What is the origin of language?

Question

Maybe a difficult question but what are the origins of the different types of languages? I'm mostly interested in the English and Greek language origins but I won't discriminate against any other information. Thanks.

Answer 1

Here's the short version. Linguist have long wondered if modern languages descended from a common ancestor.
As far as English and Greek go, those languages are part of the Proto-Indo-European family which have been traced back 5,000 yrs. Here's a chart that showing the evolution of languages from that time.
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/pdf/philology.PDF
I've found this site which gives more of an explanation and is more interactive and user-friendly. :-)
http://colfa.utsa.edu/drinka/pie/pie.html

Answer 2

Well, in the natural of the orgin of all Language, we don't know it. This is because the first humans who spoke didn't invent a writing system. That came many many centuries later. The other problem is the farther back you go, the less likely you are to find the origin of that language. There are ideas that say that all languages come from a proto language which might have started somewhere in Africa. Unfortunately we don't even know if there was a proto language or if it was developed in different areas. We (linguistic anthropologists, linguists, historical linguists) do however have ideas as to the possible grammar and formation because of Creoles. A Creole is formed when the children don't have a direct language to listen to and learn. Instead they take from the 2 or more languages that formed the Pidgin, and they develop their on grammar over time. The funny thing is, no matter what the grammars used to form the pidgin, the creoles all around the world usually end up with similar grammar. This might show how the first languages started to evolve.

Now, As to the rest of the question. The oldest language we can trace English and Greek to are Proto-Indo-European. This is a Proto language that streched from India to Europe. Indo-European is actually a reconstructed language based on what we know from the oldest Indo-European languages we can find. Indo-European languages are spoken in India, the Middle East, and throughout Europe, and now, the Americas and Australia. Ancient Greek was an offshoot of Indo-European, I think in the family known as Hellenic, but I'm not sure exactly. Then it formed into Modern Greek which as one can tell, it evolved.... a lot.

Lastly, English has a colourful history to say the least. England was invaded by the Angles (thus Angle-land) then the Saxons, which formed Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. Then the Norman Conquest added the French element to English. There were also Viking raids as well as other affects.
The worst part of the history of the English language is the Great Vowel shift, which happened right before Shakespeare (that's why Shakespeare is considered Early Modern English, not Middle English). this is what happened to our vowels to make many different pronunciations for each vowel. And what's worse is it would often change in the present tense but not in the past of irregular verbs, so then the words sounded completely different now. That is like Keep and Kept, and meet and met, and bite and bit. The older forms would have made more sense if it weren't for the vowel shift.

I know it's long, but I hope that helps. There are more details I can provide you with on the History of English and German, and many romance languages, but you'd probably have to IM me for that.

Answer 3

Hi, generally the origin of any language is another language. English and Greek both belong to the Indo - European family, a group of languages that extend from India-to Europe which seem all to have roots in a Proto-Indo-European language, some say an edenic language from Ur other from eralier african origins but is all very speculative and based in a theory of common ancestry instead of paralel development by which humans, languages and everything would not necessary have the same evolutionary origins biut would have developed parallely from difrerent origins -species.

Although this classification is artificial, man made I mean, it is quite logical and there are enough basis to accept the validity of the family per se.

Beyond the Indo - European group or family, which goes back in time aproximatelly 9000 years and since there are now written proofs of the existance of other languages from which indo-european might procede, being the earlier remains found of the oldest scriptures dated also 9000 years ago, it would be absolutely speculative to attempt much further explanartion than that.

Nevertheless, since you asked, in my oppinion the origin of language is mimetic, i.e. it would have imitated nature or natural noises. The first languages, in an evolutionary frame, evolved from basic indicative noised often related or that echoed -mirrored other noises either made by the things - objects or made by their movement. Written language would have evolved much in the same way but it would have evolved from visual forms namely footprints or animal prints would have tauhght the man a way to represent something that was not there anymore but had been.

For this reason, phonetically some names and nouns are very similar even in very distantly related families. For example the pronouns that, these, those etc...share the T- D + vowel sound with hundreds of otyher world languages. So probably a simple T- D npoise would probably have accompanired a manual indication, i.e. pointing, to indicate any toher thing. Hence why pronoun are words that always stand for other things than themselves or substitute the noun - names.

Hope it helps
Santiago

Answer 4

English and Greek. There were a group of humans who spoke a language now known only as Indo-European. Approx. 5,000 years ago, this group broke apart and spread around Europe and Asia. The language of those who ended up in Greece evolved into Greek. The language of those who ended up in England evolved into English.