How Language Developed
Good morning, meth heads. How are you doing over in The UK there and across the world, across the globe? Hope you're doing well. Today's voice is not a get I'll be listen. I've been I have been reading up on some research studies and stuff whilst away, and I've got some really cool ones to share soon, but I got something cooler to share today.
Speaker 1:And if you don't think it's cool then I don't know what to say. I didn't think it was cool until I got into philosophy, space, time, physics, all this stuff. Now I think language is unbelievably cool. Like, think about language, the words we use, the way we speak to ourselves is so important. But we never question why it has come to be, why the words we use, what the explanations we have, the terms we use, where they come from, why we use them, are they the truth?
Speaker 1:Do they convey what we're actually thinking, you know, or actually feeling? Or actually, is what we say causing the feeling as opposed to we're feeling something then it causes us to explain it? Maybe it works both ways, but maybe, maybe the words we use create or supercharge certain feelings and they take them in the wrong direction, wrong way. Who knows? But this book and languages I'm reading, but I'll recommend it Balalia, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna share a few things from what's blown my mind from it. So the first thing about languages, the European languages, Indo European languages come from a common ancestor. So unbelievably, Russian English are related back in the day, can't believe it's I feel sick. But it makes sense. So when you go back, there's a common ancestor and over the years, in simplified terms, over the years languages have got less and less developed.
Speaker 1:They've become easier, maybe lazier, less explanations, less complexion to them. So for example, in Word English we got flowers and flower. But in Latin there's like eight ways to say flower depending on loads of different stuff. And then you go back again to Sanskrit it's even more complex. So Sanskrit, the ancient Sanskrit, You could say in a sense that the further back you go the closer you get to true explanations of what we're trying to say because back in the day when they were language building and that's the focus and that's prehistory we don't know we've only started seeing language on the decline unbelievably.
Speaker 1:The language came into being, took ages, it came into being written form, the survivals of it, and then we've only ever seen this decline in the sense that it became less and less complicated. You know, from Sanskrit to Latin to French and all that stuff, it gets less and less complicated. We cut the words down and then they lose their true meaning and then they start building up again over time. So languages are contracting and then expanding. But really we're in we haven't really seen contraction part on the mass scale yet.
Speaker 1:We've seen just we've seen the decline of language in a sense as what people are saying. This has happened since the age of Cicero. Even Cicero and stuff back in the day, ancient Greece, they were saying that languages were was better back in the day. And every generation says the same. Our language is better back end.
Speaker 1:Language is better back end. And because it's been better way back back to a common ancestor, we don't know what it was, but we can we can take a guess in terms of, like, how complicated it was. Anyway, the book explains, like, how did we come up with language? Such the system. How is this system developed?
Speaker 1:It's so complex. Was it one creator of system or did it just develop? And what they realized is languages are built, right, on metaphors. So trying to explain an so you're trying to explain an idea using things we all know. Right?
Speaker 1:This makes complete sense. Think about it. So if back in the day they had a feeling or an idea or a thought and they wanted to explain it, the only way to explain was through the physical world. We had words for physical things. So the only way to explain abstract mental things was through the physical world.
Speaker 1:Now this is this is one problem in the South because the physical world will never be a good explanation of what we're going through mentally. Right? So there's already a layer away from the truth there. Remember, description is not to describe. But that anyway, back in the day, it must have been a more complicated explanation, description of what's happening.
Speaker 1:These these metaphors were clean. They were new. They were big. They were punchy. And over the years, they become dead metaphors.
Speaker 1:They use so much that they become dead that we don't even notice them in everyday talk anymore. That's a metaphor in itself. You know, a word is dead. Something is dead. Physically it's just not moving, it's gone.
Speaker 1:Let me just say there's an example in book about metaphors. Let me see if you can spot the metaphors in this. Okay. So the cabinet meeting, groundbreaking plans were put forward by the minister for tough new legislation to curb the power of the unions. Right?
Speaker 1:There, there's full of metaphors. The cabinet meeting, groundbreaking plans. Plans aren't groundbreaking. You know, I'm gonna shovel pregnant to the ground. Plans were put forward.
Speaker 1:No plans are actually put forward. We're just visualizing putting forward as a suggestion. So that's another metaphor. But they minister for tough new legislation. Legislation is not tough, that's a material thing like meat and materials and fabrics, right?
Speaker 1:To curb the power of the unions. Not curb in the power of the unions. Curbing is a metaphor. And we're not actually putting the metal in the horse's mouth wherever it was. So in that sentence, you might have read that and gone, yeah, don't know what the metaphors are.
Speaker 1:Because we use them so much that we are unaware that we are speaking in consistent, constant metaphors. Dead metaphors. And some people come up with new metaphors and they can make you think. Right? You go, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:I get it now. But we're always thinking of metaphors. Languages built on metaphor. Let's go through a few more words on that. Discover initially meant remove the cover from, so the physical removing the cover, so discover.
