A long long time ago, humans went from grunts to some kind of primitive language then to an advance language.
How did a region possibly learn and agree that the sound “tree” for example meant that big thing over there?
Maybe my family would agree and say, but then our neighbours or tribe some 20km away?
Then for every word, tenses, grammar?!
I imagine it took a long time but I can’t even comprehend how you would transition from grunts to even a basic common language for a larger region like ancient China, Egypt, or aztecs.
They obviously did accomplish it, but how?
In: 44
That’s a super complicated question. But bear with me as I reaaaally simplify it:
You start with small tribal groups of hunter gatherers — at that point, you’re making noises that are proto-languages. Think “Ooga booga.” Within your small tribe of 30 people or whatever, you all learn sounds together that mean the same things. Over time, you start to get to where your tribe isn’t moving around as much, and you start farming. Since your tribe has crops now, you all kinda stay in one place.
Well, it turns out you know of another group’s existence. They’re another small tribe on the other side of the river. You’ve run into them a couple times and thankfully no serious war or anything broke out, so you didn’t have to club them with your mighty club. Well, you’ve heard them yell “urga burga.” You have no idea what that means.
Time passes and the tribes keep running into each other just passing by and stuff, cuz you’re like within a few miles of each other. Your tribe decides to trade some crops with them. We got mighty good carrots and we’ve seen that they have some awesome potatoes. We eventually find a way to meet with them. The first meeting is tense, because we can’t understand each other. Over repeated years and meetings, we start to pick up on what their “urga” means, and they kinda pick up on what our “ooga” means. Over generations, you get more and more communication, and eventually intermarriage between tribes. The two tribes eventually become one, because ya’ll are peaceful and your teens keep sneaking off to bang each other and now it’s grown and there are 300 people all living together, speaking a language that is mostly the same. The language naturally melded — one tribe found that “urga” is easier to say. The other tribe borrowed some words from the one tribe as well. Words get adopted or dropped depending on many variables — difficulty to pronounce, the words sound like their meaning, etc. Languages evolve for lots of reasons.
Repeat this process over and over until you have fully agrarian societies settling in larger and larger cities. Sometimes one city will have its own language, sometimes four cities will all end up speaking the same language.
Eventually one city creates a big army and takes over like 20 other cities. The leader of the city is like “I’m a king, yo, this is my kingdom.” At first, maybe there are like 3-4 different languages within his 20 cities. Over time, a lot of trade and mingling and marriage and criss-crossing happens between the 20 cities in the kingdom. After a long time, everyone in the kingdom basically speaks the same language.
Now kingdoms start warring and trading and eventually you have kings and emperors controlling larger and larger areas with more and more people. Whatever language the emperor’s city speaks often becomes the “main” language of the kingdom or empire. Every little city in the empire wants to trade with the main city and get close to the emperor and stuff, so they learn the new language if they have to. Or maybe over time, people are educated in the main city and end up in the smaller cities. The language keeps spreading throughout the empire.
That’s basically how it works. Languages evolve and adapt as people mingle with each other and learn to communicate with each other.
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