Why did older languages in general have more complicated, multisyllabic words, when most other things increase in complexity as they develop further?

Question

Doesn’t it make sense to start with simple noises to represent the everyday things?

In: Other

Answer 1

Language is one of those things that is rarely designed and created intelligently (by which I mean languages don’t tend to be created at all). They develop organically which means there’s a lot of room for nonsense. Nobody decided what makes sense, they just communicated.

Older languages have tons of simple words as well, it’s just hard for us to parse what we’re actually hearing so it seems complex. Plus there’s also a difference between complexity in vocabulary and complexity in grammar.