Speaker 1:Assessment comes ultimately from Latin to sit by. Board originally meant plank and is not a skeletal as the other method was used since it can be used in the concrete sense today. Decide comes ultimately from Latin to cut off. That's mad. So decide.
Speaker 1:Think about it. How can you how can you get over the concept of to decide, pick something, go with an idea? Then you'd say, you cut off. Cut off one. Okay.
Speaker 1:So they would we've cut off one to decide, to go with another. Right? And then asked the word decide. And we think, okay, decide. It's not really that didn't come from a metaphor, but it did.
Speaker 1:It did. So the truth of the matter is, and this is from the book, that we simply have no choice but to use concrete to abstract metaphors and when one stops to think about this, this is not even so surprising since after all it's not from the physical world, where else could the terms of abstract concepts come from? One thing is certain, nothing can come from nothing. The mind cannot just manufacture words for abstract concepts out of thin air. All it can do is adapt from what's already available.
Speaker 1:And what's at hand are simple physical concepts, objects one can point at like head or tree and physical actions like cut or run. Right. Another part, this is where we can tie in maybe with thoughts. So your thoughts, the mind is a mechanical thing. The thoughts process is very mechanical.
Speaker 1:It works off memory, it works off the metaphors, works off the physical world. So that's all it can do is work off that. And then we take this seriously and then we think that the mind is the thoughts we have are so accurate or descriptive but they can't be, they can't be. Over the years it's getting worse. We are literally gone from the original people describing abstract things in their head with the physical world of metaphor and maybe being a completely complex metaphor, dead metaphor we don't even we're not even aware of anymore.
Speaker 1:So it might have been way closer to the truth of the original meaning of a feeling than we have today because we are literally going off other people's descriptions of thousands of years. And it's description, description, description has been cut, cut, cut, blunt, blunt, blunt. Now we have language. Now we take labels. We don't even think about things.
Speaker 1:We don't even realize we're talking to metaphors, we don't even know the words we're using are really describing a feeling, we have a feeling of anxiety, we have a feeling of nervousness, we have a feeling of sadness or whatever, and because we are so used to just labeling things blanketly today, we throw a label at it and that label has all the connotations of society on it that we haven't looked into ourselves. We've just taken it ahead on. And that face value taken of a word that we then start to describe ourselves as becomes the way we feel. Does that make sense? Hopefully, it makes sense.
Speaker 1:But the main thing that I spoke to blew my mind was that they've come up to the realization that psychological time has been manufactured from the physical world. So we would say, I'm going to the shop. Right? So I'm going to the shop means there needs to be space. I need to move through space to get to the shop which takes physical time.
Speaker 1:Right? So I'm going to the shop. We then started using fit these actual physical words that I'm going to the shop. We started using it mentally. Like, I'm going to think.
Speaker 1:Right? And there's no I'm going to think. You're not moving to think. Right? You think.
Speaker 1:There's no movement in that. But the movement, we have now confused with time psychologically. Right? So we started using the physical descriptions, the physical world, which makes sense because it makes sense that we would do that. We bought it inwardly.
Speaker 1:Now, we think psychological time is a movement like physical time or physical movement, space and time. They're very interlinked now. And this is the source of potentially all our problems because we now have past, present and future physically makes sense. I will go from here to the shop, it will need physical time, therefore that is kind of a starting point, is a middle and then there's the future. The future is I will be at the shop and the past is behind me as I walk.
Speaker 1:We've now brought that mentally to physical time and then we think of psychological time and then it causes the problem of the future. We are always now thinking the past, future and the present but we're not really thinking of present anymore, we're always thinking of past and future We're so used to physically thinking that way or trying to explain something that way. And if you think about it, anxiety, sorrow, pain, the desire for pleasure, all this stuff comes from always thinking of the past or the future. I'm not thinking of the now. Maybe back in a day before we actually did do this, before we pulled in what the physical world was into the mental, maybe there was only thinking in the now.
Speaker 1:Maybe there was only the thought. There was only living in the now and using words of physical stuff as opposed to thinking of it mentally. We've brought that inwardly. And it makes sense if you think about it, like they used to think the earth was the centre of the universe. And if we thought earth was the centre of the universe and has a centre, then we think we have a centre.
Speaker 1:And then if we have a centre, then we work through that centre. And we're trying to work out ourselves psychologically through the physical world. So then we must have created a center in ourselves which is the self. There's now the self, the individual in me. And maybe the start of our individuality is the problem because then we're all thinking of ourselves versus the collective humanity.
