Irish Translation Forum

I think I mentioned it on the forum before, but I saw a show on TV once where a linguistics professor (I think that's what he was) explained a theory that humans may have whistled, hummed, and then sung, to some extent in imitation of birds, before developing "normal" speech, and that's why rhythm and music are so powerful to us. The widespread nature of these sorts of trilling sounds makes me wonder if they are a remnant of those old habits. It also makes one wonder whether that's what the aborigines mean by the "song lines" that are their history, or what some of the Native American legends mean when they say that people were "sung" into existence. Could be very ancient memories.

I heard that before and also the fact that language most likely began with the most genetically diverse group on earth ;The Bushmen of S Africa & Kalihari desert. We are all chips from that block and their language contains the richest amounts of sounds or phonemes of any language on earth. As people migrated away from there across the world they tended to lose sounds and so the people at the ends of the human journey often have the least sounds in their language for instance Hawaian has only 15 phonemes and English about 40 whereas Bushnan or San has in the order of 200. We all still carry the click sounds with us but they are not used in words any more. For instance people the world over use a tuh tuh sound with children to show displeasure and clicks to call dogs and animals.

The song lines are migration paths and the memorised songs allow them to find their way by mentioning mythological beings and features of the landscape associated with them.A person that has learned the songs will be able to travel 100s of miles and reach a specific destination by singing the different songs in a set order as he/she travels along regardless of whether they were ever there before.