I have found that with languages, the base of the language is founded upon nature and natural phenomenon. This is because they had nothing else to work with - they merely referred to a 'dog' as the sound it made, expressed differently by the way the first and second word influenced it. For example, in English, 'dog' was one of the first words, as, the word dog sounds a bit like the sound it makes, yes? Then, there is semantics. This is where you mime out the word or syllable of the words or sentences to find the body language associated with it, where the syllable of "ba" would infer a somatic movement of a striking action, implying that the the motion of the sentence is going from one point to another, movement, violence, or, deference itself. With the shaping of the tongue, the letters written down, the shape of them, is related to the shapes your tongue makes, i cannot remember from which angle right now. This would be like a clicking noise, or, the roof of your mouth is on one side of the left or right hand side of the letter as you speak, okay? Now, I want to delve into 'the lines of art itself.' This is where we need to observe that curves at certain points indicate that the motion is gentle from one point to another, without being abrupt. This defers cooperation over domination, a act of agreement, or, delicacy. Of course, if it were an abrupt angle, then it would be 'a case of dismissal,' where the previous thought was dropped in favour of the new one, seeming better, or, an act they do not enjoy. So, if we were to accept that the motions of art are about emotion, as emotion is in our subconscious mind, where it translates into logic and actions, we could see our whole sum of actions is about taking thoughts in, processing them from nerves, to sensations, to heightened senses, to emotions, to thoughts. These thoughts are expressed as words, body language and media, of course. To fully understand why you like and dislike some things, for example, we could observe the emotions that suite our personality. These emotions suite everybody, but, it is a comfort zone we seek, something that makes us feel at home, of course.
America has messed up English, as, it is harder to learn the American phonetics conversion and back again than to learn British baby phonetics. These need to be reintroduced to grant children equal opportunities, as, I suspect that with the good grounding in America and their previous colonies, the rate of literacy will improve with pace. With phonetics, we find that we say the syllable that we are using. This will make the whole use of language easier, and, we will find we can understand other dialects. Now I would like to talk about learning Chinese. This is a very easy language to learn if you use the traditional Chinese alphabet, as, they are all pictures of nature and natural occurrences. This means, if the picture looks like a barn or house, that is what it means. The more basic the picture, the more basic the meaning. This would imply that as time marches on and new words are added, the pictures get more complex, of course. This would also mean that 'slang' would leave you making pictures other people might not recognize, and, you would be well served to have that phonetically in the Germanic alphabet. Then, there is the slight differences between regions - this was not a meeting of the minds, so, each village seemed to come up with their own agenda for language. As battles were fought and trade commenced, the words mingled and they filtered, and they came with a national language that everyone uses - society got bigger, language had to be agreed upon, of course. Now, if it comes to a child expressing itself, it would take a object it has seen, and, try to draw it, yes? This would be a lack of expressive power, a shortcoming of mental to physical expression, a lack of manifestation. If it was to draw a line on a wall, from top to bottom, and, drew a skew line, in all likelihood, it would have to be a case of graffiti. If you want to know what the child meant, though, you would have to understand if it comes from the top to the bottom, it wants something from high up or parental persons, as it denotes a lowering of goods, in all likelihood. Conversely, if it goes from bottom to top, it want to be bigger or get picked up, yes?
With language, it is basically a manifestation from your mind to another. This follows from science, where relaying a particular force will have a knock on effect onto other matter, as, matter is everything that exists. So, when you have a message, sometimes it might be hard to relay, yes? This would mean you need to put it to a common message, something that all other humans or animals sometimes understand. This would mean that you need to understand some things are universal - when you smile, it is a common shared message, a emotional message that holds true; people understand you are happy, okay? Then, there is the facet of meanings. A smile to be followed by extending your hand to someone would mean you are happy with them - this is a message of society, you are happy because of them. If you were to observe all the basic things you naturally do when you feel something, then you would understand, through emotional social hard wiring, that the message will be understood. So, with language, we like to bring these emotions to the fore and relay them to others, of course. This will let them understand how you feel, about them or something else. Then, there will be a conversation, maybe, or, dismissal and continuing with the lives we lead.
The Danish man and the Saxon woman live on the farm. Their nouns are very similar but, their grammar messes things up. To away with cases and invent word order and the preposition. And get rid of noun gender that is so, so what. Something is so "right" about English because by the third generation of French speaking Normans, they had to teach French as a foreign language. Of course they did leave their influences on English. And that is what is special about English. It evolves. No academy holding it back
But, you must surely admit, the words we make up now are not based on nature, rather on other words and slang, yes?
Not all words are onomatopoeic, only a select few are. For example 'dog' as you suggest is not one of them. However, the word "bark" is one such word. Since English is a Germanic language the word 'dog' is quite amazing as it does not really make any etymological sense, at least not from my understanding. In Swedish, we say "hund" just like the Germans and the Dutch etc. A dog "should" be called a "hound", but the English use that name for a specific kind of dog, I think.
Actually, the use of "Dog" in English is a recent iteration. Previously the word used was "Hound" (from the German "Hund"). It was the much later adoption of the word "Docga" (the name of a now extinct fore-runner of the Mastiff hunting dog) which later became the common name of "Dog" in English. And prior to the introduction of German into English through the Saxon Invasion, the common language was Latin in which the word "Canis" was used (where we also have "Canine"). In the Pre-Roman land, the Celtic word used was "cù", based directly off of the Indo-European "Kwo".
