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A review by yellowcloudintrousers
The Story of Human Language by John McWhorter
which began with a single first language spoken in Africa.
The clicks are written with symbols that look rather like profanity in comic strips. In Nama, spoken in Namibia, hara means “swallow,” !hara means “to check out,” |hara means “to dangle,” and †hara means “to repulse.” One click language has 48 different click sounds. There are languages in Australia with just three verbs. In Jingulu, the only verbs are come, go, and do. Beyond this, Jingulu speakers use such expressions as “go a dive” and “do a sleep.”
For example, in early Latin, the word for impossible is inpossibilis, but in later Latin, the word was impossibilis. The n changed to an m because the m sound is closer to a p than n. This process is called assimilation. Over time, laziness created a new word.
Grammaticalization.
Often a word’s meaning drifts in various directions over time. The word silly began in Old English meaning “blessed.” But to be blessed implies innocence, and by the Middle Ages, the word meant “innocent”.
Meat in Old English referred to all food and only later came to refer to animal meat. We keep a remnant of the old meaning in sweetmeat, which refers to candy and fruit.
It has been theorized that Indo-European actually emerged in what is now Turkey, but recent genetic evidence concurs with the traditional southern Russian scenario.
Hittite.
Francien French became predominant because the national courts settled in its region; Castillian Spanish because it was spoken by the armies who advanced southward to defeat the Moors; Tuscan Italian because that region produced Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Standard English is the dialect that happened to be spoken in the region where London was. Before this, England was a patchwork of very different dialects.
A standard is a dialect with an army and a navy.
There are about 6,000 languages in the world and only 200-odd countries; this shows that multilingualism in nations is a norm. The appearance otherwise is explained by the fact that only a quarter of the world’s countries recognize two languages of¿ cially, and only four recognize three or more. India recognizes Hindi, English, and 14 regional languages; Singapore: Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English; Spain: Spanish, Catalan, and Basque; and Luxembourg: French, German, and the local German dialect.
Only about 200 out of the 6,000 languages are “written” in the true sense of being used in of¿ cial documents and having a literature.
There are some problems with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For one, Whorf’s analysis of Hopi grammar was erroneous. Linguists have since shown that Hopi indeed has markers situating actions in time and that Hopi culture keeps careful time-based records with various calendars and sundials. There are also intuitive problems with the hypothesis.
to imply that language channels thought leads to uncomfortable implications given the difference between a language such as Tsez or European languages and ones like Riau Indonesian, where it often seems as if one barely needs to say much at all! Do Riau Indonesian speakers think less richly than shepherds in the Caucusus Mountains and functionaries in Brussels?
150,000–80,000............................... Estimated time during which human
language arose.
4000................................................. Probable origin of Proto-IndoEuropean.
3500................................................. First attested writing.
3000................................................. Probable origin of Semitic.
2000................................................. Bantu speakers begin migrations south
and eastward.
The clicks are written with symbols that look rather like profanity in comic strips. In Nama, spoken in Namibia, hara means “swallow,” !hara means “to check out,” |hara means “to dangle,” and †hara means “to repulse.” One click language has 48 different click sounds. There are languages in Australia with just three verbs. In Jingulu, the only verbs are come, go, and do. Beyond this, Jingulu speakers use such expressions as “go a dive” and “do a sleep.”
For example, in early Latin, the word for impossible is inpossibilis, but in later Latin, the word was impossibilis. The n changed to an m because the m sound is closer to a p than n. This process is called assimilation. Over time, laziness created a new word.
Grammaticalization.
Often a word’s meaning drifts in various directions over time. The word silly began in Old English meaning “blessed.” But to be blessed implies innocence, and by the Middle Ages, the word meant “innocent”.
Meat in Old English referred to all food and only later came to refer to animal meat. We keep a remnant of the old meaning in sweetmeat, which refers to candy and fruit.
It has been theorized that Indo-European actually emerged in what is now Turkey, but recent genetic evidence concurs with the traditional southern Russian scenario.
Hittite.
Francien French became predominant because the national courts settled in its region; Castillian Spanish because it was spoken by the armies who advanced southward to defeat the Moors; Tuscan Italian because that region produced Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Standard English is the dialect that happened to be spoken in the region where London was. Before this, England was a patchwork of very different dialects.
A standard is a dialect with an army and a navy.
There are about 6,000 languages in the world and only 200-odd countries; this shows that multilingualism in nations is a norm. The appearance otherwise is explained by the fact that only a quarter of the world’s countries recognize two languages of¿ cially, and only four recognize three or more. India recognizes Hindi, English, and 14 regional languages; Singapore: Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English; Spain: Spanish, Catalan, and Basque; and Luxembourg: French, German, and the local German dialect.
Only about 200 out of the 6,000 languages are “written” in the true sense of being used in of¿ cial documents and having a literature.
There are some problems with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For one, Whorf’s analysis of Hopi grammar was erroneous. Linguists have since shown that Hopi indeed has markers situating actions in time and that Hopi culture keeps careful time-based records with various calendars and sundials. There are also intuitive problems with the hypothesis.
to imply that language channels thought leads to uncomfortable implications given the difference between a language such as Tsez or European languages and ones like Riau Indonesian, where it often seems as if one barely needs to say much at all! Do Riau Indonesian speakers think less richly than shepherds in the Caucusus Mountains and functionaries in Brussels?
150,000–80,000............................... Estimated time during which human
language arose.
4000................................................. Probable origin of Proto-IndoEuropean.
3500................................................. First attested writing.
3000................................................. Probable origin of Semitic.
2000................................................. Bantu speakers begin migrations south
and eastward.