The Country of Syllables
There was an old country called by the fancy name Syllables and within it humans had built eleven towns. These also had strange names which were; loving, mildly loving, opposing, mildly opposing, controlling, description, explanation, quizzical, music and muse, expressive and remembering. Every year the inhabitants of these competed in a bicycle race such as the Giro of Italy. Each town chose its best boy and girl cyclists and they bicycled against one another in races which finished each year in every town of the country. A phoneme had been chosen (in place of the Giro’s numbers) for each of the participants. But the total number of participants could not be superior to 220 since that was the limit of phonemes available and the roads between the towns were often quite narrow as well as the narrow main streets of each town.
The cyclists of one town could be called, for example: do, re, mi, fa, so, la and ti, as in our music lessons but this is simply an example and no town had such a particular association of names among its cyclists. In fact, what the young cyclists must take as their Giro names were their own individual family names, Each family in the town had its own family name – some of them very ancient, others newer. But in very early times it happened that the phonemes available were exhausted and no more family names could be created and so the country called Syllables and its towns became aristocracies, whereby there were only 220 noble families in total. It was, therefore, only the oldest families which could send their youth to race in the Giro. However, there were new families which combined two phonemes together (normally four letters or five i.e words) and, if needed, those families could join bicyclists in the Giro. As years passed by there were more and more ‘words’ along with phonemes in the Giro.
The Giro of languages in the country has one particular characteristic: when the race entered one of the eleven towns it was always the young people of that particular town who were victorious at the finish line. Therefore, each town could have an emotion-filled celebration on the evening after the cyclists arrived because its own team had been victorious. Thus, for example, at the one called ‘Mildly Loving’ it was the cyclists called by the names of that town’s families who had won the race and the families from other towns had fallen behind in the timing. This singularity preserved good feelings among all the cyclists and among the older generations as well, in each town. And both the children of the oldest families with a single phoneme for a name could be joined in the festivities with those from the same town whose names were made of two phonemes or more.
The Giro explained above is an acceptable metaphor for the origin of homo sapiens language. It parallels metaphorically the way our human language began in Africa and after in other places where humanity migrated – to Arabia or Europe, to central Asia, to Australia, and across the Bering Straits into the Americas. Earliest men and women created the eleven towns mentioned above out of their imagination as they encountered life. The encountering experience is repeated in the names of the eleven towns in the Giro of Italy. And the list of these place names seems to be exhaustive - early man and woman, given the typical attributes of homo sapiens, could only think of these phonemes – names which represented their human experiences, namely loving, mildly loving, opposing, mildly opposing, controlling, describing, explaining, music and muse, quizzical, expressing and remembering. To each of these experiences their brains and mouths neurologically created a phoneme as an expression of the subject-object experience, and it became a commonly understood term for them and the community. Each of these sounds, therefore, was created to represent a particular experience of homo sapiens. And the expansion of this is shown in the Giro. Each syllable became a family in its particular town as the ancestral family of that town. It was passed down to each family’s children as that family name and when the cyclists of that family raced in the annual Giro, they carried that name of a phoneme such as the ‘do’ or ‘re’ above. And when the Giro passed through their town, all the ‘dos’ were first in the Giro race. The same would occur for the ’res’ when they raced to their town, and the ‘re’ family would celebrate victory. And ‘re’ parents would hand on to their children and children’s children the aptitude to be ‘re’ - named cyclists. As history of homo sapiens ‘evolved’ in historical time and place, the eleven towns had their own special representations in each new country they inhabited. They created the same eleven groups of families together because their experiences were already codified in eleven models. There was place in each model moreover for new families who could create new phonemes for a name. In some of the new towns some families took new names and, added to the earlier names, they became characteristic of that town alone and not of any other town. Moreover, these new family names would be passed on to their children. The towns could learn in what manner other towns had taken on phoneme names and competition could take place on the Giro by which everyone could learn how to associate the names with the various naming experiences humanity had undergone. Common terminology thus could become an aspect of human history.
If someone went to a town not his or hers they would have the special experience of that town and perhaps stay with families whose names represented phonemes related to the experiences of that town, and knowledge
of their major experiences and their names could be integrated in his or her personality, showing that there are certain common experiences which affect both host and visitor. And if someone was able to visit all the towns in every given country at any given period in time, he or she would be able to become a good linguist.
So, in people’s minds eventually all the available syllables or phonemes of consonant-vowel or vowel-consonant nature, i.e. two characters making the syllable, came to be known by homo sapiens, and all of this was inherited by their children through DNA.
But the number of possible syllables able to be created by the mouth and nerves of, and the air inhaled by, human beings was limited. Only a certain number of syllables (consonant and vowels) could be made in a separate way through the neuronic system of the brain and body, and the progress toward a infinite number of phonemes stopped. It was impossible to create any new understandable phonemes. Any new families in human towns had, metaphorically, to combine at least two of the phonemes in order the be accepted (having a new name) in the community. In this way, humanity began to enter the stage of complex word-making. The new families of word-making nature (two or more syllables in their names) were attached mainly to the town where the first syllable of the word (they were named by) had given names to one of that town’s families. After this phenomenon, the first or the first and second syllable of their name could be symbolic of a certain town where these syllables had been given as names to the principal families. But since each town
could have an infinite number of families (of course, separated from each other by the first-placed phonemes),’language families’ could arise. That is, languages could arise which use the earliest town aristocratic family names and keeping all the later-arriving family’s names (two or more syllables). But there was never any crossing over – if a family moved to another town, it would have to take upon itself a new name related to the indigenous names at its new residence.
