Natural Human Language

Genesis 1:28
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

According to evolution, human language began to develop when ape-like creatures started to grunt and make other noises at each other. Eventually they agreed on meanings for these sounds and language was born. According to the Bible, language is a gift of our Creator, Who is the source of all language. He made us to have fellowship with Him. He gave us language as an important part of our relationship with God.

The evolutionary view of language doesn’t explain why the more ancient languages are the most complex, but the biblical view does. The biblical view also explains why research is showing that we are programmed for language.

In one instance, researchers studied the communication of profoundly deaf children with hearing parents, neither of whom had ever been taught sign language. These children had never heard or seen normal language, so they wouldn’t be influenced by their surroundings. Researchers wanted to find out if the children followed a pattern in how they put their communication together. To their surprise, they found that the children all followed the same patterns of sentence structure. The pattern used by the children is one of two patterns into which all the world’s languages can be divided.

This research supports the Bible’s claim that we were created with a built-in ability for language.

Prayer:
Dear Father, I confess that I have abused Your gift of language with foolish and harmful speech and by not using language to pray to You as often as I could. For Jesus’ sake, forgive me and help me to use language as You intended. Amen.

Notes:
P. D. Sackett. 1983. “Do Deaf Children Show Language Learning Bias?” Science News, July 30, p. 73. Painting: The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563).

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