catapult magazine

I have a query about language, and I really need help. I’m in the midst of writing a position paper in my Master’s program, and I’m really struggling with it. It’s a position paper on language, and I’m not sure what I think about language.

Is language an innate ability? Is it universal—is it by nature of our creation in the image of God that each person on earth has the ability to use language?

Can the similarities across languages (all languages are more similar than they are different) be due to some kind of innate knowledge of language and how it works, or is it socially constructed, or a combination of the two?

Is the ability to use language structural?

Does anyone know of any Christians who have taken on this topic? I’m having trouble locating good sources.

Thanks!

this is an interesting subject. i’m currently reading a book that talks a lot about language.. a few excerpts you might find interesting…

“the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik isolated two infants in the seventh century B.C. and commanded the servant in charge of them never to utter a word in their presence. According to Herodious, a notoriously unreliable chronicler, the children learned to speak—their fist word being the Phrygian word for bread. In the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II repeated the experiment, hoping to discover man’s true “natural language” using similar methods, but the children died before they ever spoke any words. Finally, in what was undoubtedly a hoax, the early-sixteenth-century King of Scotland, James IV, claimed that Scottish children isolated in the same manner wound up speaking ‘very good Hebrew.’
Cranks and ideologues, however, were not the only ones interested in the subject. Even so sane and skeptical a man as Montaigne considered the question carefully, and in his most important essay, the Apology for Raymond Sebond, he wrote: ‘I believe that a child who has been brought up in complete solitude, remote from all association (which would be a hard experiment to make) would have some sort of speech to express his ideas. And it is not credible that Nature has denied us this resource that she has given to many other animals… But it is yet to be known what language this child would speak; and what has been said about it by conjecture has not much appearance of truth.’
Beyond the cases of such experiments there were also the cases of accidental isolation—children lost in the woods, sailors marooned on islands, children brought up by wolves—as well as the cases of cruel and sadistic parents who locked up their children, chained them to beds, beat them in closets, tortured them for no other reason than the compulsions of their own madness. There was the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk (thought by some to be the model for Robinson Crusoe) who had lived for four years alone on an island off the coast of Chile and who, according to the ship captain who rescued him in 1708, ‘had so much forgotten his language for want of use, that we could scarcely understand him.’"

I laughed heartily at the notion that isolated Scotschildren learned how to speak excellent Hebrew naturally, straight from God, as it were. Very funny.

Even if children are placed “outside” of a community, I still think they have a sense of responding to someone or something, even if to their own selves. People will use whatever means they have to communicate their needs and desires. Language is a bit overrated when it comes to the miracle of communication. Developmentally disabled people, though their brains hinder language functions, are able to communicate without speaking. And I am often amazed at how much one single painting can communicate, just by sitting in a museum under lights.

Hi, I found your site through a "search" on the web after wondering about different languages and how they came to "be". Now I find the only satisfying answer is the Tower of Babel explanation, but I still want to know how the unique sounds and symbols came about from each culture. Thanks for all the replies to Bridget, as they gave me food for thought. From what I see so far, I like this forum.

I teach German and in class I study some passages on language and culture. We look at the Babel story. Through studying this story 6 times with students and reading The Gift of the Stranger by David Smith and Barbara Carvill (a book about foreign language pedagogy) my interpretation of that text has changed quite a bit. I think it is easy for us to see the divesity of language as a bad thing. But it seems like it is something God used to help us get back on track (realizing we can’t accomplish whatever we want and that we are dependant upon him to get to heaven). So it almost gives us an opportunity for other-worldly hospitality because our lack of understanding is amplified by the language barrier. This could be completely off topic. Sorry if it is. Also, if you read the the chapters preceding Babel, you’ll see evidence of more than one language before Babel Gen. 10. The style changes drastically, so you could question the chronology, but I don’t take it that literally when it says they spoke one language at the time of Babel.