...Nature vs Language is interesting? The idea of this offered of human 'nature', human 'language' (...behavior?). The anachronistic, the modern, life and becoming? a ponderance for tired mechanicsPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Is not language a part of 'nature'? Written language may be predominately a trail of homo sapiens sapiens, and this written language is continually evolving by it's addition of new words and the manner in which those words are used. That there is considerable variation or similarity between languages is interesting to study and may hint to the migration and movement of human populations. Perhaps you could expand on your opening post to assist in the development of this thread......Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
this forum is so wonderfully smart Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! i like it very much. Perhaps 'nature' viewed as perception, therethen perception and behavior..another alighting mix <*>
This forum is indeed an interesting place, full of diverse behaviors and a larger audience of observers (perception) than posters. It is human nature to observe and to use language to convey what we have perceived to others. What we perceive and convey is frequently quite different from what we have actually observed. Our perception of any experience is dependent on having a frame of reference for our observations. Our choice of words may distort the observations we are attempting to convey and the listener may not understand our message if they lack the experience of the parameters we are attempting to describe. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Language is subjective and not objective, since any noise/sound can be used to label anything. This is why there are so many languages. Different people in different places made up anything. If we barked when meaning a dog or meowed when meaning a cat this would approximate objective. But the word/sound dog or cat is purely arbitrary, having little to do with any osund made by the critter, chosen for human subjective tonal character. It sort of sells better making it easier to remember. The value of language, lies in its ability to slow down nature, so the human conscious mind can keep up. For example, say someone was a natural carpenter. They might have sort of an instinct for angles, lengths, stresses and stains. It would be hard to transfer this instinctive talent to another, without language, since much of the data processing is done unconsciously and therefore without noise/sound. With language, our carpenter, may self observe and then use language to help explain his blink of an eye decisions with as many words as it takes to teach. If slow enough and clear enough, others can copy that which they could not do on their own. With language being used to slow down of nature, humans could learn natural and unnatural things and develop will power. Not all slowing down with language gets it right. This learning and willing then alters the natural into a collective and often synthetic version of natural based on slow speed of language and data loss. With language in modern times the tiniest thing can take a book to express, slowing it down so anyone can see, trying to minimize any data loss. Theoretically, one could develop a language that can go the other way. A language that can move more data faster and therefore explain nature at nearly full speed. Such a language already exists, is quite ancient and is collection to all humans. This language is called symbols. A symbol is a compressed form of language. The symbol liberty takes a lot of words to translate; one sound=book of slow language sounds. You first need to decompress symbols into one of the slow language. This is a common human language is diversified into language subjectivity. Then you recompress while keeping track of the gist of meaning obtained from the slow language translation. Then you learn to use symbolic sentences to move compressed data blocks, with orders of magnitude more data. This makes it easier to define the natural in real time. It also make it easier to see unnatural since the symbol sentences sound retarted.
I don't remember coming across language described in this manner, as slowing down nature, so the human conscious mind can keep up. That's a very interesting way to contemplate language. Is this your own concept or are you drawing on the work of another in this sharing? Because of the lack of quotations, the impression is that this is your own comprehension being presented. Please continue. I find this interesting....
It is quite a pleasure to read perceptives here at Sciforum. Wellwisher, i like the precept of "slow language" you introduced -quite well Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ..an idea yet.. that language is objective with subjectivity being an aspect of language.
