Why does the earth have so many languages ?

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by CHRIS.Q, May 1, 2013.

  1. CHRIS.Q Registered Senior Member

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    147
    Why is the same human,but there are multiple languages ​​....... This is what factors determine ?

    These languages ​​there are many branches

    I now have an idea If the transplantation of an a American memory to another of people does not speak English

    Then that person will be very fluent in English ?
     
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  3. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    Language is subjective in that any sound can be chosen to mean anything. This is why a hundred different languages can't agree on one word to describe each item or action. While any given word can have more than one meaning. There is no cause and effect between the sound used and the situation or else cat would be called meow in all languages. The cat does not make any sound/noise that sounds like the word cat; arbitrary and subjective with another language doing something else.

    Language is processed in the left brain. This side of the brain differentiates reality and is responsible for the urge to make a distinct sound or noise for each detail we differentiate. If you discover something new, you get to equate a sound (name it). I would like to call that the little piece of finger nail on the side of the finger or toes, that hurts when the nail tears, a hurtacle. If it sounds good others will use it. If enough people use it, it will be included in formal language over time. It could be anything but descriptive helps.

    The way the brain works is, although we have two sides of the brain, we are only conscious of one side at a time. The other side still works but is more unconscious in terms of affect and motivation. Since language is left brain, that would mean the right brain is unconscious. The right brain is more spatial, emotional and intuitive. This right brain unconscious subjectivity will overlap, while the left brain tries to attach a sound to a new differential event/object. Since the right brain seeks spatial, it will give the urge to add a new sound/meaning attempting to fill in 3-D.

    As an analogy, say the entire body is analogous to 3-D. The left brain looks at one detail of the body; the hurtacle. To satisfy both the detail need of the left brain and the whole need of the right brain, the details will need to spread out; language expands toward 3-D. It is subjective in that we can approach 3-D by randomly filling it the volume.
     
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  5. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    Evolution takes place in many areas of the world and if you were born in a specific place those there would speak a language they made up to insure that they would know who lives there and who does not. Understanding who lives with you and who does not keeps the people in a rather tight control group and can defend against aggressors for those who come to take over cannot speak the language of those who were already living there. Language helps differentiate people and their customs so they are unique and can only understand each other of their dialect.
     
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  7. andy1033 Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    What about whom ever created us wanted us to be separate us.

    Maybe mankind was done before many times.

    To answer the question you have, you have to determine is there a root language?
    There is no way to answer this, as we only have some written word. Spoken word was only recorded recently, so trying to work out if there is a root language, or language sprung up with another way, who knows.

    I personally believe mankind has been done over and over. Maybe there are remains somewhere some found. We will never know.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Of course the answer is that communities used to be relatively isolated. And there is such a thing as language drift. If there isn't a written language to keep things standardized, the language will change over time due to the inaccuracy of oral transmission, and just the creativity of people who like to make up new words. Eventually, languages will change so much we call it a separate language.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Archeologists and anthropologists have recently come to the conclusion that the technology of spoken language was invented around 70,000 years ago. This is when they see a sudden explosion of evidence of a great number of complex, intricate, coordinated tasks that could not possibly have been performed by people who were, at the same time, using their hands for communicating signals.

    By this time, our species had spread out to inhabit all of sub-Saharan Africa, but had not yet made a successful migration to the other continents. I haven't seen enough articles on this topic to know where language was first invented or how quickly it spread to the rest of Africa. However, technologies that are entirely cerebral and involve no tangible artifacts generally spread very quickly from one tribe to another, so I suppose it would be impossible to answer this question.

    At any rate, even as recently as 1,500 years ago, languages continued to evolve, and they evolved differently in different communities, in response to their environment and culture. Latin split into Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Romansh, Italian, Sicilian and Romanian during that time; while Old High German split into English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, German and Yiddish; and Slavonic split into Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusan, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Czech, Slovak and Polish.

    Modern transportation and communication technologies have brought the various "tribes" of humans closer together, yet we still modify our languages to suit our own needs. Brazilians and Portuguese talk much differently, and the speakers of the many dialects of Arabic can only understand each other well when they use the formal Arabic of the Koran, which has been standardized on radio and TV. When I was a kid in the 1940s and 50s I found it very difficult to understand American Southerners, although radio, TV and population movement have reduced what were once dialects into mere accents. I had the same problem with British English, which is also much easier to understand after decades of swapping movies, rock'n'roll songs and TV shows.

    It's very likely that there was originally one single language, which changed to adapt to the lives of the people who spoke it in different regions and different times. We don't know this for sure, and we probably never will, since in a few thousand years a language can change completely: vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, even its fundamental perspective on the universe. But we do know that the Na-Dene languages of western North America (Navajo, Tlingit, etc.) are related to the Yenisei language of Siberia, and those people have been separated for at least 8,000 years. (Not all linguists are convinced yet but the evidence is strong.)

    So this is the answer to your question. The reason there are so many different languages is that language adapts to suit the needs of its speakers. As civilization becomes more integrated you can expect to see fewer languages. Perhaps eventually just one.
     

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