General, Research, Technology

Children are able to quickly invent their own sign language

Despite numerousresearch, scientists still do not know exactly when and how people learned to speak. Some researchers believe that conversational speech arose about 50 thousand years ago, but others are confident that this skill arose much earlier. It is extremely difficult to figure out how humanity came up with languages, because most modern languages ​​have arisen and evolved over a very long time. However, scientists do not give up and sometimes their work gives very interesting results. For example, recently researchers from America, Germany and other countries have found that young children can quickly come up with their own sign language.

Children can always find a common language with each other.

The discovery was made during the experiment, the essence andthe results of which were disclosed in the scientific publication Medical Xpress. In the course of a new scientific work, scientists decided to find out how quickly people can find a way to talk with each other without the ability to pronounce words. To do this, they gathered a group of children and gave them the opportunity to talk via the Internet via video. They saw each other perfectly, but could not hear - the researchers turned off their microphones in advance.

How do people find common ground with each other?

The little participants in the experiment were giventhe task is to explain to his interlocutor what is depicted on the white sheets of paper shown to him. At first, the drawings were quite simple, like a hammer, and the children only needed to show with their hands how they knock on an imaginary nail. However, the images gradually became more complex and in the end the participants were shown an empty sheet of paper. And do you think that the children were able to explain to the interlocutor what they see?

Did you know that children can easily learn writing by correcting the mistakes of robots?

Of course. After some time, the stupor, the children simply pointed to a white patch on their clothes. Then they silently agreed that a certain hand gesture would indicate white. That is, at that moment they had already begun to develop their own sign language. The first word in their general vocabulary in this case was “white”. Already after 30 minutes of conversation, the interlocutors had a small list of various gestures symbolizing a word.

Sign language was invented in ancient times

According to researchers, their scientific workproved that children can not only learn their native language, but also, if necessary, develop their own. Based on this, we can assume that the ancient people managed to quickly create a basic language for communicating with each other. And only then, for thousands of years, they were engaged in its enrichment.

The main word of 2019

It is important to note that our language is also graduallyevolves. Many of the words used in the 20th century today seem alien and are almost never used in everyday speech. But instead of them there are new words that are increasingly heard in conversations of people around.

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Finally, I want to share an interesting fact. Surely many of our readers know that Oxford University chooses the so-called "word of the year" every year. In 2019, this status was assigned to the phrase “climate emergency”, which can be translated as “extreme climate situation”. And all because in the past year, the issue of global warming was raised so many times and became the cause of numerous disputes.