How did languages as they exist today, develop?
537892
Modern human languages began life in primate communication systems, but complex language began life about 100,000 years ago with the emergence of the first fully modern humans in Africa.  By the time of the first writing about 5000 years ago, languages were already complex structures.  After the development of writing certain very complex structures that are only found in written language evolved, but these structures are not necessary for communication, they only have stylistic functions not needed in oral communication.\n\nIf you want a VERY good book on the subject, look for "The Unfolding of Language:  An evolutionary tour of mankind's greatest invention" by Guy Deutscher (2005, Metropolitan Books).  It is so good I'm going to start assigning it as required reading in my Languages of the World class.
17101
Communication is always available, however I suspect you are referring to modern communication.  \n\nThink of the Celtic peoples.  They had no modern communication facilities and no written language.  And yet, they made deep inroads of culture over much of Europe and a strong culture in England beginning at least as far back as 1,000 BCE.  .
965026
language has evolved over a long period of time. nouns were probably the first words to be used. as tribes mingled and formed races they took/developed their words and passed them on to their children.\n \nor, if you're asking in a biblical context {sigh} then it was supposed to be adam
1185206
advantage:we can learn about many language ,their structure...and how a language is created\n\ndisavantages:there are several things undiscovered
715452
fatima, what other aspect would you choose, would you claim is more important than language?\n\nFor by language, indeed languages, we evolved apes have learned to communicate.  With language, by our communication, we've learned to warn each other of the poisonous berries, or the bad water, downsteam from where the Hippos pooh-pooh....\n\nWith communication, i.e. language, mankind has taken the boldest step ever in the species' progression.  \n\nAbout 6 or 7 years ago, the Arts and Entertainment Channel here in the U.S. catagorized the 100 greatest innovations, of the past 1000 years.  This broadcast was carried over two nights, with the latter 50 on the first night, allowing speculation to build over 48 hours as to what would be the greatest "invention", innovation of human-kind.....  \n\nGuess what Number 1 was???\n\nThe Guttenburg printing press, in the 15th century.  A machine which spread the printed word,.......language........ across the cultures, across the continent, across the span of the world!!\n\nOtherwise, my answer to your question would be: \napsoreiua bnosI:ri 09589063[wimwbmxzDxkgnhmy[\ni.,  \nXd5rlkhxru47d,rji;l\n>>>GIBBERISH, GIBBERISH, GIBBERISH, GIBBERISH<<<
779393
Languages "evolve"\nEnglish as we know it is the Germanic language of the British Isles, widespread and standard also in the U.S. and most of the British Commonwealth, historically termed Old English (c450–c1150), Middle English (c1150–c1475), and Modern English (after c1475).
288618
There is no reason but sheer convention. It is the way language developed and grew verbs with different past tense forms, which fall into separate groups, such as "think, thought, thought; bring, brought, brought" and "sing, sang, sung, sink, sank, sunk" and quite a few more.
438
Language predates the alphabet. The origins of Language are lost to the mists of time. The alphabet as we know it was developed by the Phonecians about 3000 years ago, and modified first by the Greeks, and then the Romans for their own languages before we adopted it from the Romans.\n\nThe origins of the English language specifically date to sometime after 1066 when Willam the Conqueror became King of England. The commoners spoke something related to the ancestor language of Dutch while the nobility spoke French. We kept the grammar of the native Anglo-Saxon tongue while adding huge amounts of French vocabulary.\nThe result is recognizably English, while still sounding very different from what we speak today. It's not until Shakespear's time that Modern English emerged.
182789
Huamns and the apes evolved from the same roots, but along different pathways.\n\nThe evolution of speech is based at least partly on social need. Small, tight knit groups of apes communicate with simple gestures and touches- that is all they need to pass info back and forth. As the group gets larger and more spread out, there is a need to be able to communicate different things in different ways. These apes get more and more vocal as the social structure gets more complex and spread-out.\n\nMost animals communicate perfectly well for their needs- within their species and with other species. Why would a species develop a need to communicate with us outside of 'get away', etc.- which they manage to communicate quite nicely now?
