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shall she sail seas Vice Captain
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 Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 6:41 pm
WARNING: I know very very little about this topic and I'm just kind of throwing it out there. I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions.
And on with the main course....
It should be safe to assume that a lot of you have already heard of the story about the Tower of Babel, the desire of man to reach the height of God, God's eventual wrath and dispersion of mankind by making them speak different languages. Let's put aside the religious and moral aspects here, and simply view the story as a metaphor.
This metaphor assumes that at one point in history, only one language was in existence. And if you take it further back to the beginning of Genesis, you have Adam being the namer of animals, material things, I-don't-know-what-else. Of what nature was this naming? Did a sound or a visual symbol relate directly to an object? Or was it also arbitrary, like all the languages we have now (e.g. We call it "cat" and the French call it "chat", but there's no logical reason why the animal is called either, and there's no better or worse name for it)?
Or to put it more simply, if my second question's answer is "yes", it would mean that there is a particular sound that will universally evoke the same image for every human mind, regardless of what langauge they understand. Even more simply, why do we have to learn other people's languages in order to understand them? Why this culture/language diversification in the world?
You may say "What's the point of questioning all this? It's just the way it is." That might be true, but let's not go there in this topic. It's not really a life-changing topic but I'm interested nonetheless.
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Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 8:19 pm
I would assume that it was one of two things. to me, it seems likely that someone started coming up with this stuff to save hastle, which makes sense, or it was because someone said it and the name stuck. But, of course, the second theory doesnt take into account the fact that the name changes in certian languages. I dont remember exactly, but the I know that the french word for cat is very different than latin.
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Devils_Advocate_110 Captain
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shall she sail seas Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 3:58 pm
My mistake, I forgot to mention in the OP that along with throwing out the religious and moral aspects, please also throw out historical accuracy because I'm using this as a metaphor.
So yes, you could say that The Tower of Babel an unlikely story but it doesn't really pertain the main issue here.
I'm not putting out any "first" or "second" theory here though, just asking a bunch of questions. So uhh... bit of miscommunication here?
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 9:36 pm
I have always seen words as a 5 ft pole with a hook at the end: It can bring ideas closer to you, but it also keeps them just far enough away. Let us look at the book 1984. In this world, the government was constantly removing words from their vocabulary so that way people could not express their displeasure. If you had no word for "freedom" than how could you adequately convey that people were taking your freedoms from you. Words give us a level of control over ideas. By saying this is a "chair" I thereby disconnect that idea from everything that is not "chair". I can say "move that chair" whereas, again, if there were no word for it I could not tell someone to move it. But words can also be limiting in this way. By saying this is a "chair" you remove the possibility that it can be anything else, or that something else can be a chair. As a child, I once sat on my lunchbox because it was more comfortable than the floor. Another kid said I could not sit on it because it was not a chair, and that a lunchbox by its name, did not give me the opportunity to sit on it. Or what if you felt an emotion that there was no word for? You could try to come up with words close to it, but because you are limited by these word's definitions, you can never hit the mark of how you are feeling. Descartes once wondered how he could intrinsically tell that solid wax and melted wax were the same thing even though they had none of the same characteristics. He believed that this was because there was an inherent "waxiness property" that traversed from one form to the next that, unlike the physical wax, was immutable. I bring this up to point out another aspect of words. You wonder if there is an inherent word to classify the inherent substances of objects. I personally do not think that there is. I mean, would a person who had never seen wax know that the two states were the same thing? Probably not. We only consider the two states of wax the same thing because we use the same word for it. If we thought up separate names they would become two separate things (in the same way that ice is not steam). It is just a thought anyway.
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shall she sail seas Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:21 pm
Good point. Very good point.
And now I'm going to very clumsily bring Plato's theory of forms... only the theory is being applied to language (or words) in this case. So the question here becomes: What if there was already a word for every single thing, be the thing material or immaterial? And rather, the inexistence of the perfect words in our life is merely due to our limitations?
I'm asking these questions to clarify the metaphor in the OP, here. The general idea I'm going for is a sound and/or visual symbol that would relate directly to the object, possibly something innate ("innate" used loosely) within us that will allow is to identify that word with the object even if we have not learnt that language before.
(I guess something that comes relatively close to this, but still extremely crude, is the word "cat" in Cantonese. The phoenetic pronunciation of it is "maow". A foreigner may be able to guess that the word means cat because it sounds very similar to a cat's call.)
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Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 8:06 pm
You know, my dad has this theory that before Babel, everyone spoke "Adamic." My mom thinks Adamic is Latin. But anyway, at the Tower of Babel, everyone began to babble (wonder if those words are related?). So now we suddenly have a lot of languages... It's a good thing so many people speak foreign languages, otherwise those people would have nobody to talk to... XD Steven Wright is a genius. Anyway, we have a lot of people speaking almost as many languages, and nobody knows what anyone else is saying. So it's only logical that everything had a different sound that represented it. The hammer is le marteau, but they both hit things hard. biggrin
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shall she sail seas Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 3:23 pm
Ehh.... I have no clue what you're on about, JoSlifer.