We have found that, before the possibility of creating new phonemes was enabled, there were at least eleven towns created (each with its experiences and its model for phonemes) and these proved, as families were created within them (those with their own distinct phonemes), that each phoneme was related to a particular town and no other. The basis of human language is in these eleven towns and the families (i.e. phoneme or words) originating in each one. All those in ‘Mildly Loving’ town are phonemes related to ‘mildly-loving’ and they are related to no other town; all persons in the town called ‘Controlling’ are related to controlling and to no other town; all those in ‘Remembering’ are related to remembering and to no other.
If a new nation, social entity or ethnicity is created, it would have the same eleven towns in its languages and everyone who lives in the town called ‘Mildly Loving’ would be of the same families as in any other town in another nation or entity in its town called ‘Mildly Loving’.
After analyzing four world language groupings (based on an appreciation of how homo sapiens migrated in its history) we have compared their terminology (words relative to each language’s terms for life, family, environment, soul, religion, etc.). We have considered that each of the ‘towns’ in our metaphorical ‘Giro’ has a certain number of the 220 possible phonemes related to its town’s name e.g. loving, mildly loving, opposing, mildly opposing, controlling, music / muse etc. Some towns could have only a few Giro competitors because it has only a few phonemes associated with it. Other towns had many family names perhaps because the experiences which created that town’s name e.g. ‘Mildly Loving’ had many phonemes (and words) associated to ‘mildly loving’ as an experience. But when the Giro race entered the town with only a few phonemes associated with it, only a few families received them in their ‘homecoming’. However, they would celebrate their victory as much as the towns which had many more phoneme-related families. This is because these young people who cycled from and to their towns were just as proud of their family as any other cyclist would be about his or her family. And, usually, they would not want to move to any other place, since they would inherit their parents’ houses and land in their town of origin.
It is the tradition of the eleven towns, each representing a certain human experience, that provided the origin of human language, and human language in a unity within eleven branches. All the oldest families of phonemes are included in the group, as well as newer phonemes (or words) based upon their doubling.
We have proven in our three volumes of Only One Human Language that all the world’s languages are based upon this Giro scenario of phoneme families in eleven towns. Neither the number of towns nor number of family names can (essentially at least) be modified. This implies that there has been, and will be, ‘only one human language’.
The human brain works in an orderly fashion as genetics tells us. Languages have not, in haphazard fashion, accumulated over the ages. Language began with both men and women having experiences of their environment, and it was a matter of the gradually evolving of phonemes to represent these – each phoneme based upon experience of a particular kind - and all eleven of these, and their phonemes, were passed on as inheritance through DNA. The neuronic content of the phoneme- and word- producing parts of the brain were passed on to their children who could enunciate the same productions of phonemes.
The 214 phonemes divided into 11 categories:
Phoneme begins with a vowel:
Opposing: er, ig, op
Mildly opposing: ag
Loving: am, em, af, ip, ez, iz , eu, iu, ot, ui, uo, oqu
Mildly loving: eh, uh, ao, oi, ru
Controlling: im, um, at, et, ot, as, uk, al, el, il, ol, an, en, in, un, ab, eb, ib, ed, id, ih, uz
Explaining: if
Describing: it, ir, os, ek, ok, eb, uf, ep, eo, io, ia, oe, aqu, equ, iqu
Quizzical: om, is, od, oh, az, oz, el
Music / Muse: or, on, og, ug, ao, ou, uqu
Expressing: ar, ek, ob, eg, ah, ap, ai, ie, oa
Remembering: et, ur, ae
Phoneme begins with a consonant:
Opposing: ki, no, ne, ni
Mildly opposing: fre, go, gi, ja, pa, pl, sw, vu, vl, za, zl
Loving: chu, do, dl, fa, zha, zhi, li, ma, nu, ro, so, ta, vo, vi
Mildly loving: bo, bi, bl, cha, cho, gu, gh, zhu, ku, lo, re, so, sy, te, wo, wi, zu
Controlling: bu, chi, dr, fi, ko, ki, me, pu, sl, sr, tr, wr
Explaining: ba, br, che, da, du, de, dw, fe, ga, ghe, ka, le, na, pl, sa, wu
Describing: fl, ga, ge, gr, gl, kr, lo, lu, li, mi, no, pa, po, pl, pr, rta, se, si, to, tu, ti, ve, vr, wa, wu, we, wr, ya, yu, ye, zu
Quizzical: be, fo, mo, qua, ru
Music / Muse: fu, ja, mu, su, yo
Expressing: ri, yi, zo
Remembering: he, hi, hu, ki, ko, pe, wo, wu
The four main language groupings chosen for the elaboration of this chart were: terminology within Indo-European, Burushaski (Sino-Caucasian), Japanese (mix of many Siberian languages), and Australian aborigenese languages. Languages of comparison: Ainu, Yanonami of Orinoco river (Venezuela / Brazil).
