• Question: Why do people speak different languages?

    Asked by asiansupreme to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 28 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by issi2001, whmichandbeale.
    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      I am very much guessing, but it’s because different languages have evolved in different places. Before the days of easy travel, communities will have been very isolated from each other and this applies to early human groups/tribes. In order to be able to communicate it’s easy to see that the different groups will have found different ways to talk to each other – there’s no reason to expect all of the ways to be the same if the groups didn’t mix.

      As tribes migrated, they took their language with them and the original language will have been modified to suit their needs, which is why these days there are languages that have similar origins and often some similar words, but that are quite distinct, for example Dutch and German are quite similar to each other, as are the Slavic languages.

      Does that answer your question?

    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      I agree with Blanka, I think it’s because as people have migrated to different parts of the world they have added new words etc to their language. As tribes were separated from each other the new words wouldn’t have been shared between all of them and so would only have developed in one place. As more words and sounds were added new languages developed.

      I find the study of how languages developed really interesting. For example, did you know that in English we have some words that come from the original Anglo Saxon and some words that have come originally from French that are talking about the same thing? This is why we have ‘cow’ (from the Anglo Saxon)when talking about the animal but ‘beef’ (from the French) when talking about the meat. French mainly entered the English language during the Norman conquest when Norman French would have been used among the rich people (who were mostly Norman) but would then start being used by some of the poorer anglo saxons.

      As you can probably tell I love this sort of stuff so thanks for asking such a good question 🙂

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