New Words
“Me not pronoun! Me Thog!”
– Thog
After one of my last caveman comics, I got some comments bemoaning the trope of “caveman speak” because of the implications it had regarding the intelligence of prehistoric humans and their capacity for language. Personally, I don’t see the same correlation between the “sophistication” (for lack of a better word) of a language system and the speakers’ level of intelligence – in my caveman comics, I feel like I write my cavemen with the same level of intelligence as my modern humans; I just make them talk funny.
But it also made me think about how people just seem to hate other folks – and think lesser of them – for simply using different words. I’m somebody who finds the changes of language, especially slang, to be very interesting, but almost all the casual discussion I see about the subject is about how dumbass kids these days just make up stupid words for no reason. And I don’t like that. I think it’s cool that “rizz” is derived from “charisma” but has its own specific use cases that’s not completely interchangeable with “charisma.” I think it’s cool that “cool” has persisted as the definitive word for “cool” for so many generations.
Anyway, that’s where this comic came from. And to those commenters from when I posted my last caveman comic last year (holy shit, it’s almost been a year?), thanks for the inspiration, but also, just cus the cavemen talk funny doesn’t mean they’re dumb. Or at least not dumber than us.
– James