Let us take one example how the system works. We shall take the town called ‘Controlling’ which as experience is basically related to human control over objects in the environment. One of these objects is children. It is not known which phoneme was used earliest to describe an object controlled by humans but we know that for English speakers it perhaps began with ‘chi’, ‘dr’ or ‘en’(children) (cf. list above for Controlling) and for French it was probably ‘fi’ or ‘el’ or ‘il’ (fils, fille) whereas perhaps at the same time in far-away Japan the following ‘controlling’ words were used for the same object to be controlled, namely children, and the phonemes chosen for children were ‘ko’, ‘do’, and ‘mo’ (kodomo)(cf list above for Controlling) which is the Japanese word for children. This is a clear representation that when humans considered anywhere about their experiences with children they created phonemes explaining this experience which involved ’control’ and though they made (by brain and mouth) different phonemes to give a name to children, all of the phonemes created fit (in our schema) into the same category, namely ‘controlling’. As we studied the terminology of all the major human languages in our volumes ‘Only One Human Language’ we found that 95% of terms (one or more phonemes, with priority given to the opening one) fit into the charts above as to which phonemes were chosen for which of the eleven experiences codified by us. In other words (which was our usual control) if a term has opening it a phoneme ‘er’, ‘ig’ or ‘op’ it has to refer to an experience of opposing or negation, and if it has a phoneme under the category ‘loving’ it cannot, normally, start with ‘er’, ‘ig’ or ‘op’ (which belong to the ‘Opposing’ category). One may notice, however, the ‘ki’, ‘no’, ‘ne’, ‘ni’ as phonemes under Opposing. This provided sometimes an exception, due probably to the possibility of pronunciation. Note that ‘nu’ is under ‘loving’ and ‘na’ is under ‘explaining’. In most Indo-European languages ‘no’, ‘ne’, ‘ni’ (cf. negative, nyet in Russian, ni in French) are considered as ‘opposing’ phonemes in human experience.
But using our charts, as a whole, most every term in any of the world’s languages, fits into our schema. If terminology or the words which produce such terminology, seems widely diverse in the various languages, (such as ‘children’ and ‘kodomo’) one thing characterizes their unity – all phonemes related to one of the eleven groupings of experiences will be found in the appropriate group and in no other. There are a few (not more than three) phonemes found in more than one of our groups but the characteristics of the two different groups they belong to are not contradictory. The phenomenon of the groupings and the necessity of all terminology (phonemes and words) fitting into one or another grouping (according mainly to the opening phoneme) proves that in every country or culture the words describing an experience will fit into a system. The very fact of having the system, moreover, proves the unity of human language, since the eleven parts of it can be applied everywhere and in all languages. It is these parts or superstructure which is the unity, not the actual phonemes which differ among themselves. But they all have one thing in common, to belong to a certain ‘town’ as in the Giro metaphor, and in general, belonging only to that ‘town’ and to no other.
In fact, all belong to a unified system, unified by residences. The phoneme content of each residence differs according as new phonemes and words become resident in it, but over the years the residences remain the same, because they exemplify a human experience with the outside world in (let us say) eleven ways, which may not be exhaustive but probably is, of human (subject) encountering an object and then creating a phoneme to express an impression about what happened.
Human experience was probably more or less the same in its earlier years and this accounts for our groups of eleven ‘towns’. But the fact that later town development carried the same group of phonemes as the earlier versions (as humans spread across the globe) this shows that language is inherited and not made haphazardly and without system. It is logical that this is the case, because phonemes were made in the brain and passed to the mouth by nerves. Each human being has this characteristic activity. The system of creating the phonemes is thus transmissible by genetics to progeny. If a new phoneme is created to describe an experience, the brain can absorb its features, but it will put it alongside its memory of experiences, i.e. in its proper ’town’ according to the Giro of Italy metaphor. And it will be passed on to children and lodge in their brains, and they will also, perhaps, create new family names in this ‘town’ - this town and only this town because their brains tell them to do so. And if, bi- or tri-lingual, they will have the benefit of the fact that there is a certain ‘commonality’ of such towns stored in their brains, they are helped to pass from one phoneme to another using the web of phonemes related to each experience (‘town’). This comes not only from language learning in the classroom but also because in their brain the eleven ‘towns’ and their meaning has already been received through heredity.
As for the meaning of a word in a newly-learned language, and if its phoneme has been added to their Japanese teacher’s set of ‘towns’ it will be easy to learn it e.g. if students wish to learn from him or her that ‘kodomo’ means ‘children’. And such bi-lingualism is possible because of the memories of the ‘towns’ and their meaning directly inherited from parents. The teacher’s own inheritance provides the word, and since the student is already aware of the ‘town’ it belongs to, i.e. its meaning, he or she incorporates it alongside the mother tongue’s equivalent word, and it will not be forgotten, and students will try to do the same with other Japanese words learned from the teacher.
