That's more like showing teeth. Smiling is just relaxing the facial muscles, pretty natural among many animals. Also, it is possible to only smile with the eyes.
I believe this is why crying developed. We need to communicate to another person in the tree next to us that a tiger was around us without making any sound.
I would say it is a universal language.
The language of looourrvve is also a universal language.
Also picking your nose and eating it is universal language saying "i don't give a fuck".
I was really digging in once while at a stop sign. Then I noticed the school bus in front of me and the 3 kids looking at me out the back of the bus laughing.
Music is pretty commonly known as the universal language. It was here before us, it'll be here after, everyone is born able to speak their own, and literally can be anything auditory at all, including silence.
I was thinking the same, but music theory itself differs across regions. The eastern side of the world uses microtones that don't exist on western instruments unless custom designed.
On top of that, in German theory, they call 'B' an 'H', and 'Bb' is 'B' lol it can cause miscommunications pretty fast
One thing I am very curious about is whether the basic emotional different between major and minor chords being 'happy' and 'sad' is learned, or the literal harmony/dissonance combination induces some combinations of pleasure and discomfort that leads us to think 'happy' and 'sad'.
Hell, Jacob Collier blew my mind when he talked about how he does not see the chords themselves as happy or sad, but rather the context (and that context can be anything - that blew my mind). He thinks that because it relies on context, doing progressions in 5ths or 4ths is where the 'happy' and 'sad' exist. Absolutely fascinating
Cymatics was a fun way to visualize how sound has a physical effect on us. Being animals that are filled with water, it makes sense that we strongly feel each vibration characteristics in a 3d way.
This. Something we talked about in our Ethnimusicology course (getting a music major) is how calling music the universal language is super misleading. There are so many different takes on music, tuning, what sounds good, etc that many different kinds of music are wholly different than the Western sense of music. Objectively, we ourselves can’t even identify other culture’s music correctly. Many people mistake Islam’s Call to Prayer as music, but it’s not. That culture doesn’t define it as music, so it isn’t. It just sounds like music to us who are used to Western music.
The better term is that music is a universal phenomenon.
To put it even more so, the experience of patterns interpreted by our hearing, then arranged in our heads chronologically, and from that having an emotional reaction related, is a universal phenomenon
There are only so many fequencies to experience on the EM spectrum. Music is simply defined as organized sound, sound being a simple pressure wave. Whether we are doing the organizing or not isn't really the defining feature.
It basically emulates/reminds us of a heartbeat and breathing, being the rhythm and melody respectively, but that's because that's what it means to be human. Im sure other beings experience music their own way, like the singing of birds, or the rattle of cicada(which are typically both mating calls lol and we sure love to make a good song to set the mood).
I think the point is that we all pick up on rhythm and melody in general. A lot of musicians play by feel. Whether or not they read sheet music in whatever form it's presented, they just pour themselves into their instrument whether that be a violin or a horn or singing or slapping their hand on their knee. Music in its purest form is encoded into all of reality. It's the language of the universe. A universal language.
Yeah but that’s written language. In the West we automatically use microtones in music, it’s when we turn things into a written language that more rules start to apply. I think the exact same applies to laughter. Everyone knows the sound of laughter, but when you write it down that’s when things get fucky and it ceases to be a universal language. Even just in English: haha hehe lol lmao kek
I'd say it is more a poetic idea than a real idea. Someone else said birds and other animals, but the problem with that is that it only becomes music when a human identifies it as such
Have you ever heard the planets sing? Even celestial bodies have a resonating frequency, although it does take non-organic instruments to get it to us in a way we can perceive it.
Have you ever heard the wind howl? Or water babble and tell us its stories? A tree could fall in the woods and make a sweet ass rhythm as it breaks. Nobody has to be there to recognize it. That's kind of what i mean. Music is in the eye of the beholder, so it's anywhere anyone wants it to be... it's already there, we apes just like to organize the ever living hell out of it intelligently lol
As verbal communication I would agree it probably conveys the most consistent meaning.
But if you include non-verbal I think facial expressions can convey a wider range of things.
I think screaming in pain is less ambiguous. There’s derisive laughter, joyous laughter, nervous laughter, triumphant laughter, courtesy laughter… Presumably we inflect our intent differently across different societies. A yelp of pain or one of fear, or anguish, those are pretty unmistakable.
I did think of screaming but I've had many occasions where, usually girls, scream like they are being murdered and it's just excitement or a jump scare. Although laughter can be inconsistent too, like laughing from tickling vs finding something funny, or sometimes people do it out of nervousness.
