Back to Hieroglyphics?

No, our language(s) will not evolve into just universal symbols. We discuss far too many different topics. Universal symbols supplement written language and ease cross-cultural communication, as it has for millennia, but no one single language can codify all that is known and documented.

Pictures leave room for interpretation, words are more precise....any tool that can enhance communication is good, but cartoon figures are really 'just for laugh's'...mkay?

I agree with Redfred. There is so much specialized language in the many fields of knowledge being pursued in this day, and these terms also continue to grow in number. Spoken language also continues to evolve and produce new concepts and terms applying to a changing social reality... I don't believe the growth of language could be readily replaced by pictorial symbols. A phonetic alphabet has continuing merit in being able to represent sounds that are spoken. I think more likely, that spelling will continue the present trend of becoming simpler and more universal in phonetic interpretation. This will be really annoying for us oldsters.

How do the Japanese and Chinese,and Koreans express specialized or scientific thought?

Do they use English or Latin?How do they mentally translate their thoughts into written text?

I know English is taught in most all schools in Japan,starting in the primary grades.

There are may words and phrases in every language that do not translate well into other languages.

I know that is why Latin is the choice for scientific expressions, because it is a
"dead" language, that is, it does not evolve and change over time.

Other languages are live,and constantly mutating over time.

Hardly anyone today could understand true "Old English."

Our high school English Teacher played a record of a person speaking in Old English(where she got it I do not know) and it was barely understandable,only a few words were recognized.

Our present day languages will also evolve,and in 300 years,hardly anyone will understand the way we speak today.

It may be a mix of symbols and a modified form of text.

If you think the Asian writing is easy to understand, kudos to you... I have tried to learn a little but I found it very difficult.

It is true that English is the language of conquerors in the present day. History might have been different, we would be speaking something else and writing pictograms or hieroglyphics.

r u n2 txt msgs? mix of symbols and modified text indeed! Your foresight is astonishing, oh wait... hindsight will have to do.

I'm with you, I could learn to recognize a STOP sign or the Men's room, but other than that I am completely illiterate. It's not a good feeling.

I'm wondering how dictionaries or encyclopedias work with a pictorial language. Without obvious "alphabetical" order, how can you find anything?

Good point about alphabetical order!

If you're familiar with Feng Shui and/or the I Ching/Book of Changes, you can imagine things being organized by the elements that make up the complex concepts We would all be wise sages from deeply pondering the fundamental essence of things, by the time we learned how to look up a word in the dictionary! (I am only speculating, someone who actually speaks and writes the language would have to enlighten us of the facts).

We couldn't even get sign language for the deaf to be the same in the UK and the US, so, the chances of "evolving a universal symbolic language" seem rather remote.

I don't know how different/similar the two sign languages are; whether people who know both have opinions about what is good or bad about each, or, whether there are some commonalities between either and other non-English versions.

It seems to me that we missed an opportunity to develop a common sign language. I know that different languages use different grammar, but, again an opportunity to pick and choose the best aspects of all.

If that could be done, then it would be possible to develop a written version of that, and achieve your goal.

We couldn't even get sign language for the deaf to be the same in the UK and the US, so, the chances of "evolving a universal symbolic language" seem rather remote

Interestingly, the geographical maps for spoken and sign language are independent. Countries that share a common spoken language may have different sign languages. Likewise, countries that share a common sign language may have different spoken languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language#Relationships_with_spoken_languages

This map appears to indicate a single sign language for the US and Canada. I Know from personal experience that there are numerous spoken dialects just within the US, some of which I can barely understand. I have a friend who is very fluent in sign language, and she assures me that she has had to learn several different dialects in sign language within the US.

I am fluent in one dialect of English, and fairly fluent in one dialect of Spanish. I've been speaking that dialect of Spanish for over 50 years, yet continue to frequently find connotations that I was unaware of, sometimes leading to unintended misinterpretations.

I can't imagine any single language, spoken, written, or other, that would express all possible ideas without error.

