HOW HAVE TREES SHAPED THE FORMATION OF LANGUAGE?

Rebecca Gill (OHS)

It is hard to pinpoint exactly what the first language ever used was, although some historians have theorised that languages such as Chinese were among the first few to be spoken, whilst Sumerian and Hieroglyphs are included as some of the first writing systems. Among these systems, many have changed as they were passed through generation to generation, in turn, altering each character or letter into a more abstract form. Originally, however, many languages featured pictographs such as in Mesopotamia. This consists of what looks like simplified drawings of the object being named, for instance a mountain may look like a peak shape or a human may look similar to a stick figure. It is simple to see how these symbols were chosen to represent each word if we look at them like this and it is interesting to see how they have been adapted. Languages are unique in that they continuously grow as time goes by, with new words being added to dictionaries every year. However, initially, words were largely created based on what people could see and the majority of new words were likely to be simple nouns. This, of course, would include something such as the word for ‘tree’ as these natural landforms would serve as a means for food, fuel as well as a building material for many generations. Due to this fact, in each language, the word for tree was created early on in the language’s history. This, in turn, has meant that other words created after the basic vocabulary was laid down and the language was beginning to be properly developed may stem from the word for tree in certain languages. For example, the Chinese character for tree is 木 (mù). The word for woods is 林. One can see that this character has been created by putting two 木 characters side by side to demonstrate the difference in size between a singular tree and a wood, therefore a plural noun has been created. The word is also commonly used as a family name. 森 is the character for forest, again another 木 has been added to the word for woods. These examples are very simple to understand due to the clear, proportional link between the size of the definition and the character difficulty. Other examples may require more thought to perceive. The character for tree is also used in perhaps more subtle ways for instance within the word 休息 (xiūxí) meaning to rest. A tree can provide shade with its branches, therefore creating an ideal space to rest under. This is but a few simple examples from only one language to showcase how a language has been formed by looking at the initial words which were likely viewed as most important for that civilisation. This shows how trees can hold relevance for countries all over the world, not just playing a part in agriculture and therefore the country’s culture but also in a way more directly rooted in the language itself.

Bibliography

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