Just FYI, if you’re interested in video games, the game Far Cry Primal is voice-acted in Proto-Indo-European. (With subtitles, of course.)
Surely if there were expressive sign languages before vocalized ones, we’d see some traces of it in extant languages?
For a comical take on this idea: The second picture on this website is hard to read, but the fourth (bottom left) panel shows the recurring Egyptian character in Asterix, who speaks in hieroglyphics, identifying himself. His name is pronounced Ptenisnet, and the hieroglyphic looks just like it sounds. 
I meant to say, Dutch has ons.
I would go further and say that it’s necessarily not so.
As I imagine you’re quite aware, sign languages are “full” languages and often quite distinct from geographically adjacent spoken languages. In other words, sign languages aren’t simply gesture-transliterated spoken languages. For example, American Sign Language is closer in syntax and grammar to spoken French than it is to spoken English. (At least, that’s what I’ve read).
Also, functional MRI research shows that speaking in sign language lights up the same regions of the brain as the same activity in spoken languages. (Again, this is my lay understanding).
That said, I think the original comment might stand. KK Fusion referred to “verbal” communication. Since sign language is neurologically indistinct from spoken language, I’d argue that they’re both “verbal.” If the distinction being made is between language and ad-hoc gestures, it seems that sign language is obviously on the “language” side of that divide.
Jonathan Swift complained about the shift to the current way of pronouncing words like “kissed” and “disturbed” (as “kist” and “disturbd” writing:
" These Gentlemen, although they could not be insensible how much our Language was already overstocked with Monosyllables; yet, to same Time and Pains, introduced that barbarous Custom of abbreviating Words, to fit them to the Measure of their Verses; and this they have frequently done, so very injudiciously, as to form such harsh unharmonious Sounds, that none but a Northern Ear could endure: They have joined the most obdurate Consonants without one intervening Vowel, only to shorten a Syllable: And their Taste in time became so depraved, that what was a first a Poetical Licence, not to be justified, they made their Choice, alledging, that the Words pronounced at length, sounded faint and languid. This was a Pretence to take up the same Custom in Prose; so that most of the Books we see now a-days, are full of those Manglings and Abbreviations. Instances of this Abuse are innumerable: What does Your Lordship think of the Words, Drudg’d, Disturb’d, Rebuk’t, Fledg’d, and a thousand others, every where to be met in Prose as well as Verse? Where, by leaving out a Vowel to save a Syllable, we form so jarring a Sound, and so difficult to utter, that I have often wondred how it could ever obtain.
You haven’t been to the shores of the Mediterranean, have you?
You know that joke about the Italian prisoner who couldn’t speak because his hands had been tied? The first time I heard it, the Americans laughed; the Swedes and the English and the Germans and some of the French laughed. The Spaniards and the Italians and the rest of the French commiserated with the poor prisoner because, hey, really, how do you speak without moving your hands?
Not currently, but in the not too distant past, among certain classes of people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had a famous speech where he stated, “I have said this before, and I will say it again and again, and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”
William Safire, writing in Safire’s New Political Dictionary (1993) noted that, Roosevelt liked the phrase, especially since his own pronunciation of “again” was distinctive in US speech, rhyming with “rain” rather than “when.”
The pronunciation was then current among people of his age and aristocratic background.
Mainly because that’s how about amillion peoplestill say “18 Rabbit.”
(Also, many ancient Maya glyphs were partially phonetic, like many Chinese characters.)
Close. The Romans used the digraphs “ph” and “th” to represent exactly what they look like: Greek aspirated “p” and aspirated “t” (that is, “p” or “t” with a puff of air, as we pronounce them in many situations, e.g. “pot,” but not “spot”).
Only later did the Greeks shift their pronunciation to the fricatives we associate with these same Greek letters phi and theta, and late Roman (and then English, etc.) followed suit – keeping their spelling (“ph” or “th”), but also changing the pronunciation to today’s familiar fricatives.
English then increased the use of “th” to include its own, native, Germanic fricatives, until then written as a thorn or yodh, depending if voiced or not.(“ph” just continued to be used for Greek-derived words, since “f” worked just fine for* that *English fricative).
By this I meant that about a million people still say something very close to Uaxaclajuun Ub’aah K’awiil to express the meaning “18 Rabbit.”
Underlining added. You mean eth or edh.
Right! Thanks.
I missed this before.
Do you mean that the Romans were using the digraphs to spell Greek words? Or did Latin have aspirated stops? If so that’s interesting given that today Romance languages don’t have any today.
Latin had neologisms from Greek, which on occasion included aspirated stops (or tried to, it would depend on the speaker). Same as today’s Romance languages can have them in neologisms from languages with aspirated stops (or at least try to have them).
Right — just the borrowed Greek words. If Latin had distinct, native phonemes for these aspirated sounds, it probably would have developed (via Etruscan) letters evolved from Greek “theta” and “phi.”
Psh, I have worked in a machine shop where with the noise, and required hearing protection had me showing someone how to do stuff hands on and no words.
Hells bells, I learn better with hands on training than verbal or written with pictures, many people do. How do you think a mute person trains and a deaf person gets trained?
That makes sense to me. Although, as a native English speaker I find it surprisingly difficult to pronounce an unaspirated stop that isn’t preceded by an ‘s’, e.g. /pin/ instead of /p[sup]h[/sup]in/. I’ve forgotten almost everything I ever knew, from an academic perspective, about foreign language acquisition, but do suspect that certain allophones like this one can be extremely difficult to perceive. You can grow up speaking your native language and yet never become aware of them, unless you take a phonology course. Even more remarkable to me is the fact that there are many languages in which pairs of completely different words may be distinguished only by the presence or absence of aspiration.
Hence my “try to” Last week I got a factory tour courtesy of a Spanish woman whose English is extremely good except that she hasn’t learned to pronounce those /s…/ words without /es/ticking an /e/ in front; I don’t imagine she ever will, since she hasn’t by now. That kind of thing is one of the biggest difficulties of language learning, in part because (as you say) native speakers often can hear differences we’ve got no idea how to explain.