Thank you.

That's fascinating and bizarre: for example (assuming my colour perception is correct) it looks as though the Portuguese use Swedish sign language, but, the Brazilians, who speak Portuguese, use French sign language.

It looks as though you could get a long way towards a universal version if you started with the French version, and incorporated the best points of all those derived from the French.

The classification of Sign Language families. Sources are cited on the talk page. en:French Sign Language family en:American Sign Language (ASL) cluster, derived from FSL en:Russian Sign Language cluster, derived from FSL en:Czech Sign Language cluster, derived from FSL en:Danish Sign Language family, probably related to either FSL or SSL en:Swedish Sign Language family, probably related to DSL en:German Sign Language family en:Vietnamese sign languages, also some Thai and Lao SLs en:Arab sign-language family en:Indo-Pakistani Sign Language en:Chinese Sign Language (unrelated to Taiwanese Sign Language) en:Japanese Sign Language family (including Taiwanese Sign Language) en:BANZSL family (British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language) en:South African Sign Language, derived from BANZSL Isolated languages No data Sources are available at the talk page

See here for missing colours

Then, of course, you'd need to persuade everyone else to switch.

In theory, (mixed-communication-media) may continue to borrow more and more single words, and simple expressions, from more and more (sources). to eventually merge into a sort of (global-pidgeon-ese ?), as will (symbols/heiroglyphics/icons, etc.), but even at an accelerated electronic pace, it will still be quite while before that transpires... (i.e.: ''eventually'' is still a longggggg time from ''now''...)

Our language could eventually evolve into some form of telepathy.

The thing about the distant future is it is very hard to predict because major advances can radically change absolutely every aspect of our future lives.

Take predictions of our future before computers were invented, who's to say some similar major advancement in the future won't change everything again.

Uncontrolled telepathy without the ability to shield one's own thought or others thoughts will lead to madness, murder, suicide or a combination of all three.

You'd have to put on a tinfoil hat to go offline.

Like this?

I wear one all the time.It keeps out some of the voices.....and I get better reception on my molars.

I wonder if I incorporate a fractal antenna into my tin foil hat if I could get more channels?

Perhaps cut out that dreadful interference from Centauri prime?

Two words for more channels: satellite dish.

Just be careful not to topple into the computer screen or hit the doorframes when pacing up and down.

Streaming is the way to go.

More channels,less ads,less cost.

Got fire stick?

Have you never heard of twitter and facebook? People already tell everyone everything including their innermost thoughts, whether it is appropriate or not.

Is telepathy such a big step? Why do you think telepathy could not be controlled in the future to a point to point contact with a filter function?

Since telepathy does not exist in anything but fiction I return your rebuttal in kind by asking this. Why do you think telepathy can be controlled to filter in and out the voices of other's minds, particularly for the first individual to develop telepathy?

As for your first question, telepathy is missing the biggest step of all: inception.

This is all about far future concepts (potentially hundreds if not thousands of years in the future). Ancient humans could imagine the concept of an artificial person one day created by them, how different would the actuality be compared to our current developments in AI for a society in the past that had no understanding of electricity, electronics and computers.

The imagination is there but what actually results is likely to be radically different than what we can imagine and involve technological leaps and dramatic social changes over such a period of time that what would seem the norm in the distant future would seem far fetched or impossible to our understanding now.

As for inception we have already past that point technologically. There are plenty of examples of EEG, biological/machine interface experiments and basic rudimentary thought controlling experiments and devices right now. Give it some time and who knows what the end result will bring from developing and building on these primitive building blocks.

Since telepathy is defined as the " ...purported vicarious transmission of information from one person to another without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction." The use of an EEG or another machine to communicate means that a known sensory channel has been used. Telepathy has yet to be demonstrated.

That definition or argument really doesn't prove anything. Telepathy is the current basic concept, who is to say that technological or scientific principle development won't alter its meaning in time?

