How did a grunt and pointing at an object become a word?
How did a grunt and pointing at an object become a word?
Why is the sky called the sky, food called food, when did this happen?None of us knows for certain how language began, but grunts and pointing are as good a starting point as anything else. As mankind developed the grunts might have shifted in tone and length or with added hand movements to stress a point. The environment probably had a lot to do with it as well. People who lived in jungles had different words or sounds for their environment to those who lived in the mountains or on the plain. English came together from an amalgam of the Angles' and Saxons' tongues with an overlay of Danish and Norman French. Other terminology - medical, mathematical and technological - were adopted from Latin and Greek, and the odd word - geographical, land features usually - came from the Gallo- or Gaelo-Celtic tongues, as in loch, lough, col, tarn and cwm (combe: Templecombe, Balcombe). Added to the more simplified grammar of English it may explain why the language became more widespread throughout the globe, although French is still the diplomats' language and Spanish is spoken around half of South America and all Central America as well as some still in the Phillipines.
Thankyou, for answering , it has been a question in my head for a long time and you follow the same reasoning as I do. The one thing i have noticed in my travels though is that some words , no matter where in the world you are universally used. The main one that comes to mind is STOP.
