Why do people speak different languages? There is no clear answer to this question. Scientists and the Bible interpret it differently. The first claim that initially all people spoke the same language and understood each other perfectly. They resolved all issues that arose peacefully, without resorting to violence. To some extent this was due to their compact living. To put it simply, all the tribes lived in the same neighborhood and could easily communicate with each other, in the same language, understandable to everyone.
The Bible has a different point of view. To have access to heaven, people decided to build a tower, which was called the Tower of Babel. However, they did not ask God for permission, which angered him. As punishment, he settled people all over the planet and forced them to speak different languages, which led to serious difficulties in their communication.
This is how the Bible interprets multilingualism. Scientists agree that the process of the emergence of different languages was quite long. At first, people lived on earth in small groups and communicated with each other using gestures. Their main occupation was hunting. But in the process of evolution, humans developed additional needs, which led to the unification of various tribes. Now a person needed not only to hunt, but also to build housing, engage in agriculture, make tools, sew clothes, etc. This could only be done together. This is exactly how peoples arose, with their own language of communication.
Initially, it differed little from its primitive counterpart, and only over time began to acquire its own dialect. At the same time, different nations this process took place individually. The end result is well known to us. Today every nation has its own own language, and in order to understand each other we are forced to resort to the help of a translator. At the same time, linguistic transformation continues. To some extent, this is facilitated by wars that lead to the seizure of foreign territories. As a result, a merging of languages occurs, leading to the emergence of certain linguistic symbioses and completely unique dialects. This, for example, is the dialect of Transcarpathians. Their language contains many Slovak, Magyar, Ruthenian and Ukrainian words.
This is how new languages arise. They may retain their grammar but include entirely new expressions. In this case, the language of the conqueror’s people always wins. This, for example, happened with the Frankish tribes, who lost their language and came under the influence of Gaul. All that remains of it is the name of the country, which we all know well. In this case we are talking about France.
According to biblical legends, in ancient times people became so proud that they decided to build a city and a tower as high as heaven. The Lord God decided to hinder the builders by confusing their languages.
The result of God's wrath was not long in coming. The builders could not understand each other, thereby the construction of the skyscraper was stopped, and people dispersed throughout the globe.
There is an explanation in the difference in the language of people and with scientific point vision. Linguists say that language, as a means of communication between people, is constantly changing. It is argued that there is no barrier that would protect him from change.
There are approximately 5,000 living languages and dialects around the world. The multilingualism of the Earth's population developed for many reasons, for example, the fragmented life of ancient tribes who lived in groups and did not even suspect the existence of other people.
Each tribe created its own so-called proto-language, which subsequently developed and branched. All languages that descend from one proto-language can be classified as one “family” of languages. There are about 13 families of languages around the world, from which many of the existing languages have evolved.
According to biblical legends, in ancient times people became so proud that they decided to build a city and a tower as high as heaven. But God decided to thwart their plan by mixing the languages of the ancient builders so that they no longer understood each other...
Why do people speak different languages? Linguists are ready to reveal the Babylonian mystery
http://www.zavtra.com.ua/news/socium/49232
Before the great migration out of Africa began, something happened to humanity and a new form of communication emerged. Most modern languages born during the Ice Age. Having made this conclusion, linguists are getting closer and closer to the origins of speech, comparing their hypotheses with the biblical legend.
According to biblical legends, in ancient times people became so proud that they decided to build a city and a tower as high as heaven. But God decided to thwart their plan by mixing the languages of the ancient builders so that they no longer understood each other. Grandiose construction stopped, and multilingual builders scattered throughout the land.
Linguists have their own view of the problem - language is constantly changing, and there is no barrier that could protect it from these transformations. Invented and borrowed words from other languages are constantly wedged into our communication.
However, for reasons that are not entirely clear, some languages evolve much faster than others. Italian, for example, has remained much closer to classical Latin than French. Lithuanian has many words that exactly correspond to Sanskrit, which was spoken 3.5 thousand years ago.
American linguists conducted a study in an attempt to reduce all the world's languages to a single root. About 50 thousand years ago, something unusual happened to our ancestors in Africa. Moreover, the ancient people, who had existed for at least 150 thousand years, suddenly began to behave differently.
