Assumption: there is only one person left in the world that can speak English.
 

Is a language considered a language if it cannot be communicated?

No. Intrinsic to language is meaning.

I speak a mixture of gibberish and english

I like cheese.

..brief pause...

It depends on what you mean by English.
Do you mean English, like from England, where Poppycocks means bullshit, or America, where there are seven different names to a torpedo roll stuffed with various meats and vegetables (ie Hogie, grinder, Sub, Zero, Hero, etc) or the West Indies version of english, which is usually pretty sexy, as well as Australian accents, which (I hope) isn't as bad as the Crocodile Hunter ("Aye, loo'a dat un, mate! Wotta Sheila!"). If you're talking about Ebonics and what I call the "Yo, Yo" language (Yo, yo. Don't be frontin, punk. I pop a cap in yo ass, yo."), than I don't know, bro.
Slang is everywhere, don't fight it...just join us....come on....it feels soooo good......
"We all float down here, Eddie, we all float down here."
----The 'real' Pennywise the Clown--from Stephen King's IT

looking back, I think I misunderstood the question.

What about dead languages, stuff like that? I don't know anything about them, so I'm kind of wondering if someone here does. I mean languages that only exist in their written form today and they basically have to be deciphered to be understood at all.

Yes. Some things have intrinsic values. The value is in the existence.

If you paint a beautiful painting, but you never let anyone else see it. Is it still art? Yes. It could be appreciated, and therefore it is art.

Lets say you have your own language that no one else can speak; or let's say it's a completely dead language. No one knows it at all. It exists only in written form and no one can decypher it. It is still a language, because it could be used for communication. It is the intrinsic abilities that make things valuable. It is the intrinsic abilities that make things real.

Re: Is a language considered a language if it cannot be communicated?
 

I love you guys. :)

After the decline of the classic civilization, for millenia the Language of the ancient Egyptians was mere columns of pictures until the age of Napoleon- was the language no longer a language during the hiatus when nobody could understand it?

Put me on the Yes side. :)

Yes.

hard question.

yes, nobody else can understand it, but you can, so it has meaning.

It's a bit like if you ever made up a 'language' as a kid, or a code, that only you knew, you could decipher it, nobody else could.

I'm on the "no" side. The definition of a language is "the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community". If english was only spoken by one person in this world then it would not be considered a language, as it would be worthless as a tool for communication. After all, I can make up a list of words that make absolute sense to me, but to nobody else. I would not be considered as the inventor of a new language.


However (and this is the catch) - if there were previous works of english in existance from a long dead race, in the form of books, texts, carvings etc, then it would be considered a language, as the communication requirement is fulfilled in this case. The people from the past would be communicating with the people of the present, albeit only one person being able to understand them.

I'll side with the yes camp. Whether it can be comunicated, to me is irrelevent. It is the rules and systems of the language that exist, even if it's just in someones head, that make it a language. Seaming as though you can never write down the rules completly free of any other language then it is not the communication ofhe language that is important toit's existance.






I got lost in tere somewhere

It also could be argued that naturally each of us develops a unique "language" over time of symbols, sounds, and associations within our own mind that help it function better - a language for "intrapersonal communication", as it were.

Very true X, anyone know of any good books on this subject btw?

Let me clarify something for you folks. By definition, a dead language is one which no community natively learns and speaks. A language can still be written and understood by a community as a second language (i.e. every medical student knows rudimentary Latin), but if it is not the first language of a community, it is considered dead.

So, because Ancient Egyptian has not been natively spoken for over 2000 years or so, it is a dead language. However, because it existed in a written form, it could have been communicated (remember the original question, as posed "if it cannot be communicated"), therefore, it has been a language since its inception.

Think I'm just playing semantics? Well, we are discussing communication, after all, so I think I'm allowed to do that :p

Re: Assumption: there is only one person left in the world that can speak English.
 

Yes. If the language can be used to describe itself, then it does not need to be communicated, it can exist through it's definition of itself. Our labels become irrelevant.

But by defining something (i.e. itself), it is communicating an idea.....

Only to itself.

Do mimes speak englitch?
Language comes in many forms.
My deaf friends speak with their hands, eyes, and various other body parts....I wonder if they speak englitch?
One thing about speaking 'merican english I find refreshing is the ability to bend words and meanings so that only some people know what the fog I mean.
Joo gno?

The original criterion was that the language had no capacity for communication. If a "language" cannot communicate, it is not a language.

If it can describe itself, it can be called a language, I think. Or at least it has the right to call itself a language, anyway.

We on the outside looking in may not call it a language because we cannot use it as such, or even see it as such, but that is insignificant. It just shows we can't see what is really going on.


Sorry if I've restated my above post; my degree was in Physics, not Metaphysics and this conversation is slightly above my head. ;)


edit: grammar

I should have been clearer. In essence, I am agreeing with you. Suppose a language describes itself. By describing something (i.e. itself), it has communicated an idea (i.e. the rules of the language, or the existence of the language), yes? The original question was "Is a language considered a language if it cannot be communicated?"

Because this language has communicated something, it is a language. Because this language has communicated something, it is not something that "cannot be communicated". Therefore, it does not fall into Bop's criteria for examination.

My original (mistaken) reading of the question was that the language cannot be communicated because there is no-one to communicate it.

In a hypothetical situation with no observer to interpret the language, then I do believe my argument holds water. But that isn't what Bop asked, as you pointed out very eloquently.

Memo to self: never argue semantics with people more intelligent than me.

Yes

Imagine Computer languages being written in egyptian hyroglpyics. That would be trippy

Po Putangete Mo Baklat Asoe

No one here can understand that. Its still a language.

heh... I usually take a philosophical slant on things, meaning that I get bogged down in minute details which bear no significance to anyone other then myself :hang:

The fact that somethinng cannot be communicated does not mean that it does not have the potential to be communicated. Yes, there is a difference.

Take a program from your computer and burn it to a CD. Take that CD out of the CD drive. Does it contain a program? Yes. There are a series of reflective and nonreflective bits written onto that disk. At present, those bits ar effectively useless. They cannot be run in the absence of a computer. But they still comprise a program. Why do they still comprise a program? Because you can put that CD back in the CD drive and read it.

Now, let us say that you know a language, but no one else does (and lets say that there are no other records of said language, too). Ok, the language is completely useless at the moment. Now, lets say that you teach someone else that language. Suddenly, that language can be useful again.

The potential gives it meaning.

Ok lets try this with a slightly different slant. Does a song still exist if there is no recording of it, now way to play it back and no-one who knows how to play it? It will exist only in someones head as a memory of that song, knowing everything about the words and music but now way to communicate it. Is that still a song that exists or one that did exist but not any more?

If someone still remembers it, yes.

Near impossible- the nature of the hieroglyphic language is such that a computer language could never be written due to its extremely flexible changing system of determinative characters. For instance, Alexander could be spelt ALEXANDR, ALKSANDR ALAKSANDER, ALKSNDR(male determinative), etc etc. The exactness programming languages demand would never work with a language that allows spelling of words however they please, not to mention no punctuation beyond a line to seperate ideas.

I see you! DONT : rolleyes : me young man! :P I know this is an extremely nitpicky thing, but I have been teaching myself to read them for the last couple years so I felt compelled to say something. :p

So does a song that hasn't been written yet still exist or even one that has been completly forgotten?

Songs that have not been written do not exist. Songs that have been completely forgotten, with no trace of existence left do not exist anymore.

The same with languages. If no record exists, then the language does not exist. You can't even argue whether it's a language or not because it simply doesn't exist. There is, however, a difference between no record and no known record.

That depends on your views of how linear, or non-linear, time is.