the question attributes properties to mere abstract symbols that belong to humans or other life forms. That is where the ignorance lies.
2007-01-21 14:52:17 · answer #2 · answered by Aspurtaime Dog Sneeze 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There was only one language to begin with, then at the Tower of Babel God confused the language of the builders to stop them building. The different new language groups split up and went off to different parts together. But language has evolved since then. English is as mongrel a language as it's possible to be! Perhaps there's an allegory there regarding creation and evolution? A bit of both, perhaps?
2007-01-21 14:45:48 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
The evolution of languages, anthropology has proven that to be true. You start out with a few language groups and as people migrate and spread out, languages change with separation.
The Tower of Babel story is interesting though, and a very interesting way to look at the emergence of different languages.
2007-01-21 14:55:12 · answer #4 · answered by lotusmoon01 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If there was an absolute split of language like the Tower of Bable story, then we shouldn't be able to learn another language. Language evolves everyday, you think that and English speaker from twenty years ago would understand "I'll go online and google it." See, evolution.
2007-01-21 14:52:39 · answer #5 · answered by Huggles-the-wise 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Tower of Babel.
"Evolution of Language"? Does that mean that one day people were just like, "Let's change the language, so it sounds COMPLETELY different? There's no similarities between a lot of languages. Like NONE...0. How on earth could people create a new language, and people would actually learn it. There would have to be a NEED for a new language, and the only sensible thing that makes sense to me is that God really did take the common language of all away.
How would you explain the "evolution" of language? I'm really curious.
2007-01-21 14:46:32 · answer #6 · answered by morethanitseems 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
The story of The Tower of Babel is RIDICULOUS! Different languages come from people in different parts of the world needing to communicate. Imagine two groups of people. One in China and and another in Russia both creating a means of verbal communication. Since they are so far apart it only makes sense that they'd come up with different methods, words, sounds, etc.
Yet another reason NOT to take the Bible seriously. Whoever believes in the Tower of Babel story is a gullible idiot (I'm sorry to say).
2007-01-21 14:45:14 · answer #7 · answered by DiRTy D 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Both explanations are correct. It started with the Tower of Babel and then languages evolved over time.
2007-01-21 14:50:49 · answer #8 · answered by Martin S 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I don't know much about the topic, but I've heard that modern linguists are baffled when trying to determine a common origin for all languages since some can't be linguistically traced along a trajectory to a common original language.
2007-01-21 14:48:50 · answer #9 · answered by sickblade 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hey is this someone I met here? Different languages, I think anyway, came about on their own! An example Spanish is the root but people from Spain look strangely at Mexicans and Puerto Ricans when they speak! Same thing is true of English, in America we speak it but those talking "the Kings English" w/etf that is we look strangely at them! We in the North also do to Southern Accents and especially Redneck Lingo! I don't believe in the bible!
Willy
2007-01-21 14:43:48 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