Language

[Haipule]

I loved the Doctor Doolittle books when I was a kid.  There's a pertinent passage early on in the first book where Polynesia (a very wise parrot) tells the Doctor that learning the language of animals has precious little to do with speech.  The way a dog tilts its head or how a cat twitches her whiskers can convey as much information as speech. 

Language doesn't appear to be an exclusively human concern.

Boru

 What animals do is less a language and more of demonstrating, power, position, survival and ect. A dog will give a man a warning other than vocally and expect us to understand exactly what was demonstrated. man will make certain motions around a dog and it will believe it understands what you were demonstrating when you have no idea what you did. This is a total lack of understanding between to different animals. We learn what dogs mean by observing their actions and dogs never learn our language, There is a huge difference in what animals do and what man does, yes both communicate but one is for existence the other can derive pleasure through it's communication. True language is a special thing that is exclusive to man. We like to infer our feelings and understanding upon animals and they just do not see it as we do.

GC

The way the bible puts it is that animals have the ability of psuchE(soo-kay) and humans have also the ability of pneuma(new-ma). Both words mean: breath. However, psuchE means natural breath, breathing, and figuratively means instinctive intellect. Whereas, pneuma means a breath of intellect from an exterior source viewed from it's state or, effect. logos means: intellect revealed through words.

Most unfortunately, psuchE is translated as "soul" and pneuma is translated "spirit". So when the bible says that "animals have a soul but do not have a spirit" really means that your cat has an instinctive intellect but it cannot read a book or process a sentence beyond "bad kitty". The verb form of psuchE is psuchO. Can a "soul" be a verb? Humans have both the abilities of psuchE and pneuma which the writer of Hebrew talks about in Hebrews 4:12. I will PM my translation of Hebrews 4:12 to you if you wish to read it.