Proto-World and the Origin of Language
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- In which I take seven minutes to say "we don't know squat."
I have yet to make that video about why animals can't talk. That or I did but forgot to update this bit in the description.
Nativlang's video on reconstructions of Proto-World: • Tower of Babel vs Ling...
Intro song: • Kadenza - Flight of th...
Outro song: • Fruits Of Her Labour f...
Welcome back! Such a good topic, especially when you one-up me and go even FURTHER back in time. ;)
I think you have at least a half-dozen more gems buried in here. One interesting thought, as those charlatan long-rangers use the term, the reconstructed Proto-World would be our latest common ancestor, splitting "language origins" into two separate issues: "origin of [modern] languages" and "the origin of language". To borrow a Xidnafism, "MADNESS!"
:) Thanks! I thought about covering Greenberg and the rest, but figured that there was enough other stuff to talk about I could just link to your video and call it a day :P
Hey NativLang, Xidnaf! You guys should do a collaboration video sometime! Two of my favorite linguists on RUclips working together is just a mental euphoria.
NativLang I'm your sub :)
We need a crossover
@ㄉㄎㄉ • ꨆꨟꨮꩆ ꨣꨰꨕ thats a natural human thing, all babys will eventually say something like mama and papa for their mom and dads, its less of all languages and more of all humans
The coolest thing is that we possibly do know two words of Proto-World. Those being the words for mother and father, with them being some variation of 'mama' and 'papa', because those words are similar all throughout the world and are probably based on the universal way of babies babbling nonsense, which parents mistakenly believe to be the baby talking to them, and then reinforce it.
Not always for example in Fijian the word for mother is 'tina', in Kurdish (Sorani) it is 'daik'
Most animals were already able to convey emotional meaning through vocalization, if not complex semantic meaning. The most interesting idea to me is that the proto-human language is music. Music communicates emotions much too effectively to be a purposeless spandrel.
Limey Lassen yeah, I really liked the idea that language evolved from music too.
you’d be interested in the book ‘this is your brain on music,’ it goes into how music and language are really intimately connected!!
I once picked up from a linguistics student in some comment section that language may have evolved from boredom so we simply started telling each other stories, but they couldnt point me to any resources
@@jumefoc most of this shits so ancient its just using your imagination anyway
@@jumefoc In my native language, Tamil, music is considered part of the language. Tamil (lit. Self expression) is divided into three parts, Iyal (Prose/Speech), Isai (Music) and Aattam (Drama/Sign language).
While, the word Tamil in modern contexts usually refer to Iyalttamil (written/spoken self expression), other forms of self expression aren't considered inferior or anything.
But it must be said, prose and speech is more efficient and precise though in expressing oneself.
Oh my God, gather round the children, a monumental event! Xidnaf actually released a video
Willimations :V
Xidnaf will "xidnaf" your mind. It's a xidnaffing.
Dracopol what does xidnaf mean
lol this comment aged poorly
The guy is busy
I've always been of the mind that the ability to use language proficiently is the combination of several independent characteristics that evolved bit by bit into how we communicate today, and that other animals have pieces of what we have, but not the totality and complexity. Heck some kinds of communication, like symbolism, might be very ancient indeed if other animals have the capacity to understand symbols. Some very simple parts of language might be incredibly basic to multicellular life in general, like maybe symbolism is just advanced pattern recognition.
Feels weird to reply to a 5 year old comment, but hey!
Yeah, what seems BY FAR most likely to me is that human communication became more complex as our brains did the same, and that the first major form was body language, as that seems to be the most fundamental way humans communicate even today, and what we have managed to get dogs to instinctively understand.
Then from there it would make sense that basic body language gave rise to simple signs, and i would hazard that proper vocal language might have kicked off around that point.
humans did first communicate by singing. this is why songs can make you feel a certain way even if you don't understand the lyrics. you can tell if a song is sad, cheerful, aggressive, etc. there was a documentary that i watched many years ago that talked about this. i forgot the name but it was about music from a neurological standpoint.
You cannot be so sure, your theory is simply one of many suggestions
LOL pseudo science through the roof
You're using irrelevant information to back up your idea.
I've heard chimps give each other unique names in the wild. I think it makes sense that it would start there and combine with gestures and grunts until words like "here" and "no" and "give" were invented out of necessity, possibly by different individuals, or maybe by one particularly intelligent individual who ate a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms.