10411
Here's why:\nWriting and Talking are very different. One of those differences is the time issue. You write something so that it's permanent.. the person who recieves it can recieve it any time in the next thousand years. Talking, however, takes place at an instant, and the audience can only percieve it at an instant.\n\nTyping, however, is a mix of the two. When typing was restricted to word processors and programming, language remained much the same. Once chatting became popular, however, typing started looking less like writing, and more like talking. Only problem is.. you can't type as fast as you talk! At least 99% of the population can't. Thus, you begin to abridge in order to go faster.\n\nThe other reason is because living languages are, well, alive. If they aren't dead, then they are constantly changing, growing. Forget online spelling and grammar. Look at english today. Go into your schools and listen to the students.. they don't speak proper english.\n\nIn other words, you'd best start getting savvy with how people speak.
801915
Take a look at this link.  It shows you how the alphabets developed.  Fascinating! http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html
922988
Definitely vocal cords evolved first.  They may have been primitive ones that allowed for people to only be named things like Ugh, but definitely the ability to produce specific, repeated sounds came before those sounds meant anything.
1039868
As a linguist, it is very difficult to trace back whether humanity was once speaking one single language. Babel belongs to the bible, but not in a linguistics course.\n\nIf we go back 8-10,000 years ago, there seems to be a trend in thinking that there were maybe less languages around. At least that would have been the case for Indo-European: there was no English, no German, no French, no Welsh, no Russian, no Hindi, no Albanian, no Greek, no Latin - there was only Proto-Indi-European (*IE) from which linguists can trace the evolution of *IE to English, for instance.\n\nThe reason why there are so many languages is because humanity is mobile: altough some people settle somewhere, there's always one group that moves away. After a while, their speech changes and can adapt to the speech of the people that already live in the new place.\n\nThere is a clear trend at the moment that English is becoming the international language, which means that that is the language that people using one language will use to speak to another group of speakers (lingua franca). However, this does not mean that English will take over all the other languages.
1062036
Linguists do not know. The oldest recorded WRITTEN language is Sumerian. Before that no languages were written (as far as we know) and therefore, by definition, left traces only in the spoken languages which they evolved into.\nIt is now pretty much agreed that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa and spread from there. Anthropologically speaking, the 'oldest' races of humans are - quite possibly - the Khoi-San peoples of Southern Africa. Their languages have features that linguists speculate make them likely to be extremely old:\n1. They are extremely complex\n2. They have (phonetic) systems that are significantly more complex than any other languages. (Among these features are the wide varety of speech sounds - up to 147 as opposed to 44 of Standard English. These include many 'click' sounds.)\nThe Khoi-San peoples were displaced by later herdsmen migrations and invasions over the last thousands of years and survive in small pockets in Botswana and elsewhere).
913589
You are very wrong my friend. Look up the history of languages and you will see that there were other languages before that.\nPhoenician greek latin...\nMost languages derive from these ones. And don't try to convince us that phoenician greek and latin come from arabic cause that's a bunch of bull.
1146250
Lmao.  It's in our nature.  Since the creation of metaphors/analogs in our language, our brains were capable of thinking of how things  are related to each other.  Even at this particular moment, you are digesting each of these words, and their meaning (in relation).  That is the dividing aspect that makes us a bit more complicated than the rest of the animals out there; and has a great deal with how we survived and how our relatives in the human chain did not.\n\nIt's a complex process of a once operating bicameral mind ie operating right brain and left brain processes with not as complex intergrations.  The theory is once man was more or less instinctual, and that he first heard god's voices from the right side of his brain.\n\nhttp://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php\n\nThis is a theory of Julian Jaynes (link ^^^).  He historically documents the change from a bicameral minded individual, to the people we know today, whom assumed a more fully concious level of brain use.  He demonstrates how men behaved in those times, and how they lost the voices of god(s)....roughly around the time they gained a more advanced language systems and brain processes.  \n\nIt's this process that you use today, and it's a paradigm of difference hard for most common people to comphrend.  Perhaps you could think of the days when you didn't understand the bulk of the english language (as a child)...do you recall a lot of thoughts or memories before you had a language to think of it?  That would be close to what I'm discussing.\n\nThe human brain is a complex thing, and still yet to be throughly resolved, but we are curious because we no-longer have many of  the automatic instinct that other creatures do.  We exist and and dominate because of our level conciouness, and perhaps I think that's an instinct in itself.
654459
Language is not static and it evolves according to the social circumstances in which it is spoken. So English 300 years from now will be as different as Elizabethan English is now. Jules. Australia.