who invented english and all the other languages ???
2007-01-25 22:57:36 · 7 answers · asked by Teju 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Nobody knows for sure. Language was invented long before people started writing things down. That led to the invention of alphabets, but nobody is sure who invented the first one of those either. All we know for sure is that on the basis of what we know now (which is always subject to being changed by new discoveries sometime in the future), the oldest SURVIVING written language is Sanskrit. That would make the alphabet it used the oldest known as well. As for who "invented" English and all the other languages, it wasn't any one person or even one group of people. Language evolved over a long period of years, just like people did, and their origins are as varied as the languages themselves. English was originally a Germanic language, like German, Dutch, and the Scandanavian dialects. But very little of the original Germanic roots remain. The Norman conquest of England in 1066, resulted in French becoming the "lingua franca" of the land. At first confined to the nobility, it eventually filtered down to the common people, blending with their native Germanic tongue, until it became our current patois, wherein fully 2/3 of the 20,000 most commonly used English words are of French origin. That's why I laugh by tuchis off every time I hear the French kvetching about English words creeping into their language. Those chickens are just coming home to roost!
2007-01-25 23:17:06 · answer #1 · answered by texasjewboy12 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
According to many sources the Phoenicians are credited with developing the world's first alphabet, which was then modified by the addition of vowels, by the Greeks, whose first two letters, alpha and beta -- drawn from the first two (consonantal) letters of the Hebrew alphabet -- were put together to form the name "alphabet."
Before that though there were the Egyptians and their hieroglyphs, each representing an idea, a word and even what is argued to be letter, or at least their equivalent of the time.
2007-01-26 07:09:42 · answer #2 · answered by Sabrina S 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think the word "invented" is taking you in the wrong direction to find an answer to your question.
2007-01-26 07:02:24 · answer #3 · answered by kathryn3 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
2007-01-26 23:01:49 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
English originated from Anglo-saxon and Latin. the alphabet is mostly from the Greek.
2007-01-26 07:31:59 · answer #5 · answered by flying peanuts 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Bloke called Eric, down the pub.
2007-01-26 07:02:41 · answer #6 · answered by Boofie 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
there is no way to name a who, there were different cultures, trough lots of years in each case.
2007-01-26 08:51:59 · answer #7 · answered by sofista 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