😂 And then we started getting good at hunting by giving specific directions.
I was just telling my dad about this channel yesterday but how it's been dead for a year. good timing.
I like the idea that language came from when we first descended from the trees and started roaming the plains of Africa, where we started experimenting with new kinds of food, one being the hallucinogenic mushroom that grows readily in animal dung (psilocybe cubensis). The state of synesthesia that resulted was what was necessary to make the neural connection between noises made with the mouth and pictures in the imagination. We may have discovered even greater forms of mental technology had the plains not dried out.
The fruit of knowledge was a mushroom :0
HOLY SHIT XIDNAF
I'm so happyyyy you're back!!!
I saw this documentary searching for what could be our first ancestors by looking at genetics, and the conclusion was that it was possible we could have come from some people that came from those people in Africa with the clicking language.
There's actually a lot of research going into linguistics and how to construct language being done on crows and ravens. These birds are *incredibly smart*; they're able to use tools, solve puzzles, communicate to other birds about things those other birds didn't directly experience (there's a facial-recognition experiment done with President masks and feeding regiments). Research on crows and other animals show that they use these skills and other behavioral actions that indicate animals can have a proto-language, even if it doesn't involve syntax or recognizable morphology. Chimps and Bonobos currently observed display these tendencies as well, through vocalizations and body language combinations that are independent from human involvement, but convey contextualized meaning to one another, and even behavioral variations among regionalized groups.
Yes! Xidnaf is back; this is exactly what I need after the crap week I've had.
I am under the idea that the first language was some form of number system to organize communication more efficiently. Numbers could answer most simple issues when faced with survival. How many animals. How much food. How many trees. You get the point.
There is a forth possibility - initially there were many languages, but the descendances of one group dominated all the others. Yet this group fell apart and now we couldn't tell. OR many be it is a cycle.
Many animals today have some ways of communicating. I think the mystery will be solved now that people are accepting the language abilities of what were once dismissed as "lower animals"
One of the key parts of comprehending and utilizing language is the ability to use language to think abstractly, which we no other animal has the capacity to do (that we know of).
Please, please makes it a regular thing! 9 months for another vid is breaking my heart :'(
Holy Crap! A wild Xidnaf video appears!
lykury And it's such a rare encounter, as well! It's almost, like, rarer than a shiny at this point.
It's rarer than Pokérus.
It is like a shiny spinda with the same pattern
Wow I'm amazed at how much details with meaning there are in your drawings and graphic representations... and how much I actually understood from that. You seem to be a visual learner or a synesthete, as am I lol.
Great "We have no idea" presentation. Love these kinds of speculations. Keep it up :-D
There was this Proto-World language and then the whole Tower of Babel thing happened.
really liked the video, didnt expect it because of the graphics, but really good video
وَعَلَّمَ آدَمَ الْأَسْمَاءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَهُمْ عَلَى الْمَلَائِكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنبِئُونِي بِأَسْمَاءِ هَٰؤُلَاءِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَادِقِينَ (31) قَالُوا سُبْحَانَكَ لَا عِلْمَ لَنَا إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَا ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ الْعَلِيمُ الْحَكِيمُ (32) قَالَ يَا آدَمُ أَنبِئْهُم بِأَسْمَائِهِمْ ۖ فَلَمَّا أَنبَأَهُم بِأَسْمَائِهِمْ قَالَ أَلَمْ أَقُل لَّكُمْ إِنِّي أَعْلَمُ غَيْبَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَأَعْلَمُ مَا تُبْدُونَ وَمَا كُنتُمْ تَكْتُمُونَ
يقهروا لما يبنوا علمهم على نظرية... تبقى نظرية وليست حقيقة علمية.
I miss this channel dearly
Take an evo-devo approach. If we explore how infants and babies/toddlers learn to talk and it'll tell you how languages evolved. Likely it was gradual rather than abrupt. Many species are able to perform complex descriptions that don't have an abstract thought to them. Language as we know it is the result of an expanded Prefrontal Lobe and Broca's region. But if we look at crows, dolphins, even prairie dogs have complex languages. Prairie dogs can change the tone and speed of the whistle to indicate the types, the size, the speed, and even color of a potential predator. Crows can pass information on and can teach others about meta-tools. It's just the ability to apply abstract thought to language that makes it stand apart from animal communication.
