Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 10:49 pm
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw
I’ve been reading some posts which question our ability to communicate raising the question if genuine communication is possible or if Shaw was right and the belief in genuine communication is an illusion.
It is an ancient question to which the Bible contributes:
Genesis 11
1Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let usgo down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the LORDconfused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Is this just biblical nonsense or does it contribute to the question of why we cannot communicate? If it was once possible can we learn how to communicate what is genuinely human?
Is a universal language possible that would enable human communication? If it is, what do you think it would require that we lack now?
per your Bible reference - refer to Jubilees - prior to Tower of Babel (and Original Sin with Adam/Eve) - animals talked with man in Eden.
per your inguary, language in the fundemental is visual, and so the universal language is what babies have via the visual objects they know without words to label them.
after a few years folks learn the phontic similars - and so the many languages.
assuming accurate translations between the 40,000 languages - the only obsticle for apt/clear speaking is via weak minds/hypocrisy.
so yes a universal language is possible - if you are not of a weak mind.
