Language: A Natural History

While you read this page you are engaging in an activity that, although we take it for granted, is truly wondrous. I am referring of course to language. If Martians were to land on our planet what would they make of the approximately 6,000 languages that we speak? Maybe they would think that the differences between them are rather superficial and what they have in common is much more significant. I do tend to agree with Chomsky (his political views are another matter) about the existence of a universal grammar.

Why do we have 6,000 languages? Wouldn’t one be enough? We all know the famous story of the Tower of Babel from the Bible. It’s a beautiful story but we need something a little more solid. Language can and does evolve in multiple directions and these variations appear to be totally random. If we had all lived together in one small place perhaps we would speak only one language but humans have settled all over our planet. In Papua New Guinea there are something like 850 languages for a population of just six million. This represents more than 10% of the world’s languages. Their harsh geography has created isolated communities – perfect breeding grounds for variety in language. Compare that to Europe with 300 million people and fewer than 50 native languages.

The history pf language is inextricably linked with events such as the invention of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. We got cities, states bureaucracy trade and many other things. This rapid growth made it essential to communicate not just with family and your immediate circle. Now you also had to haggle with trading partners and to negotiate peace with your enemies. This was when languages began to mingle. Sometimes it was in a voluntary way and other times through war and conquest. This was when as Nicholas Ostler has described it, “languages first began to colonise, infiltrate and exterminate other languages”. So we can blame it on the farmers. Why were there winners and losers? A language needs an army. English is not the world’s lingua franca because of the beauty of Shakespeare’s English. The role of force is not always a simple question though. The Romans occupied Britain for hundreds of years but left almost no trace on the speech of the islanders.

Some of these tribal languages are absolutely fascinating. When few people speak a language its grammar is usually incredibly complex. A lot of people think that the languages spoken in Africa and the Pacific islands are primitive and simple. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all know that Spanish has two genders and that German has three but Fula, a language spoken in West Africa has no less than 16 genders. The genders and declensions that you find in Latin are a piece of cake compared to some of these tribal languages. English represents the opposite phenomenon because although it is not easy to learn it less complicated than other Germanic languages such as German and Swedish and Icelandic. This may be because in England in the period of the Viking invasions there was a lot second-language learning, which tends to lead to a simplification of structures to facilitate communication.

We have spoken about the 6,000 languages in the world but the tendency is surely to the reduction of this number due to globalisation and powerful. The vast majority of people speak what linguist John McWhorter has called the “big bad Berlitz languages”. There are many more languages that have 5,000 or fewer speakers and these are under threat. The loss of this linguistic diversity is indeed a tragedy. Many of these languages are only oral and when they disappear there is no record of their existence. At least when animals die off they leave a testament in the fossil record. However, a situation like Papua New Guinea us just not practical. A state needs a common language that everyone speaks. This doesn’t mean that minority languages have to be trampled on. Languages are beautiful things and they should not be used to foment hatred or divide people.

Further reading
Empires of the Word Nicholas Ostler
The Power of Babel John McWhorter
An interview with Steven Pinker about his book The Stuff of Thought.(AUDIO STREAMING) Click here.