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Friday 25 May 2018

Curiosity: How different languages are formed?


Based on what I've researched, there are 2 conflicting theories: Biblical and Linguistic;

Let's first look on the Bible Account

According to this bible verse "So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city." The Bible tells us that God confused the people’s language at Babel because they rebelled against him.As a result, the workers “left off building the city” of Babel and were scattered “over all the surface of the earth.” But why do people reject the Babel account? Simply put, it contradicts certain theories regarding the origin of language. The Bible states that the confusion of language and dispersion of the people took place “in the land of Shinar,” later called Babylonia.

When did that happen? “The earth was divided,” says the Bible, in the days of Peleg, who was born about 250 years before Abraham. So the events of Babel evidently took place some 4,200 years ago.—Genesis 10:25; 11:18-26.

Some scholars theorise that modern languages stem from one original language—the so-called mother tongue that they thought humans spoke nearly 100,000 years ago.


(source:click here )

Linguistic Theory 

According to the linguist historical Max Muller, he published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of languages. Sounds such as: Bow-wow (The bow-wow or cuckoo theory, which Muller attributed to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds), pooh-pooh (The pooh-pooh theory saw the first words as emotional interjections and exclamations triggered by pain, pleasure, surprise, etc.), ding-dong (Muller suggested what he called the ding-dong theory, which states that all things have a vibrating natural resonance, echoed somehow by man in his earliest words), yo-he-ho (The yo-he-ho theory claims language emerged from collective rhythmic labour, the attempt to synchronise muscular effort resulting in sounds such as heave alternating with sounds such as ho); and ta-ta but did not feature by Max Muller, according to the ta-ta theory, humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures, rendering them audible.

(source: click here)

Linguistic Groups

The most widespread group of languages today is the Indo-European, spoken by half the world's population. This entire group, ranging from Hindi and Persian to Norwegian and English, is believed to descend from the language of a tribe of nomads roaming the plains of eastern Europe and western Asia (in modern terms centring on the Ukraine) as recently as about 3000 BC.

By about 3000 BC Semitic languages are spoken over a large tract of desert territory from southern Arabia to the north of Syria. Several Semitic peoples play a prominent part in the early civilisation of the region, from the Babylonians and Assyrians to the Hebrews and Phoenicians. And one Semitic language, Aramaic, becomes for a while the Lingua Franca of the Middle East.

(source: click here)

But until now, no one can surely confirm the origin of languages and why are they so many different languages spoken in the world.

Now, this makes me think how characters or alphabets are formed. Who made it? When? How? Why? Like these words that you are reading right now and and letters on it, how are these made?




2 comments:

  1. The way you wrote your blog with a lot of information is just spectacular! Your curiosity blog really made me curious how languages were formed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. hi! i really liked your curiosity blog it has got a lot of information I got to learn how languages were formed It is amazing.

    ReplyDelete

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