Is there any such thing as a primitive language?
by Charles Taylor, M.A., Ph.D., PGCE, LRAM, FIL, Cert. Theol.
Simple, complex, degenerate and primitive languages are figments of the imagination.
Languages like English, with only a few changes in the endings, are said to have
a simple grammar, but can be very complicated in the way use is made of small words
like ‘the’ and ‘of’.
‘George plays the piano’ sounds like a simple comment until you ask
the question ‘Which piano?’ My African students could never understand
why we don’t say ‘George plays a piano’, because they were taught
that the piano means a particular piano. The answer of course is not ‘This
piano’, or ‘That piano’, but ‘Any and every piano’.
This type of usage of ‘the’ is irregular because ‘the’ also
means ‘the only one’ or ‘a particular one’. For example,
if you say, ‘The dog bit me’, you don’t usually mean that just
any dog bit you or every dog bit you, but that a particular dog of which you are
now painfully aware bit you.
While English people usually do not see that this degree of flexibility for the
meaning of a tiny word ‘the’ is difficult, many people from other language
groups find it so.
Since all languages communicate equally well for those who naturally use them, no
language is degenerate in that sense. Any language can communicate any idea if you
take the trouble to work on it.
Since all modern races are descended from Noah and his sons, who had a complex level
of technology, for example shipbuilding, metalcraft, farming, etc., the so-called
primitive races are not primitive at all. They should rather be called ‘ultimative’—(primus
is Latin for ‘first’ and ultimus is Latin for ‘last’).
The so-called primitive races are at the end of a chain of dissolution
of the civilization and culture of their ancestor, Noah.
This is why the anthropologist cannot make up a consistent picture of the evolution
of culture from primitive to advanced. It simply never happened that way. As for
the languages of ‘ultimative societies’, they are often so complex in
grammar that people who speak English find them very difficult. This is true even
of many languages which have easy vocabularies compared with English.
A million people in south-west Uganda use the following ‘word’—tiwaakukiba
haire—to mean ‘wouldn’t you have given it to them?’
All parts in this word have specified meanings, for example ha = give,
ti = not, w = you, aaka = would, ire = have,
and ki = it. The English person trying to fit all these pieces together
regards it as incredibly complex.
Actually, the question of the complexity of a language is a purely relative one.
For any foreigner, a language may be complex when he uses his own familiar language
system as the point of comparison. But it is obvious from the ease with which the
national speakers use the language that the greater complexity simply isn’t
there.
However, if we take as our reference point the relatively ‘moo-ving’
communication of a cow, then men’s immense language abilities, and the overwhelming
complexities of the languages themselves, point to only one thing. Man was created
with language.
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