How can I know what I think, when I have not yet heard what I say?! (handicapped child)
Words can make a strong impression and stick. This applies to us, but perhaps even more so to primitive people. Old Indian traditions greatly valued reticence, just because one appreciated the power of words. By speaking a word, one creates a reality. Words are not just strengthening the ability to think. They are the source of thinking. By choosing the words people are getting to know and understand their own thoughts. Just look at young children, who repeat and learn to read aloud.
The easiest comes first, tangible things like an object, plant, animal or the land itself. Than a bit more difficult, parts of those objects, like the ground of the land or a broken tool. Then more difficult yet, metaphorical ideas, for which concrete words are used in a new, abstract meaning. The ground in combination with the activity of breaking becomes ‘breaking ground’, an expression that can be used for exploring new territory.
Between 80.000 and 20.000 years ago, people start distinguishing and mastering more and more concepts and activities. Even for invisible matters like social relations. In the end words are invented for things that only refer to itself and to nothings else! Think about a promise or a covenant. Such words do not refer to anything already in existence, but they exist only after the word has been spoken and the promise been made. The word is the reality itself! In the distant past such words must have been very difficult – very important for group life and yet very hard to keep them in mind.
There is a deep connection between word and spirit. One can not go without the other. In ancient oral cultures, both are based on spoken language. Breath and air carries both ( out from the mouth and into the ear). Both are invisible and volatile, difficult to control and fanthom, but for all that both have a great influence in human life.
Human language offers tremendous opportunities. Language enables abstract thinking. Words create new realities. Language frees from the world of the concrete and tangible and opens a world of invisible realities – social and emotional, knowledge and fantasy. Yet language is also restricting and distorting. For example (almost?) all languages in the world use the subject+verb construction, even when this not very appropriate. Take a sentence like “it is raining”. Who is raining? Unintentionally, this kind of language leads us to search for ‘who has done it’. And finally, language does not only connect people with eachother. It also excludes people who do not speak the same language.