The first phonemes were created by homo sapiens probably by liking or disliking something to a lesser or greater extent and a necessity of giving it a name by mouth in order to preserve it in one’s mind. This accounts for the first four items on our list of eleven. Then perhaps came the necessity of describing or explaining something to the spouse or relatives. If humans were engaged in activities of childbearing, planting to produce food, animal keeping, or any other activity using objects other than themselves, they experienced the controlling experience and these objects required a phoneme. Quizzical followed because the subject did not know what he or she was experiencing. Expressing arrived because the object produced some extreme reaction such as joy, fear or surprise. Music / Muse (i.e. musical notes and poetic ideas) met human subjects as object and phonemes described them. Finally, it so happened that human ‘history’ with its challenges brought about the need to remember past events, and the experience, fortunately, of remembering these needed phonemes to explain the facilitation of it. I haven’t been able to think of any other subject-object relations than those mentioned above. Human sexual life is basically included in the first four on loving and opposing. Eating is included in controlling, as is fighting and hunting. Art and literature is included in describing or explaining. Relations with deity is included in the four first items as well as quizzical. Healing both in the subjective and objective sense and sleeping, the soul and unconsciousness could be a separate item arriving much later in history than those we have listed, but they could be also placed under quizzical which deals with the unknown which eventually, one hopes, will be known.
See also www.iverpublications.ch for more information on Only One Human Language e.g. an article on Only One Human Language and the Scythians which applies our scenario to this old Euro-Asian language spoken in its modern version today by the Ossetians / Alans of the Caucasus
ANNEX I: Terminology of the following Languages have been used in this research:
Volume I Only One Human Language. The Unique Language of Homo Sapiens - Amazon 2016, 393 pp
Kashmiri-Malay language parallels; ‘Sino-Caucasian’-Kampuchian parallels; Thai language parallels
Saami-Malay
Yukaghir-Malay
Ainu-Malay
Koryak-Malay
Itelmen-Malay
Chukchee-Malay
Ainu-Kashmiri
Origins of People of the Karakorum Himalayas
Language Parallels in the Karakorum region
Ainu-Dumaki-Kashmiri-Burushaski
Dumaki -‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Ainu -‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Kashmiri-Burushaski
Australian Aborigenese
Nalik-‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Lau-‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Australian aborigenese - ‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Proto-Syllables from Indo-European, Burushaski, Japanese
and Australian aborigenese illustrating Only One
Human Language. 214 basic phonemes - see p. 352
for those which begin with a consonant . see p. 358
for those whichbegin with vowel)
Conclusions; Bibliography; Index, Symbols, About the Author
Volume II: Asia-Amerindia Language Comparisons. Only One Human Language, Vol. II - Amazon 2018, 411 pp.
Introduction
Uto-Aztecan language terminology
Algonquin
Cherokee-Iroquois
Muscogee-Caddo
Mosain -Tsimshian-Washoe
Ameridians of Mexco, Guatemala
Miskito and Cuna
Arawak, Carib, Warran
Yanonami, Waika
Quechua, Asmara, Inca
Campa, Machigenka, Panoan, Turpian, Tucuna
Waura, Trumai, Urubu (Kaapor)
Part II. Names of gods in various cultures
How Chinese terms conform to Only One Human Language
Conclusion Part II.
Bibliography Asian Section; Amerindian Section; Eurasian
and Aboriginal section
Vocabularies and Word Lists of Asian and Amerindian peoples
References, Symbols
Volume III; The Speech of Early Homo Sapiens. Only One Human Language, Vol. III - Amazon 2019, 334 pp.
Background to the Research
Diversity of Language
Syllables in Proto-Bantu
Detailed Analysis of the Proto-Syllables.
(all 214 proto-syllables are analyzed pp. 57-82)
Subject-Object Relations Creating Syllables (see p. 90 for diagram of
Eleven types of Subject-Object Relations)
Swahili and Proto-Syllables
Zulu and Proto Syllables
Kabyle and Proto-Syllables
Names of Egyptian deities and Proto-Syllables
Aramaic and Hebrew languages and Proto-Syllables
Arabic and Proto-Syllables
Conclusion, Bibliography, Footnotes, Index, About the Author
ANNEX II: Principles of Human Language arising out of the research.
1. The language of homo sapiens as a whole is one language
2. This human language is inherited through DNA
3. Human language is not developed according to ethnicity alone
4. Human language is developed through subject-object relations
5. There are at least eleven of these subject-object relation categories
6. There were at least 214 phonemes within these eleven categories
7. Words developed from phonemes in each category
8. The phonemes and words always remained in their category of origin
and were inherited as such and not by ethnicity alone
9. Bi-and multi-lingualism is based upon the above principles, all the inherited phonemes remaining within their categories in the DNA , and transferable when learning languages
10. Human language began in East Africa and spread across and around the world through migration
11. Much language terminology of the oldest peoples e.g some Australian aborigenes, some Amazonian Amerindians, and the Ainu - is the same
12. The DNA of some Australian aborigenes and some Amazonian Amerindians is the same, indicating that language is transmitted through the DNA and not according to ethnic differences alone
Charles Graves
27.5.2024
There was an old country called by the fancy name Syllables and within it humans had built eleven towns. These also had strange names which were; loving, mildly loving, opposing, mildly opposing, controlling, description, explanation, quizzical, music and muse, expressive and remembering. Every year the inhabitants of these competed in a bicycle race such as the Giro of Italy. Each town chose its best boy and girl cyclists and they bicycled against one another in races which finished each year in every town of the country. A phoneme had been chosen (in place of the Giro’s numbers) for each of the participants. But the total number of participants could not be superior to 220 since that was the limit of phonemes available and the roads between the towns were often quite narrow as well as the narrow main streets of each town.
