#822 Will we ever end up with just one language?

Will we ever end up with just one language? We will lose more languages, but it is very unlikely that we would all end up speaking the same language.

There is no way of knowing when language appeared. Humans evolved about 300,000 years ago and they probably started by grunting and gesturing at each other. Over time (over a lot of time), these grunts and gestures probably evolved into a language. When, though, is anyone’s guess. If it started before people migrated out of Africa, then it is likely that there was one language to start with. However, it is more likely that the foundation of language was there when people migrated and several protolanguages evolved once they had migrated. There are arguments for and against a monolanguage, but there is no way to know either way. There is also no way of knowing when this happened. Some experts have looked at the number of languages we have now and thought that it would take about 100,000 years for so many complex languages to evolve. However, again, that is just a guesstimate.

There are said to be 7,139 languages in the world today. 573 languages have disappeared since records have been kept. There are probably many other languages that have disappeared over the course of history as their speakers were wiped out or absorbed into another culture. Currently, about 40% of languages have 1,000 or fewer speakers and are at danger of disappearing. It is estimated that by 2050, 90% of the languages spoken today will have disappeared.

Why do languages vanish? They disappear, obviously, because the last speaker dies and there is no one to pass the language on. This happens if people are wiped out through war, or if a culture is absorbed into another larger culture, as happened with the colonization of Africa and the Americas. A language can happen if it is not taught in schools. If the language is only used at home, there is more chance that it will disappear. The speakers of a language don’t have to die for it to disappear. There are other reasons why people might choose to stop speaking a language. Lack of motivation can also be a factor. Young people might see speaking their local language as a hindrance to their career and stop speaking it. The spread of the Internet is a huge factor in the number of languages that are vanishing. 55% of all content on the Internet is currently English. The next 10 main languages make up another 35% of all content. That leaves the last 10% for all other languages. Many of the less spoken languages are not even represented on the Internet. Young people might ignore their own language in favor of a language spoken by the people they talk to on the Internet. There are many reasons why languages vanish.

So, if 90% of languages will disappear by 2050, that will leave 700 languages. If that many languages will vanish, will the trend continue and leave just one language? The chances are very slim. The first reason is that a lot of the languages that are vanishing are dialects, rather than complete languages. A dialect can vanish, but still leave the main language. And the second reason, and probably the most important, is that even though minor languages are at risk, major languages are just too major to disappear. The reasons why a language will disappear do not apply to languages that have several millions of speakers. These languages are taught in schools, are spoken all over the country, and are necessary for a person to live in their country of origin. A person’s culture and sense of identity is also very strongly tied up in the language that they speak. To give up a language would mean giving up a culture. This is not likely to happen.

The only way major languages could disappear is if climate change increased to the point where people in individual countries have to migrate and spread across the world, living in many other countries. Or, if aliens invade.

So, what is likely to happen? More people will learn second languages. Right now, English is the world’s main language, but this might not always be the case. There are far more native speakers of Chinese than there are of English. And large parts of Africa speak French, so when the African countries become more wealthy and powerful, French might see a resurgence. On top of that, the ability of translators will improve to the point where people can talk to each other without having to learn a second language. This might not be soon, but it will happen. This would reduce the chance that languages disappear. And this is what I learned today.

Images By Jun – Flickr: Eteocypriot writing, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15990976

Sources