Before we begin looking at how this might be useful in our family research, let us take a quick look at some interesting characteristics about human language. In studying language over time, there are certain maxims that experts have determined about language as presented in An Introduction to Language, 5th Edition by Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman. Some of them are as follows: •
“Wherever humans exist, language exists.”
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“There are no primitive languages – all languages are equally complex and equally capable of expressing any idea in the universe.”
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“All languages change through time.”
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“The relationships between sounds and their meanings are arbitrary.”
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“All human languages utilize a Sinite set of sounds that combine to form meaningful words, which are combined to form an inSinite amount of sentences.”
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Every language in the world includes “universals” such as “male” or “female,” “animate” or “human.”
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“Every language has a way of referring to past time, negating, forming questions, issuing commands, and so on.”
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Any child from anywhere can learn any language in which he/she is exposed.
Written Clues As with any genealogical tool or research methodology, this is not going to work every time, but it is worth looking at if you are unable to climb a “brick wall.” As mentioned above, differences in language can be recorded. Nowadays the human voice can be recorded and humans can be videotaped while speaking. Unfortunately, our ancestors did not have this type of technology. Indeed, their recordings of the human language are through the written word. However, regional dialects can still be detected through word usage, word meaning, sentence structure, and through phonetic spelling. If you are lucky enough to have old letters that your ancestors wrote, old photographs with writing on the front or back, postcards your ancestors wrote on, recipes they wrote, bibles they wrote in, autograph
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