How Did Men Learn to Talk?
Talking and the words used came into being through the desire of men to communicate with each other. Before words became known and used man talked to those about him by the use of signs, gestures and other movements of the body. Even to-day when men meet who cannot talk the same language they will be seen trying to come to an understanding by the use of signs and gestures and generally with fair results. The need of more signs and gestures to express a constantly increasing number of objects and thoughts led to the introduction of sounds or combination of sounds made with the vocal cords to accompany certain signs and gestures. In this way man eventually developed a very considerable faculty for expressing himself. Sign by sign, gesture by gesture and sound by sound language was slowly developed. A man would be trying to explain something to another by sign or gesture and to make it more clear would make a sound or combination of sounds to put more expression into his efforts. Finally the other man would understand what was meant and he would tell some one else, using the same signs, gestures and sounds. Later on it would develop that to express thus any certain thought, act or the name of a thing, all of the people in the community would make this same combination of sounds, signs and gestures to express the same thing. Finally the gestures and signs would be dropped and it was found that people understood perfectly what was meant when only the sound or combination of sounds was produced. That made a word. All the other words were made in the same way, one at a time, until we had enough words to express all the ordinary things and the combination of words became a language. The children learned the language by hearing their parents talk it, and that is how men learned to talk.