Not really. Words are still made up to this day, many simply do not realize it. Author Isaac Asimov "invented" at least 3 words that have entered common usage. "Robotics", "Roboticist", "Psychohistory", and and "Positronic".
With language, the whole goal is to get what you are feeling to the other person, or, 'to look for comfort.' Our whole life is spent seeking comfort, and, we think that sharing these feelings of ours with others will lend us this comfort. This is because we are a bunch of nerves, and, when we feel something, it affects us so that we need to give this energy off to find balance once more, of course. So, why language? This would be where we find a more fine way of relaying this energy onto others. Energy is the thing seeking to move, not us to move it, as, it wants to move. It wants to move because it seeks survival through itself multiplying, a fundamental of life and energy universally - it wants to create more of it because then it will consume the whole, and, 'feel safer.' That be as it may, if it ever did take on a solid state, it would be a metal. These simply fall to the core of the gravity waves they encounter, nothing more. This, for us, would be where we spend as much energy and feel good from, for example, exercise, yes? So, comfort is the driving force behind language. The whole point of speaking is to seek comfort, and, it is often found to be more prevalent if we do spend energy. Then, we find some words more appealing, because we like the feeling of spending energy, so, foreign languages would appeal to some of us as that would feel different, that we would spend more with less words, or less with more words, leading to our own self image of what we want to feel like, depending on our usual level of spending energy. So, we could enjoy speaking one language one moment, and not enjoy it the next.
The trick now for me and those that follow my posts is to find a way to speak languages we understand. This would be where we would, under duress, reply with some monkey mimes and grunting, as we would be speaking to ourselves, yes? So, how would we converse with someone in a way that they would understand? As we would not have full knowledge of the dialect, nor, as I understand it, need to, we could converse with someone in Chinese quite easily with their picture dialect, maybe on a sort of menu? With that as a beginning, maybe we could draw pictures of what we want to say in any place - carrying a pad of paper would be required though. Hmmmm, after preparing snap to grids of elemental boiling points and calculating mass based on atomic and proton numbers, this seems to be my hardest challenge to date! How do we speak any language? Mixing languages... I reckon you only need to understand about ten percent of what you hear, or, that you pick out the odd word here or there to understand the base message? If you were to mix the languages you know with some miming and phonetics, you could be understood quite easily, of course. What is the purpose of using the language? Are we writing a grammar exam on something, or, are we asking when the bus is coming? If we are standing at the bus station, obviously we are waiting for the bus, and, if it comes down to reading, we will understand if we were to have followed all my various threads on various sites regarding this. But, if we want to ask what is in the casserole, we could find that hard. So, wanting it to be easy, we could mime out the parts of the sentence we want to relay, and, ask for conference? Then, we could piece it together based on what they say... WAIT! Maybe we could learn on the spot? With my 'photographic memory techniques,' we could learn the language as we are speaking it. My photographic memory techniques are to link words we use commonly, yet have no bearing on linking it to something else, or, do not associate it with anything else, yet, to produce a great link between memorizing the words we want to speak, by using a three step process; [1] Think of a word you know well, [2] Think of a number you want to remember it as, [3] Link the two together through repeating the word you know, the number you know and the word you want to learn about ten times.
A surprising to most Americans number of German words are also English words. Hand is a good example. Hund sounds close to hound but normally in the USA we do call them dogs. Since many people in America came first from England and later Germany it might turn out that things got mixed up and dog is said. I have no research on this at all. We do not call all dogs hounds. Handschuh is a good example of two words that could be made into english. Hand and shoe, or glove.
English is a fascinating language, and rather unique in that it is actually a combination of a great many other languages. Latin, German, and Celtic were the first languages. Then later on it adopted any words that were in use and fit a need. And it continues even today. Most do not even realize that words like Honcho came from Japanese, Caucus came from Algonquin, Chemistry came from Egyptian, Catsup came from China, Boondock came from the Philippines, and Mammoth came from Russia (which actually means "Underground" as they were once thought to be a burrowing animal - it later in English became used to indicate size). A great book on this is The Story of English, by Robert MacNeil.
Greek came ahead of latin. My gosh, I am certain a number of languages predate the Romans. That was most interesting to read. I can't compete when it comes to knowing the roots of all the languages.
Going on 4 years yet a bit earlier than you. I love to try to give accurate information. I sometimes find I am not as accurate as I want and try to solve that too.
Yes, but we did not get the words from Greek, we got them from Latin. You may be able to trace words from Latin to Greek, and ultimately to Sanskrit or earlier proto-Indo words, but that does not mean we for them from Sanskrit or proto-Indo.
You and I are not on the same track. I commented the language spoke by the Greeks came first then Latin. As you say, we have a lot of words in English that came from Latin roots. Prior to Latin in Italy was an earlier language Tuscan.
One builds off of the other. And classic Latin comes largely from Etrustcan, which may actually be so old it is a Pre-Indo-European language.
Hound is the correct english word..."dog" is actually what you call a male hound, "bitch" being the a female hound ...
In word origins, it says dog came from old english docga It seems Hound came from a different language. Hund in German.
dog or dogca doesn't change the meaning...english is a predominately Germanic language, actual low german/saxon ...nearest linguistic relatives being the Frisians of northern Netherlands