I'm glad you are alive
Do the turkic languages?
I really like the visualization of the languages and their similarities. Very good thoughts.
Read the Bible and you’ll find the answer.
Holy shit I did not expect that outro song
My bet is human language began as a series of (probably universal) gestures and grunts. As generations and tribes went on, spoken language developed independently and culturally. And likely after the early human brain was "developed" enough for complex language.
i'm one of those people who have memories from infancy. (autism super-power, probably). Ykno how infant development sometimes mimics huvman evoltion? Like fetuses have tails? I think we developed the thoughts for language before the mechnism. Because I can remember being a toddler and having all these thoughts i wanted to express, and the words in my head, and trying to make my mouth say the words and they wouldn't come out. Like I was talking but no one understood me and it made me really mad. I also remember having thoughts i wanted another person to know but not knowing how to make the words get flat into a single sound in my head. They were swirly instead of in a row.
Most of the modern Indian languages are descended from Prakrit, which is itself a descendant of vedic Sanskrit, which had two descendants: Classical Sanskrit for the Royal and priestly classes and Prakrit for the commoners.
"Maybe language was invented multiple times independently, and modern languages are descended from different first languages"
not in the Americas tho nosiree
In summary, "we don't know".
We''re not in the dark about this as much as you think! Read "The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain" by Terrance Deacon. It explains why and how language is an idiosyncratic human phenomenon and how our capacity for language, symbolic thinking, and biology has co-evolved. It avoids getting stuck in the "chicken b4 egg or egg b4 chicken" mentality in regards to language and the brain. There has actually been a lot of work done on how language has evolved. Of course it's not known for certain, but there has been a lot of scientific investigation undergone that shouldn't be overlooked!!!
Maybe it started as sign language with arms and then an ape decided that "if I make a noise like h ( or something) that means ____" and that evolved into variations of that noise such as making it less loud or making it more loud to mean a multitude of things. Eventually they couldn't get enough variations because the differences were hard to distinguish so they began doing different sounds. Eventually though they couldn't get enough out of those sounds so a human decided to put the sounds together to form a language. It probably began pretty simple like "k-g" and then those evolved and then it got more complicated with more letters and regions became diverse with more letters being put together and eventually it became what we have today. That's just my theory though.
It is possible that homo-erectus had language and that homo-erectus, at some point, only had ~1300 individuals in a small region in South Africa, ~900000 years ago. Which makes it possible that the small group of homo-erectus spoke a single language, from which all human language evolved.
I have to be in the boat of convergent evolution. meaning that language evolved several times in several places. throughout every spices in the world convergent evolution is an extremely common phenommia whether it be the chambers of hearts or wings on an animal so one could assume that the same would be true for our animal species and the ability to communicate
Xidnaf, when did you become a brony? Love these intro and outro songs.
Right before season 4 started. Glad you like them :)
I find the existence of a Proto-World language far more plausible than language being created multiple times in multiple places. If language families are truly unrelated to each other, surely we could expect to find really weird languages that seem totally alien (not just with different vocabularies, syntax, semantics, and morphology). Though, we don't find anything like that outside of a priori constructed languages.
There are definitely some words that I think are connected at least between Semitic and Indo-European: for instance the root Q.R.N means horn which would have been *korn, W.R.D means rose which in PIE is *wrod, and there might even be a root connecting K.H.N with king or Khan (just a hypothesis), but my point is that I think these words are very ancient and weren't borrowed. Also, eye and 'ain, fruit and pri, love and lev (heart in hebrew), cut and H.T.K, and Albion sounds related to Lavan (both mean white) - they could be coincidence. Just some interesting similarities I've noticed.
This is either a bad video or it was a good one with the info available at the time of publishing. This is wildly outdated or just wrong on many many points.
Change the playback speed to .75 and this video is a lot easier to follow.
Could it also be that people developed writing first, maybe in the form of painting, and they slowly developed certain sounds to refer to those paintings
probably not. language was probably developed many times separately and can be totally unrelated. I don't think you'll find a genetic link between Dakota and indo-european
I remember reading a long time ago that there's some species of primate, I want to say gorillas, where the only reason they can't speak is because of something to do with how their jaws work.
We may know a little bit more. A common trend among languages, even ones seemingly unrelated, is the use of mum/ma/na/nana/mama or similar for mother, and dad/pa/da/dada/papa for father. One theory is that this is because its the first sound a baby would typically speak, and it would most likely be with the mother/breastfeeding.
