do you know which language is mother of all world languages?

Question

swath B you got it correct u get 5*'s !
dear jonathan it is not like that if you donot know than the answer does not exisit. thanks, just enjoy. take it easy Jonathan !

Answer 1

sanskrit?

Answer 2

Dear Mr. Bholeshankar,

Sorry, but Jonathan has science on his side. The relatively modest notion that Sanskrit is the mother of all north Indian languages is also inaccurate. Hindi, Gujarati, and all of their sister languages developed from Prakrits which flourished among the common people, while Sanskrit was kept to the élite. Sanskrit itself was deliberately cultivated as an attempt to revive the much older Vedic language.

Science has also shown that the human language faculty develops very quickly and fully, in the most degenerate of linguistic environments. New languages spring up just as soon as they are needed, e.g., when strangers of different backgrounds are thrown together in port towns, and Pidgins and Creoles appear within a generation or two, like magic. There is no need to postulate a unique original language; in fact, it would be untenable to do so.

Answer 3

Most specialists now agree that there is no such thing. The favored hypothesis is "polygenesis" (=several origins). It was a myth in the Middle-Ages to believe that there was one unique origin to all the languages spoken in the world.

There are several thousands of languages spoken in the world, belonging to at least 6 different groups (hundreds according to other classification methods).

The only common origin for sure is that a lot of the first words came from onomatopeas and the reproduction of the sounds of nature, cries of animals, etc.

Addition: considering sanskrit the origin of all world languages is not only an error but shows a very limited vision of the world. Sanskrit is only a member of the Indo-European family of languages which gave birth to most European languages with the exception of the Basque language, the only non-imported European language. Europe is not the world and probably not the cradle of mankind either.

To Taivo: it is true that the hypothesis of monogeneis has been widely spread in the US since the works of Meritt Ruhlen, however I am not from the US and I can tell you that his views are far from being shared worldwide. Most agree that it is possible but the methods of his analysis are disputed by many. Therefore most linguists WORLDWIDE (not just in the US) consider it only a hypothesis, and usually a less likely one. All modern prehistoric findings tend to question the previously accepted idea of a single common origin for man in Africa (as we all learned at school) so that brings even less evidence that a mother language ever existed. No evidence of polygenesis either. Both are only valid theories to this date but I am not sure monogenesis has gained the vast approval you say it has.

Answer 4

Scientists believe that all people today descend from a single woman in Africa who lived about 170,000 years ago called "Eve" or "Mitochondrial Eve."

Eve carried a mutation, the FOXP2 gene which made speech possible and the first human language began with her immediate descendants. Of course, we don't know what the language was called or what it was really like.

It is believed that some of the earliest human languages were not unlike the Khoi or Bushman languages of South Africa with a large inventory of clicking sounds. Clicking sounds are useful in hunter-gatherer societies where it is important that hunters not make sounds which will frighten away game.

Gradually, clicking sounds disappeared in most human languages of the world. In English, the sound tsk-tsk to express disapproval is believed to be about all that's left of them.

Russian linguists believe that a large number of languages in the northern hemisphere are descended from a hypothetical proto-language which they have called "Boreal." It was spoken about 20,000 to 25,000 years ago. All European languages, Middle Eastern languages, North Asian languages and American Indian languages, Eskimo and Chinese are believed to be descended from it if the theory is true.

In short, check out any books or internet articles that deal with the "Boreal" and "Nostratic" proto-languages if you are seriously interested.

Sources - See:

John Pickrell - NewScientist.com news service


"The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" by David Crystal

Answer 5

Swath B is wrong. That is just Indian nationalistic propoganda that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages. It is the ancestor of the languages of northern India only.

Millie is wrong that most linguists accept the theory of polygenesis. Most linguists accept the theory of monogenesis. Modern human language evolved at one place and time just as (and probably at the same time as) modern humans were evolving genetically from their immediate ancestors in central Africa. The mother of all languages was spoken about 100-150 thousand years ago. All modern human languages are descended from it in one way or another.

LATER EDIT for Mr. Hindisi...: Creoles are not languages de novo, but are made from the linguistic input of existing languages, therefore they do, in a sense, still derive from the original creation of language. Historical linguists in general would be very surprised if there were ever any solid evidence that languages did not have a common origin at about the same time that genetically modern man originated. Polygenesis just does not have any serious support among linguists.

Answer 6

Indo-Uralic.

Edit 1: Most (not all) modern languages can be traced back to Indo-Uralic. It is considered the ancestor of Indo-European, which in turn was the ancestor of languages like Greek, Slavic, Germanic, Iranian, Sanskrit, and Latin.

Edit 2: "swath B you got it correct" (sic). Hardly. Human civilisation is at least 7000 years old. The oldest instance of Sanskrit dates back merely 3500 years.

Answer 7

No one language is the mother of all world languages because many languages developed independently... so your question doesn't HAVE an answer

Latin is the root language for all the romance languages. Germanic and West Germanic are root languages for a number of European languages... etc. but there is no answer to your question because there is no mother language.

Answer 8

there probably is a mother language but we do not have the information to ever find out what it was. written records have only been around for about 4000 years and people have been speaking for at least 50,000 years. thats 46,000 years of language that we do not have and will probably never have any clue about.

Answer 9

The language spoken before the Tower of Babel.

Answer 10

Latin is the basis for many languages such as Italian, Spanish, and French -- I wouldn't say "all" world languages, but it is a part of many. And of course many English words have Latin roots.

Answer 11

well in my religion, the names of everything were taught to Adam when right after god created him, but it didn't mention what was the language

Hebrew is old, Arabic too