Until then, their behavior hardly differed from the customs of the Neanderthals. They used stone tools and had some form of communication, which scientists suggest was based on gestures, facial expressions and sounds.
The advent of speech accelerated progress. Scientists believe that the new means of communication has allowed humanity to make a huge leap forward. This event was more significant than the computer or biotechnological revolutions combined, experts say.
It is assumed that ancient people developed speech before the great migration from Africa. “Perhaps they were trying to discuss the routes of the upcoming migration to Europe and Asia, and it was not so easy to manage only with gestures in this regard,” the scientists joke.
A team of researchers from the Santa Fe Institute is working to find the “mother of all languages.” The Evolution of Human Languages (EHL) project, led by Nobel laureate, physicist Murray Gell-Mann creates a unique etymological database about all the languages of the world. EHL linguists are trying to reconstruct and then compare ancestral languages, moving ever closer to the origins of human speech. The project has already caused a mixed reaction from the scientific community. Many linguists are convinced that beyond the threshold of eight thousand years, all attempts to find the root of a language are unreasonable.
EHL linguists were only provoked by the criticism. They grouped all the world's languages into 12 linguistic superfamilies, four of which (including the languages of Eurasia, North Africa, Oceania and possibly the Americas) were experimentally combined into one company, calling it Borean (meaning “northern”). The ancestor of most modern languages, according to researchers, appeared 16 thousand years ago, when glaciers covered most of North America and Europe.
Linguists continue to develop their hypothesis. They seem to have proven how from one language group were able to form lion's share Eurasian, American and North African languages.
In their opinion, the Ice Age is to blame for everything. 20 thousand years ago, at its peak, humanity had lost much of its linguistic diversity. As the glacier moved south, people migrated with it and mixed with each other, both genetically and linguistically. As a result, a very complex “linguistic puree” was formed, which scientists tried to disassemble.
Why are there so many languages?
There is no single answer to this question, as there is to all questions concerning the distant past. There are several versions. According to one of them, there is common language from which all others were born. According to another version, Neanderthals developed a person with two mutations in the FOXP2 gene on chromosome 7, as a result of which this person’s body became capable of language.
People began to ask the question about language a very long time ago, from the time ancient egypt. Ancient people, when they encountered foreigners, did not understand their speech and considered them second-class citizens. The Greeks contemptuously called them “barbarians” because their speech seemed like a meaningless set of sounds: “bar-bar-var”. Nowadays, with the help of a computer, people can recreate many ancient languages based on their roots. modern words. Studying languages from different angles, linguists have discovered that many languages, even at first glance completely different, have something in common. But why are they different? The answer can be based on observations of languages modern people. There are words in the Russian language that are called differently in different regions. Some people call “beets” “buryak”, “Thursday” - “chetverik”, “curb” - “curb”. It all depends on the dialects. Neighbors have almost no differences in language; those who live further away have differences in individual words or sounds. But their speech can still be understood. But understanding neighbors' neighbors is no longer so easy. And it’s impossible to make out what those distant people are saying. This is how it appears new language. It is easy to determine that Russian and French are different languages: speakers of one do not understand speakers of the other at all. What is "pomme" in French? It is unlikely that a person who has not studied French will guess that this is an “apple”. And if you compare Russian and Ukrainian: “yabloko”, then there is no need for translation, the word is clear, of course. Despite the fact that the languages are different, people who speak them can easily understand each other - there is a lot in common between them. But in addition to the distance of peoples from each other in terms of distance and time, the appearance of different languages is greatly influenced by geography. On the island New Guinea, the population speaks almost a thousand different languages! And all because the island’s territory is dotted with mountains and jungles. It is difficult for people to navigate through it, they rarely communicate, they hardly exchange new words, so each village has developed its own language. And linguists call the Caucasus the “mountain of languages”. There was even an old Arabic legend: “Allah had a bag in which different languages were stored. While traveling around the world, he gave each nation one language. But when he traveled around the whole world, except the Caucasus, there were still a lot of languages left in the bag. Allah just "He turned the sack over the mountains and poured out all the languages. Therefore, now each tribe there has its own dialect." There are a lot of such countries and localities with different dialects.