Speaker 1:Like if an ant started thinking of itself, then ants wouldn't be ants, would they? Like, because the ants need the ants to be a colony. They're a colony of ants because all the ants work in tandem together. And maybe humans in a sense, we kind of do work together. A human can't be a human without humans in way because we're very social people.
Speaker 1:But we now become very individual and we've pulled that in from the physical world. Everything we do is pulled from the physical world inwardly. Isn't it? Now we've got this strong belief that there is a self inside us, the center, the ego, and that's potentially where all our psychological problems begin. What do think, Va?
Speaker 1:Because now we think of the South, we think of the South only. The South must improve over time, the South must become something. Becoming, so like whilst it might take physical time to turn a piece of metal into a sword, right, physically where we see that, over time it's improved. We now think well the self, the me, will improve, I need to become something and it's going to take time. It's going to take psychological time, it's going to take physical time.
Speaker 1:And we we have this we we now have this in our mind that to be better, we need to take time to improve ourselves. And in that improvement, there's a chase for something all the time. All the time there's chasing desire is a way of doing this. We're chasing something all the time. I need to be better.
Speaker 1:I need more money. I need this job. I need this and that. And that's just being pulled from the physical world because as an individual, as a human being, you don't need to become anything to be a human, basically. You need to become someone to be something or to be worthy of anything.
Speaker 1:We can simply live in now. And that's enough, but we think we have to become all the time. And this then creates the past, present, the future, and it creates our longing for a future version of ourselves, we must take time to reach. But can we be and realize the the falseness of all that and it's becoming over time because it's never gonna stop because you're always gonna keep wanting to more more more desire. Can we realize that we can be in the present and it's enough for us to be in the present?
Speaker 1:We don't need to become anything. It's a false it's it's a it's it's a fake thing we forever chase. And in that chasing, it causes our anguish, and it causes our sorrow in a sense. And I think that's quite true. I think it is true.
Speaker 1:Always trying to be someone else. Always trying to be something. Be who you are now, right now. So that's the main thing. Can you in this present moment, stop trying to change yourself to be something.
Speaker 1:You are a human being. Being a social creature, being bringing joy into your day, doing things you love doing without the feeling that you have to change, you have to be this, you have to do that, you have to lose 35 pounds, you have to lose a 100 pounds. You have to be super strong, you have to build loads of muscle. Also, build we can work on the building can happen over time, but if we focus on that as the main thing, that's the problem. I don't even know if this is making sense, but this book has really affirmed that for me because it's it's this it's described where this all comes from.
Speaker 1:It describes language, which come from metaphors, come from the physical world in ourselves. So today, when you when you observe the words you use in yourself, the self talk and just talk, the communication you use, really start questioning the meaning of the words. Where does it come from? Why does that mean? Like, start, like, really looking at the language you use and be very kind of, like be very curious behind it.
Speaker 1:You know? And I think that's that's the curiosity we speak to ourselves. It might be the starting point here. And as a I started posting in Scumbaugh, one of the turtles, you know, like, god, I I speak so negative to myself all the time. I think it was Jackie put a story up, someone messaged me.
Speaker 1:I'm negative self talk to myself all the time. Negative self talk comes from memory, experience, all this stuff and everything's negative so then we just we live off negativity and it pops into our minds because our memories are just full of like always what we did wrong and all this stuff right in the past But we should be we should die of that. Like, you did something wrong. Who cares? Whatever.
Speaker 1:Move on. And really understanding the language you use. Look into it. Is the words you're using to describe the feeling the true feeling? Or are you going off a label someone's given you?
Speaker 1:Have a look into that today. But that's it in this book guys. I don't know if any of you enjoyed this podcast or not. I think it's fascinating about language. What's the name of the book?
Speaker 1:It's called The Unfolding of Language, The Evolution of Mankind's Greatest Invention. And, yeah, it's mad. And to finish off, was how do you know, look at words, like how did the word 'pisk' turn into fish? That's the word for 'pisk' and Old Germanic 'pisk' into fish Basically the word 'p' is easier to say 'p' by saying 'f' So 'f' is a half way of saying 'p' Yeah, something along those lines or like for example another one is h k k with a tongue hitting the roof k to So is like a half of a k, so the tongue goes halfway up try Right? Or k.
Speaker 1:K. So basically, from k to c h to So k is turning to h's. And if you think about it, v v to 'th' changes to 'f' we say some people do this now. So we think how does language change? Well, a lot of people say 'think' now instead of 'think'.
Speaker 1:So 'think' is an easier way of saying 'th', it's like halfway. So instead of saying th, you say f. Right? It's easier. So we basically come in lazier with pronunciation.
Speaker 1:So instead of saying think, we start saying think. And over time, think t h will change to f. Yeah that's it. So enjoy guys, have a think about that yeah, have a think about it and let me know what you feel afterwards and I'll speak to you tomorrow.
