Modern English has many word roots in Latin and Greek, but where did the Latins and Greeks get those word roots in the first place? Did somebody just make it up out of the blue? Or did they get it from an earlier language, and if that’s true, where did they get it from?
In: Culture
I’m not a linguist but hopefully I can add something to the conversation. Like many others have said, modern languages “evolved” from old extinct languages. If you keep going back, there should be a certain point in time where things are invented. I guess the moment they became existant, if they are useful, that concept will continue to be used by future generations. For example, let’s look at the word “google”. It was not used until Google, the search engine was invented and became dominant, but now that it has, it’s sort of become a verb and maybe in the future, it will evolve into a concept like an entity holding limitless information. And if enough people find the concept useful and keep expanded upon it, I guess it can become a root for future languages, like Martian English or whatever.
Just pure speculations here, but we have seen countless examples like this in modern languages so it makes sense for me. I hope it somewhat helps you imagine the path languages can take.
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