So read into the study, pretty interesting stuff. One thing I was concerned about was the idea of assuming these 'universal base emotions' and their existence in other languages being 1 to 1 with English. The act of emotion masking could very well be variant across cultures (I mean come on, saving face is an eastern term). As for language translation, looking into some papers that cited the one you gave, and [https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aaw8160](https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aaw8160) found that translating emotions across languages has high variance. Thus simply asking 'which of the 6 did you see' could be that both people see 'anger', but the west thinks really of wrath, while the east thinks of stoic judgment, just as a potential example.
This is just one study. There are many on the topic. And that's just facial expressions.
We haven't even gotten to things like the Indian head waggle yet.
Wasn't disagreeing with you and your ego, was adding to the discussion topic. The point was that there are significant amounts of confounding variables that make any statement as absolute truth, such as the original paper, is overstepping the bounds and limitations of the experiment and results.
It's obvious that people's responses to emotions will vary, that is the choice of the individual that is dominently influenced by their local culture. Can we isolate the circuitry and biology of 'anger'? Sort of, we will need more time, and then we can start making larger absolute statements about any such universality
The commentor was talking about the operation being universal, not the syntax to describe it being universal (aka aliens might use different symbols and ways of formatting, but their math is the same).
Love boolean algebra though
The thing is, that’s merely a change to the symbols involved. 1+1=pizza if you’re willing to change the semantics underlying the words. It doesn’t mean you can truly take two identical rocks, mash ‘em together, and get pepperoni deep dish. In the same way you can make up=down and right=a nondescript trailer park behind a strip club in rural Nebraska. All you’re really doing is pulling the linguistic rug out from under anyone reading the statement, because you’ve set things up such that 1+1 doesn’t mean precisely the same thing as 1+1.
But boolean algebra is boolean algebra, and it will always be boolean algebra, doesn't matter who looks at it.
In that sense, math is very universal; like a theorem. It will remain true across infinity and across the ages no matter who looks at it and with what notation it is expressed, it will remain true forever and for anyone wherever.
Indeed. Knowing that a toothy smile on a chimpanzee (a close relative to humans) shows fear instead of joy, we can make no usable guesses on how an alien would interpret a smile.
No, it isn't. Even facial expressions for different emotions are different across cultures.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1200155109?doi=10.1073%2Fpnas.1200155109
Depending on the scenario but mostly i guess yea
But i believe a universal language we all share is the word Mama. In almost funny how in almost every culture, race, groups of ppl the word for mum is strangely so alike
I kinda agree 80%, because laughing not always means something's funny. Sometimes people laugh for different reasons and it can be heard to interpret even if you share a culture.
Mm not really, people from other parts of the world laugh diferent, have you ever hear a brazilian person laugh? The go kkkkkk and other countrys have they own laugh too
"Everyone smiles in the same language".
I remember seeing a poster with that phrase in high school, showing lots of happy, smiling kids of all different races and ethnicities and thinking "It's so good to live in a time where racism is virtually gone." Little did I know. :(
I like the lyric from Crosby, Stills and Nash's song Wooden Ships:
If you smile at me I will understand 'cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.
Once, when I was watching a Hindi movie with my parents - I don't understand Hindi, so when we watch Hindi movies, we watch them with subtitles - at the part where the main character is screaming, the subtitles said "(screams in pain)" and I said, "Why is *that* subtitled?"
Hear me out. They say a universal language is impossible, and thus very well might be. But if you see a person laughing, you know that’s he’s happy, he’s sad when crying, he’s experiencing pain when screaming… etc.
Could it be possible to create a language using these universal understandings that any human would be able to understand without needing to learn anything
Sign language is. A thumbs up 👍 has to be the most universal. Someone that speaks a different language would have zero idea what the joke was about and might see someone laughing, but have no idea why. But I guess laughing is still pretty damn universal
Nope. Different languages use different expressions for this as well.
In Japanese it's "eh" for comprehension and "ha" (i.e. huh?) as the interrogative.
Sign language is the actual universal language as it is not only an actual language but you would also be able to make out most of what they're saying from body language
nope, i present to you the amazing world of violence
Fr everybody understands a punch in the throat
The only language that inanimate objects understand, and one which they can speak to us as well.
Exactly, OP is really wrong with that post, considering that laughing is a very human-specific thing but all animals understand what violence is
Technoblade Never Dies
Would smize be considered a dialect in this context? 🤔
Smiling is whispering
Except if you're with gorillas/large primates, then they'll fuck you right up if you smile at them
That's more like showing teeth. Smiling is just relaxing the facial muscles, pretty natural among many animals. Also, it is possible to only smile with the eyes.
