Monday, June 27, 2005

Language Tree

All languages spoken by humans can be mixed, you can try to immitate or copy a word or sound of another language or dialect, maybe you won't get it exactly right, but you can try. Extensive mixing or isolation of languages can create a new language or dialect. But why is this. For now I can think of two reasons:

1. All languages originated from one ancient mother tongue or a group or very closely related tongues that eventually spread across the world. Therefore, they all must have some kind of very basic grammatical or phonetic foundation, that allows languages to mix.

2. Since all humans are one species, it may be genetic or physical characteristics that allow languages, no matter how long separated by time and distance, to still be able to blend.

Probably for this post I will work on studying these. First, let us look at some laws we can all aggree on. Note: All my linguistic posts will be about natural languages, unless I say so.

1. Languages change, no matter how slightly, over a period of time the spoken language will change.

2. Practically all modern languages were once dialects of a larger, more general language. English and Frisian from West Germanic, Indian and Bengali from Sanskrit, etc.

3. All languages can mix, I already explained this.

4. Any kind of event that influences people, politic, economic, or military, can also have an impact on the language(s) of those people.

5. Spoken language precedes written language, therefore, we can assume that most changes happen first in speech, then in writing.

That's if for now.

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