First of all, I suggest you take 20 minutes of your precious time to watch this relatively new TED talk on Language.
The mere concept of human communicating through sounds (aka: language) has always fascinated me since I was a speech-retarded child :)
I can remember clearly when my Dad was trying to teach me the Arabic letters and their proper pronunciation and he had great difficulty doing so, the 'Qaf' letter most specifically.
At school, I enjoyed language classes in general, they were among the most interesting to me. I excelled in Arabic, English and French all together. The grammar was always the part that most attracted me.
Anyway, I have got some commentaries on the video I would like to share with you:
1- The story of Babel, no matter how fictitious it sounds, is very symbolic and expressive. We, like people of Babel, now face a complexity of problems and challenges which we need to cooperate and work hand in hand to stand against, I am sure despite our various languages, we will succeed in rising up only if we believe we can do it -God won't be angered :)
2-This notion of Cumulative Cultural Adaptation is impressive, I always thought when I ate in Pizza Hut about how man has evolved from a wander-about eating from trees and hunting for meet to a highly-civilized creature ordering food at a restaurant, eating it with a fork and knife, but I had no idea anthropologists had a term for that!
3-I hope you have taken notice of the 'huge' number the EU spends on translation services so they can communicate in meeting and conferences, we-the Arabs- speak one language and yet.....you know the rest!
4-While I don't agree on the evolutionary doctrine he is immersed in, I still think the video is great and worth watching
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