Well you must have a standard by which all other languages are measured.
Inherent Meaning
- Thread starter Bowser
- Start date
"Must"? What makes you think that?
Otherwise we would be without language altogether. ☺
Rubbish.
Please provide evidence.
What is, "a word?" It means something. In order to develop a new language there must be a translation available, else words are meaningless. Hence there must be a natural, innate language available. Without something to measure against, language would be void. ☺
To us.
Drivel. Translation to what?
Bad news for you: words are "meaningless" in and of themselves; they ONLY have "meaning"/ relevance because we agree on what they mean.
Unsupported crap.
Please explain why different people have different languages if - as you claim - language (i.e. the words themselves as opposed to the ability to develop/ use a language) is "natural" and "innate".
What is the "natural" word for tree? (It's a fact that if you claim it's "tree" then a Russian, a Frenchman and a Chinese woman will disagree with you).
Nope. We developed languages without having any original language to begin with. No translation. Translators are a relatively recent development, occurring only after people gained the freedom to travel widely.
Then what is a language based on?
I have no idea what you mean by "based on".
Language is, essentially, an arbitrary series of grunts etc that we have all decided to agree on.
Still waiting for you to answer this:
Translation to what?
And this: Please explain why different people have different languages if - as you claim - language (i.e. the words themselves as opposed to the ability to develop/ use a language) is "natural" and "innate".
So far all you appear to have is some baseless supposition that you persist in clinging to despite the lack of supporting evidence (or even argument).
I'm developing a new language. I'm taking the language I was raised with and translating it into this new language. Now, there must be something to base this new language on, hence translation is possible. In the same way un, ein and one all refer to the same VALUE, in order for there to be ANY language, there must be an innate language with which to base ANY language. ☺
So, what you're saying is:
A) you don't have any supporting data or argument,
B) you can't answer my questions, and
C) you're sticking with your baseless supposition.
Got it.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
No. This is flawed reasoning.
Uncountable languages sprang up on the planet without relation to each other. There are certainly words and concepts in languages that have no direct translation to other languages.
That's the root of the phrase "lost in translation". Translation is inherently faulty, to some degree.
Hence the phrase Traduttore traditore.
And Hofstadter's book Le Ton Beau de Marot (to give an accessible source).
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Grunts, whistles, moans, and clicks, just like all natural languages in all vocal species, each in its own dialect.
Nope. There is no innate language.
You could take a group of babies and have them learn language by hearing it from a robot speaking random (but consistent) words for different objects and actions. They would then speak that language, even though it did not come from any kind of innate language.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I believe this is a function of the "mirror neural network" in the brain.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Huh I've fallen out of touch with his books.
Metamagical Themas is my favorite non-fiction book of all time.
Why am I not surprised?
EXACTLY!
That explains why there's so many words for the same damned thing (i.e. every language uses a different word for a thing, ergo how can there be a "natural word"? Don't tell me: English is the natural language and all others are fake/ wrong/ unnatural).
No
What I'm saying is , that in every language a word describes something but not something else .
Then you should learn to write more precisely: what you actually wrote was -
There isn't.
And
There's no such thing as a "natural word".
As for
A word? Just one single word per language that only has a single meaning? (This is false).
Or do you mean each word in every language has only a single meaning? (Also false).
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Moreover, the older the word, the greater the variety of associated meanings, usually with a fundamental common denominator.
Home, homely, homeland, home-base, home-work, homing in, coming home, ...etc.