How far off topic can you drive my thread.

**Sandform** · 05-02-2008 10:12 PM

How far off topic can you drive this thread? This is a post someone made a long time ago. I want to see how far off topic you can go without "trying" to go off topic. I'll be back in a few weeks to see.

*Note: I don't know if any of those Harvard genius guys have made any reasonable attempts at this, and if so I haven't read them yet.

Come on, now, I want to hear your theories on this. It may not seem like much, but turning simple, monosyllabic grunts into words is a big deal.

My theory is that people began to make associations with different types of grunting and howling and such. For example: Me and Caveman Jack here are always collecting wood. It's an everyday thing that happens often. But it gets tiring pointing to a piece of wood everytime you want to do that activity. So me and jack make a special grunt for it, "blargh" (i dunno...). So now, everytime me and jack want to collect wood, we say "blargh". Soon it's becoming a hit with the rest of our tribe. But not everyone collects wood. Another guy, joe, likes the idea and calls fishing "gahk". The same thing happens. Then as time progresses we start refining our speech, because obviously we realized that we sound like a bunch of retards. Our children are taught the words too, which further decomposes the words (and then recomposes I suppose). "Blargh" soon becomes "blark" and then "bark".

I suppose "gahk" becomes "gack" and then "gock" or maybe "dock" which is part of fishing.

The basic idea follows into ideas, such a "get" and "take".

Abstract things like "Germany" and "Russia" or names of countries might have come from words meaning "fertile" or "rocky" or "icey".

Written word has a lot to do with it to, but not many people wrote frequently; maybe the smartest in the group or the leader.

Well thank you for your time. Try and post your ideas.