History of Languages

History of Languages

It seems that academics and professionals are still not entirely sure of how old language is, but general consensus us that it has been with us since around 100 000 BC. As a result of this disagreement, it is even harder to accept which is the oldest surviving language. That is, one that is still in use in our modern world.

Currently, about 7,000 languages are spoken around the world. They belong to different language families and their origins date back thousands of years ago. Researchers are still finding it difficult to determine which language is the oldest. However, the earliest written languages on record are the cuneiform script that was discovered in Mesopotamia that dates back to 8th millennium BC. The Sumerian script that started in the 3rd millennium BC was developed for funerary inscriptions because the Sumerians were concerned about their afterlife.

Early History

For centuries, humans have wondered about the origins of language and yet nobody is any the wiser due to lack of agreement on the topic as well as evidence.

Evidence can be found in fossils as well as studies of language learning and comparisons between the languages of humans and animals. Thus, this a long and complex process which would draw on the work of scientists, archaeologists, psychologists and more.

The lack of evidence has meant that many experts shy away from this subject. In fact, in 1866, the Linguistics Society of Paris banned any debates on the topic. Ever since, it has been considered one of the most difficult topics faced by science.

Modern Theories

Everybody from Darwin to Chomsky has had their say on this topic. Theories range from children copying their mothers to apes producing sounds which have evolved into language.

Another theory states that as the early humans developed tools, language also developed as gestures could no longer be used due to hands being occupied with tools.

The origins of human language will perhaps remain forever obscure. By contrast the origin of individual languages has been the subject of very precise study over the past two centuries.

         There are about 5000 languages spoken in the world today (a third of them in Africa), but scholars group them together into relatively few families - probably less than twenty. Languages are linked to each other by shared words or sounds or grammatical constructions. The theory is that the members of each linguistic group have descended from one language, a common ancestor. In many cases that original language is judged by the experts to have been spoken in surprisingly recent times - as little as a few thousand years ago.

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=axx

The above link makes a lecture of following.

1. Words on the brain: from 1 million years ago?
2. Origins of language
3. Linguistic groups: from 3000 BC
4. Language and race
5. Latin and German: from the 5th century
6. Linguistic evolution
7. Imperial tongues
8. New languages from old