Relationship between languages

[RickLewis]

think it makes the mistake of having to assume an original root language, which is a false. You can just as easily see language not as a root system but as a series of converging branches.

If there are branches , then there is a root .

This is possibly true, but:
(a) if there was a root langauge, it was a very, very long time ago. The origins of our modern languages probably lie many tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Most archaeologists think that the Neanderthals had some kind of language, although we obviously can't know that for sure. Clearly people spoke languages long before they were first written down. (The oldest surviving writing is less than ten thousand years old). Therefore if we want to find an original root language, we presumably need to look not at which language was written down first, but at the similarities and differences between languages to try to determine how they are related. I understand that there has been a lot of work published on this recently.
(b) it isn't certain that there is a single root language. It might be the case that language was independently invented several times in different parts of the world. After all, it is such a useful thing.

[Khalid]

The CAMERA was invented by the Chinese c 500BC and was also mentioned by Aristotle - when your people were still illiterate living the the desert trying to domesticate the camel.

Are you sure about that? A reference would be handy. The Chinese invented many things, but surely a working camera requires chemically sensitized paper. Or do you mean a camera obscura?

The Chinese invented the idea of camera . Wikipedia says : the Arabic scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) also wrote about observing a solar eclipse through a pinhole,[6] and he described how a sharper image could be produced by making the opening of the pinhole smaller . So Ibn el haitham participated in putting the basis of the camera When he made his box in which light goes through a tiny hole in a specific point of the box . He named that box 'Al Komra' . This is what I wanted to say about the root of word camera as I watched on t.v .

[Khalid]

think it makes the mistake of having to assume an original root language, which is a false. You can just as easily see language not as a root system but as a series of converging branches.

If there are branches , then there is a root .

This is possibly true, but:
(a) if there was a root langauge, it was a very, very long time ago. The origins of our modern languages probably lie many tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Most archaeologists think that the Neanderthals had some kind of language, although we obviously can't know that for sure. Clearly people spoke languages long before they were first written down. (The oldest surviving writing is less than ten thousand years old). Therefore if we want to find an original root language, we presumably need to look not at which language was written down first, but at the similarities and differences between languages to try to determine how they are related. I understand that there has been a lot of work published on this recently.
(b) it isn't certain that there is a single root language. It might be the case that language was independently invented several times in different parts of the world. After all, it is such a useful thing.

I agree with you . There can't be one single root language . But I just tried to highlight the characteristics of Arabic language that really differs in it's vocabularies and structure from most of languages .

[chaz wyman]

This is possibly true, but:
(a) if there was a root langauge, it was a very, very long time ago. The origins of our modern languages probably lie many tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Most archaeologists think that the Neanderthals had some kind of language, although we obviously can't know that for sure. Clearly people spoke languages long before they were first written down. (The oldest surviving writing is less than ten thousand years old). Therefore if we want to find an original root language, we presumably need to look not at which language was written down first, but at the similarities and differences between languages to try to determine how they are related. I understand that there has been a lot of work published on this recently.
(b) it isn't certain that there is a single root language. It might be the case that language was independently invented several times in different parts of the world. After all, it is such a useful thing.

I agree with you . There can't be one single root language . But I just tried to highlight the characteristics of Arabic language that really differs in it's vocabularies and structure from most of languages .

Odd that you agree with him, and yet disagree with me who has said exactly the same thing. It's especially odd since you also think that we all come from Adan and Eve whose genealogy has been calculated to 4004BC, which is about 100,000 years too late for modern humans, and 250,000 years too late for Neanderthals.

[RickLewis]

I agree with you . There can't be one single root language . But I just tried to highlight the characteristics of Arabic language that really differs in it's vocabularies and structure from most of languages .

I didn't say that, actually. There could have been a single root language. I just don't think we can tell yet. If there was a single original language, then it was such a very, very long time ago (maybe 100,000 years, maybe more) and modern languages have diverged from it to such an degree that it would be difficult to tell. However, it is also possible that language has been independently invented several times over in different parts of the world.

