Talk:2567: Language Development

Has a small, child-size, stick figure been used before? I did not find a category on explainxkcd. This might be an interesting trivia to add. --198.41.242.129 18:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

There have definitely been kids on xkcd before. For example: 1145: Sky Color (but I'm sure there are others). --NeatNit (talk) 20:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Other examples are 674: Natural Parenting, 441: Babies and 1650: Baby Kvarts314 (talk)

Actually words linguists use when they try to talk in very old languages sometimes sound like the things my little son might say between his first perfectly pronounced single words.--Gunterkoenigsmann (talk) 18:53, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Someone needs to say “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” 172.70.206.151 18:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Looking at Wiktionary, I believe the child is saying "Milk Please" See also Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂melǵ- Bpendragon (talk) 18:57, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Hopefully he won't say the proto-Indo-European word for "bear". 162.158.74.26 19:09, 12 January 2022 (UTC)Pat

You mean *hrktos? 20:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Oops. I think a brown one ate my IP address.162.158.187.92 20:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The pace of early stage development isn't necessarily an indicator for continued development pacing. I didn't start Proto-Indo-European until I was almost 2, but had completed full vowel shift before second grade. 108.162.237.73 21:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I corroborate this. I hadn't made many full sentences in Proto-Indo-European until around 4, but by 3rd grade I had fully changed to modern english. --172.70.126.215 23:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Though the explanation eventually touches on this (perhaps multiple editors got in there and shuffled this nearer the end) I believe it should really have started with something about how Language Development (in a child) is being confused/conflated wifh Language Development (in human (pre)history). It would get straight to the point, I believe. It could then continue to go the further mile in getting into the deconstruction of it all. I'm leaving it unedited by myself, for now, because it deserves a lot more text-shuffling and refining than I can promise to do myself right now, but putting this idea out there to pique the interest of other possible editors. 172.70.85.79 21:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I have done this now. Originally I and someone else both submitted a really long description at the same time and my "merge" in my limited time was just to put my text after his. Now that I have more time, I've gone through and tried to weave the two in a more logical way, and have it starting with the basic explanation of the joke. I'm new to contributing at this level so if someone wants to check it over to make sure it looks good, feel free. Levininja (talk) 00:34, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

"Old English developed out of Proto-Germanic. Modern English developed out of Old English with many additions from French..."

According to John McWhorter, English is the product of Germanic tongues (spoken by Angles or Saxons?) creolized with the local Celtic languages such as the ancestors of Welsh and Cornish. That involved a blending of grammar and some vocabulary. Later came pidginizing with Norse speech of the Vikings, where details like case inflections were blurred or lost. Romance borrowings came yet a bit later, with 1066 and all that Norman Conquest business.

McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English is perhaps worth a read; hope I haven't mutilated the gist of it too much. 172.70.110.245 01:01, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I second a mention/explanation of the whole "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" idea mentioned above. In biological evolution that turned out to be an error, and it's obviously an error here, too. Mschmidt62 (talk) 02:34, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

If the baby is speaking Proto-Indo-European (with some emerging Germanic) at age 1, and Elizabethan English by age 2, is anyone able to work out by what age they would be speaking our present form of English? --enchantedsleeper (talk) 10:23, 13 January 2022 (UTC)