The history and evolution of languages - from primitive grunts to modern dialects

All so-called social animals communicate with each other in some way, from birds and bees to great whales and jungle apes, but humans are the only social animals that have developed a full language. This means that the language of humans is more than just a group of prearranged signals. Human speech differs in physical ways from the types of communication used by other animals. This is because speech originates from a cortical speech center which doesn't respond via instinct, but instead organizes sound and interprets its meaning on a rational basis. This speech section of the brain is unique to human beings. Exactly when the unique talent of language first developed is impossible to pinpoint. It is assumed the process to develop this capability took a long time. Human ancestors were most likely speaking millions of years ago, but did so with slower delivery, a less robust vocabulary and a much simpler grammar than we use today.

The origin of human language will probably remain forever obscure. In contrast, the origin of various individual human languages has been the academic subject of intense study over the past two hundred years. There are about five thousand languages that are spoken in the world today. About one thousand of these languages alone are spoken in Africa. Despite the multitude of languages, linguistic scholars group all languages together into a relatively small number of families -- about less than twenty families in total. Languages are connected to each other via shared words or types of sounds or grammatical constructions. Language theory posits that the members of each language group have ultimately descended from one language, in essence giving that language family a common ancestor. Additionally, in many cases that original language is thought by linguistic scholars to have been spoken regularly in surprisingly recent times. In a few cases, this time would be as recently as a few thousand years ago.

Culturally and numerically, the most common and widespread group of languages spoken today would be the languages of the Indo-European family, which are spoken by about half of the world's population. This entire language group, which ranges from Hindi and Farsi to German and English, is believed to have its roots in the languages of a tribe of nomads that roamed the plains of most of eastern Europe and western Asia, centering in what is now currently known as the Ukraine. This language family is believed to have begun as recently as about 3000 BC.

From about 2000 BC onwards, peoples speaking some form of Indo-European language began to spread throughout Europe, eventually reaching the shores of the Atlantic coastline and extending to the northern shores of the outlying Mediterranean. These languages even also penetrated far into Asian territories, eventually occupying both the Iranian plateau and the majority of India.

Another linguistic group that had great significance in the very early history of west Asia and is still of great importance in this day and age is the Semitic language family. These languages also are believed to be derived from the language of a single tribal group, thought to possibly be nomads hailing from southern Arabia. By around 3000 BC, most Semitic languages were spoken across a large tract of desert territories that stretch from southern Arabia to the very north-most tip of Syria.
 

How English has changed