There are about 7,000 languages in the world. But why? Why are there so many languages?
It's a question as old as humanity itself. Explaining why people speak different languages is common in myths from cultures around the world. The story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible is a famous example, but there are many others.
The truth is, we don’t have an easy answer for why humans speak so many languages. There may be no reason at all. Instead, language diversity is a response to a variety of factors that we are only beginning to understand. We may not have the answers, but here are six factors that help new languages form.
Language may have developed in more than one place.
Did humans ever speak a common language? We don't know. There are two schools of thought:
– Monogenesis: Suggests that all languages evolved from a simple ancestral language as ancient humans migrated out of Africa.
– Polygenesis, which holds that many ancestral languages developed independently, as did agriculture and animal domestication.
So there might have been a bit of linguistic diversity to begin with. But even if there was a common human language to begin with, humans would still speak thousands of different languages. That's because . . .
People move and language changes
The main reason there are so many languages has to do with distance and time. Groups of people are always moving around, looking for new opportunities. And languages change over time. Even English. Remember the first time you read Chaucer? English has changed so much over the centuries that it’s hard for modern English speakers to “understand” Chaucer without a glossary.
What happens when you combine these two factors? Groups of people who speak a common language split up by distance, and over time their dialects evolve in different directions. After enough time, they end up speaking two separate, but related, languages.
War
Of course, migration doesn't always happen peacefully. War has undeniably influenced the languages people speak today.
War can lead to the formation of new languages, or the extinction of established languages. War can divide populations that once spoke a common language, thus creating new languages. But war can also lead to the death of other languages, as conquered people are forced to speak the language of their conquerors.
Geography
But none of the above explains why languages are unevenly distributed around the world. Europe, for example, has around 225 indigenous languages, depending on how you count them. But tiny Papua New Guinea has at least 820!
This is largely due to the island's unique geography. Mountains, forests, rivers, and swamps keep the population divided into many small tribes. These small groups have been isolated for so long that they have developed different languages in many cases.
Why are there so many languages? Blame it on the rain.
Another factor that appears to influence language diversity, at least in some parts of the world, is rainfall. Researchers from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre recently experimented with using computer models to determine the factors that influence Indigenous language diversity in Australia.
Researchers found that in Australia, rainfall affected the number and distribution of Aboriginal languages in the country. That may sound surprising, but it makes sense if you think about it. In Australia, rainfall determines how many people a given area can support. Areas with more rainfall can support more groups of people, which affects how many languages can develop.
Sound adaptation
“Acoustic adaptation” is another factor that explains not only why there are so many languages, but also why they all sound different. But what does “acoustic adaptation” mean? Simply put, the environment affects how animals hear.
For example, in dense forests and hot climates, consonants are harder to hear than vowels.
In 2015, researchers from the University of New Mexico and the Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage-CNRS in France looked at 628 languages from around the world and compared different linguistic characteristics with the climate in which the languages developed.
According to IFLScience, they found that “languages originating from warm regions with dense cover tend to use fewer consonants, and are instead characterized by a higher proportion of vowels, which are transmitted at lower frequencies. In total, it is thought that acoustic adaptation may account for about a quarter of the variation in vowels and consonants between languages.
What's the problem with multiple languages?
Ultimately, the world’s languages are important for reasons that have nothing to do with acoustic adaptation or migration history. They are important because they bind communities and cultures together. They preserve knowledge and connect people to their heritage. For these reasons, and many others, linguistic diversity is worth preserving.
Translation is essential for language survival and we are here to help. Check out these Translation services ours and if we can be of any help to you with your translation needs, we'd love to hear from you.
