Why does the world have different languages?
I know that it's probably a dumb question and I'm probably a bit of a dunce for asking this....but I'm wondering why we are all divided with respect to language? I thought I'd ask this here, as this is a language site.
Any ideas?
19 Answers
The Bible is the only place I've found a satisfactory answer to that one - during the first 17 centuries or so of mankind's existence there was just one language Genesis: 11:1 but because contrary to the Creator's instructions of 'filling the earth and cultivating it' Genesis 1:28 rebellious humans gathered at what later came to be called the city of Babel (Confusion). There they began to build a tower to 'make a celebrated name for themselves' - for that reason the Creator purposely confused the language of the people causing them to speak various tongues so that they couldn't communicate and thus they scattered all over the earth. Genesis 11:6-9
The Bible is the only place I've found a satisfactory answer to that one - during the first 17 centuries or so of mankind's existence there was just one language
My first degree (before turning to linguistics) is in physics, and much of what I learnt and tested in the lab points to the fact that the world is millions of years old, at least. This is what radioactive decay suggests. The only way to refute this is to say that either exponentials and logarithms are all rubbish (and therefore buildings, airplanes, mobile phones, water ducts, cars, traffic lights and many other technologies that depend on this are miracles, since the maths they are based on is random theories), or the world was created with all average radioactive disintegration processes deceptively showing a fake picture that resembles a world that has existed for millions of years, just to mislead scientists and prove how powerful God really is, taking the mickey out of them. I find it hard to believe that God created the world trying to deceive a small group of people who will live in a distant future, believing in logic and evidence, by ensuring that all experimental scientific evidence disproves what appears to make sense, only so we resort to him/her/it. If we don't believe in science, let's go back to the Middle ages, and let's live in huts, eating whatever we can get our hands on. Believing that the world is only a few centuries old and believing in this scientific evidence (that I have tested myself first hand) are incompatible ideas, which means that God wants to either confuse us, to divide us, or to make us fight to one another. And at the same time, the God of the Muslims (the fastest growing religion in the world) seems to be telling them that we are the enemy. Does anyone have a God does doesn't lie to us or tries to not to make us all fight?
Sorry about my rant, but while I don't have any problem with people believing in their own gods, I have a problem accepting that the world is thousands of times younger than my laboratory experiments tells me it is. Petroleum and diamonds can be explained if you assume that geological processes have been going on for a long time, fossils can be explained if you assume that there has been an evolution for millions of years, and radioactive sampling works so precisely in any calculation since radioactive was discovered, that there is no reason not to believe it. Common medical treatments (especially cancer) are based on radioactive decay, nuclear plants are based on this theory too; many modern applications take it for granted. How come it doesn't work as soon as we hit the "magic" date mentioned in the scriptures? Maybe someone misunderstood them? My logic tells me that such statement makes no sense. I won't argue about the rest, since it is more a matter of faith than anything else. Similarly, I won't believe anyone who tells me that my daughter is not here, because I have seen her before; I see her all the time. It doesn't make sense.
But going back to languages, I have read many books about this topic, and I am currently reading more.There are thousands of theories, and the most unifying ones (one non-religious that believe that all languages have a common ancestor) have little proof of it. You get a good picture if you study just one language over a period of one or two millennia. You get to see changes in grammar, in pronunciation, in vocabulary... but specially -and this is very interesting- in meaning. English can be hardly recognized in the 14th-15th century, and it looks like "Swahili" in the 12-13th century. Go back in time and you keep learning a different language every few centuries. And go back many millennia, and you can unify dozens of languages in what we call Indo-European languages; all reconstructed using rules that explain how a set of words and rules could be "distorted" into different languages that don't seem to bear any resemblance. The beauty of these theories is that they explain rather accurately most of the changes in most of the languages, so it is either another "magical" coincidence, or Indo-European languages have a common ancestor. Study these languages and you'll see how different they can be, and you will never wonder how can languages be so different. Non Indo-European languages don't even seem to share features with our languages. Go figure!
Archaeological and linguistic evidence shows no connection between the languages spoken in the Old Testament (Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew), with Aramaic being the language of Jesus Christ (the name given by the Greeks), while these languages are intimately related to modern Arabic in morphology, syntax, phonetics and lexicon. Reading the Old Testament one can't help but thinking that maybe God's word have to do with those who speak these languages (i.e. not English). I rather don't mix religion with linguistics, anthropology and science.
Anyway, talking about the Bible, I though some people might be interesting in The Lord's Prayers in Middle and Old English:
Late 9th century: Þ? ?re fæder, þe eart on heofonum, s?e þ?n nama geh?lgod. Cume þ?n r?ce. S?e þ?n wylla on eorþan sw? sw? on heofonum. Syle ?s t?dæg ?rne dæghw?mlican hl?f. And forgief ?s ?re gyltas sw? sw? þ? forgiefaþ þæ¯m þe wiþ ?s ?gyltaþ. And ne læ¯d þ? n? ?s on costnunge, ac ?l?es ?s fram yfele.
Late 15th century: Oure fadir, þat art in heuenys, halewid be þi name. Þi kingdom come to. Be þi wile don ase in heuene and in erþe. ?iue to us þis day oure breed ouer oþer substaunse. And for?iue to us oure dettes, as and we for?iuen to oure dettouris. And leede us not into temptaciouns, but delyuere vs from yuel.
