A very interesting video! I watched it and recommend it.
For accessibility, turn on subtitles.
Saluton! Kiel vi fartas? Bonvenon al Scienco Ĉiutage! Hold on a second! You don't need to change your YouTube language settings.
Everything is alright.
That was just a greeting in another language.
It's not an official language of any country.
In fact, it's not even a natural language, so to speak.
But I guarantee it really exists.
Stay until the end of the video, and you'll understand this story properly.
But before we get there,
I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about how much easier everything would be if all of humanity spoke the same language.
Communication between people worldwide would be much more practical and efficient.
So why doesn't this happen?
After all, if humans walk, jump, sleep, and do so many things the same way, why doesn't everyone
speak the same way too?
The truth is that early humans were already expressing themselves long before the emergence of
any language.
Non-verbal forms of communication have always existed among our ancestors, and even
in other animals, like this dog wagging its tail to show happiness.
Give this cutie a like.
Whether through gestures or facial expressions capable of conveying ideas of fear, disgust, happiness, or sadness,
humans were already communicating long before words were invented.
There were also drawings.
The famous cave paintings allowed ancient humans to express themselves
and leave behind small fragments of our species' history.
People, animals, nature, and even early maps were immortalized on cave walls
tens of thousands of years ago.
But what about speech?
When did humans definitively differentiate themselves from other animals and begin to
communicate through words and languages?
According to biologist Charles Darwin, considered the most important figure in the study of evolution
of species, our language arose precisely from the imitation of animals.
Even in the 19th century, Darwin wrote:
"I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to imitation and modification,
aided by signs and gestures of various other natural sounds,
the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries."
Other scientists offer different explanations for the emergence of verbal communication.
For some researchers, the first sounds imitated not only animals,
but also human hand gestures themselves.
For example, the sound of
might have given rise to the sound of
PA
The sound of
might have given rise to the sound SHH. And so on.
There are also those who say it all began with interjections,
those sounds we make even unintentionally out of surprise, pleasure, or pain, for example!
In other words, perhaps the first word in history was the "ouch" of a Neanderthal who stubbed their toe on the cave's coffee table.
Another theory suggests that verbal communication was born from collective work,
in an attempt to synchronize muscular effort.
Like when you and your friends need to lift a heavy object together and say "one, two, three, go!"
But without the words "one, two, three, and go," it's all based on grunts.
Ultimately, it's possible that the correct answer is all of the above.
In other words, humans didn't wake up one day communicating perfectly.
Little by little, our language emerged through sounds here and groans there.
And then, over time, our vocal apparatus developed,
allowing an ever-increasing range of sounds to come out of our mouths.
And then humans gradually began to name each object around them with different names and sounds.
Furthermore, at some point, human language underwent a unique change in evolutionary history.
The ability to be creative with language.
For example, the sentence "Peter pineapple, suddenly Yorkshire" was probably never said before.
This kind of creativity has no precedent in other animals.
Animal language is direct.
A dog wagging its tail is always a happy dog.
Human language, on the other hand, has many more layers of complexity.
And the exact same signal can mean different things in different situations.
For example, "I love my team that's with me here in this room."
Or "I love my team that's with me in this room."
In addition to having language, humans also create language in different forms: signs, writing, or spoken language.
A process that gave rise to the more than 400,000 words that exist in Portuguese alone,
in addition to the other millions of words in thousands of languages around the world.
This is the subject of study for a large field of knowledge called linguistics.
Names like Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Lev Vygotsky
dedicated their lives to understanding and trying to explain how the systematization of human languages works.
The first known language was called Proto-Indo-European.
It was the root of most languages spoken in the world today.
And when I say root,
it's because we can think of it exactly like a tree. The root grows and gives rise to the trunk, which in turn divides into a series of branches.
And that's how it happened with our language.
The Proto-Indo-European tree
was not the only one in this forest of human communication,
but it was certainly the one that grew the most and bore the most fruit.
All these languages were born from that common root.
In some cases, this branching happened long ago in the past.
That's why, I don't know, English is so different from Nepali.
Portuguese and Spanish, which diverged much more recently, have many more similarities.
The exact location where Proto-Indo-European originated is unknown,
but scientists believe it was roughly where Turkey is today.
