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All living beings communicate but only humans are capable of communicating by way of speech and use different languages. While the bark of a dog and the roar of a lion constitute oral communication, it cannot be compared to the sophisticated and well developed verbal communication of humans. Have you ever wondered where all this originated or where the myriad words came from? Millions of words in different languages are used everyday by people across the world to mean the same thing, what the English call milk, is lait to the French, milch to the Germans! The fascinating thing about language is that it seems to have been there forever and is taken for granted by most of us.
Historians state that language must have originated somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago but are not sure as there is no hard evidence on this subject. They are also not sure of how the ability to communicate using language developed but propose various theories on the subject. Some believe that language ability in humans developed as part of the evolutionary process while most believe that it was because of the need to adapt to the surroundings and develop. According to the second theory proposed by historians, humans were blessed with a bigger brain that was capable of articulating thought, which was then translated into words. Whether this theory is true or not cannot be proved. However, it was seen that initially man was a lone animal who later formed groups and hunted together. This was seen as the beginning of the need for communication. Initially, gestures and non-verbal communication was successfully used but soon this was not enough and man created language. Theories state that initially language consisted of animal sounds accompanied by gestures. These inarticulate sounds then transformed into simple words, which later developed over the years into languages. Some historians use biblical references to prove that verbal communication was present right from the time of Adam and Eve and even Moses!
Language is never static and undergoes constant change. So, the vague words and gestures that were once used, got more sophisticated over time and became what we know today to be the ancient and old languages. Incidentally these are all dead languages and not used in active communication today. Most of the languages we know today find their base in these ancient languages. While it is not clear which is the oldest spoken language of the world, given the lack of evidence regarding spoken languages, languages like Classical Sumerian, Classical Latin, Classical Greek, Classical Tamil, Vedic Sanskrit, Classical Chinese and many such languages are classified under this category as most are not really used in daily speech but only add literary value. Most modern languages find their roots in these classical languages and these linkages can be seen even today.
The English language finds its roots in the Indo European group of languages, which encompasses Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Old Irish, Gothic, Old Church Slavic and Lithuanian. For example, Mother in English, can be traced to the Latin mater or Sanskrit maatra or the old Irish mathir, or the Greek mater, to name a few. Ancient words often undergo change and find relevance in modern languages today. Any modern word of today can be linked to an old Latin or Greek or even Sanskrit word, showing that languages of today are also linked in some way. For instance, the German use the word mater and in Hindi it is Mata, all coming from probably the same roots.
Given the vast expanse of the world, it is not possible to count the exact number of languages used but a rough estimates claim that there are more than 6000 languages and this count is ever increasing! Statistics show that there are about 200 languages in the world that are spoken by over a million native speakers and there are some languages that barely have one person speaking it, en route to becoming extinct! Several indigenous languages of Australia and Africa are slowly becoming extinct, with barely one or two speakers. On the other hand, we have languages like Mandarin Chinese, which is perhaps the most spoken language in the world with over a billion native speakers. According to a survey conducted by the Summer Institute for Linguistics in 1999, Mandarin Chinese was the most spoken language with Spanish and English coming in the second and third place. The top ten spoken languages in the world also included Bengali, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian and German, while French came in at the eleventh place. However, these denote only primary and native speakers and not the secondary ones. Once the secondary speakers are included, though Chinese remains at the top, English is in second place with over 480 million speakers. The top ten include Spanish, Russian, French, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali and Japanese, in that order with German being the 11th in number. The survey also revealed that the most influential language, the world over, was English with French and Spanish coming in at the second and third place respectively.
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