Language has existed since the beginning of time. It’s a means of communication, a link between meaning and expression, an arbitrary system of creative vocal symbols used among human beings.
You’re about to start wondering why I said vocal when we have written language too, right? Well, as you might already know spoken language is the prime language. Dare I say, the origin of any language.
But is it a unified language? Of course not. I don’t have to tell you that there are more than 7,000 languages in the world today.
What I do have to tell you today, however, is the reason behind this diversity, the reason why we have so many languages.
Now, before we get to our main topic, we first have to understand how language came to exist in the first place. Don’t worry, it’s all related.
Now, are u interested in knowing the origin of your language? If so, do carry on reading. Trust me, it’s not as boring as you think.
The origin of language
To tell you the truth, no one knows for sure how language originated.
We don’t have an accurate agreed-on answer as to where language came from. There is no direct physical evidence related to the speech of our ancestor that might tell us how language was back in the early stages, but what we do have is a bunch of theories and speculations. Let’s go through them, shall we?
What we suspect first is that some type of spoken language developed between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago and that it came from one of these sources:
The divine source:
In most religions, it is believed that language is a God-given gift to human species. In Christianity, God gave Adam the kingdom of all animals in the Garden of Eden and the first thing Adam did was to name these animals. That is how language started according to religious sources. “Whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name”.
Now listen to this, it is believed that today people speak many different languages rather than only one language because ancient humans became too proud and they tried to build the Tower of Babel in order to reach God. So, God punished them by separating their languages.
The natural sound source:
It is believed that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. The theory itself included many different theories including:
- The “Pooh-pooh” Theory: according to this assumption language originated with the use of sounds that reflect emotions such as pain, fear, hunger, and the sounds of laughter and crying. Some examples of these sounds are Ah, Ooh, Ouch, etc. However, these sounds of emotion do not necessarily exist in the vocabulary of human language. Therefore, it is not possible to assume that sounds of emotion are the basis for human language.
- The “Bow-bow” Theory: all languages have sounds that mimic the natural sounds. These are called onomatopoeic words. For example: CAW-CAW, COO-COO, Splash, Bang, Boom. What they believe in short is that language originated from these onomatopoeic words.
The physical adaptation source:
Instead of looking at the type of sounds as the source of human speech, we can look at the type of physical features human kind possesses. Especially those distinct from other creatures, for example: the human mouth has a complicated muscular system, which allows us to produce various vowels.
Our tongue can move backwards, forwards, up and down. This allows us to produce various speech sounds and add to that having upright teeth, small lips, a pharynx and a larynx.
In fact without these speech organs, human beings could not have spoken. And for this reason, researchers have claimed that human beings adapted all these physiological changes throughout their history and these changes caused the emergence of human language.
The Genetic source and The Innateness hypothesis:
This is where science comes along. As we all know the human brain is far more powerful than any small physical adaptation therefore scholars looked at it as the source of language, they indicated that we are born with a special capacity for language.
According to Chomsky humans are born with innately hard wired language capabilities. When a child is born he has the ability to learn any language. In other words, his brain has got the templates of all the languages. What he has is called LAD ( language acquisition device).
And while scientists have discovered a gene by the name of FOX P2 that assists in the child’s language internalizing abilities. This can’t be considered as a conclusive proof to say that the origin of language is the direct result of innate genetic hard wiring of human brain.
What we can conclude from all these theories is that we can’t blindly reject the fact that languages are similar in words, sounds, sentences, etc, so perhaps they really did originate from one ancient language (“mono genesis” theory). But there is no strong evidence that supports this idea.
Why are there many languages?
Regardless of whether language was a special gift from God, a natural evolutionary acquisition, or any of the other theories, the fact remains that language does exist. And since so many languages exist today as well, we can’t help but wonder why?
Many hypotheses were published to answer this question:
Candelabra theory:
This hypothesis claims that as humans evolved parallelly in more than one location, each group developed its own unique language, meaning that distance had the major role of the diversity we see today.
Now, imagine you have a tribe of people who speak a common language. You take this tribe and split it in two, with one group going east and the other going west. Eventually they lose contact with each other, but their language remains common for a while.
Over time though, the two groups live through different experiences and encounter different things that influence their language. They come across new objects and ideas and create new words for them independently.
Some old words are lost as those objects or ideas may be unimportant in their new environment. Meaning of words slowly shifts as they take on more metaphorical meanings.
Pronunciation changes as certain sounds become harder or softer. Grammar changes as certain markers are deemed unnecessary while new markers are formed to distinguish concepts they find important.
After several hundred years, if the tribe is reunited, they will find it difficult to communicate because their language has evolved differently during their years of seperation.
The Mother Tongue theory:
This theory claims that one original language spoken by a single group of Homo sapiens perhaps as early as 150,000 years ago gave rise to all human languages spoken on the Earth today.
As humans colonized various continents, this original mother tongue diverged through time to form the numerous languages spoken today. Meaning that the new environments played a role here which led to new ways of life and new things to say.
As humans spread into new parts of the world, and developed new technologies and social structures, their worlds changed. And when speakers of one language have come into deep, long-term contact with speakers of another language, sometimes the result is a new language emerging.
English is an example, as it evolved out of the contact between French-speakers and Anglo-Saxon speakers.
The development of Pidgin and Creole:
- A pidgin language: is a simplified language derived from two or more language. In other words, it’s a contact language developed and used by people who do not share a common language in a given geographical area.
- A Creole language: is a stable natural language that develops from a pidgin.
Given the fact that there weren’t any forms of instantaneous communication that we have today, contact between early communities that were too far apart or too difficult to reach would have been rare or non-existent.
Subsequent migrations of groups that spoke different languages, such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Altaic, and Proto-Semitic needed a way to communicate, they further spread their languages (Pidgin and Creole). And this resulted in the gradual changes of sentence structure, sound, and vocabulary.
Conflict between subgroups of a language community:
Language attributes to group identity. Its purpose is to communicate clearly, quickly, and concisely, so communities develop “short-cuts” that are unique to their needs.
And different age-groups articulate their own particular position within a society by speaking in their own distinctive way. Especially young groups who like to distance themselves using slang words such as: mate, cash, farm, etc.
It is important to state that even in the most isolated communities there will always be internal conflict between the young and the old, and that surely drives language change and diversity.
For what it’s worth, the many languages that still exist in the world are important for reasons that have nothing to do with distance, environment, historical migration or any conflict of some sort.
They are important because they bring communities and cultures together. They preserve knowledge and connect people to their heritage.
For these reasons, and many more, linguistic diversity is worth preserving by not letting any language die, regardless of its origin and how it came to be.
In the end, I would really like to know what language you happen to speak. Are you a bilingual or by chance a multilingual? Make sure to comment below!