Humans may speak a universal language, say scientists

TelegraphUK ^ | Sarah Knapton

[BenLurkin]

"These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage," said Dr Morten Christiansen, professor of psychology and director of Cornell's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab in the US where the study was carried out.

"There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We don't know what it is, but we know it's there."

...

"It doesn't mean all words have these sounds, but the relationship is much stronger than we'd expect by chance," added Dr Christiansen.

Other words found to contain similar sounds across thousands of languages include ‘bite’, ‘dog’, ‘fish’, ‘skin’, ‘star’ and ‘water’. The associations were particularly strong for words that described body parts, like ‘knee’, ‘bone’ and ‘breasts.’

The team also found certain words are likely to avoid certain sounds. This was especially true for pronouns. For example, words for ‘I’ are unlikely to include sounds involving u, p, b, t, s, r and l. ‘You’ is unlikely to include sounds involving u, o, p, t, d, q, s, r and l.

[paterfamilias]

“In Latin (recent root for much of Europe), “I” is “sui”, “

Not quite.

“Sui” is the genitive case of “se” meaning “himself.”

In Latin, “I” is “ego,” declined as follows:

Nominative - ego, Genitive - mei, Dative - mihi, Accusative - me, Ablative - me.

[JoeProBono]

[PghBaldy]

Music is the universal language, and love is the key
To peace hope and understanding, and living in harmony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09rBsH9l8bg

[BenLurkin]

That hand sign means different things in different cultures.

[Little Pig]

I stand corrected. It’s been a while.

[BenLurkin]

Courtesy of skip2myloo:

This theory is hardly new.

Scholars link most active languages today to an origin of a Proto-Indo-European language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

[Sacajaweau]

Booga booga....said the cave man.

Show me your money....said the cave woman.

[paterfamilias]

Interesting concept, but I found their data (such as was presented) a bit sketchy.

However, if we consider that we are all descended from a single hominid (Eve), and that early Man presumably shared the same language, then we should reasonably expect that there would be a few surviving traces of that early shared language, just as we can show closer connections in even the dissimilar members of the current language families, i.e., the Indo-European family which includes English, the Romance Languaues, Albanian, and Hindi.

[j.argese]

English was good enough for the Bible people. English was good enough for the Bible to be written in.

[xp38]

math and music are the universal human languages

[JGT]

“All of this reading is putting a strain on my penis.”

[Enchante]

Universal language?

S-E-X

[needmorePaine]

in nearly every language the word for mother is ma and that can be attributed to the fact that it is one of the earliest sounds a baby can make repeatedly and thus associate with their care giver.

Similarly pa or ba is associated with the child’s father. It comes later in mouth muscle coordination

In my experience, "dada" came before "mama." I assume the "d" sound is easier to make.
My wife would always joke about how unfair it was that she carried our kids for 9 months but they learned dada first.

[katana]

Usually explained by the fact that the sound "M" is easiest for a baby to form. So you have Ma, Mum, Mamá, etc. Just focusing on the two main Semitic languages, there's Ima in Hebrew and Umma in Arabic. The "B" sound is the other earliest sound and it's not a coincidence that a father is called Abba in Hebrew and Abu in Arabic.

Supposing there was some sort of prehistoric universal language it's going to be difficult to identify since every language seems to have sounds that aren't found in others. The "L" sound in English can't even be heard as different from "R" to Japanese speakers. And Japanese goes further off track with "Ha-ha" for mother and "Chi-chi" for father. Then there's that guttural sound in Arabic which resembles somebody choking on a peach pit represented by a letter called "ein" (say that while swallowing and you might come close). And we mustn't forget the clicking sound in Xosa.

All in all, then, figuring out what people were speaking at the base floor of the Tower of Babel isn't going to be easy, facile, kantan, leicht, kal, or baseet.

[CrazyIvan]

“math and music are the universal human languages”

And they are very closely related.

[Little Pig]

???

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament was mostly Greek. The Bible wasn’t produced in modern English until more than a thousand years after Christ. Indeed, modern English didn’t even exist until more than a thousand years after Christ.

[Adder]

The article left me confused...and thats with a u sound.

Its written as if they have never heard of Indo-Eurpean or Proto-indo-european languages. Or as if they had never heard of linguistics at all.

Too much “golly-gee-whiz” excitement over ma ma and da da.

Not sure if the study was done by idiots, written by idiots or dumbed down to speak to idiots.

So what about African “click” languages? Or Australian Aboriginal languages? [Not sure...just askin]

[Chickensoup]

“math and music are the universal human languages”

____________________

If they are so darned universal why is it that certain eastern music sets me screaming in the streets.

To me it sounds atonal and unpleasant.

And I have a varied and broad taste in music.

[untenured]

It’s true that “anata” has a t, but I was taught, and it seems to be true among Japanese I hear speaking Japanese (I know a little still), that they almost never use this pronoun, preferring a third-person reference instead. So, the exception that proves the rule? :-)

[Reno89519]

Agreed (until I got married).