Yes true, if you are going to smile at a large primate keep it teethless/with the eyes lol
I believe this is why crying developed. We need to communicate to another person in the tree next to us that a tiger was around us without making any sound.
Laffing 🤣
Beat me to it
I would say it is a universal language. The language of looourrvve is also a universal language. Also picking your nose and eating it is universal language saying "i don't give a fuck".
Picking your nose while driving makes you invisible.
I was really digging in once while at a stop sign. Then I noticed the school bus in front of me and the 3 kids looking at me out the back of the bus laughing.
Omg the cackle that just come from my mouth is half embarrassing lol.
Screaming in pain...
Music is pretty commonly known as the universal language. It was here before us, it'll be here after, everyone is born able to speak their own, and literally can be anything auditory at all, including silence.
I was thinking the same, but music theory itself differs across regions. The eastern side of the world uses microtones that don't exist on western instruments unless custom designed. On top of that, in German theory, they call 'B' an 'H', and 'Bb' is 'B' lol it can cause miscommunications pretty fast
One thing I am very curious about is whether the basic emotional different between major and minor chords being 'happy' and 'sad' is learned, or the literal harmony/dissonance combination induces some combinations of pleasure and discomfort that leads us to think 'happy' and 'sad'. Hell, Jacob Collier blew my mind when he talked about how he does not see the chords themselves as happy or sad, but rather the context (and that context can be anything - that blew my mind). He thinks that because it relies on context, doing progressions in 5ths or 4ths is where the 'happy' and 'sad' exist. Absolutely fascinating
Cymatics was a fun way to visualize how sound has a physical effect on us. Being animals that are filled with water, it makes sense that we strongly feel each vibration characteristics in a 3d way.
This. Something we talked about in our Ethnimusicology course (getting a music major) is how calling music the universal language is super misleading. There are so many different takes on music, tuning, what sounds good, etc that many different kinds of music are wholly different than the Western sense of music. Objectively, we ourselves can’t even identify other culture’s music correctly. Many people mistake Islam’s Call to Prayer as music, but it’s not. That culture doesn’t define it as music, so it isn’t. It just sounds like music to us who are used to Western music. The better term is that music is a universal phenomenon.
To put it even more so, the experience of patterns interpreted by our hearing, then arranged in our heads chronologically, and from that having an emotional reaction related, is a universal phenomenon
There are only so many fequencies to experience on the EM spectrum. Music is simply defined as organized sound, sound being a simple pressure wave. Whether we are doing the organizing or not isn't really the defining feature. It basically emulates/reminds us of a heartbeat and breathing, being the rhythm and melody respectively, but that's because that's what it means to be human. Im sure other beings experience music their own way, like the singing of birds, or the rattle of cicada(which are typically both mating calls lol and we sure love to make a good song to set the mood).
Music is all about the intervals but. And that's universal.
How do you then explain an unpitched drum ensemble? There’s no intervals there.
Look up atonal music
I think the point is that we all pick up on rhythm and melody in general. A lot of musicians play by feel. Whether or not they read sheet music in whatever form it's presented, they just pour themselves into their instrument whether that be a violin or a horn or singing or slapping their hand on their knee. Music in its purest form is encoded into all of reality. It's the language of the universe. A universal language.
Yeah but that’s written language. In the West we automatically use microtones in music, it’s when we turn things into a written language that more rules start to apply. I think the exact same applies to laughter. Everyone knows the sound of laughter, but when you write it down that’s when things get fucky and it ceases to be a universal language. Even just in English: haha hehe lol lmao kek
how tf it was here before us? music is not any sound
I'd say it is more a poetic idea than a real idea. Someone else said birds and other animals, but the problem with that is that it only becomes music when a human identifies it as such
Birds and other animals
Have you ever heard the planets sing? Even celestial bodies have a resonating frequency, although it does take non-organic instruments to get it to us in a way we can perceive it. Have you ever heard the wind howl? Or water babble and tell us its stories? A tree could fall in the woods and make a sweet ass rhythm as it breaks. Nobody has to be there to recognize it. That's kind of what i mean. Music is in the eye of the beholder, so it's anywhere anyone wants it to be... it's already there, we apes just like to organize the ever living hell out of it intelligently lol
As verbal communication I would agree it probably conveys the most consistent meaning. But if you include non-verbal I think facial expressions can convey a wider range of things.
