In my book, Deciphering the English Code, I explain how the roots of English and Indo-European languages can be traced to body sign language employed in Africa by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. I realize today there could be other ways for a language to begin, for example – computer language. But I don’t see how else the first spoken language could have developed, since any new mode of communication must be built on a tribe’s previous mode of communication. That leaves grunts and body/sign language as the only logical basis for the first spoken language.
SCHOOL
There’s a lot of talk about schools these days. Do we open them during a pandemic or find ways to teach them online until the pandemic is over?
The wordology process involves breaking words down to their most basic pieces and summing the meanings of the pieces to arrive at the meaning of the entire word when it was created. In English, it works about 92% of the time.
SCHOOL and SCHOLAR have the Motion S prefix.
So we have to understand why S might denote motion in a word. That’s easy. It’s the continuing sound of SSS that seems to mean motion all by itself. SSSS like a snake in the desert. S even looks like a snake. And yes, there are two other attributes of the SSS sound which formed the basis for other S-words. I will list the two here and go over them in other posts. The sound SSS van refer to smallness – like shh means quiet. The length of time one can hold an SSS out links some S-words to things that can persist over time.
Other good examples of the Motion S Prefix include: SCOOP – (a moving cup is functionally a scoop) SWING, SHAKE, SHIMMY, SURREY, SHIP, SEND and SHOES. And what is a SNAKE if not a moving neck? S+NECK=SNAKE.*
We break SCHOOL down to S-CHOOL and S-CHOLAR. The operative second word is COL or COLLECTIVE. English words that begin with C are very often about anything a CLAW can do. I believe the letter C is a hieroglyph for a claw. My sense is that birds, which have always gone coo and caw, were admired for their CLAWS and their ability to CATCH prey. We’ll get into more C-words later.
SCHOOL then breaks down to MOVE(S) TOGETHER ( COL) . The school of of fish has the same basic meaning as does the schooling done in a schoolhouse. The fish and the children move together.
We may be able to tutor or teach children online, but real schooling involves moving children together through a graded system.
*Vowels carry less information than consonants. They are often quantifiers. Vowels also freely change from one part of a country to another. We don’t ignore vowels, but we look to consonants for the meaty parts of a word’s history.
THE ENGLISH CODE 