How the fuck does language work?

how the fuck does language work?

like really?

how the fuck do these symbols that comprise words get converted into concepts in my brain? how come i can speak at a reasonably fast pace with another human and we can both understand what we are saying?

words are really weird. spoken word especially. just say some words out loud. we're just making noises with our bodies and converting that into information.

i mean, i couldn't imagine creating a language from scratch. having to do that helen keller bullshit where she touches water to associate water with the word for water. how fucking neat is it that we can call each other faggots and know what that means?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Not sure if really profound, or if OP's on drugs.

i am on drugs but i don't think that makes the point any less valid.

you probably don't think about how neat language is on an often enough basis.

well i think it all depend on the culture that the language is derived from too.

Reading is just staring at dead trees and hallucinating

yeah, some cultures like african ones use clicks and shit.

i remember watching this one video where people in africa couldn't distinguish green from blue because they use the same word for it.

study semiotics user. it is very interesting. also read umberto eco

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

The symbol: & =a guy dragging Hus ass across the ground

There's a point on acid where your structure feels about to change.

India has a color between orange and red. When you talk to one of them, it's obvious to them but anyone from the west just doesn't get it.

well language is conceptions encased in form for processing. what i find fascinating is before language skills are developed how does conception even work. try conceptualizing without using internal narrative that relies on language

My nigga. Bakhtin my dude

Not really. Who the fuck still reads from paper anymore? LOL

Here's a thought.

>you have to lose one of the following
>ability to communicate
>human hands

I've heard speculation that the language mental system is derived from the smell-memory system. Unlike other senses, smell involves recognizing a huge number of unique things and remembering their significance. With the mental machinery in place for that , animals with decent brain power could adapt it for various kinds of communication, which can be picked up just as new smells can be learned. The sounds used as symbols are largely arbitrary, but a culture of sorts can form that passes on sounds to future generations. Animals with a HUGE amount of brain power can adapt the recognition processes to other inputs, like written symbols, braille, codes, etc.

From another perspective, consider that among social animals, communication is an enormous evolutionary advantage, with humans having by far the greatest expression of that. Humans are programmed (brain structure and development) to learn and build languages. Twins left to each other's company most of the time will develop their own language to use between themselves. It's not complex, but the basics are there. Keep in mind that this is largely arbitrary too. Look up African click languages some time for a view of what else is possible.

?

Not sure. But did you ever see two babies talking with each other? Even though they are not speaking our language. But they seem to be communicating

For a long time, English didn't have a word for a color between yellow and red, which is why we say that people have red hair when by modern conceptions of color, it's more of an orange.

...

doesn't make any sense. Ever heard of sign language you fucking idiot?

there are radio-wave beings around us all right now, from another world, marveling at the fact that we communicate by creating vibrations in matter using our vocal cords.

Both.

i think its weird how whenever i hear my voice it sounds retarded.

its due to the acoustics of my skull-- that's why i sound differently to myself, but to other people they never hear what i think i sound like. i think i sound retarded but that's what everyone hears me as.

singing is even worse. have you ever recorded yourself singing and listened back to that? its fucking dreadful. but i can belt it out in the car, even with other people around, and feel fine about it.

"Ability to communicate" he didn't say speak

language is fucking gay
you think language is fucking neato op?
how about fucking the stars and shit man
that shit is wild

A word is a sign connected to a set of impressions in your memory. Other people have their own impressions set for the word, which is not exactly like yours, but usually is similar to. When you express a word, they remember that set of impressions, and it's the way how they are understand you. It's very relative and conventional. Strictly saying, no one can understand each other, and communication is completely impossible.

jeremy what the fuck did i tell you about smoking a bunch of pcp then ranting on the internet about life

I can't jack off to any of this. 0/10 shit thread

but you can use ur mind to think of hot girls.

that's the magic of language.

My cat seems to be enjoying classical music radio.

it feels like OP just watched the arrival and now is questioning life

How high are you?

>clicks and shit
may as well bring up phonetics being different. Real dIfference of language is in grammatical structure, not how it sounds

Op

don't forget about the peoples from the Canary Islands who developed a whistling language.

take a few fucking cognitive science courses faggot.