Do you have a better definition of interpersonal mind-to-mind communication using technology and/or physics yet to be perfected?

Interestingly I saw a report today saying that the Mclaren Formula 1 racing team are investigating the possibility of mind control for their cars. The research is being done jointly with Smith Kline Glaxo.

A McLaren Formula 1 car already has complete mind control of the driver and pit crew. What more do they want?

What they always want, faster & more efficient.

Merge ESPERANTO with EMOJI's maybe?

"don't look at me in that tone of voice"

A voice to pictograph app might be amusing.

It was the same ,, just different symbology...

Remember in the old days most people were illiterate, indeed there were no books...

..."Hieroglyphs were called, by the Egyptians, “the words of God” and were used mainly by the priests."...

https://discoveringegypt.com/egyptian-hieroglyphic-writing/egyptian-hieroglyphic-alphabet/

No one has ever heard ancient Egyptian spoken,so how do they know the vowels,etc.?

Linguistics amazes me.How do they come up with these things?

..."The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, thereby opening a window into ancient Egyptian history."...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion

I know many people that have been using single finger hieroglyphic languages for a long time.

I notice you did not choose hieroglyphs to convey these ideas.

I don't believe how language is written will cause any evolution towards a common universal language. The alphabet we know in the US is almost universal as it is. What is written in any other form can be rewritten using our set of characters without changing the underlying language (I assume the modifiers used in French and German are included). Pictorial symbols like emojis are actually very limited in how much meaning they can convey.

Any evolution is likely coming from the sharing of words across languages and the shortcut of writing them in their native form. I have seen Japanese engineering drawings use English words interspersed in the Japanese characters. They often use our numeric characters as well, maybe it's easier. I've overheard non-English speaking Europeans use English words (I think it's English, maybe English is using their words). All this is still a far cry from any universal language.

A side note: in Science Fiction Author Greg Bear's Eon book series future humans have developed pictographic communication, but it requires technological augmentation to project and see. Since part of the story line includes an all out nuclear war I'm hoping it's not prophetic.

There are over 7000 languages on Earth,and hundreds are in danger of extinction,being replaced by other languages.There are Click Languages,and even Whistling Languages.

A friend of mind is a policeman,and he pulled over a driver that only spoke click language.It was interesting to say the least.

He had his son with him,and he translated to the officer.

He though it was a joke,and called his supervisor,who called his supervisor,and finally got verification that it was,indeed a real language.

Languages evolve and change constantly,but I believe they eventually will merge into a more or less universal earth language.

Maybe not in our lifetime ,but I think it will happen eventually.

I'm not so sure. There is a certain kind of security in a language. During wartime, it has been shown that an uncommon language has actually helped to provide security, i.e Navajo code talkers. This is an example of largely unknown, unwritten language that had a English based translation created for it. Lately there has been a major worldwide resurgence of native and aboriginal languages and dialects and it appears that the trend is moving toward more language diversity, not less.

By a quirk of history, it would seem to me that "English" will become the near-future universal language.

The reason for this is that computer logic and the core languages and structures were developed within the English speaking world and thus currently all other cultures by necessity are being drawn into our logic structure to be able to develop source code that functions.

Maybe we will evolve to understand source code in Hex and only need a dictionary of 16 characters. That would then be universal?

Among other items pointing in the same direction, International Air Traffic Control has been mandated to be in English for quite a few years.

As I look at operating manuals commonly published in multiple languages, I've noticed that the English version nearly always occupies less space than the versions in most other languages.

But even within the English language, the context where one uses the same word will produce a different meaning. A vector in air traffic control will not have the same meaning when a vector is used in epidemiology. Universal symbology will just not be flexible enough for all fields of knowledge.

Meet Vector Prime.

pronunciation is also as important as context.

For instance,down south,the word Naked;pronounced with a long "A" means "Ain't go no clothes on,"

However,when pronounced "NECKED",it means they ain't got no clothes on and they up to somethin'"