While we are on the topic of language, I wonder if we shall ever evolve toward a universal language? Logically, it would make sense if all people evolved toward a common means of communication. In the interests of 'fairness', it would perhaps be best if it were a new language to all people, rather than a default to the language most commonly used. That would truly 'level the playing field', in my opinion. My far-fetched concept of the day. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
the link of Esperanto is interesting..I liked how it mentioned the subjectivity of language differentiality
A new feature built into Google Translate for Android, Conversation Mode is a little rough around the edges, but it’s basically your own personal Babel Fish. It does what Word Lens does but in real-time speech, translating English and Spanish. It’s as easy as pressing a key when the language is being spoken — let’s say you’re trying to order some food in Spanish. It translates what you say into the phone on the fly, and then reads the Spanish version out loud, so the waiter can understand. The waiter can then respond in Spanish, and the phone will convert it to English, speaking it out loud. You can imagine how crucial this would be to travelers — and while it can only compute English and Spanish for now, I’m betting Google’s working on other languages. Check out a preview video of the app above, from a few months ago, or a user video below. Android users with 2.1 or higher can download the new Google Translate now, which has a few other improvements built-in as well, according to Google Blog. Watch the presentation that's located there. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...lri7CQ&usg=AFQjCNH6l8OrCGYSWBsojB51J4AmS2xnyA
There is a universal language called symbolism. The symbols within dreams, for example, follow universal trends regardless of cultural language. The dream symbols represents some of the alphabet of the universal language. Symbolism is a 3-D language, with symbols like a compressed file format (more than meets the eye). Normal language is easier to interpret since it is not 3-D, and uses much smaller data density, which it easier for the conscious mind. One way to understand how this universal language evolved is to consider looking at a lake. Regardless of what we call it using language, the visual input into the brain, stemming from light coming from the lake is the same for all humans. Just because one person says lake, and the other lac, does not mean each will see a different thing. Only the name has been changed not the visial input. The unconscious mind works with this universal data from the sensory systems. The result is a universal language. To process more complex relationships universal input is combined into 3-D symbols. The language was too fast for the early conscious mind, with cultural language a slower way to move data so the conscious mind could keep up. As a contrast, the instinct pre-human could depend on a hunch that resulted from internal data crunching. But since it does not require thinking it keeps one unconscious. But if we can slow data processing down, we can see the steps and learn will power. The sounds we came up with are purely subjective with subjectivity the reason there is no universal cultural language.
@ Cosmic...a translation program that can mangle Spanish for me. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It's only a start to try and make a translator that you can carry with you with your cell phone. I think that , in time, this is the best way to go for I believe that people should always maintain their countries own language if the so choose. I know that English is being taught and that seems to be the general direction for most first world countries are going for.
-That translative device, is neat-funny cosmictraveller..such info is brightening. -Wellwisher your writings spark interest. *-The subject of the attractivity of english is interesting to me. -That understanding and comprehension are languages is also interesting. Art of being human is interestingly variable.
The problem with that is that there is not already a community of speakers, so there's no literature, no idioms, no slang. It's rather soulless. Also, there are no expert native speakers to teach it, so everyone will speak like a child. In the 1920s it seemed like it would. That was its heyday, there were at least ten million speakers. I learned it as a teenager in the 1950s, and I still have a number of pen pals in several countries. In those days it was very popular in eastern Europe, because if they got on a train and got off two hours later they found themselves in a place where they couldn't understand anybody. Distances are so large in America that we never have that experience. And our people are so chauvinistic they just assume that everyone should learn English. I learned it from a book in a total vacuum in just three months, well enough to carry on a reasonably sophisticated correspondence with a non-anglophone. I traveled through eastern Europe in 1973, visiting many of my pen pals. I even met people who spoke Esperanto. Well it is, that's the whole point. It was invented specifically to be easy to learn. It has a powerful compound word-building facility and a large set of suffixes and prefixes, all of which greatly reduce the number of words you have to learn. Unfortunately it is an inflected language since Prof. Zamenhof (Doktoro Esperanto, "Dr. Hoper") spoke Polish in everyday life, but at least the inflections are unvaryingly regular. That Polish thing also explains its rather challenging phonetics: scienco is pronounced "stsientso." The problem with Esperanto is that to achieve the goal of making it simple and easy to learn required sacrificing subtlety and beauty. The prefix mal- turns a word into its opposite. So "old" is malnova, "bad" is malbona, "short" is malalta, etc. This cuts an entire large part of your vocabulary in half, which is a boon to learning. But it also makes the language rather sterile. The prefix -ido means "offspring," so hundido, katido, ĉevalido, bovido, ŝafido, cervido are "puppy, kitten, foal, calf, lamb, fawn." Again, nice and easy to learn, but you don't have any cute little words for cute little baby animals.