And as humans migrated around the world, languages also diversified.
Furthermore, wars and land invasions also led to the
proliferation of languages. For example, when the Romans conquered a region, they
brought Latin. But at the same time, they also absorbed words from the local languages
of the lands they occupied. And imagine this process happening all the time
for thousands of years, in the most diverse corners of the world. The result was the subdivision
of that first original language into thousands of languages very different from each other.
And they are literally thousands.
There are about 7,000 different languages in the world.
In Brazil alone, there are over 200.
The vast majority are indigenous languages, such as Guarani, Yanomami, Guajajara, and many
others.
And there are also communities that speak foreign languages, such as Pomeranian, which is similar
to German and is used especially in some cities in Espírito Santo and the south.
In addition, of course, to Libras, Brazilian Sign Language, and one of the
official languages of Brazil. And by the way, for those who don't know, each place has its own sign language.
It is not universal; there are a few hundred around the world.
But returning to spoken languages, just as happens in Brazil, other countries have
similar situations. That is, in most places, the majority of the population communicates
in only one or two languages, and then very small groups speak an immense variety of languages, which exist even with few speakers.
Putting this into numbers, we can say that 94% of the Earth's inhabitants speak only about 10% of the existing languages.
In other words, over 90% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the world's population.
If this information, on one hand, is impressive, on the other hand, it is worrying. After all, this means that a large part of humanity's cultural wealth only survives thanks to a very small portion of the population.
In other words, over time, many of these languages may become extinct.
In fact, this is quite common. On average, according to UNESCO, every two weeks,
a language ceases to exist on Earth. And I hope the next one isn't mine.
At this rate, by the end of this century, half of those seven thousand languages I mentioned could simply disappear.
And it's worth differentiating the concept of an extinct language
from another important concept, that of a dead language?
The most famous example of a dead language is Latin.
Latin still exists.
Many people speak Latin.
Priests say mass in Latin,
Harry Potter casts spells in Latin,
dogs keep barking.
But Latin is not anyone's native language.
In other words, no one will intuitively learn Latin
as happens with Portuguese in Brazil,
English in the United States, and so on.
After all, it's not the official language
of any country. Or rather, to be precise, it is for the Vatican, but
that's a very special case. It's a country with less than a thousand inhabitants, the size of a
square. The fact is that no human grows up hearing Latin from their family, at
school, or on television. Everyone needs to stop to study the grammar and
vocabulary if they want to know how to speak it. And this, of course, requires a lot of effort, a lot of time
and results in very few people being able to speak Latin fluently.
If it's already hard to learn a new language,
imagine one that is spoken by very few people.
This leads us to wonder,
what if it weren't necessary to learn several languages
to communicate with everyone?
After all, no matter how passionate you are about studying languages,
it's impossible to know them all.
But what if we tried to choose just one
and turn it into a kind of universal language?
Why has humanity never done this?
Well, it wasn't for lack of trying.
The most famous example is Esperanto, an artificial language
idealized by the Pole Ludwik Zamenhof in the late 19th century.
He lived in a city that at the time belonged to the Russian Empire,
where several different languages were spoken.
And that's why he wondered, what if there was a single language
for all peoples?
But then he didn't want to just hope for it and decided to act.
Okay, sorry.
Zamenhof took Slavic phonemes, was inspired by Latin words, and imitated structures common in various languages,
such as the adjective before the noun, which is typical of English.
And to facilitate learning, he used simple rules, such as, for example, only three verb tenses: past, present, and future.
The result was the creation of the most important artificial language in the world.
Today, Esperanto has almost 10 million people who speak it with some minimum level of fluency.
It is used in some international events, in online broadcasts, in literature, in music,
and it was also the language I used in the greeting at the beginning of this video.
Furthermore, Wikipedia alone has over 350,000 articles in Esperanto today.
But Esperanto is not the only artificial language ever invented by humans.
There are other similar projects, such as Novial, Ido, and also Interlingua.
The latter is called an auxiliary language
because it is based on the existence of similar words in various languages around the world.
And a large part of this vocabulary comes from Latin languages,
but there are terms from other parts of the Earth that are understood by many people.
