If the myth is true, languages diverged in Babylon. That is why Douglas Adams created a character called the Babel Fish in his book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This fish settles in the ear of its bearer; it feeds on brain waves and unconscious frequencies, and excretes a network of conscious thought frequencies and signals received from speech centers. Thus, if you have a Babel Fish in your ear, you will understand everything expressed in any language.
Although this product of Adams' naughty mind has not yet turned into a technology that will make things easier in our universe, it is advancing rapidly.
However, the figure of Babel Fish has critical implications on how language works: Language is not a fixed element of consciousness, it is established later, only through an exchange. Language is a series of operations, i.e. receiving, processing and exporting, between two or more consciousnesses.
The Babylonian Fish is not the language itself, though. It is just a translator, an adapter, a kind of mediator between two minds that do not know each other's language. Two people who think they speak the same language need a translator, an adapter, a mediator when they are trying to get along with each other, don’t they? Otherwise, communication would always be seamless, and we could understand each other perfectly. But, we can not! Or, we just think that we cannot express ourselves and understand others.
Communicating in the same language also require a translation process in many cases.
Our day-to-day communication seems to sustain on rather superficial patterns: Autopilot is on again.
When one asks how we are, without thinking for an instance, we automatically reply that we are good. “How is business?” “It is great.”
More complex functions of language become active when we have to pay attention and think it over, when we have to find the proper question and refined answers.
As questions become better, so does the language. So, first, let’s find the right question, where the answer resides.
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