Bdnjds

Your brain is crazy shit man

They made a shirt that can detect sound and apply pressure to different parts of a persons body and after wearing this shirt for long enough a deaf person can translate these strings or pressure on different areas into language and feel what people are saying out loud.

yes

Tolkien

Philology

You are born with a part of your brain that has potential to become responsible for language if stimulated correctly during childhood. Ability to communicate is something that evolved and is written onto our biology.

I JUST GOT REALLY HIGH, THOUGHT ABOUT EXACTLY THIS, WENT ON Sup Forums AND SAW THIS THREAD. OP YOU'RE A COOL FUCKING GUY.

Anyway, whats more ridiculous than language is how we use it. Thnk about what you're doing right now; how we're communicating. You're looking at your screen as i look at mine. Think about what you're doing right now, you're alone looking into what is essentially a fancy flash light (use your inner stoner and think about a normal flash light being a 1 pixle screen). And the lights cause you to have thoughts which evoke feelings and could even influence behavior. If your shit runs out of power then the light is gone, as well as all of the meaning and value within the light. So, if you think about it, we're streaming our consciousness into light and whatever the internet is made of.

And thats pretty cool, i guess.

Yeah I was thinking about this last night, stoned out of my mind. We vibrate a valve in our throats while we move our tongue and lips in certain positions. We also build up slight air pressure and then release (think about the "T" or "D" sound)... You're building up air pressure, holding your tongue against the roof of your mouth and forcing a small amount of air in there, and then you release to make the sound.

It's weird to think about how animalistic humans are, and we could be on a discovery channel show for aliens about these weird "humans" and how they act.

If aliens really did come here they probably wouldn't view us as intelligent.
Trying to distinguish our language into something other then incomprehensible gibberish, from their perspective, would be no easier then us listening to birds and trying to decipher the meanings of their chirping.

I think all animals can communicate like us, just in a more simple format.
eg, maybe one birds chirp signals a certain emotion, another means follow for foods, another signals for dangers etc.

I think what's really neat is bugs with antenna, they just both slap their antennas together to share information via the subtle electrical impulses, which is probably the most efficient no nonsense form.

Our language leaves us open to interpretation, quite often the result of major and minor scale conflict simply comes down to our misunderstanding of what message we are trying to get across, due to our preconceived notion of the other party and our own minds interpretation of what they are communicating to us.

It's hard to give an example of this, but i'm sure we have had a conversation with someone, and they respond like they understand what you said but their response sounds like they took what you said completely different, maybe i just suck at communicating.

Really, its just vibration, sound vibration that makes us internally hallucinate a picture.

Wanna hear about chinese?

Look, 女 means woman.
安 means peace. It's a woman under the roof, because in times of peace women don't have to hide in forests. 好 means "good", it's a woman and a child, because for chinese family was so important.

Lets take a look on the other word.

河 means river. Do you see the three points at the front? They're called three drops of water and will appear in all water-related words.
酒 is word for wine and alcohol, it consists of three drops of water and word for jar 酉
泪 is a character for tears. It's three drops of water and 目, eye. Look, it's like manga eyes.

If you put only two drops it becomes ice instead, like this 冰
冰淇淋 this is word for ice cream. Look how cold it is.
疾病 means disease, it's cold too.

These are the most basic words, still pretty cool, right? I love chinese word for pussy too - they use characters of flesh and cave.

Ddduuuude

language is outdated and ambiguous.
so many problems are caused because of this.
we need to develop communication that transcends the languages of today.
an example of this would be engineering which can be precisely defined.

>Wanna hear about chinese?
hm

>a woman under the roof
ok neat enough

>manga eyes
hm

> I love chinese word for pussy too - they use characters of flesh and cave.
hm

>flesh and cave.
hm

Have you been smoking that 'wacky tabaccy' again?

OP language didn't arrive from nothing, we had protolanguages, languages without complex grammar, stone dildos, metal dildos, silicon dildos, everything and then donald trump won the presidency

There are some cultures where there are no words for cardinal directions. Just think about that for a bit.

Fucking casual.

>10/10 thread. Came buckets.

>how the fuck does language work?
>we're just making noises with our bodies and converting that into information.

You just answered your own question.

i can say a car is powered by gasoline but that doesn't explain much.

thats some tumblr tier meme

OP did you just watch arrival?

Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.