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Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 3:46 pm
That happens a lot. I'm not good with words. If you phrase your confusion as a question, I can answer it, but just talking is tough. I wonder if coloring my words would make it easier to understand? Blue for doctrines, red for opinions, green for jokes?
Anyway, probably the Adamic language was based on sounds, just like ours is now, to answer your original question.
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Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:59 am
Ok, I'm to sleepy to read the whole topic. So for now I'll just post this.
A true name is a name of an thing or being that expresses, or is somehow identical with, its true nature. The notion that language, or some specific sacred language, refers to things by their true names has been central to magic, religious invocation and mysticism (mantras) since antiquity.
In other words: A name is sometimes a kind of spell, mostly used in summoning, binding, releasing, and dispelling as you most often say/call out its name for it to work.
Side note: It is also the reason why before fighting a powerful spirit or demon people try to find out it's name, because often just by calling it by its name weakens it. This is also why in some myths and stories the bad guy takes away people's names and make them forget it, because there is power in a name.
True names is a concept that has been around for thousands of years. For words have power. As the bible says.. in the beginning there was the word. A word so powerful that it created the universe. It was believed that this word was the true name of God, and people have searched for it for a very long time. It was believed that there were words of power that, if found, could literally do anything. Change a rivers course, create riches or good fortune, destroy mountains, control the winds and weather. Along with this was the belief that all things had a word... a "true name". This name would encompass everything that object or person was, and knowing that name would give you total power over that object or person. Call animals to you, cause crops or flowers to grow or wither, etc. It is believed that finding the true name of god would give total control over all creation and destruction. To know a persons true name would give you the ability to control them completely. To make them your slave, make them love you, kill for you, and with a word even die. Some think that every person knows their true name, but that it is buried so deeply in their soul, spirit, whatever, that they do not know that they know it. As long as there have been men, there has been mysticism. And as long as there has been mysticism there have been men who devote there lives to trying to find the true names of everything. Actually, of anything. They are largely unsuccessful. Usually completely unsuccessful. But the belief and practice continues today.
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 1:02 pm
JoSlifer: lol... I guess colour-coding your text might help. You mind explaining more about the Adamic language though? Sure, it's based on sounds like any other language (let's not go into disability-related languages like sign language here), but the thing is - how is it truly any different from any other language that currently exists?
ArchWarrior: I like the fresh new perspective you bring in here. Good to see someone who's more literary-minded contributing to this thread. I never thought that what I was thinking here would be related to spells or any sort of power struggle, but it should have been obvious. (Stupid me!) Even whynaut was mentioning this in a different way.
So maybe the new issue here might be:
Is is possible for a ("perfect" ??? ) language not to be connected with power? It still kind of goes along with my OP because this language would be able to embody the meaning of a word without any gap between the signifier and the signified. This means no assumptions can be made. No impositions of different ideologies are possibly within this language. An individual or group cannot take hold of one word and control it by saying "this is what this word means, no ifs or buts".
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shall she sail seas Vice Captain
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:29 am
Sorry it toke so long to reply, I kinda forgot where this topic was.NomNomNominal ArchWarrior: I like the fresh new perspective you bring in here. Good to see someone who's more literary-minded contributing to this thread. I never thought that what I was thinking here would be related to spells or any sort of power struggle, but it should have been obvious. (Stupid me!) Even whynaut was mentioning this in a different way.
Although people can just give you a false name. But the truth is nicknames are of then closer to person's true name than their birth name. This has more it do the with the nature of nicknames themselves. A nickname often being an descriptive name added to or replacing the actual name of a person, place, or thing. But there is no real fear in giving out nicknames because often people have more than one. NomNomNominal So maybe the new issue here might be: Is is possible for a ("perfect" ??? ) language not to be connected with power? It still kind of goes along with my OP because this language would be able to embody the meaning of a word without any gap between the signifier and the signified. This means no assumptions can be made. No impositions of different ideologies are possibly within this language. An individual or group cannot take hold of one word and control it by saying "this is what this word means, no ifs or buts".
Which mean that if the U.N. did go along with his idea everyone would already now their own languages and second common language for speaking with foreigners and others who may know your native language. And if a remember right there is still a copy of his work in the U.N. but it is looking like no one is going to try and use it any time soon.
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Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:37 pm
Might that be Esperanto? Off the top of my head, I recall that it's a deliberately-created language instead of one that evolved naturally. The problem is, even if the Russian guy did succeed, who's to say that his language wouldn't be connected with power?
Possibly bias on my part, but the fact that it's man-made already makes me assume that there's some connection to it already. Even well-intentioned actions can be imposed on the unwilling.
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shall she sail seas Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:10 pm
What would be the point of a language not associated with power? None of my mental processes can even conceive of such. Well, I've actually only thought of two... The first, a scripture: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy, 1:7). We want power, and we want our language to reflect that. As for my second thought (it may sound chauvanistic), men seek power, be it physical, intellectual, or grammatical, as the case may be. Something about us is just competitive, and the way to win competition is with power. So, I restate the question: Why do we want a powerless language?
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