This is the case with words like kimono, igloo, and vodka, for example.
And with the result, it's possible to write texts like this one,
which is on the website of the Brazilian Union for Interlingua.
I don't know if my pronunciation of Interlingua is up to date, but I'll try.
Le novetinto miliones de personas qui parla portoquese, francese, espanhol, italiano,
romaniano, etc.
E mesmo le parlantes anglese comprehenden un texto technique in interlingua sensulio pra
vi.
So?
Could you understand?
It's an example of text comprehensible to speakers of different languages, even
if they have never studied another language.
But beyond this attempt at international communication, artificial languages and other forms
of communication can be created for other reasons,
including artistic ones.
This is the case with Nadsat, invented by writer Anthony Burgess,
for his book A Clockwork Orange.
Anyone who has read this work or watched Stanley Kubrick's film
should remember the language used by the droogs
who went around giving toltchoks to others' gullivers.
Or, in good Portuguese, the thugs who gathered to beat up people around.
And there's also Klingon, which is even more impressive.
It's a fully structured language, even with its own grammar,
developed by linguist Mark Ocrand for the Star Trek series.
TlhIngan maH!
There are books published in Klingon, annual events to promote the language, and even the case
of an American father who spent the first three years of his son's life communicating
only in Klingon, supposedly to understand how children learn this language.
How do you say "stupid idea" in Klingon?
But neither Klingon, nor Interlingua, nor even Esperanto,
has been able to make the entire world speak the same language.
A language fabricated in a laboratory, so to speak,
faces many difficulties in being incorporated into people's real lives.
After all, remember what I said a little while ago about Latin?
Like a dead language, artificial languages are not official in any country.
And they are not present in anyone's daily life.
Except for the child who heard his father speak Klingon for 3 years.
But otherwise, we only have access to artificial languages if we stop to study and learn
everything from scratch.
And this process faces many barriers.
The main one is access to education in the world.
Just think, for example, about Brazilian schools.
In many of them, students barely have enough Portuguese classes.
A second language, like English, is out of the question.
It's no wonder that only 1% of our population is fluent in English.
Imagine, then, the challenge of teaching an even less used language like Esperanto.
Besides, we are talking about only one of the more than 200 countries in the world.
This situation is even more delicate in other places.
Most countries don't have much to gain by adopting another language instead of their population's languages.
Especially when translation into lingua francas like English and French
is sufficient for international communication.
And therefore, even though some of us may wish it, the truth is that it's unlikely that the entire world
will one day be able to understand each other in a single language.
On one hand, this may seem like bad news for some, but let's consider the
other side.
The great variety of languages that exist in the world is fantastic.
Just as different peoples have their laws, their religions, and even their calendars,
they also have their languages.
They are a fundamental part of the culture of each group and nation.
Studying new languages stimulates our brain and improves our memory.
And it also serves as a hobby for many people, who enjoy learning a little more about
the world through the language of each place.
And it is also a practice that motivates many people to pack their bags and explore other
countries, in pursuit of an immersive experience in a different reality.
And even without traveling, it serves to broaden our cultural repertoire.
Watching a movie in another language or listening to music in a different language,
even if we don't fully understand the lyrics,
are sensations that transport us around the world without leaving home.
Therefore, it's okay if humanity never speaks the same language.
In the end, it can serve as an additional incentive for us to explore the world.
Hundreds of countries, thousands of languages, millions of words, billions of people,
and infinite reasons to be enchanted by this fascinating species that is the human being.
so fascinating that is the human being.
Koran dankon... kaj ĝis la venontan fojon!
⚠️ Research elaborated with the aid of Deep Research is subject to referential ambiguity.
🖥️Clean HTML code with the use of a proprietary tool.
👥Research by Guilherme Felipe, Curation Sílvio Lôbo
Why Doesn't Humanity Speak the Same Language? An Exploration of the Roots of Linguistic Diversity
The ubiquity of multiple languages on our planet, a fact so intrinsically linked to the human experience that it often goes unnoticed in its depth, raises a fascinating question: why hasn't humanity developed and maintained a single universal language? The answer to this question lies not in a single cause, but in a complex interplay of historical, geographical, social, and cognitive factors that have shaped the evolution of human communication over millennia.