The cyclists of one town could be called, for example: do, re, mi, fa, so, la and ti, as in our music lessons but this is simply an example and no town had such a particular association of names among its cyclists. In fact, what the young cyclists must take as their Giro names were their own individual family names, Each family in the town had its own family name – some of them very ancient, others newer. But in very early times it happened that the phonemes available were exhausted and no more family names could be created and so the country called Syllables and its towns became aristocracies, whereby there were only 220 noble families in total. It was, therefore, only the oldest families which could send their youth to race in the Giro. However, there were new families which combined two phonemes together (normally four letters or five i.e words) and, if needed, those families could join bicyclists in the Giro. As years passed by there were more and more ‘words’ along with phonemes in the Giro.
The Giro of languages in the country has one particular characteristic: when the race entered one of the eleven towns it was always the young people of that particular town who were victorious at the finish line. Therefore, each town could have an emotion-filled celebration on the evening after the cyclists arrived because its own team had been victorious. Thus, for example, at the one called ‘Mildly Loving’ it was the cyclists called by the names of that town’s families who had won the race and the families from other towns had fallen behind in the timing. This singularity preserved good feelings among all the cyclists and among the older generations as well, in each town. And both the children of the oldest families with a single phoneme for a name could be joined in the festivities with those from the same town whose names were made of two phonemes or more.
The Giro explained above is an acceptable metaphor for the origin of homo sapiens language. It parallels metaphorically the way our human language began in Africa and after in other places where humanity migrated – to Arabia or Europe, to central Asia, to Australia, and across the Bering Straits into the Americas. Earliest men and women created the eleven towns mentioned above out of their imagination as they encountered life. The encountering experience is repeated in the names of the eleven towns in the Giro of Italy. And the list of these place names seems to be exhaustive - early man and woman, given the typical attributes of homo sapiens, could only think of these phonemes – names which represented their human experiences, namely loving, mildly loving, opposing, mildly opposing, controlling, describing, explaining, music and muse, quizzical, expressing and remembering. To each of these experiences their brains and mouths neurologically created a phoneme as an expression of the subject-object experience, and it became a commonly understood term for them and the community. Each of these sounds, therefore, was created to represent a particular experience of homo sapiens. And the expansion of this is shown in the Giro. Each syllable became a family in its particular town as the ancestral family of that town. It was passed down to each family’s children as that family name and when the cyclists of that family raced in the annual Giro, they carried that name of a phoneme such as the ‘do’ or ‘re’ above. And when the Giro passed through their town, all the ‘dos’ were first in the Giro race. The same would occur for the ’res’ when they raced to their town, and the ‘re’ family would celebrate victory. And ‘re’ parents would hand on to their children and children’s children the aptitude to be ‘re’ - named cyclists. As history of homo sapiens ‘evolved’ in historical time and place, the eleven towns had their own special representations in each new country they inhabited. They created the same eleven groups of families together because their experiences were already codified in eleven models. There was place in each model moreover for new families who could create new phonemes for a name. In some of the new towns some families took new names and, added to the earlier names, they became characteristic of that town alone and not of any other town. Moreover, these new family names would be passed on to their children. The towns could learn in what manner other towns had taken on phoneme names and competition could take place on the Giro by which everyone could learn how to associate the names with the various naming experiences humanity had undergone. Common terminology thus could become an aspect of human history.
If someone went to a town not his or hers they would have the special experience of that town and perhaps stay with families whose names represented phonemes related to the experiences of that town, and knowledge
of their major experiences and their names could be integrated in his or her personality, showing that there are certain common experiences which affect both host and visitor. And if someone was able to visit all the towns in every given country at any given period in time, he or she would be able to become a good linguist.
So, in people’s minds eventually all the available syllables or phonemes of consonant-vowel or vowel-consonant nature, i.e. two characters making the syllable, came to be known by homo sapiens, and all of this was inherited by their children through DNA.
But the number of possible syllables able to be created by the mouth and nerves of, and the air inhaled by, human beings was limited. Only a certain number of syllables (consonant and vowels) could be made in a separate way through the neuronic system of the brain and body, and the progress toward a infinite number of phonemes stopped. It was impossible to create any new understandable phonemes. Any new families in human towns had, metaphorically, to combine at least two of the phonemes in order the be accepted (having a new name) in the community. In this way, humanity began to enter the stage of complex word-making. The new families of word-making nature (two or more syllables in their names) were attached mainly to the town where the first syllable of the word (they were named by) had given names to one of that town’s families. After this phenomenon, the first or the first and second syllable of their name could be symbolic of a certain town where these syllables had been given as names to the principal families. But since each town
could have an infinite number of families (of course, separated from each other by the first-placed phonemes),’language families’ could arise. That is, languages could arise which use the earliest town aristocratic family names and keeping all the later-arriving family’s names (two or more syllables). But there was never any crossing over – if a family moved to another town, it would have to take upon itself a new name related to the indigenous names at its new residence.
