Evolution of Languages
Where Do Languages Come From?
We know that Spanish is simply a later version of the Latin language that was spoken in Rome two thousand years ago. Latin spread with the Roman conquest of Europe and, following the breakup of the Roman Empire, the regional dialects of Latin gradually evolved into the modern Romance languages: Sardinian, Rumanian, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese. A language family, such as the Romance family, is a group of languages that have all evolved from a single earlier language, in this case Latin.
A language that existed long before Latin, Proto-Germanic, or Proto-Slavic first differentiated into these three languages and then they, in turn, diversified into the modern languages of each family. This larger, more ancient family is known as the Indo-European family and it includes almost all European languages (but not Basque, Hungarian, or Finnish), and many other languages of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The Indo-European family has, in fact, thirteen branches; in addition to Romance, Germanic, and Slavic, there are also Baltic, Celtic, Iranian, Indic, Tocharian, Anatolian, and three single languages that are by themselves separate branches of the family: Armenian, Greek, and Albanian.
The story does not end here, for Indo-European is but one branch of an even larger (and more ancient) family known as Eurasiatic. In addition to Indo-European, this family also includes the Uralic family (Finnish, Hungarian, Samoyed); the Altaic family (Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus, Korean, Japanese); the Chukchi-Kamchatkan family just across the Bering Strait from Alaska; and the Eskimo-Aleut family that extends along the northern perimeter of North America from Alaska to Greenland.
A language family is a group of genetically related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. Most languages are known to belong to language families. An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit; that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor. The concept of language families thus entails the concept of a historical genetic ancestor of a language, implying a gradual evolution over time of one language into another language.
We know that Spanish is simply a later version of the Latin language that was spoken in Rome two thousand years ago. Latin spread with the Roman conquest of Europe and, following the breakup of the Roman Empire, the regional dialects of Latin gradually evolved into the modern Romance languages: Sardinian, Rumanian, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese. A language family, such as the Romance family, is a group of languages that have all evolved from a single earlier language, in this case Latin.
A language that existed long before Latin, Proto-Germanic, or Proto-Slavic first differentiated into these three languages and then they, in turn, diversified into the modern languages of each family. This larger, more ancient family is known as the Indo-European family and it includes almost all European languages (but not Basque, Hungarian, or Finnish), and many other languages of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The Indo-European family has, in fact, thirteen branches; in addition to Romance, Germanic, and Slavic, there are also Baltic, Celtic, Iranian, Indic, Tocharian, Anatolian, and three single languages that are by themselves separate branches of the family: Armenian, Greek, and Albanian.
The story does not end here, for Indo-European is but one branch of an even larger (and more ancient) family known as Eurasiatic. In addition to Indo-European, this family also includes the Uralic family (Finnish, Hungarian, Samoyed); the Altaic family (Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus, Korean, Japanese); the Chukchi-Kamchatkan family just across the Bering Strait from Alaska; and the Eskimo-Aleut family that extends along the northern perimeter of North America from Alaska to Greenland.
A language family is a group of genetically related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. Most languages are known to belong to language families. An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit; that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor. The concept of language families thus entails the concept of a historical genetic ancestor of a language, implying a gradual evolution over time of one language into another language.
Current distribution of Human Language Families
Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family, because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. However, the term family is not restricted to any one level of this "tree"; the Germanic family, for example, is a branch of the Indo-European family.
Check out Acient Scripts for information on written languages.
Sources:
The evolution of Languages
Language Family
Genetic Distance and Language Affinities
posted by Dan @ 10:19 PM
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