eli5 How did “words” come to be before any language was developed? Like before words existed how did a group of people just collectively decide a banana is a banana and not a “ksirjrnwpx”
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Amateur (armchair) linguist here. I’ve always been fascinated by this particular topic too. And unfortunately, it’s not a fully answerable question, but I can try my best:
So assuming consciousness doesn’t need to be analyzed or explained further than being aware it exists— once humans were able to do more than just survive, they were able to do more than just forage, hunt, or sleep; they had time to think. Time to think, conceptualize, and invent or innovate. With this ability, it became a necessity to be able to communicate these breakthroughs with one another. Some were probably obvious over the course of early humanity: sex feels good and also leads to procreation. Fire burns.
Some were more subtle: these berries are good, but not THOSE berries. Some of these particular observations became passed on into instinctual responses, such as being put off by the smell of rotten (deadly) foods, or responding to the cry of a helpless baby.
Those that weren’t readily programmed into us over generations of natural selection had to be taught in some way, shape or form.
How does this all tie together? Once we became aware enough of our environment and our inter-tribal interactions, we probably came to the obvious, albeit complex conclusion that we needed ways to discern certain people, plants, animals, objects— eventually to the point of being able to describe feelings and ideas that are wholly abstract.
The common words for mom and dad in most languages begin with “m,” “p” or “d”, respectively. This is because these are the easiest shapes for a baby to make as it learns how to utilize language. They require simple mouth or tongue movements, and are identifiably unique sounds. I would assume if these words were the first to be ‘invented’, it came about because people needed to be able to communicate with their immediate family, with whom most people develop their most important relationships with, and therefore take priority in survival scenarios.
I can’t tell you what the first words were, what they meant, or what purpose they served. And I don’t think any linguist worth their salt could either.
TL;DR: Humans are unique in their ability to react cognitively to their environment rather than instinctually. As survival rates and longevity went up, the complexity of human interaction did as well, which necessitated the creation of language that allowed generational and cultural exchanges of information that would be lost otherwise. Or at the very least served to help identify Caveman A from Caveman B, or deadly berries from tasty berries.
Sorry for the ramble, but I’m not an expert, just an amateur language lover overtired at 3AM.
EDIT: This is simply meant to expound on the last part of your question— Once words were created, spread throughout a culture, and became well-known, their pronunciation and spelling would often evolve as peoples accents and the eccentricities of the way the people they conquered learned to speak their rulers’ newly imposed language. Some languages developed simply because a conquered nation could not learn how to voice certain syllables, and as these mispronunciations carried on over time, they evolved into entirely new dialects, sometimes into entirely new languages.
We are creatures with cognitive abilities in a chaotic existence. We naturally strive to organize our surroundings in some manner, and due to our intelligence, it happened to be most efficient to be able to describe our experiences, thoughts, and observations with language. It almost serves as a form of time travel in that it allows us to pass ideas on to generations that may not have even known we existed otherwise. Swaths of the greatest advancements of Mankind would be wiped clean if we had only maintained an oral history that couldn’t be faithfully encoded into a physical record.
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