This article was written by Elijah Emory-Muhammad of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
A seething howl, an attentive bark or a hostile growl are just some of the ways that animals can communicate with each other. However, animals lack the ability to use language as humans do. The human brain is able to rationally organize sound into speech, unlike animals, which mostly produce instinctive responses. Yet humans were not always able to communicate so effectively as they do now, and humans too used to mostly communicate through grunts and cries. So how did language reach the point that it is at now?
A lack of evidence clouds the origins of language as a whole, but there are various theories that could unearth the mysteries of language. One such theory, the Bow-Wow Theory, suggests that language started off as imitations of natural sounds. Nevertheless, this theory of onomatopoeic speech can be challenged because few words in most languages are just imitations of sounds and sounds are perceived differently in different languages. For example, in English the sound a cow makes is heard as “moo” and in Finnish it is heard as “ammuu.”
The Pooh-Pooh theory suggests that speech began with interjections and exclamations; still, this theory can be challenged as well. Similar to the Bow-Wow theory, no complex languages contain a relatively large amount of this part of speech.
Another common theory is the Yo-He-Ho theory, which suggests that language evolved from grunts, groans and snorts but this theory overlooks where exactly words, not to mention grammar, came from.
On the other hand, the origins of specific languages can be backed up by some historical evidence. Just like how India gave birth to arguably the oldest religion, Hinduism, the same applies for what scientists consider the oldest language, Tamil. Even though it is believed that Tamil first appeared around 5,000 years ago, it is surprisingly still spoken by around 77 million people in the world. Controversially following Tamil is Sanskrit, a language that also originated in India and plays a role in the Indo-European root of language.
Some other very old languages are Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Chinese, the oldest written language that is still in use. An honorable mention is Sumerian for its contributions to the oldest written text, “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” Unfortunately, languages like Sumerian and Egyptian, having been used for some of the oldest written texts, are now dead languages.
Although most language groups are compact in specific areas, there are two prominent enclaves of languages that spread across the globe. The Indo-European (western and southern Eurasian) languages eventually spread to the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand because of European colonial expansion. Even so, prior to this expansion, the people who spoke the Indo-European languages interacted with the Finno-Ugric (Finland, Estonia, Hungary) group in Europe. This was mostly done through tribal warfare and eventually the Finno-Ugric group was scattered due to Indo-European pressure.
Romance languages form a subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian are all Romance languages which were heavily influenced by the Roman empire’s national use of Latin. A successful Roman campaign in the 2nd century AD led to these European territories to be put under the control of the Roman empire until its fall. Although what is now England was also under the control of the Roman empire, Britannia’s Latin roots had not seeped deep enough for them to retain the language after the arrival of German tribes like the Angles and the Saxons. For this reason, English is considered a Germanic language, along with Dutch, Flemish, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Islandic. Then, one may wonder, how does English share commonalities with Romance languages?
That is because once the Germanic Normans seized parts of France, Latin words from medieval French were added to their languages. Then the Normans arrived in England and the various languages intermingled. For this reason, modern English’s vocabulary has large portions of Germanic and Romance origins. Yet the interconnectedness of these languages only account for a small portion of the 147 or so language families.
With roughly 6,500 languages being spoken in the world today, it is very difficult for experts to trace the origins of language but an understanding of language has definitely been achieved. Language itself is akin to DNA; the many languages that have gone through a sort of natural selection to become what they are today are almost like the adaptive genes that dictate the traits of humans.
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