The Origins of Language

The following pages deal with the early history of our language, including the origins of Indo-European which is the earliest known source language of English and many other European languages.

The ultimate origin of language is likely to remain unknown, although many different theories have been suggested. We do not know whether language emerged in one or several places or at different times in our history. It is believed that humans have an innate capacity for producing language.

One general theory that language began as a way of warning fellow hunters of danger is balanced by another that women were the first conversationalists, working at "home" together with language as a social lubricant. Evidence for the latter theory exists in the fact that girls learn language earlier than boys, but this is hardly proof.

As spoken language leaves no traces in the historic record we shall probably never know. However theories abound and considerable research has been undertaken, some of which is given below.

We are quite sure that, whatever the ultimate "first language" we can certainly trace English back to a language called Indo-European which originated 8-10,000 years ago. Read the most recent research in "Nature" of November 2003.

The Salmon as an example of a word which shows the similarities and differences between a wide variety of languages

A Prehistory Timeline of language, showing evolution from 8 million years ago to the invasion of the Romans

Indo-European, its Family Tree and the words Indo-European languages have in common.

How Indo-European was discovered.

Non Indo-European language families.

 In November 2003 the magazine Nature reported the work of Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand under the heading "Language tree rooted in Turkey - Evolutionary ideas give farmers credit for Indo-European tongues".

Their findings suggest that farmers in what is now Turkey were the first speakers of Indo-European - and not later Siberian horsemen, as some linguists have claimed.
They used the rate at which words change to gauge the age of the tree's roots - just as biologists estimate a species' age from the rate of gene mutations. The differences between words, or DNA sequences, are a measure of how closely languages, or species, are related. Read an abridged version of the article here.