We have found that, before the possibility of creating new phonemes was enabled, there were at least eleven towns created (each with its experiences and its model for phonemes) and these proved, as families were created within them (those with their own distinct phonemes), that each phoneme was related to a particular town and no other. The basis of human language is in these eleven towns and the families (i.e. phoneme or words) originating in each one. All those in ‘Mildly Loving’ town are phonemes related to ‘mildly-loving’ and they are related to no other town; all persons in the town called ‘Controlling’ are related to controlling and to no other town; all those in ‘Remembering’ are related to remembering and to no other.
If a new nation, social entity or ethnicity is created, it would have the same eleven towns in its languages and everyone who lives in the town called ‘Mildly Loving’ would be of the same families as in any other town in another nation or entity in its town called ‘Mildly Loving’.
After analyzing four world language groupings (based on an appreciation of how homo sapiens migrated in its history) we have compared their terminology (words relative to each language’s terms for life, family, environment, soul, religion, etc.). We have considered that each of the ‘towns’ in our metaphorical ‘Giro’ has a certain number of the 220 possible phonemes related to its town’s name e.g. loving, mildly loving, opposing, mildly opposing, controlling, music / muse etc. Some towns could have only a few Giro competitors because it has only a few phonemes associated with it. Other towns had many family names perhaps because the experiences which created that town’s name e.g. ‘Mildly Loving’ had many phonemes (and words) associated to ‘mildly loving’ as an experience. But when the Giro race entered the town with only a few phonemes associated with it, only a few families received them in their ‘homecoming’. However, they would celebrate their victory as much as the towns which had many more phoneme-related families. This is because these young people who cycled from and to their towns were just as proud of their family as any other cyclist would be about his or her family. And, usually, they would not want to move to any other place, since they would inherit their parents’ houses and land in their town of origin.
It is the tradition of the eleven towns, each representing a certain human experience, that provided the origin of human language, and human language in a unity within eleven branches. All the oldest families of phonemes are included in the group, as well as newer phonemes (or words) based upon their doubling.
We have proven in our three volumes of Only One Human Language that all the world’s languages are based upon this Giro scenario of phoneme families in eleven towns. Neither the number of towns nor number of family names can (essentially at least) be modified. This implies that there has been, and will be, ‘only one human language’.
The human brain works in an orderly fashion as genetics tells us. Languages have not, in haphazard fashion, accumulated over the ages. Language began with both men and women having experiences of their environment, and it was a matter of the gradually evolving of phonemes to represent these – each phoneme based upon experience of a particular kind - and all eleven of these, and their phonemes, were passed on as inheritance through DNA. The neuronic content of the phoneme- and word- producing parts of the brain were passed on to their children who could enunciate the same productions of phonemes.
The 214 phonemes divided into 11 categories:
Phoneme begins with a vowel:
Opposing: er, ig, op
Mildly opposing: ag
Loving: am, em, af, ip, ez, iz , eu, iu, ot, ui, uo, oqu
Mildly loving: eh, uh, ao, oi, ru
Controlling: im, um, at, et, ot, as, uk, al, el, il, ol, an, en, in, un, ab, eb, ib, ed, id, ih, uz
Explaining: if
Describing: it, ir, os, ek, ok, eb, uf, ep, eo, io, ia, oe, aqu, equ, iqu
Quizzical: om, is, od, oh, az, oz, el
Music / Muse: or, on, og, ug, ao, ou, uqu
Expressing: ar, ek, ob, eg, ah, ap, ai, ie, oa
Remembering: et, ur, ae
Phoneme begins with a consonant:
Opposing: ki, no, ne, ni
Mildly opposing: fre, go, gi, ja, pa, pl, sw, vu, vl, za, zl
Loving: chu, do, dl, fa, zha, zhi, li, ma, nu, ro, so, ta, vo, vi
Mildly loving: bo, bi, bl, cha, cho, gu, gh, zhu, ku, lo, re, so, sy, te, wo, wi, zu
Controlling: bu, chi, dr, fi, ko, ki, me, pu, sl, sr, tr, wr
Explaining: ba, br, che, da, du, de, dw, fe, ga, ghe, ka, le, na, pl, sa, wu
Describing: fl, ga, ge, gr, gl, kr, lo, lu, li, mi, no, pa, po, pl, pr, rta, se, si, to, tu, ti, ve, vr, wa, wu, we, wr, ya, yu, ye, zu
Quizzical: be, fo, mo, qua, ru
Music / Muse: fu, ja, mu, su, yo
Expressing: ri, yi, zo
Remembering: he, hi, hu, ki, ko, pe, wo, wu
The four main language groupings chosen for the elaboration of this chart were: terminology within Indo-European, Burushaski (Sino-Caucasian), Japanese (mix of many Siberian languages), and Australian aborigenese languages. Languages of comparison: Ainu, Yanonami of Orinoco river (Venezuela / Brazil).
