Like the title says, how are different languages formed and why aren’t we all just speaking the same language?
In: Culture
Over time, languages diverge. People in different regions start pronouncing words differently, they start using existing words to mean different things, they invent some new words, they change the common grammar. At first this is minor, and people can still understand each other. You might call it “soda” and they call it “pop”, and you might say “park the car” and they might say “pahk the cah”, but you can still understand what each other are saying. But over centuries, these differences accumulate and snowball, they get bigger and bigger, until eventually you’re speaking so differently that you can’t understand each other anymore. You’re speaking two different languages now.
This has happened over and over again throughout history. Every language we speak today has been evolving constantly for thousands of years. And single languages from, say, 2000 years ago, have split into dozens of languages today. You might be aware that Latin over time diverged into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, etc. That was because of the effect I described. Different people living far enough away from each other will start speaking slightly differently. And these slight differences start to add up, until 1000 years later you’re not speaking the same language at all anymore.
You might be interested to read about Modern English, Middle English, and Old English. You can see how the English language has evolved over the last 1000-1500 years, from something basically unrecognizable into what it is today. [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gy82lniAUA) (start at 0:55)
Latest Answers