The Wall_Spring 2023_Issue 9

Amelia Duda (she/her), LVI, shows how language has developed from its ancient roots and how it unites us.

Let’s get this straight: language has been, and always will be, crucial. Living in a world of 8 billion people – and counting – where each person knows, on average, 1.6 languages is a remarkably diverse time to be alive.As a bilingual, I have found that languages are a gateway to different cultures and are a great segue into niche topics like the world and travel. Being proficient in a foreign language has been an asset in acquiring knowledge of other languages and, more often than not, results in a satisfied smirk on my face when overhearing a conversation in Polish on the Tube. So why are humans so fascinated with communicating with each other in this way?When did this language development even begin? How did our languages come to be as they are today? Each species has its way of communicating, however understandable this communication is to you and me. Still, only humans have developed cognitive language communication.This means that we understand languages in all forms: reading, writing, speaking, and even social queues, allowing us to share ideas, thoughts, opinions, and feelings with others. Linguists predict that language exclusively involving speaking was born over 150,000 years ago to meet that human need for connection. Back then, this language consisted of grunts, heaves, or shouts to alert others of any incoming mammoth attacks. However, even though humans have significantly advanced the structures of languages, some of these

more instinctual ways of communicating still exist in some of our oldest languages and are often used, even today. For evidence of this, look to the Southern African languages, known colloquially as the “clicking languages”. This group of African hunting languages has three language families: Nama, Khoisan, and Bantu. Zulu, the most spoken native language of South Africa, is a part of the Bantu languages; the language has three click sounds or click consonants, as they’re referred to, in its day-to-day use.The importance of these languages derived from the fact that men had to communicate with their hunting partner to hunt prey without scaring it off, and a series of different click consonants would get that message across.We have a lot of information about these languages and rightfully so, as Khoekhoegowab, a language of the Khoisan family, was once one of the most spoken languages in the world.This is because thousands of years ago the Khoisan people, a tribe of hunter-gatherers from Southern Africa, used to be the largest group of humans on Earth. 20,000 years old, did all modern languages originate from them?Well, the answer is most likely, no. Many tribes, such as the Khoisan tribe, would break off from each other and colonise different areas with different climates, leading them to develop differently and, by extension, their languages. Etymologists – linguists who study the As these languages are around

origins of words and languages – can determine the roots of different languages by comparing patterns in grammar, pronouns, and numbers.This research can be challenging as similar-sounding words can sometimes be false cognates or borrowed from other languages, meaning that these similarities wouldn’t be a clear indicator of language origin. However, what is interesting is that these borrowed words, also known as loanwords, can be a clue as to where a specific tribe settled.An example of one of these clues is that the English word Coyote, comes from the Aztec word Coyotl, a language spoken by Native Americans. Etymologists can then infer that when first British settlers arrived in America, they saw these coyotes, which are native to the lands of North America, and borrowed this word from the Native Americans.This is crucial evidence which supports certain moments in history and reveals glimpses of how diverse languages have come to be. However, with 1.5 billion speakers, English has reached a level of diversity that Esperanto only wished it international language’, Esperanto was created by a Polish man named Dr Lud wik Zamenhof, a 14-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, in the late 1800s to erase communication barriers between people. Dr Zamenhof created an artificial language: artificial in the sense that it didn’t come from a specific country or culture but instead contained words from many different European could have achieved. But what is Esperanto?Well, nicknamed ‘the

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