Here’s something that has always bothered me, as a person and a writer. Where in the heckity-heck did we come up with language? All of a sudden someone decides, “Yeah, let’s call this round thing a ball,” why not a shoe or a ring or a steve? And, how did everyone catch on with what it was being called and agree on how to spell it? It just doesn’t make sense to me, so I’m here to hopefully clear some stuff up for anyone who feels similar to me.

If you aren’t frustrated enough by words themselves, here’s something else to bug you: we don’t actually know the true origins of language. There is no consensus among experts as to where the language originated or how it developed. Although there isn’t a solid way to determine where language came from, there are a couple different theories on how they came about.

Many religious societies throughout time have believed that the gift of language was bestowed on them as a present from the gods. Some evidence of this theory comes from the Bible, Genesis 2:20, “So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.” which implies that man was just born with the ability to speak, and Adam decided what to call the animals. Now, however, the supporters of this theory are fading away and it is becoming less popular.

The other hypothesis on how language came about is that language occurred by natural evolution. Somewhere along the line of evolution, humans developed a more advanced brain which allowed for invention and learning. They acquired a “language acquisition device” which means that our brains developed to a point where communication through language was possible. We converted the noises and gestures that we used previously and turned them into organized, creative languages.

Hieroglyphics were the origin of written language and were used from civilizations such as Native Americans and most famously, the Egyptians. The first hieroglyphs found were written in approximately 3300-3200 BC. The type of language that is used there is much easier to understand and really universal. Almost any hieroglyphics can be understood if you have a little background information on how the society that it was written in worked. The pictures and symbols soon evolved to letters and structured sentences and to the language we have today, like this article.

Languages are different all around the world;however, it is rather easy to explain why that is. When the ability to speak arose, languages started developing. The civilizations at the time were spread out, so not everyone spoke in the same dialects. It would make sense to me, however, that as civilizations grew closer together and one language became the standard, the rest would die out. To an extent that is happening now. For example, some Native American languages such as Cherokee and most others are slowly dying out and could become completely dead languages in only a couple of generations. Cherokee is one of the most advanced languages on earth and is very hard to learn if you were not born into the language. The sentence structure and grammar are incredibly complex and difficult to learn. That is why it is so important to protect ancient and influential languages so that as history is dug up and discovered, there are people able to read and interpret what the historical documents say.

There are obvious primary languages across the world now, such as English, Spanish, and Chinese. There are also 3 main root languages, Latin, Greek, and Germanic. With the growth of the popularity of the Internet, it is becoming even more apparent that English is going to become the standard. People in other countries, like Spain and China, learn English in school. In Finland, almost every person speaks English, many as a first language.

I hope this helped to clear things up, it is very hard to comprehend and make sense of. Language is so cool and it is amazing that so many people can communicate effectively with other people from around the world.