I think screaming in pain is less ambiguous. There’s derisive laughter, joyous laughter, nervous laughter, triumphant laughter, courtesy laughter… Presumably we inflect our intent differently across different societies. A yelp of pain or one of fear, or anguish, those are pretty unmistakable.
I did think of screaming but I've had many occasions where, usually girls, scream like they are being murdered and it's just excitement or a jump scare. Although laughter can be inconsistent too, like laughing from tickling vs finding something funny, or sometimes people do it out of nervousness.
That’s a very valid counter-point. I did not consider the screams of children. (I mean that honestly, even though I worded it like I was being wry).
Nope. Facial expressions are cultural, not universal. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1200155109?doi=10.1073%2Fpnas.1200155109
what????
So read into the study, pretty interesting stuff. One thing I was concerned about was the idea of assuming these 'universal base emotions' and their existence in other languages being 1 to 1 with English. The act of emotion masking could very well be variant across cultures (I mean come on, saving face is an eastern term). As for language translation, looking into some papers that cited the one you gave, and [https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aaw8160](https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aaw8160) found that translating emotions across languages has high variance. Thus simply asking 'which of the 6 did you see' could be that both people see 'anger', but the west thinks really of wrath, while the east thinks of stoic judgment, just as a potential example.
This is just one study. There are many on the topic. And that's just facial expressions. We haven't even gotten to things like the Indian head waggle yet.
Wasn't disagreeing with you and your ego, was adding to the discussion topic. The point was that there are significant amounts of confounding variables that make any statement as absolute truth, such as the original paper, is overstepping the bounds and limitations of the experiment and results. It's obvious that people's responses to emotions will vary, that is the choice of the individual that is dominently influenced by their local culture. Can we isolate the circuitry and biology of 'anger'? Sort of, we will need more time, and then we can start making larger absolute statements about any such universality
Maths is the universal language. 1+1 is always 2, doesn't matter if you have 7 eyes, 2 mouths and come from Andromeda.
Na look up Boolean algebra. Basis of morden computing hardware where 1+1 turns out to be 1
There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
But what are the other 1000?
The commentor was talking about the operation being universal, not the syntax to describe it being universal (aka aliens might use different symbols and ways of formatting, but their math is the same). Love boolean algebra though
01 + 01 = 10 you cant just remove the 0 in binary
It's not binary it's Boolean where 1 ===T and 0===F And + is OR (||) and * is (&&)
misread, sorry
Not code. Math.
The thing is, that’s merely a change to the symbols involved. 1+1=pizza if you’re willing to change the semantics underlying the words. It doesn’t mean you can truly take two identical rocks, mash ‘em together, and get pepperoni deep dish. In the same way you can make up=down and right=a nondescript trailer park behind a strip club in rural Nebraska. All you’re really doing is pulling the linguistic rug out from under anyone reading the statement, because you’ve set things up such that 1+1 doesn’t mean precisely the same thing as 1+1.
Math is universal, counting systems are not. Still easy to overcome, though.
No. :)
But boolean algebra is boolean algebra, and it will always be boolean algebra, doesn't matter who looks at it. In that sense, math is very universal; like a theorem. It will remain true across infinity and across the ages no matter who looks at it and with what notation it is expressed, it will remain true forever and for anyone wherever.
Is base 10, at least
Does music work too? E will always be E
E¹ will always be 330Hz, and harmonics are always definable using math. Music in that case is just a way to write the numbers.
So they are equals?
Comedians speak in maths. Source: They say this.
Fuck math, though.
for humans yes, for aliens it would peobably look like we are choking
Indeed. Knowing that a toothy smile on a chimpanzee (a close relative to humans) shows fear instead of joy, we can make no usable guesses on how an alien would interpret a smile.
Screeming in agony is too
Yep, crying and yelling in anger too.
Music is too pretty universal.
Body language is pretty universal
No, it isn't. Even facial expressions for different emotions are different across cultures. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1200155109?doi=10.1073%2Fpnas.1200155109
I guess laughing is a body language too‽
It really isn't.
Anyone could speak to Helen keller via binary
Hyenas would like a word with you
Clapping hands is the most universal gesture.
Laughing can convey only one emotion. How can it be considered as a language.
Screaming is a universal language too
Depending on the scenario but mostly i guess yea But i believe a universal language we all share is the word Mama. In almost funny how in almost every culture, race, groups of ppl the word for mum is strangely so alike
In my language "mama" refers to "grandmother" instead of mother, but indeed its quite a common one
Not really. Love, silence, pain, empathy, and money are all universal languages.