Proto-world would probably have this.
In my opinion the only possible remnants of a "proto-world" language could be the words for mother and father, like mama baba/papa, мама папа 妈妈 爸爸 ماما بابا Rousseau theorised that langauge did not really exist uniformly somewhere, until people started living in more long-term dwellings, so it first originated with each family. before that, people would lead more or less solitary lives, like most animals, and only children would have the need for language to communicate with their mothers. so there could have been as many languages as there were people at that point, until people started living in families, and then communities. so it would make sense that mama baba are the only remaining possible connections to that language, since language would have first been born in the family
the last one is unlikely because a person with their 1st language as English can speak Mandarin so if they evolved differently we would probably have different vocal cords or slightly different vocal cords the an other cultures making it either really hard or impossible to make the sounds other languages make.
Very late to the party but one thing you said kind of struck me as odd-- that archaeologists don't have the ability to discern when language developed from the archaeological record. I have a hard time believing, though, that there couldn't be *some* discernible difference between the features of humans or human ancestors without language and those with. Like, certainly, there must be some difference in culture or presentation because language shapes the way we think and behave, so at some point there must be a difference in what we can find not in the human remains themselves, but in the items they were buried with or in the remains of settlements, or something
You forgot a fourth possibility: maybe all languages ares descending of multiple other languages. sort of like how past a distance from us most humans are ancestors for all of us at the same time.
Other primates do have their own languages, including chimpanzees.
Birds are also Proven to have their own languages, same with goats, dolphins, and octopy.
However, it isn't complex, but they are designed to convey very simple things.
Like the state of their surroundings, themselves, of others, and weather, or not there is dangers.
In fact going off of this note, almost every species that has a ability to communicate in away has a language.
Which communication can be achieved verbally, visibly, and by smell... Possibly also by touch, and taste.
Only 3 is confirmed to be used in basic communications by almost every organism.
However, dialects might change based on colonies of the species in question.
Lmao I love that guy poking the DNA strand
I would guess that there is a common ancestor of most modern languages, but it wasn’t the only language at the time, in the same way that there was one most recent common ancestor of all humans, but they weren’t the only human at the time.
YAY YOU'RE BACK, DADDY
You're knowledge about Romance languages triggers me. In Spain Spanish/Castillian Spanish is not the only language. They also speak Castilian, Basque,Asturian and Galician/Galician-Portuguese. In Italy there are also different languages spoken
tldw: who knows!
It's now known modern humans are a mix of Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthals. As that both had language for there to be a Proto World there would have to have been a common language before Sapiens and Neanderthal split then re-merged. That's I believe roughly 600,000 years.
I once knew a builder that pronounced the words
"Historical Society" as
"Stoss Sydey".
As in: he would never bid on work for a house that was protected by the Stoss Sydey because they don't let you do anything!
He just talked too fast and didn't bother with enunciation at all.
It seems like a pretty good isolated example of how easily language can change.
But man...that marble mouthed asshole used to really irritate the hell out of me.
I’ve got a pet theory about “ma” and “pa” being the first words; there are so many languages with a variant of those, from completely different language families. The only reason I’d say they’re words and not consistent baby gibberish is because pa-variants almost always mean father, and ma-variants almost always mean mother.
It's because these are the easiest phonemes to reproduce.
Dolphins can communicate extremely well. They can comprehend abstract thoughts such as "red ball" or "blue ball" without seeing a ball at all. I've heard that they even develope certain languages within their pods.
@UTubeFekUrself and they’re a darn good swimmers
@@alqaadi9858 And they are good at being cute....and evil
I was waiting for that
@@egg9605just like us humans! just goes to show how consciousness and intelligence can give life forms the ability to make morally good and bad choices.
They probably won’t get nearly as complex of a language as us considering how barbaric they are compared to us with the largest being known to rip shark livers out and swim away
There's an ancient Greek legend about a king in Greece and a king in Phrygia arguing about whose language was the first. Back and forth they argued. Then the Phrygian king proposed an experiment of taking two newborn twins and isolating them in the forest with a mute shepherd, to see what language they would speak first. The babies grew, and the mute shepherd tended his sheep and fed the babies sheep milk. Day after day the kings observed the babies from a window, but they didn't say anything, until one day, one baby made a noise...
