I searched up previous questions like this out of curiosity (and as per rule 5), but the most I found were simple things like physical objects or contextual filler words. I’m still quite confused about how both the first spoken and written languages were deciphered. I understand pointing at a rock and saying “rocher” in French and “felsen” in German and then knowing what a rock is in their language, but there are so many filler words or just nonphysical words in general that I couldn’t imagine how people started understanding each other.
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You can think of how babies learn language. Babies start with nothing, and they learn thanks to their parents patiently teaching them and showing them things and talking to them until it starts to make sense. And then the babies repeat the sounds their parents make, and if they get it right parents are happy, and if they’re close parents will teach them the right way to say it.
If a baby can start with no language and learn to be fluent in a few years from their parents, then you can certainly imagine how intelligent adults with a reason to want to speak to each other (such as wanting to trade) can teach each other their languages.
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