[whattheheckman]

How do you know that languages evolved? Were you there? Why don't you trust the account given to us by God, Who tells that He was there?-because there is no proof God was there, and if you can't even prove he exists, then how do you prove he was there?(selective reasoning on the part of the questioner)

How could language have evolved from random babbling? If a tornado going through a junkyard couldn't produce a Boeing 747, how could random babbling result in something so complicated as the Spanish verb paradigm?-no specific language can ever come of it if it's specified before the language begins developing, much like if you were to specify that a tornado was going to produce a Boeing 747 from rubble, it wouldnt be likely, but it would be likely to produce a pile of SOMETHING (example, if you were to go to a completely undeveloped area, with no language, which by the way doesnt exist today, but if it did, and you went there, and said "english is going to develop from these people within 100 years," it's HIGHLY likely that you'd be wrong, but they WOULD develop some words, like water, rock, earth, rain, etc., words enough to get by, and then over time they would develop a complex language by mutually understanding what a word means before moving on to create another)

How could random mutations in language introduce information, which is what language is all about? Whenever I see a typo in a document, it doesn't add information, but takes it away.-mutations in a language are made intentionally, or circumstantially, not randomly, such as slang evolving in english today (ex., the word "dude" is generally meant as a person, usually male, or in some instances to call to a person or to get their attention, this was not around in england while our ancestors were there, without evolution of language, how did this word come to exist?)

If the language spoken by English settlers in what is today Brooklyn evolved into Brooklynese, why are there still other dialects of English? Shouldn't the entire English-speaking world now sound like Vinny Barbarino?-wow that's a stupid question. you intend to insinuate that just because a single area develops a different language, which is unlikely since america is a monolingual country and everyone can usually understand each other, so there is no need for a new language, everyone else will immediately get an accent? no, that would not happen. to those who spoke brooklynese, anyone who learned it would have an english accent, and to anyone who spoke english, anyone who spoke brooklynese and learned english would have a brooklynese accent, but no one would immediately develop an accent in their native language, and to insinuate such is an extremely unintelligent analysis of language in general.

Which evolved first, the ability to speak French or the ability to understand spoken French?-as stated before, it was probably a mutual understanding of a single word and a mutual ability to speak it before another word came along, therefore they would have evolved around the same time for each word, depending on who was learning the word.

If languages evolved, why don't we see one language kind suddenly becoming another language kind? Why don't Portuguese speakers suddenly start speaking Farsi? For that matter, why don't we hear people speaking a transitional form?-because that would make no sense, linguistic evolution and genetic evolution are not the same thing, and even in genetic evolution one species does not wake up one morning as another. over time though, languages will change in the way you stated, example being slang in english (some time ago, "the cats meow" was popular slang, and is now basically unheard of unless actually talking about a cat meowing, much like saying "sweet" back then actually meant sweet, like in sweet tea, and now means something similar to "awesome," or "amazing.")

How could a language evolve in stages from less complicated to more complicated? Of what use is half of a future tense?-when a word is needed to communicate better, it is invented, most likely by many people, and whatever becomes most popular a name for that object or place in time or part of speech, (such as "or," "and," "is,") is usually applied to the language permanently. and the use of a half future tense, lets say "shall be" means in the future, and "will be" means in the near future (within a week.) if a person were to say "I shall be dead soon," the word "soon" implies the near future, but does not specify a week, a month, a year, etc., but if he were to say "I will be dead soon," it's safe to say he will be dead within a week, based on the meaning of "will be" over "shall be" (by the way, I know the two are synonyms and have nearly the same meaning, this was hypothetical)

The Nazis, the Communists, and American racists have all tried to force people to give up their "less evolved" languages in favor of "more evolved" German, Russian, and English. Doesn't that prove that linguistic evolutionism is at the root of Nazism, Communism, and racism?-no, it only proves that most humans are egotistical, and would like to think that their language is better than another, thus forcing it on another person to "help them" (AHEM, SOUND FAMILIAR?!)

How do you experimentally verify the supposed evolution of French from Latin? What would you use as the control? If you can't, is linguistic evolutionism scientific at all?-there is no control, if there was, this would be proven fact because we would have been there to see it. linguistic evolutionism is a theory, one that is backed by the fact that english, spanish, and french have latin root words, and japanese, who had little or no contact with other countries due to the fact that it is an island, has no latin root words. if linguistic evolutionism were wrong, it is likely that japanese would have latin root words, or there wouldnt be any root words connecting any language, putting up a full language barrier between all peoples. (if god made languages, why do some of them have words that are similar? was god not creative enough to come up with words for everything in many languages, so he had to use words with the same meaning in so many of them? why arent there root words in other languages like japanese if there are in english, spanish, and french?)

The "evidence" for linguistic evolutionism consists of a bunch of supposedly old documents that are dated either by reference to one another or by the dates that those documents themselves purport. Isn't that circular logic?-yes, in many ways it is, but there are other ways to link those documents by date. and isnt it selective reasoning to read the bible with the assumption it is true, rather than the assumption that it is a possibility?

If languages improve through evolution, why don't teenagers automatically speak better English than their parents?-they do. current english includes slang, and includes words such as "codon" and "chromosome" and "nucleotide" that they were required to learn for various subjects in school, while their parents most likely can't tell you the meaning of "codon" or "chromosome" or "nucleotide," despite that they are english words. the fact that words are taught to students in school rather than adults causes teenagers to understand english better in most situations than their parents, because any new words aren't taught directly to the parents, while the students are required to learn them. and if god made language perfect, why isn't the declaration of independence worded the way it would be worded today? doesn't the fact that it isn't prove a change in linguistics since the time it was written?




your evolution questions to ask your biology teacher were so much more difficult
maybe you're losing your touch?