"Baaaaaaaaaa!"
"Hey, that's not a Greek word!"
"It's not a Phrygian word either. There must be a language older than yours or mine..."
:-)
Dracopol wow is this an actual story?
It's a legend, but it's actually a variant of a legend about an Egyptian pharaoh making such an experiment with babies, and they cry out, "Bekos!" which is the Phrygian word for bread. Just a legend.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psamtik_I#Discovering_the_origin_of_language
I am always amazed by the ancient Greek understanding of the universe, even though they had no way to really discover anything. They just thought it was somewhat obvious, which is fascinating. The legend you explain here clearly understands divergent change over time (multilinear evolution) in terms of language, but they just assume it is obvious that this happens. It seems to suggest the reason that the baby is saying "Baaaaaa!" is because the "language" of sheep came before the language of humans, in the way that sheep are more simple, and complexity builds over time. Obviously, we know now that there is no such hierarchy of nature as Aristotle argued, where humans are the pinnacle of creation, but given what they knew then, it's ridiculously accurate.
The pre-Socratic philosopher known as Anaximander of Miletus believed that humans had to have come from other animals (in fact, he thought we came from fish, because human embryos look like fish), because our period of nurture is too long compared to other animals, and the first humans would have died if humans had always been humans. He thought nurturing had to have progressively become longer over time. It just blows my mind that someone in 600 B.C.E. came up with this, even despite the flaws with it. He thought that the first humans were just overdeveloped fish babies that weren't hatched at the usual time and had to free themselves from the parent fish as fully grown adults. Still a better explanation than creationism though.
@@shadow_of_thoth "they had no way of discovering anything"
Literally any person plucked from that society would be smarter than YOU.
@@norgepalm7315 Would you like to explain to everyone how the ancient Greeks would have gone about discovering quantum mechanics or population genetics, you dimwit?
Also, you misquoted me. I did not say, "they had no way of discovering anything." I said, "they had no way to really discover anything." You'd think someone on a linguistics video would have enough cognitive function to pick up on subtle connotations without taking things too literally.
There's 3 words that we know for a fact prove the proto-world language:
Ouch
Yeouch
Gneurshk
What the heck is “gneursk”?
i understood that reference
That’s a human person
Ma was definitely a word
@@allisond.46 You don't get the reference...
They have made 3D models of chimpanzee vocal tracts and shown that they can produce practically all the same sounds as us. They just lack the mental capacity. So it's likely that mental capacity for language was a later evolved trait.
I'd heard about this. You might be right, but what you're talking about was from one very recent study, and even the results of it seem to still be up for some interpretation, At the very least they seem to lack the necessary detailed motor control in their mouthes, which I figured I'd lump in with "physical ability." As opposed to, for instance, parrots, which can be trained to mimic human sounds relatively easily.
Xidnaf mental abilities also are physical abilities. it gets really confusing if you try to find out what exactly they lack.
+Xindaf you are back!
+Xindaf I'd love to believe that there did exist a common language for all the world's languages :P and I though linguists called it BOREAN
I imagine the process could have been like this: Simple sounds for emotional expression -> pre-humans able to use greater number of sounds can express greater number of things, increasing with time -> intelligence increasing results in development of basic grammar -> use of language makes intelligence itself more useful by transmitting new technology and concepts intergenerationally -> increasing intelligence leads to further complexity of grammer. Basically at some point there was a feedback loop where language and intelligence both complimented and accelerated the growth of the other.
Having increased intelligence seems to promote a natural desire to communicate things in greater detail. My best guess is that language evolved somewhat in tandem with our general intelligence. Tribes with both increased intelligence and the ability to articulate would have a much easier time organizing hunts, gatherings, alliances, communicating that theres danger nearby etc etc whereas those with weaker communication abilities would struggle far more at doing any of those things. My best guess is that language originated with just codes, like a short low grunt was understood by locals as someone saying "rock" and then eventually a short low grunt followed by a slightly higher pitched short grunt would mean "sharp rock" as they developed the intelligence to specify which rock they were referring to.
rock 🪨
Don't worry. We'll know for sure when time travel becomes available to linguists.
Honestly they should be the first to get access
Time traveling linguists:*peaking out of bush at entrance of cave*
Caveman 1: Wassup, can a loc come up in your cave?
Caveman 2: Man fuck you, I'll see you at food hunt.