Let us take one example how the system works. We shall take the town called ‘Controlling’ which as experience is basically related to human control over objects in the environment. One of these objects is children. It is not known which phoneme was used earliest to describe an object controlled by humans but we know that for English speakers it perhaps began with ‘chi’, ‘dr’ or ‘en’(children) (cf. list above for Controlling) and for French it was probably ‘fi’ or ‘el’ or ‘il’ (fils, fille) whereas perhaps at the same time in far-away Japan the following ‘controlling’ words were used for the same object to be controlled, namely children, and the phonemes chosen for children were ‘ko’, ‘do’, and ‘mo’ (kodomo)(cf list above for Controlling) which is the Japanese word for children. This is a clear representation that when humans considered anywhere about their experiences with children they created phonemes explaining this experience which involved ’control’ and though they made (by brain and mouth) different phonemes to give a name to children, all of the phonemes created fit (in our schema) into the same category, namely ‘controlling’. As we studied the terminology of all the major human languages in our volumes ‘Only One Human Language’ we found that 95% of terms (one or more phonemes, with priority given to the opening one) fit into the charts above as to which phonemes were chosen for which of the eleven experiences codified by us. In other words (which was our usual control) if a term has opening it a phoneme ‘er’, ‘ig’ or ‘op’ it has to refer to an experience of opposing or negation, and if it has a phoneme under the category ‘loving’ it cannot, normally, start with ‘er’, ‘ig’ or ‘op’ (which belong to the ‘Opposing’ category). One may notice, however, the ‘ki’, ‘no’, ‘ne’, ‘ni’ as phonemes under Opposing. This provided sometimes an exception, due probably to the possibility of pronunciation. Note that ‘nu’ is under ‘loving’ and ‘na’ is under ‘explaining’. In most Indo-European languages ‘no’, ‘ne’, ‘ni’ (cf. negative, nyet in Russian, ni in French) are considered as ‘opposing’ phonemes in human experience.
But using our charts, as a whole, most every term in any of the world’s languages, fits into our schema. If terminology or the words which produce such terminology, seems widely diverse in the various languages, (such as ‘children’ and ‘kodomo’) one thing characterizes their unity – all phonemes related to one of the eleven groupings of experiences will be found in the appropriate group and in no other. There are a few (not more than three) phonemes found in more than one of our groups but the characteristics of the two different groups they belong to are not contradictory. The phenomenon of the groupings and the necessity of all terminology (phonemes and words) fitting into one or another grouping (according mainly to the opening phoneme) proves that in every country or culture the words describing an experience will fit into a system. The very fact of having the system, moreover, proves the unity of human language, since the eleven parts of it can be applied everywhere and in all languages. It is these parts or superstructure which is the unity, not the actual phonemes which differ among themselves. But they all have one thing in common, to belong to a certain ‘town’ as in the Giro metaphor, and in general, belonging only to that ‘town’ and to no other.
In fact, all belong to a unified system, unified by residences. The phoneme content of each residence differs according as new phonemes and words become resident in it, but over the years the residences remain the same, because they exemplify a human experience with the outside world in (let us say) eleven ways, which may not be exhaustive but probably is, of human (subject) encountering an object and then creating a phoneme to express an impression about what happened.
Human experience was probably more or less the same in its earlier years and this accounts for our groups of eleven ‘towns’. But the fact that later town development carried the same group of phonemes as the earlier versions (as humans spread across the globe) this shows that language is inherited and not made haphazardly and without system. It is logical that this is the case, because phonemes were made in the brain and passed to the mouth by nerves. Each human being has this characteristic activity. The system of creating the phonemes is thus transmissible by genetics to progeny. If a new phoneme is created to describe an experience, the brain can absorb its features, but it will put it alongside its memory of experiences, i.e. in its proper ’town’ according to the Giro of Italy metaphor. And it will be passed on to children and lodge in their brains, and they will also, perhaps, create new family names in this ‘town’ - this town and only this town because their brains tell them to do so. And if, bi- or tri-lingual, they will have the benefit of the fact that there is a certain ‘commonality’ of such towns stored in their brains, they are helped to pass from one phoneme to another using the web of phonemes related to each experience (‘town’). This comes not only from language learning in the classroom but also because in their brain the eleven ‘towns’ and their meaning has already been received through heredity.
As for the meaning of a word in a newly-learned language, and if its phoneme has been added to their Japanese teacher’s set of ‘towns’ it will be easy to learn it e.g. if students wish to learn from him or her that ‘kodomo’ means ‘children’. And such bi-lingualism is possible because of the memories of the ‘towns’ and their meaning directly inherited from parents. The teacher’s own inheritance provides the word, and since the student is already aware of the ‘town’ it belongs to, i.e. its meaning, he or she incorporates it alongside the mother tongue’s equivalent word, and it will not be forgotten, and students will try to do the same with other Japanese words learned from the teacher.
