Language can be roughly categorised into 2 different types of form: the Written and Spoken form. The most common languages today have both written and spoken forms, for instance, English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Tamil etc. There are also some languages which are more commonly understood by their spoken/written form: like the Hokkien dialect which is mostly spoken and also Classical Chinese which is mostly read in its written form. The main purpose of a language is to enable communication between different parties, which both written and spoken forms are able to achieve.
It is most commonly agreed upon that spoken languages have been around more than written forms. However, currently, there is no universal agreement amongst some groups of people as to how languages, or more specifically speech, came about to be. This is also tightly related to the theories surrounding the origin of the world, Creationism and Evolutionism.
Speech is something I think many of us take for granted in our daily lives, because it is something so common that it just comes naturally. However, if we look back closely in the first few chapters of Genesis, we find that our God is a speaking God, how He created the world merely by His words and commands. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but what we ought to be surprised about is that Adam, the first human created by God, is capable of speaking, right from the start.
If evolution was true, it would also mean that speech also evolved together with humans, and should logically appear after humans have been formed for a long time. One of the most commonly cited examples of evolution is that homo sapiens evolved from apes. However, today, when we look at apes, as with all animals and organisms, while they are all capable of communicating, there are no strong links observed between their forms of communication and the nature of language as we know it today.
Currently, there are people who believe there is still no conclusive evidence to support that all the languages as we know of today, are even related to one another. In fact, currently, they generally agree that languages of the world can be categorised into various language families. For example, Chinese is under the language family of Sino-Tibetan, which also consists of languages like Burmese. English is under the Indo-European language family, which also consists of languages like Hindi. Tamil is under the Dravidian language family, which consists of other languages like Malayalam and Telugu.
If evolution indeed happened, and with languages being an integral part of human culture, it will most likely mean that they will follow a similar trajectory, and that will mean that the language as we know it today is likely to have evolved from how animals communicated in the past. However, currently, there is still no strong conclusive evidence on this. In fact, it is more commonly agreed by some that languages are separated into different families precisely because of the fact that they are not similar to each other. But, that also seems to have contradicted the fact that creation mentions that all humans came from one human, and how did that eventually lead to the situation now where we are unable to find a common origin language today?
In Gen 11:1, it was stated that the “whole earth had one language and one speech”. It was a period where everyone on earth could understand each other. In the Bible, it did not state who this group of people were, nor when this incident happened. But what was mentioned was that they wanted to build a tower which could reach the heavens, and to make a name for themselves. But then God confused their language, so that they may not understand each other. They were then scattered abroad over the face of all the earth. This is the incident which can explain why there are different languages with seemingly no relation to each other. Because God deliberately made it so, from this event that occurred at Babel. Thus, it can be observed that the origin of “different” languages can be clearly explained from Genesis 11.
While researching on this topic, I came across an interesting article with a unique take on the origin of language. While the article is quite dated, it argues that the presence of language supports Creation because to learn how to speak, there must be someone who can already speak and can teach the person to speak. The author claims that no one can speak a language unless they are taught and that there is no evidence to support that speech as we know it today evolves from an animal level base. The article claims that there exist cases where “wild” children who were found were unable to talk verbally, as there was no form of social interaction. While that can be attributed to isolated cases, and cannot be extrapolated to be applied generally for all, it does show the importance of social interaction in the process of learning speech. The article goes further to state that the real essence of human speech lies in the structure of the human brain and not just on the organs that produces voice, as even people who are unable to speak due to various physical impairments in sight, hearing and voice, also learned to speak with their fingers and communicate abstract ideas. The article in fact then states that in the case of Adam, his “speech teacher” is God, as the first recorded instance of speaking is by God, during the process of creation. And the first “conversation” was when God commanded Adam (in Gen 2:17) to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A few verses later, it was then recorded that Adam then gave names to the various living creatures, and then by himself spoke in Gen 2:23. From this, we can know that soon after being created, Adam is not only capable of understanding speech, but also producing speech. Thus, to the author of the article, they feel that this acts as evidence for creationism. This idea may bring about some discussions about its authenticity, but to us today, we should take note and not let it divide us.
The purpose of this article here is not so much to dive deep into the topic of apologetics, but more so to share with all something interesting which I came across, when I was reading about something seemingly not relevant to the Bible. From this, I feel that the Word of God is definitely something which is still relevant today, and can withstand the test of time.