How did languages form worldwide? Why don't people talk one language?

Question

Thanks,
Karl
http://www.freewebs.com/smithkarl/sitemap.htm

Answer 1

As a linguist, it is very difficult to trace back whether humanity was once speaking one single language. Babel belongs to the bible, but not in a linguistics course.

If we go back 8-10,000 years ago, there seems to be a trend in thinking that there were maybe less languages around. At least that would have been the case for Indo-European: there was no English, no German, no French, no Welsh, no Russian, no Hindi, no Albanian, no Greek, no Latin - there was only Proto-Indi-European (*IE) from which linguists can trace the evolution of *IE to English, for instance.

The reason why there are so many languages is because humanity is mobile: altough some people settle somewhere, there's always one group that moves away. After a while, their speech changes and can adapt to the speech of the people that already live in the new place.

There is a clear trend at the moment that English is becoming the international language, which means that that is the language that people using one language will use to speak to another group of speakers (lingua franca). However, this does not mean that English will take over all the other languages.

Answer 2

How many kangaroos are their in England? And how many potatoes in Ireland before 1600 CE? Words enter language because of things in the environment and how we communicate socially. At the same time, isolation causes language to change. People in France and Spain can mostly comprehend the Quebecois and Latin Americans, but not entirely due to centuries of outside influences. It's when periods of isolation are broken with intermingling of other languages (eg. the German Saxons and Norsemen settling in England) that the greatest changes happen. The South African language Afrikaaners did not exist 200 years ago.

Scientists and linguists have traced language back to one region, south central asia (Iran and the surrounding area) where "proto-indo-european" was suspected of being a single language across most of humanity. But as people spread around the world, as geography, environment and isolation caused change and regional variations, language changed.

Why has English spread worldwide and become the de facto "global language"? It certainly isn't because it's a "better" language; in fact, as one who teaches English, it's a horrible language. English spread widely because of the British empire and the timing of the US being the world's dominant nation militarily, scientifically and economically.

Think on this: Would the US be Spanish speaking if the Louisiana purchase hadn't happened? Would the US speak French if they had not lost to the British in Canada and expanded southward? Would Latin still be the world's "lingua franca" if the catholic/protestant split hadn't happened (most catholics knew Latin at one time)? Would English even exist if the Britons had lost the Battle of Hastings in 1066? English is dominant by luck and circumstance, not superiority.

We'd be better off with a worldwide artificial language using Japanese or Korean grammar, the Latin alphabet, and an organized vocabulary. But in reality, it will never happen.

Answer 3

The Bible on diversity of languages: when humanity, still speaking the same language, decided to "build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered...", God said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language...". (Genesis 11:1-9)

The Qur'an says of the diversity of languages simply that "there are signs in this for all mankind" (Qur'an 30.22); on the other hand, it says that God made us into nations and tribes "that you might know one another" (Qur'an 49.13).

Mechanically, how that took place? We notice that there are families of languages: most of the languages of Europe are related to one of three older languages: Old German, Latin, or Old Slavonic. And supposedly most of the languages of Europe are related to the languages of India. Elsewhere in the world, we could no doubt draw similar "family trees" for the languages in those places.

Attempts have been made in recent times to construct one language for humanity (e.g. Esperanto), and there are even people who use them as their native tongue. But no one has figured out the real "first language", and no doubt there is a reason for that - the best explanation I've seen is the one from the Bible...

Answer 4

I love stuff like this! I’ve been studying Linguistics for the past three years now and I think that there may never be a ‘as straight-as-a-die answer’ to this topic, because naturally (as humans), we’re born curious, inquisitive and ever-questioning. As humans, we will always be searching for answers; especially on topics that concern our existence, purpose and reason for being. So naturally we’ll be chewing on this debate for evermore! I think that the answers to this debate are entirely up to the individual who participates – how much they want to know and more importantly, want they want to believe.

Here are a few things to think about:

- The ephemeral nature of speech/language means that there is almost not enough (or even no) data on which to base conclusions on the subject

- During human evolution, a system of verbal communication emerged from proto-linguistic or non-linguistic means of communication, but beyond that little can be said

- One of the earliest accounts of the origin of languages is in the Hebrew Bible. The key biblical narrative is the story that God punished human presumption in building the Tower of Babel (or confusion of tongues), Genesis 11:1-9

- Most mythologies do not credit humans with the invention of language, but know of a language of the gods (or, language of God), predating human language

- Mystical languages used to communicate with animals or spirits, such as the language of the birds are also common, and were of particular interest during the Renaissance

- A fundamental problem of language origin is the Continuity Paradox: language acquisition apparently only occurs in situations involving pre-existing languages, or at the very least pidgin communication

- A related question concerns the possibility of linguistic monogenesis, a hypothesis that holds that there was one single protolanguage (the "Proto-World language") from which all other languages spoken by humans descend

- Biologists do not yet agree on when or how language use first emerged amongst humans or their ancestors. Estimates of the time frame of its origin, range from forty-thousand years ago, during the time of the Cro-Magnon man, to about two million years, during the time of homo-habilis

- Some authorities believe that language arose suddenly, about 40,000 years ago. This is the time period from which we first see artifacts, such as cave paintings and carved figurines. The relatively sudden appearance of these artifacts leads some to speculate that the cultural leap may have been prompted by the development of language which in turn allowed greater creativity to flourish.

- Steven Pinker, following Noam Chomsky and ultimately Immanuel Kant, believes that humans are born with a "language instinct:"

There’s loads! But if you would like to add more fuel to the fire, try Evolutionary Lingusitics!

Answer 5

It all began when people started building the tower of Babel, before that they all spoke one language and because they could communicate so easily they decided to build a tower that would get to heaven so that they could be at the same place as him. The communication was so easy that the tower was built very fast and when God noticed it he decided to stop them by giving each person their own language and by that he cut down all means of communication between them so it remained like that forever. Believe me there is no science involved here.

Answer 6

Im not sure how it happened, but it would be too difficult to expect everyone to speak one language as what might be an easy language for one is not so for the other.

Maybe there are a few gestures that all can learn but just basics only

(like hand waving for hi or goodbye, ect)

Answer 7

From a biblical point of view, it's because of the Tower of Bable incident, where God confounded the language of the people who thought they could reach Him simply by building a high tower.

From a scientific point of view, Man evolved in different places, so it's not too surprising if their language turns out different in different places.

Answer 8

Languages formed during the building of the tower of Babylon. The Lord confounded their language so that they could not understand each other. Read about it in the Bible!!

Answer 9

When I was in a train somewhere outer London with 2 other Malaysian friends who also speak Malay like I do, we couldn't stand the stench of one English punk.

It was summer and he wore sleeveless tshirt. Since Asians generally aren't as tall as the British, imagine our positions when we had to stand next to him holding the rubber grip hanging above our heads. And since the dude never shaved... boy, the aroma coming from his sweaty armpit was phenomenal...lol

Thank God, ppl speak different languages coz my friends and I had to verbally release the built-up tension or die from poisonous gas/air-pollution, whatever

Answer 10

Make a ball and call it the world. Cover it with paper mache and color it blue. Cut out several paper continents and tape them onto your world so that they are separated by water. On each one, draw a stick man. Now, move each continent slightly towards another, and add a stick man to each. Do this over and over until some of them touch. The stick men from the two continents that touch that are closest to each other are now effected by each other's speech by exposure. Do this for thousands of years.