The first phonemes were created by homo sapiens probably by liking or disliking something to a lesser or greater extent and a necessity of giving it a name by mouth in order to preserve it in one’s mind. This accounts for the first four items on our list of eleven. Then perhaps came the necessity of describing or explaining something to the spouse or relatives. If humans were engaged in activities of childbearing, planting to produce food, animal keeping, or any other activity using objects other than themselves, they experienced the controlling experience and these objects required a phoneme. Quizzical followed because the subject did not know what he or she was experiencing. Expressing arrived because the object produced some extreme reaction such as joy, fear or surprise. Music / Muse (i.e. musical notes and poetic ideas) met human subjects as object and phonemes described them. Finally, it so happened that human ‘history’ with its challenges brought about the need to remember past events, and the experience, fortunately, of remembering these needed phonemes to explain the facilitation of it. I haven’t been able to think of any other subject-object relations than those mentioned above. Human sexual life is basically included in the first four on loving and opposing. Eating is included in controlling, as is fighting and hunting. Art and literature is included in describing or explaining. Relations with deity is included in the four first items as well as quizzical. Healing both in the subjective and objective sense and sleeping, the soul and unconsciousness could be a separate item arriving much later in history than those we have listed, but they could be also placed under quizzical which deals with the unknown which eventually, one hopes, will be known.
See also www.iverpublications.ch for more information on Only One Human Language e.g. an article on Only One Human Language and the Scythians which applies our scenario to this old Euro-Asian language spoken in its modern version today by the Ossetians / Alans of the Caucasus
ANNEX I: Terminology of the following Languages have been used in this research:
Volume I Only One Human Language. The Unique Language of Homo Sapiens - Amazon 2016, 393 pp
Kashmiri-Malay language parallels; ‘Sino-Caucasian’-Kampuchian parallels; Thai language parallels
Saami-Malay
Yukaghir-Malay
Ainu-Malay
Koryak-Malay
Itelmen-Malay
Chukchee-Malay
Ainu-Kashmiri
Origins of People of the Karakorum Himalayas
Language Parallels in the Karakorum region
Ainu-Dumaki-Kashmiri-Burushaski
Dumaki -‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Ainu -‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Kashmiri-Burushaski
Australian Aborigenese
Nalik-‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Lau-‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Australian aborigenese - ‘Nostratic’-‘Sino-Caucasian’
Proto-Syllables from Indo-European, Burushaski, Japanese
and Australian aborigenese illustrating Only One
Human Language. 214 basic phonemes - see p. 352
for those which begin with a consonant . see p. 358
for those whichbegin with vowel)
Conclusions; Bibliography; Index, Symbols, About the Author
Volume II: Asia-Amerindia Language Comparisons. Only One Human Language, Vol. II - Amazon 2018, 411 pp.
Introduction
Uto-Aztecan language terminology
Algonquin
Cherokee-Iroquois
Muscogee-Caddo
Mosain -Tsimshian-Washoe
Ameridians of Mexco, Guatemala
Miskito and Cuna
Arawak, Carib, Warran
Yanonami, Waika
Quechua, Asmara, Inca
Campa, Machigenka, Panoan, Turpian, Tucuna
Waura, Trumai, Urubu (Kaapor)
Part II. Names of gods in various cultures
How Chinese terms conform to Only One Human Language
Conclusion Part II.
Bibliography Asian Section; Amerindian Section; Eurasian
and Aboriginal section
Vocabularies and Word Lists of Asian and Amerindian peoples
References, Symbols
Volume III; The Speech of Early Homo Sapiens. Only One Human Language, Vol. III - Amazon 2019, 334 pp.
Background to the Research
Diversity of Language
Syllables in Proto-Bantu
Detailed Analysis of the Proto-Syllables.
(all 214 proto-syllables are analyzed pp. 57-82)
Subject-Object Relations Creating Syllables (see p. 90 for diagram of
Eleven types of Subject-Object Relations)
Swahili and Proto-Syllables
Zulu and Proto Syllables
Kabyle and Proto-Syllables
Names of Egyptian deities and Proto-Syllables
Aramaic and Hebrew languages and Proto-Syllables
Arabic and Proto-Syllables
Conclusion, Bibliography, Footnotes, Index, About the Author
ANNEX II: Principles of Human Language arising out of the research.
1. The language of homo sapiens as a whole is one language
2. This human language is inherited through DNA
3. Human language is not developed according to ethnicity alone
4. Human language is developed through subject-object relations
5. There are at least eleven of these subject-object relation categories
6. There were at least 214 phonemes within these eleven categories
7. Words developed from phonemes in each category
8. The phonemes and words always remained in their category of origin
and were inherited as such and not by ethnicity alone
9. Bi-and multi-lingualism is based upon the above principles, all the inherited phonemes remaining within their categories in the DNA , and transferable when learning languages
10. Human language began in East Africa and spread across and around the world through migration
11. Much language terminology of the oldest peoples e.g some Australian aborigenes, some Amazonian Amerindians, and the Ainu - is the same
12. The DNA of some Australian aborigenes and some Amazonian Amerindians is the same, indicating that language is transmitted through the DNA and not according to ethnic differences alone
Charles Graves
27.5.2024