The Wikipedia article on the Origin of Language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language) has a lot of interesting information. For instance:

Using statistical methods to estimate the time required to achieve the current spread and diversity in modern languages today, Johanna Nichols — a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley — argues that vocal language must have arisen in our species at least 100,000 years ago.[30] Using phonemic diversity, a more recent analysis offers directly linguistic support for a similar date.[31] Estimates of this kind are independently supported by genetic, archaeological, palaeontological and much other evidence suggesting that language probably emerged somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Stone Age, roughly contemporaneous with the speciation of Homo sapiens.[32]

It also gives a great example of a language being invented from scratch:

Genesis of Nicaraguan Sign Language

Beginning in 1979, the recently installed Nicaraguan government initiated the country's first widespread effort to educate deaf children. Prior to this there was no deaf community in the country. A center for special education established a program initially attended by 50 young deaf children. By 1983 the center had 400 students. The center did not have access to teaching facilities of any of the sign languages that are used around the world; consequently, the children were not taught any sign language. The language program instead emphasized spoken Spanish and lipreading, and the use of signs by teachers limited to fingerspelling (using simple signs to sign the alphabet). The program achieved little success, with most students failing to grasp the concept of Spanish words.

The first children who arrived at the center came with only a few crude gestural signs developed within their own families. However, when the children were placed together for the first time they began to build on one another's signs. As more and younger children joined, the language became more complex. The children's teachers, who were having limited success at communicating with their students, watched in awe as the children began communicating amongst themselves.

Later the Nicaraguan government solicited help from Judy Kegl, an American sign-language expert at Northeastern University. As Kegl and other researchers began to analyze the language, they noticed that the younger children had taken the pidgin-like form of the older children to a higher level of complexity, with verb agreement and other conventions of grammar (but no recursion).[122]

[chaz wyman]

The idea of a single proto-language is basically bankrupt.
Homo erectus leaving Africa and spreading throughout Asia and Europe had some form of communication, these communities gave rise to localised communities of Neanderthalensis, which we know had a developed hypoid bone, and could talk. Their obvious intelligence demonstrated in their fine stone tools and the ability to survive extremes of climate whilst hunting mammoth and other dangerous game make it almost certain that they used a spoken language. Even elephants and big cats employ a range of distinct vocal signals. It is likely that the first words spoken by humans di not constitute what we call a language, and the human vocabulary increased in disparate communities, as the need fo a range of labels and meaning cause the necessary of inventing new words, in this way there has always been different modes of speaking we like to call different languages long before there was any definitive separate language.
You might even choose to reject this line of reasoning and arbitrarily decide that these communities are not the 'real humans', but that they emerged (c. 120,000ya) from Southern Africa in what has become know as the "Out-of-Africa Two" hypothesis. It is likely that they had a reasonably sophisticated language at that time. I suppose this would be the best candidate for a 'proto-language', but it will never be known what that language consisted in and it is impossible that they did not adapt that language with 70,000 years of contact with the Neanderthal and similar subspecies they met and joined with in their eventual domination of the genus. It was not until the eventual extinguishment of all other human forms c.30,000 bp that human variation became nothing more than superficial. By then the last major innovation in evolution; the acquisition of the abstract and artistic thinking skills becomes apparent, but by then the ~Dispersal of BABEL was well into the past by thousands of years, and differences in language were already numberless.
It is no more than a matter of taste with what and how you define "a language" all modern languages shares words with and from others, and it is more a matter of National pride that we choose to delineate and sunder one language from another. No modern language is recognisable back more than a few hundred years, and the further you go back the less likely any label is useful or meaningful. Language does not conform to a definition, and should not.

[Kayla]

I started this question as I heard an information saying that the oldest manuscript in the world was found in a mine in Egypt and it was in Arabic language which goes back to 4000 years , and the first idea came to my head is that Arabic might be the oldest language

the chinese system of writing is older than that

and if you want to hear someone laugh real hard, tell a chinese that their language descended from arabic

[chaz wyman]

I started this question as I heard an information saying that the oldest manuscript in the world was found in a mine in Egypt and it was in Arabic language which goes back to 4000 years , and the first idea came to my head is that Arabic might be the oldest language

Ancient Egyptian is NOT Arabic.

The original Egyptians were swamped by invading Islamic hoards, and are now squeezed into a small Coptic community who have lost their original language.