There are more than 6,500 spoken languages in the world according to most linguistic estimates which is staggering considering that only 23 languages account for three-thirds of the world population. Despite this, languages have not changed much over the last couple of millenniums with mainly new variations of accents having been produced due to diversity. However, almost all modern languages are linked to one another with most, if not all, having a common ancestor dating back to roughly 6,000 years ago.
What is considered a language?
According to Cambridge Dictionary, a language is a structured system of communication that involves the use of spoken, written or visual words to convey meaning. Naturally, humans use language in spoken or visual form when communicating but over many millenniums, written languages have become integral to society too. Most linguists agree that spoken or visual language comes natural to a person, but written language has to be learned through repetition or study, hence written language is considered an artificial creation. But what differentiates one language from another?
Officially, a language is created when it is spoken and written distinctly from other languages. Differences between different languages include the type of words use, sentence structure and significant accent influence. If a new spoken language has been created but is not yet written, then the language is termed as a dialect rather than a language itself.
Similarities in modern-day languages
Most modern-day languages are similar to at least a couple of other languages, since many languages have been inspired or derived from other languages. Pakistan’s national language Urdu is known to be influenced by multiple languages, but it was largely created based on Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Hence, many words in Urdu are similar to other languages for example, Kursi means ‘chair’ or ‘throne’ in both Arabic and Urdu, as well as many other languages including Bengali, Punjabi and Hindi.
Such similarities and derivations from other languages have been a result of cultural or colonial spread. It has been observed that Hindi and Urdu sound similar when spoken, since they are heavily inspired by Turkish, Arabic and Persian, as Pakistan and India were under the rule of Mughal Empire once. Pakistanis and Indians began to use scripts of these languages and adapt them into their communication. Upon separation of India and Pakistan, Urdu had become a modern-day version of Arabic with loanwords taken from Turkish and Persian, while Hindi had become a mixture of Persian, Arabic and Turkish meshed with Sanskrit – one of the oldest recorded languages that originated from Indian subcontinent.
Similarly, western languages especially the five major romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian & Romanian) evolved directly from Latin and much of English has been derived from other western languages. Some languages or dialects are even more similar to other dialects or languages. One example would be the Plattdeutsch (Low German) dialect which is commonly spoken in Northern Germany and has startling commonalities with English and Dutch. Moreover, Farsi and English have also been seen to have many similar words some of which have been listed below:
- Khoob in Persian – Good in English
- Behtar in Persian – Better in English
- Dokhtar in Persian – Daughter in English
- Setare in Persian – Star in English
Many other languages have similarities such as these either in words, sentence structure or various other manners, and many linguists theorise that it is a result of most languages having a common ancestor.
Common ancestor of languages
Tracing back languages to their origins is difficult as there is very little evidence of most ancient languages, since the oldest record of a written language dates to 4,000 years ago. Consequently, finding origins of languages before that can be tricky as written scripts have either been lost or destroyed over time or most languages were spoken not written before then. In fact, most languages even a couple of millenniums ago were spoken rather than written.
However, the origins of modern languages can be traced back to their ancestor largely due to extensive knowledge and information on languages nowadays. Similarities between languages can help determine where they originated from and how they evolved over time. The common ancestor of most modern languages including nearly all western languages and many eastern languages, such as Persian and Sanskrit, is known as ‘Proto-Indo-European’. It is estimated that the language originated from Eastern Russia. Although, the theory of Proto-Indo-European being the common ancestor of most modern languages is still a hypothesis, existing archaeological evidence does support the theory. As more archaeological evidence continues to be found, perhaps an even older ancestor of modern languages will be found soon.
What linguists have found and believe in
Most linguistic theories are based on cross-examination of languages and some archaeological evidence such as visual depictions or writing on stones or other instruments. Still, most theories are not heavily supported enough by evidence from them to be widely accepted by linguists. Many estimates have been produced for how old languages are, but majority of linguists agree that spoken languages were created roughly 100,000 years ago while written languages are no more than a few thousand millenniums old. First signs of written languages date back to 3000 to 5000 years ago having been found in China.
Cross-examination of languages has determined how one language evolved from another to become distinct nowadays. A main distinction between Latin and English has been found to be that when the letters ‘T’ or ‘F’ are at the start of an English word, Latin has ‘D’ and ‘P’ respectively for such positions. On the other hand, German (after the 15th century) began to have ‘Pf’ when a word started with ‘P’ as a consequence of the high German accent, while the Low British accent meant that the letter ‘P’ in English remained a ‘P’.
How languages continue to evolve
The concept of language and how they evolve, or grow is often described by linguists using a tree as a reference. From one root or branch, the tree grows various other roots or branches and so on; similarly, one language inspires another one to be created and so on. However, the natural evolution of languages has become stunted, since common languages are taught in school to masses hence common languages continue to dominate the world, while fewer different languages are spoken around the world. Usually, newer languages are created in more secluded parts of the world or among aboriginals of different regions.
A common question linguists receive regarding the evolution of language revolves around programming languages. Programming languages are not considered to be human or natural languages as they are not a means of communication for humans, but rather a means of communication for computers. Computers can use programming languages like python to express or make decisions, but we cannot. For a language to be a human or natural language, it must be expressive and flexible enough for communication among humans. Nonetheless, programming languages are still a language on their own as they are described by their own set of rules and have their own structure. It is unlikely that programming languages will ever become human languages, but perhaps one day communication may become advanced enough that spoken languages are eliminated from our lives altogether.
