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The Divine Source of Language
- Authors
- Name
- Ozan Ceylan
- @ozxn893
There are 2,796 languages in the world. But where did they all come from?
There are a lot of theories about the origin of language. However, it largely remains a mystery. So far, studies have not provided us with a definitive answer. All we really know is that the spoken language existed even earlier than the written language.
Spoken language probably developed between 100,000 and 500,000 years ago while written language only dates back to about 5,000 years ago. However the ability to produce sounds is located in an ancient part of the brain which we share with all vertebrates (fish, frogs, birds, mammals).
I would like to talk about some of the historical attempts to discover the origin of language and language origin myths from around the world.
Language as a Gift From The Gods
Divine Source Theory is perhaps the most ancient theory of the origins of language. As you might have already guessed from its name, Divine Source Theory takes us deeper into our religious and mythological roots.
In most religions, language is considered as a gift from God. It is believed that if human infants grow up isolated, they would spontaneously begin using God-given language. Experiments were conducted along these lines in the past to find out if it was true or not.
To illustrate, Herodotus , a Greek writer, reported the experiment of Pharaoh, named “Psamtik”, on two children who grew up in the company of a mute shepherd and goats, after a while, they uttered a Phrygian word “Bekos” which means “Bread”. Therefore, the Pharaoh concluded that this language is a God-given language.
The Language Experiment by A Christian King
It is said that in 1493, James IV, the monarch of Scotland, appointed a mute woman to raise two infants. This experiment was reported to have taken place on the island of Inchkeith so that these children would grow up without human language interaction.
With this experiment, he wanted to determine if language is something humans learn or is in-built into humans by birth. He guessed that the language they would speak would be the same as that the god had gifted humans initially.
Some say the infants could speak good Hebrew, thus reporting that it was the divine language. However, this claim has been refuted by many historians.
The Divine Source According To Hinduism
In many cultures, trees represent the interconnectedness of wisdom and life. In Hinduism, the world tree myth is a symbolic story of the dispersion of people worldwide with different cultures and languages.
According to the myth, there grew in the center of the earth the wonderful ‘world tree,’ or ‘knowledge tree’. It was so tall that it reached almost heaven. It said in its heart, ‘I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them from separating’.
But Brahma, the creator-god disapproved. To punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth. This caused people to disperse across the earth resulting in differences of belief, speech, and custom.
The Divine Source According to Native Americans
The Aztecs’ belief about the origin of language starts with a great flood. Only one man, Coxcox, and one woman, Xochiquetzal, survived having floated on a piece of bark. They find themselves on land and beget many children who are at first born unable to speak, but subsequently, upon the arrival of a dove, are endowed with language, although each one is given a different speech such that they can not understand one another.
The Divine Source According To Africans
The Wasania, a Bantu people of East African origin, have a tale that in the beginning, the people of the earth knew only one language, but during a severe famine, madness struck the people, causing them to wander in all directions, jabbering strange words, and this is how different languages came about.
The Divine Source According to Australians
A native tribe in Australia, from the area around the aptly named ‘encounter bay,’ tell a story about how cannibalism caused people to speak different languages
A women named Wurruri would go around and put out peoples fires while they were sleeping. When Wurruri eventually died, people come from far and wide to celebrate her death. The Raminjerar were the first to start eating her skin and immediately began to speak intelligibly.
The other tribes further east, arriving later, ate the contents of intestines, which caused them to speak a slightly different langauge. The northern tribes came last and devoured the intestines and all that remained, and immediately spoke a language differing still more from that of the Raminjerar.
Conclusion
All around the world different cultures and religions have their own myths about the origin of language. While different in many aspects, what is similar is that there believe that language originated from a divine or magical source.
What is also interesting is that most of these stories include the dispersing or coming together of tribes.
Thus, although research has not yet been able to exactly prove when people first started speaking, we are not left for want of interesting stories about how language might have started.
References
- Burgh, Theodore (de). “King James IV of Scotland’s Language Experiment.” Linguistics and the Human Sciences, vol. 2, no. 1, 2006, pp. 47–58.
- Chomsky, Noam. Reflections on Language. Pantheon Books, 1975.
- Bierhorst, John. The Mythology of Mexico and Central America. William Morrow, 1990.
- Werner, Alice. Myths and Legends of the Bantu. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1933.