How did countries in Europe, develop complex distinct languages between each other? Despite them being so close?
In: 37
I don’t know for all of them but some have huge mountain as borders so peoples are really separated.
Most of them are based on Latin since the Romans conquered most of Europe. Other than the armies not many people traveled that far from their local region 2000 years ago
Time and isolation. You have to remember that back in the day, aside from a small minority of merchants and noblemen, most people would have stayed put in the place of their birth. This means that over time, their dialects drift enough to become different languages. Then add wars that can kill off border populations (who would speak an intermediate), and epidemics that would cause general disorder and mixing of people and dialects into something new and distinct. Then add foreign invasions introducing a completely new language to the mix.
Eventually, add nationalism to crystallise and exaggerate any prior differences.
It’s actually almost the opposite of that. Most European languages actually started as the same language and slowly drifted apart.
You have to remember that for thousands of years the fastest way to get around was on a horse and you had to be relatively of high station to be able to afford one so for most people it was walking. So walking 20 miles would be an entire day journey and for many people they would never leave the village they were born in.
With this in mind its quite easy to see that languages could slowly drift apart. With regional dialects evolving out of an original common language until they diverged so completely they could be classed as an entirely new language.
This is the foundation for nearly all European languages.
Only six European languages, Maltese, Basque, Estonian, Hungarian, Finnish and Sámi, aren’t from the same prehistoric root language, Indo-European.
And Basque is the super weird one as we have no idea where it came from and it is completely different to any other language. Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian and Sámi come from the Uralic language tree, while Maltese is Arabic
*How did countries in Europe, develop complex distinct languages between each other? Despite them being so close?*
Evolution.
How many times have you walked to the next town?
People used to stay where they were born and talk to other people who were born in the same place. It’s still that way to an extent. [New York City has multiple accents](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hrA9-6o4tI). [London has multiple accents](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0QUnt5h8w4).
Consider the Galapagos Islands and [Darwin’s famous finches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_finches): different species on different islands.
Back before fast transport and communications, you could be born on one side of a river or lake or mountain range and never see or speak to people from the other side. You may have come from the same stock many years earlier, but your languages and cultures diverge over time.
My favorite example of huge accent differences between towns with the same language is the wonderful world of the Flemish.
Belgium is a country decided by class and language. Funnily we can just say language. Note Brussels, the capital, is the exception to most of what I say so take that into account.
The official language of Belgium was French until the (dramatic drum roll) Language Wars of the 60s. This “war” accrued when the Flemish part of Belgium started to become the richer part of the country overtaking the more resource rich French speaking south. The language war was about the right of the Flemish to speak Flemish in Flanders. Crazy.
The situations that the average Flemish would find them in were weird. For instance a university lecturer who speaks Flemish in front of a class of wholly Flemish speaking students in the middle of Flanders was forced to speak French. It was illegal to speak Flemish if you were on the government payroll.
This made some people upset.
But there was a side effect from all of this French speaking in a Flemish speaking world.
Since there were no standard Flemish speakers (nothing on TV for instance), with any conversation outside of your monkey sphere always being in French (post office, government officials etc) most towns never heard any “outside” Flemish accent.
This accumulated in nearly every town in Flanders having widely differing accents. Imagine a broad Scottish accent in one place and 20 kilometers away the town speaks with an Appalachia accent.
This still manifests itself on Flemish TV where a street interview with a Flemish person, say, will still involve Dutch subtitles of what they’re saying.
The USA was settled very quickly, not too long ago. This made the entire region relatively uniform, compared to the Old World. Europe has nothing close to the diversity of many places in Africa and Asia. It’s the USA and Canada being the weird ones out.
Latest Answers