Caveman 1: Ah, neanderthal don't hate me cause I'm beautiful unga bunga
Maybe if you got rid of that yee yee ass hair cut you get some bitches on your dick.
Oh, better yet, Maybe Tanisha'll call your dog-ass if she ever stop fucking with that trepanning surgeon or shaman she fucking with,
Oooggaaaa
Caveman 2: Booga?!
_'when'_ time travel becomes available...?? the _'first'_ to get access...??
what do we want? --- TIME TRAVEL!
when do we want it? --- IT DOESN'T MATTER!
And then some Hindu nationalist will teach the first ever cavemen Sanskrit and be able to claim that Sanskrit was the mother language
@@jfrfilms6697 Man, that one sure came out of left field.
5:05
according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a Hee should be able to fly
Xidnaf's video, but every time he says "language" he speaks faster.
Zaqq lmao
Now THERE'S a good meme
BlueUmbrella!
tiz you
Astronomy487 Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The Hee, of course, flies anyway, because Hees don't care what humans think it's impossible.
6:30 R.I.P. United Kingdom and Iceland lol
Same to the entire caribbean.
☣Scuppetta1998☠ dat sulawesi tho
However there is a New Zealand, Usually the first to be left out.
It was weird seeing New Zealand but not other, smaller islands.
logosloki lol, like Tassie?
If there was one original language, what would you name it?
Humanian/Humanish/Humanese
I should just pull a Khmer and call it "Origin", "World" or "Human". But I do like the sound of "Proto" Rather than "Proto-World", "Proto-Humans", or "Proto-Sapiens". Proto... Just sounds interesting.
Whatever they called themselves
I'd call it 'Sapien'
We could use the reconstructed word for proto-indo-european, *Hoi(H)nos, meaning one. One language to form them all.
I think it did exist cause
1: humans have a part of our brain dedicated to launguage
2: human anatomy has existed exactly like this for 150k years-ish
3: we only started migrating out of where we were all started 50k-ish years ago,
4:conclusion, we had 100k-ish years to develop launguage before splitting
apart, and I’d say we could do it cause those humans had a launguage part of thier brain and it existing at all is clear evedencw of this
(I made this theory up on my own, sorry if I got something wrong but I do know everything about what I said before 4 was right)
That's logical. What do you think of the problem that even say 150k years ago all the little groups of the first humans would have been close, but still distinct geographically?
The proto language still had to spread through this small initial group for it to be ubiquitous.
So did one group develop more of a language than others and it simply slowly and without resistance spread within the still relatively small lands of humans by the various methods it could have? Or was there multiple unique seedling languages in competition even then and one may have finally win out? Language might be a sort of freak accident, a step that happen very rarely/uniquely in evolution. But then again the second option, which is more in the vein of convergent evolution, makes sense for language. Since language feels like a very natural adaptation that would happen multiple times.
So the question comes down to, is language so natural that it would evolve individually multiple times in a short timeframe, or is too complicated to quickly initially evolve multiple times.
@@pseudonymousbeing987 Here's a thought, what if one or two groups kind of started making a quasi-language, with "words" for water, or lion, and what have you. Then bits and pieces of it leaked out into nearby groups, who each expanded on those bits to make their own quasi-languages in accordance with their needs, which then had bits spread to even more groups, and so on until what you had was a a ton of quasi-languages spread out around many groups. At that point, as groups start slowly combining into distinct societies, their language too would combine into distinct full languages. Maybe just the act of becoming a complex society necessitates that your barebones protolanguages evolve into something much more fleshed out, and so they do.
That neurologic argument actually favors the posibility that humanity did not inventend language at all bu rather learned it from someone else (was sort of tamed). Dogs have a specific part of their brains as well dedicated to human language that they evolved from continuated interaction with our species. So it would make some sense that we actually learned the first language or languages from an older hominid. Kinda of like ancient aliens but without the alien part nor the conspiracy. This would neither be a first as for example many of the more primitive tools we have are known to not be human inventions
@@leonake4194 Even if homo-sapiens at the time didn't learn language from older human species, its likely the first language was spoken by something other than us. Who knows, maybe homo-erectus had some kind of primitive language long before our species descended from them. Its possible language is older than humanity itself (humanity as in our species of humans).
X-xidnaf? *raises from wheelchair, takes oxygen mask off* I-is it really you?