The Origin of Diversity: The Starting Point and the First Deviations
Although theories about the unique origin of human language are subject to ongoing scientific debate, the most accepted hypothesis suggests that our earliest ancestors developed a rudimentary form of language at a specific time and place. From this point of origin, the expansion of the human species across the globe was the primary catalyst for linguistic divergence. As human groups migrated and settled in different regions, isolated from one another by geographical barriers such as mountains, oceans, and deserts, their languages began to evolve independently.
This geographical isolation is one of the most curious aspects. Imagine communities that, for generations, had no contact. The need to name new elements of the environment – plants, animals, climatic phenomena – in a new territory led to the creation of new words. Without linguistic exchange, these innovations became exclusive to each group. What was one word for one group had to be reinvented for another, geographically distant group, or a new form would emerge to express the same idea. It's as if the world were a vast laboratory of linguistic experimentation, where each group, in its own corner, created its own rules and vocabulary.
One point that causes bewilderment is to consider the amount of effort and resources that have been and are spent on translation and interpretation throughout history, from ancient courts to modern international organizations. If there were a single language, all this infrastructure and complexity would be unnecessary. This leads us to question whether this diversity, despite its challenges, has not brought intrinsic benefits that have helped shape humanity itself.
Social and Cultural Factors: Building Identities and Borders
Language is intrinsically linked to the cultural and social identity of a group. Over time, languages not only diversified out of adaptive necessity but also as markers of belonging. Speaking a particular language or dialect became a way of asserting a group's identity, differentiating it from others. This is particularly evident in communities seeking to preserve their traditions and culture in the face of external influences.
Power dynamics also played a crucial role. The rise of empires and the expansion of dominant cultures often led to the dissemination of their languages, often at the expense of local languages. However, even in these scenarios, cultural resistance and the need to maintain one's identity could lead to the preservation or even the creation of new linguistic variants. The imposition of an official language by a dominant power can, paradoxically, reinforce the importance of the native language for those who oppose such domination.
It is strange to note how a single word can carry a universe of cultural, historical, and emotional meanings for a speaker of a certain language, yet be completely incomprehensible or have a different meaning for someone else. The polysemy and nuances that each language offers are a direct reflection of the unique experience of each people. The way we name the world influences how we perceive it, and this diversity of linguistic "worldviews" is one of humanity's richest legacies.
Cognitive Adaptation and the Nature of Language
The human capacity for language is innate, but the specific structure of each language is learned. Our cognitive architecture, while sharing the ability to acquire and process language, allows for remarkable flexibility. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, although debated in its most radical form, suggests that the structure of a language influences the thought processes of its speakers. This implies that as languages diverged, so too might, to some extent, the ways of thinking and conceiving the world.
Another curious point is the incredible ability of the human brain to learn new languages. Although we have a native language that shapes our cognition, neural plasticity allows us to learn multiple languages, often acquiring different structures and ways of thinking. This suggests that linguistic diversity is not an insurmountable barrier, but rather a reflection of the adaptability and richness of the human mind.
The Phenomenon of Creole and Pidgin Languages: An Attempt at Union
Despite the tendency towards diversity, history also shows us examples of attempts at linguistic unification. In contexts of intense contact between speakers of different languages, such as in colonies, ports, or trade routes, so-called pidgin languages emerged. These are simplified languages with rudimentary vocabulary and grammar, serving as a basic means of communication. What is strange is that these languages, initially created out of temporary necessity, can evolve into creole languages, which become native languages for new generations, developing more complex grammar and richer vocabulary. It is as if the need for connection overcomes the barrier of difference, forcing the creation of linguistic bridges.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Richness and Complexity
In summary, humanity does not speak the same language due to a confluence of factors. Geographical isolation after human dispersal, the deep connection between language and cultural identity, social and power dynamics, and the very flexible and adaptable nature of human cognition have all contributed to the vast tapestry of languages we observe today. Linguistic diversity is not an accident or a flaw, but rather a testament to human creativity, cultural resilience, and the complexity of our evolutionary journey. The curious and strange points that emerge from this exploration remind us that each language is a universe in itself, a repository of history, culture, and unique ways of seeing and interacting with the world.
