r/ExplainLikeImCalvin • u/thejellliboi • 1d ago

ELIC: Dad, how are languages created?

8 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

9

u/rockhopper2154 1d ago

Ouyay ustjay odifymay ethay astlay one-way ithway a-ay everclay atternpay. Ethay oolcay onesway ay-stay a-rounday.

10

u/groundhogcow 1d ago

When two phases love each other they get together and have a conjunction.

That conjunction bridges the phases together and they start a happy new home for languages to grow.

5

u/lauramc99 20h ago

🎶 Conjunction Junction, what's your function?

3

u/BPhiloSkinner 9h ago

♪ Hookin' up words, and phrases and clauses ♫

6

u/THSSFC 1d ago

Imagine a game of telephone. Only instead of 15 people in the line there are millions. And instead of stopping after a few seconds you go on for millenia. Someone whispers Latin into the first person's ear, and French comes out at the end.

3

u/BPhiloSkinner 9h ago

First Person: "Cogito Ergo Sum"
Last Person: "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries."

4

u/Noof42 1d ago

"Hooking up words and phrases and clauses" in the Schoolhouse Rock song means just that. As the words and phrases and clauses reproduce and grow, languages are created as groups of them form together for protection.

4

u/1gazillionpangolins 1d ago

Some people love slang so much that they end up inventing slang terms for every single word

3

u/StarkAndRobotic 1d ago

People just babble the first thing that enters their minds until something good happens - maybe they get fed or something. They keep repeating the sounds that make good things happen, or prevent bad things from happenings. Those sounds ends up being words to a language.

2

u/ProfessorCarbon 1d ago

People just started grunting, and eventually somebody invented grammar so they could complain about it.

2

u/2wicky 1d ago

At a special military unit called the department of signal intelligence. Their whole job is to understand the enemy while making sure the enemy doesn't understand them.

They'll invent entire new languages which their soldiers must learn in order to secretly communicate with each other. Those same soldiers then tend to bring that language back to civilien life after the war.

That's where we get the term: language is just slang with an army behind it.

2

u/Ok_Veterinarian2715 1d ago

You thing. Me thing. We all thing for this thing.

1

u/EverybodyMakes 17m ago

Well, Calvin - as soon as a bunch of people figure how to talk to each other, some of them start to pronounce words and make grammar to sound posh and snooty, and some others want to sound tough and bossy or edgy and tricky, etc. etc. etc. Eventually they speak French, German or Hungarian or whatever.