@Chights47,
If you could ask a goldfish about water, it might look around and ask you what you're talking about. Language is like the water in a fish bowl, you 'swim' in it. Like a goldfish, you can catch glimpses of your body, you can see the sand and the ceramic shipwreck, but you can't see who's doing the swimming and you take the water for granted. Somebody has to take you out of the bowl, point to the water, and you have to gasp for breath before you understand.
Where did language come from?
7 million years ago, the oldest known relative of modern man walked upright in Western Africa in what is now called Chad and until we discover evidence of older relatives, language began with
Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
So, before language there was be-ing (to be, as in 'you are 'be'-ing, be-ing is written with a hyphen to distinguish be-ing from a concept called being, as in human being).
What is language?
Something would occur to
Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the wonder of a sunrise, the splendor of a sunset, the pain of stepping on a rock, grumblings in his stomach, the warmth of the sun, or an animal running away, and he would 'grunt'. ('Grunting' isn't necessarily a verbal occurrence, it could be nothing more than what we call 'recognition'). The family: hominidae (bipedal mammals including recent humans) have been 'grunting' in one form or another for 7 million years.
First, there was be-ing followed by the 'grunt'. The 'grunt' may have been a simple 'grumbling of the stomach' followed by the act of getting up and finding food.
It wasn't until the 5th century BC in India that the formal study of language began. A grammarian named Panini observed our speaking, identified the 'grunts' we were making and classified them into hard sounds (consonants) and soft sounds (vowels). He determined whether what we were talking about referred to some thing (noun) or an action (verb). He then wrote down 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology. Vedic Sanskrit is the first known formulation of sounds into consonants, vowels, nouns, and verbs.
In essence, Panini noticed patterns in our speaking and set up agreements for us to follow.
Wait just a minute! Panini didn't set up anything! We were already following the agreements he set down. We were already speaking with and understanding each other, and if we weren't he wouldn't have had anything to observe. Panini was just the first person to put what he observed into a formal system, i.e., he wrote it down and got historical notoriety for the writing.
Most of life follows this scenario. Somebody notices a pattern, puts it down on paper, creates his own concept for what was observed and brands it as his own. Whether they know or don't know that's what they're doing is immaterial to this conversation. We listen to the person as if he knows something we don't. We make this person the authority, blindly calling what he observed a 'fact' and we file it away without ever taking the time to 'observe' (think through) what he observed and uncover what's there. In essence, we set aside our author-ship in the matter called 'living'.
The consequence of Panini's observations is that we have replaced be-ing and recognition (knowing) with a system called language: -noun a system of “guttural grunts” classified into hard sounds (consonants) and soft sounds (vowels), then into nouns and verbs, concepts, and finally into facts.
We let the system interpret life for us instead of using the system to express our be-ing. Essentially, we have turned living (be-ing) and recognition (knowing) into a predictable system which doesn't allow room for you to 'be' or 'know'. 'Author', 'authentic', 'authority', and 'authenticity' are all related. If you turn over control of your life to a 'system' you are no longer the author of your own life. You no longer have any authority in your life and the price you pay is your own authenticity (be-ing).
