If languages evolved, how come there are no "half-languages"?

Question

Also, what use is half a language?

Any intermediates would have been functionally useless.

Answer 1

Uhm, there are. Many forms of Creole are found in the Carribean and Louisiana, all evolved from French into something more or less distinct. While similar enough to French that a French-speaker could usually understand the gist of what is being said in Creole and that a Creole speaker could make himself better understood with effort, it's separate enough that someone actually has to study the other to speak it fluently. Louisiana Creole takes this evolution from French further and incorporates some expressions from English.


Another half-languages you might be interested in is Luxumburgian, which evolved from a Dutch dialect with influences from French. Something possibly on the way to becoming a half-language is the difference between Quebecois French, which is similar to medieval French, and the more modern French spoken in France, and the deriviations found in western Africa. Another possibility is the differences between the various Englishes of the US alone. Can a Californian understand the heavy drawl of a Southerner or New Englander? Not easily, if at all, and I'm not even mentioning all the dialects of the British Isles.

Whenever you see languages in the same family, they came from half-languages and sometimes still are effectively half-languages. Latin evolved separately in France, Spain, Italy, and Romania, though for a short enough time each was still only a regional dialect or half-language and could be understood by each other, especially if they made the effort to enunciate clearly. We can see the slow shifting of German as it went from the west to east through Europe, eventually becoming English. A German can sometimes understand the gist of Dutch even today with a lot of work, and vice versa.

Answer 2

Languages did evolve, but I am not sure you understand that evolution is not starting over (it is changing) so there really would be no "half-languages". For that to be then half would have to have gone away without being replaced. A good example of evolving languages are dialects....think English in Great Britain versus English in the US as an evolution or "change" in a language.

Answer 3

No one knows exactly when language came into being, so it's hard to know for sure - or even theorize with any confidence. One suggestion, however, is that people had the mental capabilities for language before they were physically able to speak. Babies are incapable of speech because their larynx is positioned too high in their throat (helps prevent them from choking and lets them nurse and breathe at the same time). As they grow older, however, the larynx shifts downward. Early humans had throats much like that of babies, but they later evolved to have lower larynxes as they grew out of infancy. Thus there may never have been any 'half-languages' in the way you're referring to them. Either a person was capable of speech and thus developed a language among others with the same ability, or he wasn't and therefore didn't. As you say, there isn't much use to a half-language.

Answer 4

Spoken languages are underconstant evolution, as evidenced by the large numbers of new words appearing in each new edition of the dictionary. A half language would most accurately be described as a dialect occurring near the border of two distinct languages, which is quite common. The dialect usually contains elements of both and would be more mutually understandable to both languages than the languages would be to each other. In fact, border areas often represent a gradual spectrum of mutual understandability proportional to the interaction of the two populations.

Answer 5

Even sign languages have their own "dialects" too, and they ARE evolving too. Pidgen Sign and most of Sign Exact English (SEE) are on its way of the Dodo, and American Sign (ASL) is evolving and changing signs for new words that pops up every day. I sign mixed SEE and ASL, I don't know if that constitutes as a half-language or not.

Sign language varies slightly to widely from region to region within the U.S., almost like an "accent". For example, a sign for 'New York City' by Californian deaf may be different from the sign for the same city by New Yorker deaf.

Plus, sign language is Not the same world-wide either. ;-) We have American Sign Language, English (England) Sign, Chinese Sign, Japanese Sign, etc. And I would assume each have their own country dialects too.

Languages are not stoic and static. They are living languages which evolve just as we do. :-) What of today's computer lingo (internet, troll, newbie, etc) as compared to non-computer age in the 1950's to 1970's? That's evolution as I see it. Plus, some words are already on their way out of the American language, as we don't use them much anymore---some were in wide use as recent as 50 years ago and already dying out today.

Answer 6

Not true. There are working languages known to linguists as "creoles" -- that means "any language that began as a pidgin but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the original mother tongue or tongues. Examples are the Gullah of South Carolina and Georgia (based on English), the creole of Haiti (based on French), and the Papiamento of Curaçao (developed from pidgin Spanish and Portuguese)."

Sort of a cross between two or more older languages.

Answer 7

Don't be silly, there are thousands and thousands of half languages everywhere on the planet. The easiest example to witness is Jamaican Patois. But, if you travel to places like the Philipines, you will discover that they actually speak hundreds of variants of the the same languages there (some can't understand eachother). In africa, it's thousands. These are blends of various languages.

Homogeneity of language is a recent thing brought on by mass comunication and ease of travel.

Answer 8

People are social. We are made to love and be loved. We are made to accomplish things and to be appreciated for our achievements. Language is simply one means that people use for sharing and understanding those basic needs.

The Piraha of Brazil are a tribe of about 200 discovered recently with no ability or understanding of counting whatsoever. They have no numbers, except one and two and maybe three. They cannot count. They cannot understand five, six, seven for example. They also have a very primitive alphabet of sounds. However they function among themselves just fine. Efforts to teach them currency of Brazil and numbers have been useless with the adults. Adults simply say that "there heads are too hard" to understand. Children, however, are beginning to understand.

Answer 9

There are some forms of half languages. Some people in Shanghai speak "Shanghainese". Also Yiddish is some what a half language.

Answer 10

the English language evolved from many languages