The work of Noam Chomsky would likely be a good reference for your question. Languages develop, synthesize, and some die or fall into disuse. Esperanto was an attempt to universalize languages.
Just to lighten the mood....Could there be more than one Tower of Babel.?
After a few beers the babbling really begins!
As far as the origin of languages goes, I don't think any theory can be proved or disproved...there are simply too many variables.
For those who are interested, here is a link to some other debunked theories. 95link text95
Here we go again.
With the Bible as with statistics you can assert (prove) whatever you want.
The many languages just prove that there is more than one way "to skin a cat"
There is only one universal language "body language" and even that can get one into trouble.
....but I'm wondering why we are all divided with respect to language?
Do you mean "divided in terms of how we perceive other languages"? If you are asking why languages are divided, there is not even evidence that there ever was a common language anyway.
My first degree (before turning to linguistics) is in physics, and much of what I learnt and tested in the lab points to the fact that the world is millions of years old, at least. This is what radioactive decay suggests
Here are some facts:
We know that radioisotope dating does not always work because we can test it on rocks of known age. In 1997, a team of eight research scientists known as the RATE group (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) set out to investigate the assumptions commonly made in standard radioisotope dating practices (also referred to as single-sample radioisotope dating). Their findings were significant and directly impact the evolutionary dates of millions of years.3
A rock sample from the newly formed 1986 lava dome from Mount St. Helens was dated using Potassium-Argon dating. The newly formed rock gave ages for the different minerals in it of between 0.5 and 2.8 million years.4 These dates show that significant argon (daughter element) was present when the rock solidified (assumption 1 is false).
Mount Ngauruhoe is located on the North Island of New Zealand and is one of the country’s most active volcanoes. Eleven samples were taken from solidified lava and dated. These rocks are known to have formed from eruptions in 1949, 1954, and 1975. The rock samples were sent to a respected commercial laboratory (Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The “ages” of the rocks ranged from 0.27 to 3.5 million years old.5 Because these rocks are known to be less than 70 years old, it is apparent that assumption #1 is again false. When radioisotope dating fails to give accurate dates on rocks of known age, why should we trust it for rocks of unknown age? In each case the ages of the rocks were greatly inflated.
I think it has to do with groups of people developing separately from each other. At the time in history that language was developing, relatively small geographical features divided humans into small groups. Their only concern was to communicate among themselves.
Then at various times in history, powerful forces swept up broad areas, imposinging their language over the local languages. From that we see the "romance" languages derived from Latin but each with their own flavor, so to speak. The Spanish invaded Mexico, Central, and South America, wiping out some local languages just as the British did in the US and Canada and the French did in other parts of the world.
The same thing happened in China as one powerful group overran regions and the militart brought their language and their government. It's an old story, oft repeated.
I don't believe there was ever only one language spoken by a large percentage of the population.
As an opinion that is not based on researched fact:
Younger generations like to invent ways of speaking that are difficult for their elders to understand and so are constantly trying to shift the language- and unless regions are in close contact, the languages drift apart.
Groups of humans are insular, and like to have complicated language patterns that are difficult to learn so they can instantly tell who is an outsider by their speech.
I am not suggesting that these are conscious decisions.
Currently this drift is being resisted by written media that preserve old speech patterns because of the value of being able to access that information.
As an aside- it is interesting that there is more mutual intelligibility between some languages that are considered to be different languages than within some languages that are considered to be the same.
Why not? Language is culture and vice versa. Wouldn't this be a boring world if there were just 1 language?
From Wikipedia:
In remote time an old woman, named Wurruri lived towards the east and generally walked with a large stick in her hand, to scatter the fires around which others were sleeping, Wurruri at length died. Greatly delighted at this circumstance, they sent messengers in all directions to give notice of her death; men, women and children came, not to lament, but to show their joy. The Raminjerar were the first who fell upon the corpse and began eating the flesh, and immediately began to speak intelligibly. The other tribes to the eastward arriving later, ate the contents of the intestines, which caused them to speak a language slightly different. The northern tribes came last and devoured the intestines and all that remained, and immediately spoke a language differing still more from that of the Raminjerar.
Makes sense to me.
'Then at various times in history, powerful forces swept up broad areas, imposing their language over the local languages.'
Why are we as human beings so bent on destroying and ruling over cultures?
I saw a great lecture series on the origin of languages a couple of years ago, unfortunately I didn't watch all of it before I returned it.
However, it spoke in great lengths about the different factors involved when languages develop, and also presented some of the findings and arguments for and against a "first language". If you're interested, here it is.
The tracing of our european languages back to it's indo-european roots that Lazarus spoke of was also treated in detail, and with interesting implications.
Good luck 
Well I believe that people in the past wanted to build a big tower in a town and they decided to live there, but God didn't want that because he wanted the people to see the rest of the world, so he made them talk in different languages and when that happened they dispersed!
I haven't read the answers on the question, but this is what I believe in, the story might not be specific because I don't actually remember it, but it was written in the Bible.
God chose for creation to spread and multiply. He chose mankind to have many languages.
