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Origin of languages
1.       ikicihan
1127 posts
 20 May 2012 Sun 08:24 pm

I am searching for the origin of languages over internet. There is no agreement on this subject and i think there will never be. 

 

Generally there are two kind of theories:

1. Evolutionist theories: Like all living things, languages started and evolved in millions of year.

2. Creationist theories: Like all living things, a language or languages created by god.

 

Origin of language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

 

Is Arabic the Language of Adam? or of Paradise?

http://en.islamtoday.net/artshow-437-3447.htm



Edited (5/20/2012) by ikicihan

2.       barba_mama
1629 posts
 21 May 2012 Mon 10:01 pm

In some religions languages are created by God as a punishment. At one point all humans spoke the same language, and they wanted to created a tower that was so high that it could reach eaven. This was against God´s will, but the people continued building it. By making everybody speak a different language, they couldn´t build the tower anymore (they couldn´t communicate), and the tower crumbled. People than scattered the earth as God wanted in the first place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

I don´t believe this, but it´s still a nice story. Different language in different regions can also be found in a lot of animals. A lot of birds have slightly different sounds in different countries.

3.       vineyards
1954 posts
 22 May 2012 Tue 12:03 am

This was a favourite subject of mine about a couple of decades ago. Here is something that I remember from those days:

In the ancient times, people used to believe in the existence of a proto-language - a language shared by the human race. The "ancient" here refers to nearly 3 millenia ago. They believed this proto-language served the basis for other languages.

A pharoh named Psammetichus I decided to conduct an experiment. He originally sought to prove that Egypt was the oldest human civilization in the world. Nonetheless, he remained faithful to the scientific reality even after the experiment pointed out to another culture as a possible candidate for being the most profound civilization.

The same motive was shared by the linguists of the Hitler era who claimed that German is the original language spoken by Adam the difference here being, the Germans did not care about the scientific truth.

I found a paragraph that repeats what I learned in those days:

quote Wikipedia

The Greek historian Herodotus conveyed an anecdote about Psamtik in the second volume of his Histories (2.2). During his travel to Egypt, Herodotus heard that Psammetichus ("Psamṯik") sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried "bekos" with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of the Phrygian word for "bread." Thus, they concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians, and that Phrygian was the original language of men. There are no other extant sources to verify this story.

unquote Wikipedia.

4.       ikicihan
1127 posts
 22 May 2012 Tue 02:01 am

if we go back in time, today´s many languages would be a single language a couple of thousands years ago. for example:

latin: italian, spanish, french...

turkic: turkish, azeri, uzbek, tatar, uygur...

syriac: arabic, heprew, aramaic...

...

 

if we mix two or three languages, there will be a new language like english.

 

there are many dead languages, we know the civilisations but we have no idea what was their language.

 

 

 

 

5.       si++
3785 posts
 22 May 2012 Tue 08:56 am

Here´s more logical theory based on some science:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages

6.       barba_mama
1629 posts
 22 May 2012 Tue 05:17 pm

7.       ikicihan
1127 posts
 23 May 2012 Wed 08:08 am

Language Families

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Human_Language_Families_Map.PNG



Edited (5/23/2012) by ikicihan
Edited (5/23/2012) by ikicihan

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