How Languages Evolved Worldwide

From what was once a much smaller number, thousands of languages have grown throughout the course of human history. Why do we have so many now? Furthermore, how do we keep track of everyone? According to Alex Gendler, linguists divide languages into language families, and he demonstrated through extensive research how these linguistic trees provide crucial historical context.

According to the biblical Tower of Babel legend, humanity originally spoke a single language before being abruptly divided into numerous tribes that were unable to communicate with one another. However, we do know that the thousands of languages spoken now may be traced back to a considerably smaller number, even though we are not actually sure if such an original language ever existed. How did we come to have so many then? The earth was substantially less inhabited in the early stages of human migration.

People who lived in large groups and spoke the same language and had the same culture frequently broke up into smaller tribes and dispersed in search of new prey and productive territory. They became separated from one another and evolved in diverse ways as a result of migration and settlement in new locations. Similar dialects with diverse pronunciation and vocabulary evolved into completely different languages over the course of centuries of living in various environments, eating various foods, and interacting with various neighbors; this division persisted as populations increased and dispersed.

Similar to genealogists, contemporary linguists attempt to visualize this process by connecting as many languages as they can to a protolanguage, which serves as their common ancestor. A language family is a collection of all languages that are connected in this way. Language families might include numerous branches and sub-families. So how do we establish whether or not languages are related at all? Words with similar sounds don't often mean much. Instead of being derived from a shared root, they could be false cognates or simply directly borrowed phrases.

Basic vocabulary that is less likely to be borrowed, such as pronouns, numbers, and kinship terms, is also a more reliable indicator than grammar and syntax. Linguists can identify relationships, pinpoint key stages in the history of languages, and even rebuild previous languages without written records by methodically analyzing these qualities and searching for consistent patterns of sound changes and correspondences between languages.

Even more significant historical hints can be deduced from linguistics, such as the geographic origins and way of life of prehistoric peoples based on which of their words were indigenous and which were imported. Linguists encounter two fundamental issues while developing these language family trees. One is that it is unclear how to determine which dialects should be treated as independent languages and which should not, i.e., where the branches at the bottom should finish.

Chinese is regarded as a single language, although the various dialects are so dissimilar from one another that they are frequently incomprehensible to one another. The real languages used by live individuals do not fall into well defined categories but rather change through time, straddling boundaries and classifications. Instead of linguistic traits, the distinction between languages and dialects is sometimes a result of shifting political and national factors. This is why, depending on who is counting, the answer to the question "How many languages are there?" might range from 3,000 to 8,000.

Another issue is that the amount of information we know about the languages at the top of the tree decreases as we move further back in time. Languages from different families are assumed to be unrelated on all levels since the current division of the major language families represents the upper bound at which links can be established with a tolerable degree of certainty. But things could alter.

While many ideas for super families or higher level relationships are speculative, some have received widespread acceptance, and others are being considered, particularly for native languages with sparse speaker populations that have not received much research. It's possible that we'll never be able to explain how language developed or establish if all human languages did, in fact, descend from a single ancestor dispersed across the babel of migration. But take care next time you hear a strange tongue. You can be wrong about how foreign it is.