Discussion»Statements»Rosie's Corner» Are some "languages" written not spoken? Hieroglyphics/Cuneiform? When did a spoken language originate and where? What was it?
Spoken language always comes before written language. I believe there may be some languages that are still only spoken, and have no written language.
When did spoken language originate? Long, long, long ago ... in pre-history. ("Pre-history" in the definition of "before written history") Since it was pre-history, there is no way to know where it originated ... but likely in Africa, since that's where we can trace our human ancestry back to.
Boy would I have ever lost on that one Walt! I always assumed WRITTEN preceded spoken. But now that I think of it that really makes no sense does it? Does one speak Hieroglyphics or Cuneiform? What about Sanskrit? I know we all come from Africa which is what makes racism so spectacularly stupid. No matter how many times you tell racists that it don't make no never mind. They have made up their heads. Sheesh. Thank you for your reply and Happy Thursday! :)
From what I've read ... Hieroglyphics mainly represented ideas, rather than words. (I have heard Chinese is the same way...which is why the many languages in China share the same written language.) So ... sort of like playing charades. No matter what language you speak, you recognize a picture of a house.
Perhaps the first written language ... cave drawings ... were used to describe a hunt to people from another tribe, who spoke a different language from the story teller.
That's a thought, cave-paintings being multi-lingual.
Archaeologists are trying to understand that ancient art, some of which is of remarkable quality.
Some have noticed many of the best paintings are chambers whose reverberant acoustics greatly enhance singing or playing simple pipes in them; implying the art was part of more than just interior-decorating or telling the neighbours about a successful hunt.
Only today I read of a small-scale study underway to determine what the paintings looked like to their originators. We see them, or photos of them, illuminated by modern l.e.d. lamps' bluish-white light. This new project will use electronic lighting that emulates the dim, flickering, reddish-yellow light of a simple oil or fat lamp, probably very similar to those used by the artists and their viewers.
I heard one archaeologist talking on the radio about these paintings, saying that below the sweeping displays of animals in one cave she studied, were hand-print "negatives" probably made by mouth-spraying the paint around a hand held to the wall. She said some of the prints were of very small hands, and admitted that while the main paintings were certainly awe-inspiring, those hand-shadows evidently made by a child moved her to tears.
We can guess those early people used art to communicate something, and were very discerning in selecting the right cave chambers for more than just displaying pictures; but we can never know what they believed, how they organised themselves, or what they used their "art galleries" for.
Walt O'Reagun 