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Order of Languages?
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What was the very first language, then the next one, and so on?
Where do Asiatic languages fit in? And native Americans and their languages?
We were talking about that this morning.
Have any ideas?
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That's a great question - I can't seem to get Google to find anything about world languages. I can find the timeline for programming languages, which is pretty interesting too.
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That would be pretty much impossible to find out, since it is very unlikely that the first spoken "languages" were written down.
My guess would be that the first crude spoken languages developed some 60 - 70 thousand years ago (maybe even as much a million years ago depending on your definition of "language").
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Ask Oisin or Tooki. They are the resident linguists.
From what little I know there are several major language families that encompass all known languages. English, and most of the Western European languages, are part of the Indo-European family which has as its "mother tongue" Sanskrit.
This site has all the details, including maps. http://home.wanadoo.nl/arjenbolhuis/...-family-trees/
As for the first language, that is lost to history. People were talking for tens of thousands of years before they ever started writing things down. So, if we don't have a written record of a language it is highly unlikely we will ever have a record of it at all.
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Sorry I wasn't around and I don't think anyone can truly say for sure.
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So, I guess the very first "language" would have been weird vocalizations, grunts, etc.
I guess I'm talking about more developed languages.
Sanskrit?
What about Egyptian? And the corresponding hieroglyphics?
Armaic? Hebrew? Egyptian? Greek? Roman? Romance Languages? Germanic languages? Chinese comes in where?
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Originally Posted by Cody Dawg
So, I guess the very first "language" would have been weird vocalizations, grunts, etc.
I guess I'm talking about more developed languages.
Sanskrit?
What about Egyptian? And the corresponding hieroglyphics?
Armaic? Hebrew? Egyptian? Greek? Roman? Romance Languages? Germanic languages? Chinese comes in where?
Click links.
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"You rise," he said, "like Aurora."
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Thanks, Strad! Didn't see them. The bottom one is better. LOVE IT.
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I thought it was Sanskrit.
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That is a very interesting subject Cody.
You are always having important intelectual thoughts.
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Originally Posted by Cody Dawg
So, I guess the very first "language" would have been weird vocalizations, grunts, etc.
...so, Welsh then.
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That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
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We can't even find the original language for the Indo-European family except by tracing evolution backwards. I don't think it's possible to figure out what languages existed a long time ago and when they came into being. There's just no evidence to work from.
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Originally Posted by Kr0nos
That would be pretty much impossible to find out, since it is very unlikely that the first spoken "languages" were written down.
My guess would be that the first crude spoken languages developed some 60 - 70 thousand years ago (maybe even as much a million years ago depending on your definition of "language").
Dude, I believe its been proven that the Earth is only 5-6 thousand years old. It says so in the Bible. 
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Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy
Ask Oisin or Tooki. They are the resident linguists.
From what little I know there are several major language families that encompass all known languages. English, and most of the Western European languages, are part of the Indo-European family which has as its "mother tongue" Sanskrit.
This site has all the details, including maps. http://home.wanadoo.nl/arjenbolhuis/...-family-trees/
As for the first language, that is lost to history. People were talking for tens of thousands of years before they ever started writing things down. So, if we don't have a written record of a language it is highly unlikely we will ever have a record of it at all.
Sanskrit isn't our mother tongue, but it is part of the Indo-European family. It has the same relationship to English as Russian does i.e. it shares a common root. This common language is unknown, as we have no written records of it, however by studying the relationship of cognates and sound changes, we can reconstruct elements of the proto-Indo European language. Of course, much of this is hypothetical as it cannot be 'proven' as such but it is interesting nonetheless.
However, Sanskrit is probably one of the closest Indo-European languages to the original proto Indo-European language surviving today. I've heard that Lithuanian is also very close and also some of the Slavic languages.
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In vino veritas.
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Originally Posted by JoshuaZ
Dude, I believe its been proven that the Earth is only 5-6 thousand years old. It says so in the Bible.
And on that young earth is a bridge in Brooklyn for sale!
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Originally Posted by JoshuaZ
Dude, I believe its been proven that the Earth is only 5-6 thousand years old. It says so in the Bible.
Oh yeah, sorry. My fault.
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I think written languages are quite a recent thing.
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IIRC, Basque is the only living non-proto-indo-european language. They consider it a neolithic language, unrelated to anything else on earth.
That may reflect old thinking on the subject, I haven't read up on the field in a very long time.
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Originally Posted by thunderous_funker
IIRC, Basque is the only living non-proto-indo-european language.
Japanese is an Indo-European language?
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Isn't this taught in school? I know I were.
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Originally Posted by Chuckit
Japanese is an Indo-European language?
I might have mis-remembered and my review of the Tree didn't reveal an obvious answer.
Basque is a branch all by itself, unrelated to anything else. I'm not sure what the names of the "parent" branch is but now that you mention it can't be proto-indo-european so my post would appear to be incorrect.
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"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." -- Hunter S. Thompson
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Originally Posted by thunderous_funker
IIRC, Basque is the only living non-proto-indo-european language. They consider it a neolithic language, unrelated to anything else on earth.
That may reflect old thinking on the subject, I haven't read up on the field in a very long time.
The vast majority of languages in the world are not Indo-European! And there are many languages which we are unable to classify (especially some in Africa). So Basque is not one of a kind!
Here is a list of 'language isolates'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate
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In vino veritas.
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Originally Posted by undotwa
The vast majority of languages in the world are not Indo-European! And there are many languages which we are unable to classify (especially some in Africa). So Basque is not one of a kind!
Well, it's still one of a kind (i.e. the only language in its family). It's just not the only thing that's one of a kind. That would be super-unique.
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Chuck
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Originally Posted by JoshuaZ
It says so in the Bible.
No it doesn't.
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At least half my memory works right.
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"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." -- Hunter S. Thompson
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You may have gotten this from the earlier links, Cody Dawg, but languages generally change into new ones gradually, and it's likely that every most extant languages descended from one original one. So we can (often) draw clear boundaries between 2 current languages, but it would be pretty much impossible to say where/when the "second" language separated from the first. Again, not that we could recreate any of the first one, but linguists seem fairly confident it existed.
John McWhorter's book The Power of Babel (here it is at Amazon) is a great layperson's book on language change and how linguistic detectives can partially reconstruct its history. His pop culture references can get a little over-the-top at times, but it's a great not-too-easy/not-too-hard read..
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Originally Posted by Kerrigan
The welsh are human?
No, they are fish.
-t
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Originally Posted by Kevin
No it doesn't.
Yeah- it kinda does.
It has genealogies going back to Adam, and it all adds up to 6k or so.
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Originally Posted by Chuckit
Well, it's still one of a kind (i.e. the only language in its family). It's just not the only thing that's one of a kind. That would be super-unique.
Oh yes, in that sense it is one of a kind!
Sorry for that slip.
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In vino veritas.
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Prior to the Tower of Babel, humanity spoke Hebrew. That's the truth, take it or leave it.
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Originally Posted by Cody Dawg
What was the very first language, then the next one, and so on?
Where do Asiatic languages fit in? And native Americans and their languages?
We were talking about that this morning.
Have any ideas?
prob hand language in the form of simple jesters 
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Originally Posted by Cody Dawg
What was the very first language, then the next one, and so on?
Have any ideas?
Body language??? Still in use worldwide .
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Originally Posted by Athens
prob hand language in the form of simple jesters
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Originally Posted by Athens
prob hand language in the form of simple jesters
Muahahahahaha. That was funny ! Maybe not intentionally, but nonetheless. 
-t
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