Wait, is this referencing Saw Gerarra?
Yay your back
What about his back?
+James Pratze only on this channel are grammar nazis, such as yourself, welcome!
ಠ
Riley Smith you're. Sorry, not sorry.
Lorn sorry, English Is my second languege
DAMMIT you wrote "Tounge" and not tongue, Kidnap
You're gonna do _what_ to him now?
columbus8myhw kidnap is kinda like xidnaf so he is making fun of him
jgsregrate or auto correct.
try tongue, but hole
Actually tongue evolved from tungōn - proto Germanic. Does any German know why tongue was called tungōn, does that have any meaning or is it just a random word.
Surprisingly tungōn தொங்கு(tongu) means to hang in Tamizh, like the tongue hangs from the mouth.
Ooh: I have food
Ee: There's a predator
Oooh: There's other people over there
Ah: Can you hand me that?
Aah: Take this
Ting: Help me with this
Tang: Be quiet
Walla Walla: We're going to fight
Bing: Stay low
Bang: Stay here
subtle reference skills 100
Britain and Ireland don't appreciate being left off the globe xidnaf :(
woops
Question: What is the thing on "your" head? Is it a bowlcut? A hat? A helmet? I NEED TO KNOW!
DerpNerd most likely a bowl used as a helmet.
He's a soldier from WW1
Nice video! Since there are already videos about the _Proto-Indo-European language_, I'd like to see a video series about the *Proto-Uralic language* and its descendants.
Hente Hoo And afro-asiatic, hardly gets any love
Hente Hoo I'd personally love to learn about the differences between Finnish and the surrounding Uralic people's since I can't seem to find many resources on it.
Torille.
Hente Hoo or Proto American languages
Hente Hoo look up youtube Native Lang
I know the word "mama" is at lest the same in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Quechua. "Baba/papa" is a least the same in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Zulu. For this reason I believe in a limited Proto-world language.
What do you all think?
Džudžan yea
@Džudžan Worked in kindergarten + read a lot about children's development...can confirm. It's the easiest simplest sounds to pronounce.
TBH I do wonder if there's a language in which its the other way around lol
Nope. M and P sounds are easier for children to articulate (the parts of the mouth that make those sounds develop first). And because of the positive reinforcement they get, they say it more and more. Various languages have independently developed those words with same or similar meaning.
BTW that is why there is often a simple word for older sibling but not for younger sibling (they don't exist at the time of the development of child). In my language, older brother = dada, older sister = didi, younger brother = Bhai (complicated) and younger sister = baini.
Amiya Vatsa oh cool! Thank you!
Arabic too
My theory is that when humans first started talking, no one really spoke an entire language, everyone only spoke several words, however the words used heavily differed from group to group and region to region, but as time went on though people from one group met people from other groups and discovered the words each other were using, later many series of words got unified and became bigger and bigger
With noche/noite and ocho/oito, you so nearly showed the right thing. It's actually that Spanish corresponds to Portuguese in those cases which in turn derive from earlier Latin . By the time western vulgar Latin has diverged, this has become (cf. French nuit, huit) and then, in Spanish, became when it follows a vowel.
Mucho/muito seems to be a bit different because they derive from Latin multus with a not a and the development parallel to is specific to Western Iberian (Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Extremaduran, Leonese etc.). French and Catalan both preserve the Latin . In both old spanish and old portuguese, a has appeared (hence the parallel development) but the reason for this is unclear; an equivalent process does not take place in the phonologically identical tumultus. It's also worth noting that Extremaduran is odd here in that it actually has munchu instead of the expected *muichu
He's back.... after so long... praise 2017...
The first good emblem of 2017.
Thankfully 2016 didn't get him! :D
*omen, not emblem
lol
@@heathdionne7717 lol
Such a great video! Subscribed!
As a Hungarian I would love to express my appreciation for consistently leaving a tiny blank hole for us in the middle of Europe! It means a lot!
Some family terms like "Ma" and "Pa" for mother and father seem to be common in completely unrelated languages. Baby babbling could be the closest thing to "proto-world".
