I heard that intelligent Cetaceans such as dolphins and whales actually are known to have there own language and grammar.
That's an exaggeration. We know that many cetacean species are social and communicate with sound, but that doesn't necessarily qualify as language. A language, by definition, has not just vocabulary but also grammar and syntax, so putting words together expresses more meaning than the sum of the meanings of the individual words. Otherwise the sounds dogs and songbirds make would be "language" too.
However we cannot seem to translate it.
It's very difficult to figure out a language if the speakers aren't helping you with the effort. Try learning Japanese by watching a thousand Japanese movies. It's even harder if the "people" don't live in the same kind of environment you live in, so you don't have any common referents. We don't even know what whales and dolphins might be talking about, except food.
Why don't we then create a cetacean language for dolphins or whales that we can teach them . . . .
Have you contacted a bunch of cetaceans who agreed to enroll in this class? You need their cooperation.
I find it really upsetting that we haven't tried extensive research on it . . . .
What makes you think that? People are working on it, and we've got plenty of software to analyze the recordings. We just haven't made much headway so it's not like assigning two hundred more linguists to the project is going to start yielding results.
So far we know that they have individual names for themselves, and that each pod (pack) has a phrase that they all say, something perhaps like a national anthem or a school fight song or a battle cry or just "kowabunga" or even a Rebel Yell which is not even language. (I don't know which species have been studied, this obviously does not apply to all cetaceans.) Beyond that we've got a big fat zero.
. . . . yet its like having a alien race on the moon and we dont even try to talk with them.
No, it's more like having an alien race on the moon and they're not interested in teaching us their language. After all, what use do they have for people who can't live in the water with them? What can you say to somebody who can't possibly understand 99% of your life, and why would you bother even trying?
Its the same way that those in charge have always done. Look at the Native Americans. They had their own languages that were used for thousands of years yet not many botherd to learn them. They made the Native Americans learn english the hard way, without educating them. Then the people said the Native Americans were savages who couldn't learn and put a price on their scalps, thereby the term "scalping" was made to give money for every indian that was killed and scalped to prove they were dead.
In fact Chief Sequoia of the Cherokee Nation realized that one of the key advantages the white man had was written language. So he developed an alphabet for the Cherokee language. (To be precise, a
syllabary like the Japanese use, in which each symbol represents a consonant-vowel combination.) Within a couple of years they had books and newspapers just like the white men, and before long there came a time when the rate of literacy among the Cherokee was
higher than among the Euro-Americans who surrounded and persecuted them. It didn't help them very much, but the
Cherokee written language is still in use.
I believe all animals have there own language and some of the language is understood by a few people in the world.
Come on dude. You're obviously intelligent and well-educated, but you come up with the most ridiculous woo-woo sometimes. This is not the way to
earn respect in a place of science and scholarship.
For starters, many if not most mammals are
not social by instinct. They have no reason to communicate with each other because they have no interest in having relationships. We're familiar with chimpanzees, horses, wolves, elephants and lions, mammals that congregate in small social groups who depend on and care for each other. But most predators are solitary animals who don't want others invading their territory, and even many grazers merely tolerate each other's company because they're not competing for grass, but they don't get friendly.
Many cetaceans are social animals because chasing prey in a three-dimensional environment is rather difficult, so working together means more food for everybody.
Like . . . . dog trainers understanding the language of the animals they work with.
My wife and I are dog breeders and I can assure you that no one with any credentials in the field would ever assert that dogs have language. Like most highly social mammals they have some ability to communicate, using postures, gestures and facial expressions as much as sounds. But these are very limited so there's not much of a "vocabulary," and furthermore there's no grammar or syntax for leveraging the value of individual "symbols" to convey more meaning by putting several together than they would convey individually. Dogs who are trained to respond to human words, gestures, whistles, etc., can never process more than two in combination. This is not language.
I understand the language of birds myself , but then again I am an eagle so it is my native tongue
You don't even know enough about this topic to realize that every bird species has its own set of vocalizations. There's no such thing as one common communication system that all birds use. Only a few species, notably most of the psittacines, have enough range of vocal ability to duplicate sounds they hear. African Grey parrots, in fact, have learned to put three English words together into meaningful phrases.
You're embarrassing yourself. Please stop. We really want to like you but you sure make it hard.
