[BRIEF NOTE] The Search for the Origins of Language

[rfmcdonald]

In the course of doing readings for a presentation Thursday, I came across this interesting theory, dating from the 17th century's debates on the question of which language was the original language of humanity:

[T]he most bizarre theory was an English contribution, and came from the architect John Webb, the pupil, relation, and executor of Inigo Jones. Webb was the man whom Christopher Wren defeated for the post of Surveyor of Works after the Restoration. 'When then it is reputed ridiculous to hear that Adam spoke Dutch in Paradice,' Webb thought, it might be worthwhile to consider the argument that 'the Language of the Empire of CHINA is the PRIMITIVE Tongue, which was common to the whole world before the Flood'. This novel concept could be proved by the fact that the Chinese 'were primitively planted in China, if not by Noah himself, by some of the Issue of Sem, before the remove of Nimrod to Shinaar, and the Confusion of Tongues at Babel'. The Chinese language could not have changed because their country had never been conquered 'as could prejudice, but rather dilate their language'. The Chinese had always been isolated from commercial and cultural contacts, lest their language and customs become corrupted. The Hebrew names in the Old Testament were simply translations from the Chinese. Adam quite clearly spoke Chinese in the Garden because language 'was not a studied or artificial speech, nor taught our First Parents by Art and by degrees as their Generations have been, but concreated with them'. Despite Webb's unique beliefs on the origin of language, he joined in the common hope that a 'Real Character' might be found so that 'we might no longer complain of the unhappy consequences that succeeded the Confusion at Babel, nor China glory that she alone shall evermore triumph in the full fruition of those abundant felicities that attended mankind, whilst one common language was spoken throughout the World.'

- from David S. Katz' Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603-1655 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pages 58 to 59.