You are close my friend .... and hingarian is the answer .... a baby says double somthing to prove that he knows what it is .... like papa, mama and first only oooo , aaaa .....just sounds , but when he start know things adds other letters .... watch Kiss Dénes .... hungarian is the mother language
I once was out for a walk in the woodlands and thought, "What if I lived before there was any culture at all? How would I interpret things?" After a good while trying, I managed to clear my mind completely and view things as if I were the first person ever to experience them. It is incredibly difficult to stay in that state of mind, your brain automatically wants to throw a bunch whatever culture you've absorbed all over every thought you have. I had to recentre myself a few times but had some interesting thoughts and even came up with a word for water, "!na", almost like a sort of suckling noise, which is where it came from because I was thirsty at the time. So I wonder if the first words evolved in a similar way to this, more like sounds associated with an action, creature or thing?
in all likelihood thinking and speaking have so- co evolved as to be inseparable.
One of the oldest feminine goddesses, Inana is associated with water
Our species didn't exist before language. Language evolved with us, not after
Imitating natural noises to communicate the idea of what it sounds like seems a natural starting point. Like how the Egyptian word for cat is essentially a meow
This is some psycho babble bullshit.
What was up with the 8 month hiatus
Tim Nur He's been focussing on college. And he moved. It's on his "super secret" channel. But shhh, don't tell anyone.
Danny Boy didnt he drop out?
RedstonerProductions He got kicked out.
***** yea thats whaat i meant
college?
YES XIDNAF RETURNS
Why do you use MLP fan songs all the time?
Because Horse
honestly it's all i listen to
Xidnaf People say i have a pretty good music taste...
what was the 8 month hiatus for.
TheEnderknight it was more like a year
What!?!? Xidnaf is back? Thanks for uploading, I had just found out about Proto World a couple days ago, and you posted this...
I love how this video was more about the things we don't know, than the things we do. Really got me thinking, thanks!
2:49 dolphins can talk to each other with clicks and whistles
But people speak differently. Cats also communicate with their sounds
@@craftah dolphins can communicate complex ideas to each other. There’s a lot of researchers who think they might actually use language, we just don’t have enough data yet to prove if they do or not.
@@danielmase6722 thats interesting
Xhosa
They don’t use grammar.
I feel like proto-world must have used all or some basic plosives. For example, some of the first sounds human babies do are "papa, tata, kaka" and stuff like that, and besides, the polynesian culture is one of the most ancient, originally from prehistoric Asia, and after going around conquering islands, because of the ocean, their language family rarely came into contact with other language families, so, in my opinion, if proto-world is a thing, then it is likely that polynesian languages would be the thing most resembling it, and polynesian languages have some very simple sounds, so my guess would be that proto-world phonetical inventory might have been similar, like say, only unvoiced plosives and a set of two (or at most three) nasal consonants, and a simple set of consonants as well, like "A, I, U" and maybe "E and O"
Peps Deps that was all one sentence
Wow 😯
@@grace-hm9ij sorry I am instense and don't know when to stop
Also, Austronesian languages have that language feature where they repeat syllables? I think it is called reduplication. For example, araw means day, araw-araw means everyday. It kinda reminds me of toddlers' language before they learn to speak a language. Those double syllables like papa, dada, mama. Is this just a coincidence?
That's written as two sentences, but when spoken it would be more.
New video notification.
At work.
Don't care!
See you soon in 8 months! :D
Ne0dax please be wrong. If he disappears for that long again after only one video I will seriously die. 😨 😭 😂
when you like a channel so much so you skip all your other subscriptions to watch his first video in months.
great new video!
Never clicked so fast in my life. It's been too long, Xidnaf. Welcome back.
The Portuguese word for night noite does actually make the /tʃ/ sound. It may be an exception in the development of Portuguese but words ending in -te make that sound. Otherwise a great video glad to see you back.
"Te" is pronounced as a "ch" in *most Brazilian dialects* (it didn't medieval (and also doesn't in European Portuguese and many Brazilian dialects), the language modern Portuguese's orthography is based in). It it pronounced like a "ch" in these dialects because of a (somewhat recent) palatalization process (a type of sound shift in languages).
It depends on the region
guys every language was has evoloved from latin except for sand script which was evolved from tamil. you can prove it because some words have the same letters.
rzeka holy mother of Baby Jesus, no! Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic (Russian), Hewbrew, Greek all use fundamentally different letters. And I don't know about Africa and there's probably a shitton of interesting languages
"sand script".... Did you happen to mean Sanskrit?
Yes, sanskrit came from a non-indo european indian language. yes.
***** no it's true I read it on wipikedia
I hope you're joking because you got so laughably wrong.