I mean, for example south and Central America only have like 2 or 3 languages, and is like the same territory of Europe, but in Europe in a “small” area are more than 6 languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian). Focus more in explaining why in Europe are so many languages in such a “small” territory?
Edit 1: yeah I know América has a lot of different indigenous languages and dialects, also Europe. I’m focusing on the principal languages
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There used to be a ton of languages in the Americas. The Native Americans were not one ubiquitous culture, they each had their own languages and dialects, much like the European nations. The difference is that their cutlures have been largely destroyed and replaced by that of colonizers. Only a very few European countries were colonizers, therefore, there are very few languages spoken in the Americast today.
Fewer.
Well, now that we have that out of the way.
There are hundreds of indigenous languages in the Americas.
So……….. you’re wrong. You have for some reason only included the European languages that became popular in the Americas rather than the languages that developed there. How very…………. colonising of you.
Europe developed many cultures for centuries, when the empires fell they became different nations which developed several languages. German and Latin, for example, where latin was spoken in the Roman Empire and German by the “barbaric” people. Now, on the American side, Europe literally destroyed and turned to ashes SEVERAL cultures, like the ones in South America (literally thousands of different cultures reduced to dozens, where only the European prevailed)
Your premise is completely wrong. In addition to the most widely spoken languages in the various countries in North and South America, there are hundreds, if not more indigenous languages. In Mexico alone, there are 68 recognized languages, of which 63 are indigenous. You need to take a long hard look at why you think European languages are the only “real” languages that matter.
There were a lot of different languages in Americas that just as European languages all were derived by gradual cultural shifts from a common protolanguage, but most of those were the native tongues of local tribes that were expunged by European invadions. After Europeans discovered America a process called colonization happen – lands that those natives lived on were seen as “no one’s territory” by the European powers like Portugal, Castile(modern Spain) or France, so they decided to take them by force creating colonial nations that used their mother tongues. As such, the local population was either killed out to make place for the settlers from European mainland, or forced into a cultural conversion in order to end up as a free labor force, witch resulted in a abandonment of the native languages, and without anyone speaking those languages they become lost to time. On the other hand European countries never faced a crisis like that, and as such most of the “mother tongues” survived.
a great book on this question is “guns germs and steel” by jared diamond but the simplest answer is colonization and a collection of mixed occurrences of those three words in that books title.
the majority of the human population, lived on a side of the world that was possible (although tough at times) to connect/trade/fight with each-other.
war is a huge factor in advancing in technology through financing scientists, engineers, etc and thus larger and larger groups of people, speaking different languages, specializing in different jumps in tech led to established cultures relatively equal to eachother across the “europe, asia, and africa”.
now on the flip side the americas had vastly fewer people, but there were still many many languages in the “new world” buuuuut because of less people and fewer wars/advances in tech, when the old world colonizers came to america they had vastly more advanced weapons and battle tactics and diseases (total other side of this story on diseases but i recommend that book to explain it better) completely unknown to the local people, leading them to slowly disappear from dying or being absorbed into the culture of the conquering people.
The key point is that the size of an area that speaks a common language depends on the speed and ease of communication. A small area that has no contact with the outside world will quickly develop its own dialect and, eventually, a separate language over time.
European colonisation of the Americas was made possible by advances in communication technology, particularly sailing ships. This not only made it easier for a single nation to rule a large empire, it also allowed for a single language to dominate the empire. The wide spread of Latin due to the ancient Roman Empire shows that politics plays a role in ease of communication too.
Before the Age of Discovery there were many more European languages than you’re probably familiar with. For example, Spain wasn’t nearly so dominated by Castillian Spanish, with Galician, Catalonian and others more widely spoken than they are now. And of course the native peoples of the Americas had hundreds of their own languages and these haven’t all disappeared either.
There are only a few languages primarily spoken in the Americas because only a few European nations had the resources to fight to colonize here. Then they wildly oppressed and destroyed the rich indigenous cultures that were here for generations. To include physical violence and stripping away our children if we spoke our languages or practiced our traditions. We’d be similar to Europe in language diversity otherwise if not moreso. My tribe is still recovering and trying to document our language so we can ensure it’s survival. I’m learning it, and my children will be raised with it.
English settlers came to America and either bought the land from, or killed, groups already here who spoke different languages (natives, French, Spanish).
Because the Americas are nowadays ruled entirely by former settler colonies, so their languages are the languages of the old colonial governments.
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