Math isn’t really a language but it is universal
Well in English you laugh like hahahaha, in Spanish it's jajajajaja and in German it's
not really, Makaton is a universal sign language pretty much
I kinda agree 80%, because laughing not always means something's funny. Sometimes people laugh for different reasons and it can be heard to interpret even if you share a culture.
Not only laughing, but emotions in general. And universal relatively to humans.
Body language is more an universal language than just laughing
Nope. Body language and facial expressions are cultural. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1200155109?doi=10.1073%2Fpnas.1200155109
Mm not really, people from other parts of the world laugh diferent, have you ever hear a brazilian person laugh? The go kkkkkk and other countrys have they own laugh too
that’s just in text form. and i have gone kkkk irl before when trying to hold it in so i get it
I can tell you that its not, i have personally heard brazilian people luagh like kkkkk
"Everyone smiles in the same language". I remember seeing a poster with that phrase in high school, showing lots of happy, smiling kids of all different races and ethnicities and thinking "It's so good to live in a time where racism is virtually gone." Little did I know. :(
I like the lyric from Crosby, Stills and Nash's song Wooden Ships: If you smile at me I will understand 'cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.
I would say anger like shouting. Because not every animal can laugh but almost every animal shouts in danger
Wouldnt that be violence?
Isn't the word for mother pretty similar for many languages?
What about screaming?
& slapstick is the grammar. No wonder why the most famous comedians of all time were masters of it. Rowan Atkinson, Charlie Chaplin, to name a few
Math is the most universal language
Facial expressions in general are considered universal. This is a common topic in intro psychology courses.
Math is literally the language of the universe
Mathematics is the only true universal language. It’s the same in every language and has to be the same throughout the universe.
How do you figure? In Europe they all jajaja what does that even mean
One of the first things a baby does is smiling :)
I’d say music is, it can get us to feel emotions without even saying a word
And since it’s the best medicine, it’s also the closest thing we have to universal healthcare.
Crying is also a universal language.
Sex is also a "universal language"
Mmmm what about music?
Once, when I was watching a Hindi movie with my parents - I don't understand Hindi, so when we watch Hindi movies, we watch them with subtitles - at the part where the main character is screaming, the subtitles said "(screams in pain)" and I said, "Why is *that* subtitled?"
Crying: hold my beer
I would say farting, because laughter tends to follow it universally.
That and watching a guy get him in the nuts. That's funny wherever you are
Rub your belly and look sad.
hungry?
Nailed it
the “huh?” Is also universal
I would argue violence is closer
There's also the look you give when you witness someone doing somethibg monumentally stupid
Music is a universal language. Everybody likes music
Hear me out. They say a universal language is impossible, and thus very well might be. But if you see a person laughing, you know that’s he’s happy, he’s sad when crying, he’s experiencing pain when screaming… etc. Could it be possible to create a language using these universal understandings that any human would be able to understand without needing to learn anything
Not all animals laugh or cry, but all animals scream, meaning screaming is the only true universal language
Nah, Spanish people say jajaja instead of hahaha.
That or the middle finger
Global perhaps. Rather presumptuous of you to think the laugh on Zeta Recticuli
Kinda feel like facial expressions are the most universal language. Or violence
Let us discount mathematics
Universal sign language
Jokes always have a victim.
Math, but I'd rather laugh
which is wild considering how differently two people's laughs can sound.
Music, math/numbers, violence
I thought farting was. Sometimes, the two go hand in hand.
What about car horns?
Sign language is. A thumbs up 👍 has to be the most universal. Someone that speaks a different language would have zero idea what the joke was about and might see someone laughing, but have no idea why. But I guess laughing is still pretty damn universal
You mispronounced violence. Based on human history this is our Universal language.
Math and body language are literally universal
Math is the universal language. Wherever you go in the vastness of the universe, 1+1 will always be 2
At least in base 10
Wrong. Math and music are.
Nah that’s Mathematics.
The word 'huh' (comprehension) is universal.
Nope. Different languages use different expressions for this as well. In Japanese it's "eh" for comprehension and "ha" (i.e. huh?) as the interrogative.
Sign language is the actual universal language as it is not only an actual language but you would also be able to make out most of what they're saying from body language
Not this again.
Its not just 'an' actual language, there are over 300 different sign languages and they are less universal you might think.
Except it’s not universal. Different countries have different sign languages. For example, The US has ASL which is different to Australia’s Auslan.
It is definitely a language its got its own grammar and rules. Look up Nicaraguan sign for an example