Humanity’s First Language Was Musical
Behind the smoldering, rolled cigarettes, a linguistics student’s imagination burns. Unlike his short-lived cigarette, this flame would scorch every region of his mind’s obsession. Music, or at least the essence of musical patterns, must have preceded our ability for meaningful linguistic patterns as human speech evolved.
The parallels always seemed to be more than coincidence. Speech sounds are just as arbitrary as musical sounds until they’re strung together in a way that’s accepted as meaningful by those who also “speak” that same language. We all have cultural, neurological schemas that influence our sense of musical grammar just as much as our sense of linguistic grammar. These schemas influence our perception of what is meaningful and what is babble.
When we’re developing as toddlers, we produce vowels with ease. It’s consonants that we first struggle to achieve as we begin to speak. Consider the babble stages of infants: Each “ga” and “ma” is a failed attempt to create the consonant sounds that will one day be native to them.
Interestingly, vowels are the only speech sounds that we’re able to sing — except for, perhaps, humming nasals such as “m” and “n.” If you don’t believe me, then I encourage you to sing a long note with either of the sounds “t” or “g”!
