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Practice Reading: Fill in the Blanks (Dropdown)
ID: #38842
The origin
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'The origin of human language is truly secret and marvellous,' wrote Jacob Grimm in 1851. The marvellous secret has long proved a launch pad for strange ideas. 'Primitive man was likely to make sounds like "meuh" when danger,' claimed Charles Caller in 1928. '"Meuh" has a plaintive sound. The human who wandered over a hostile land inhabited by awesome beasts desperate noises, and languages have preserved some echo of his lamentation such as malaria meaning "fever" or the Latin mors meaning "death".' Faced with such weird speculations, many avoided the topic, regarding it as a playground for cranks, but recently, language origin and evolution have become key research areas. Language probably developed in East Africa, around 100,000 years ago. speech was used for friendly interaction, and was an important tool in power . Information-swapping was probably not an important original — contrary to the views of philosopher John Locke, who spoke of language as a 'great conduit' for knowledge.
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