The Origins of Language

We do not know when the first human language was created, although there are several popular theories of the origin of language. We do, however, know English's relationship to many other languages and we can chart its development back perhaps 4000 years to a language we call Indo European. The realisation of the surprising links between existing languages is a story in itself, which you can read here.

Look at a diagram of the Indo-European Language Family tree.
Look at this timeline showing the origins of man and language.

An analysis of the words shared by many languages and which we believe originated with Indo-European tells us something of the conditions and environment enjoyed by these early people.
These words include words for snow, winter, oak, beech, pine, bear, wolf, otter, weasel, deer, rabbit, horse, goat, pig, dog, eagle, snake, crab, ant, bee.
There are no common words for sea, elephant, camel, monkey, rice, bamboo, palm, lion, tiger ...
There was a word for some kind of vehicle and for wheels. There were words for family members - mother, father, husband, brother but also father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law which suggest the family was based around a woman marrying into a man's family. English "daughter", German "Tochter", Armenian "dushtr", Greek "thugater" and Sanskrit "duhitar" etc show how similar some of the surviving words can still be. There are words for the parts of the body, for farming, tools and weapons ( arrow, axe, ship and boat), law, religion and numbers up to 100 at least. The number system shows the numbers 1 to 4 were inflected which some linguists have suggested means they used an old system of counting on the fingers with the thumb tapping the fingers in turn.

In simple terms we might think of these languages as tribes who moved away from the main original family and set up home for themselves in different parts of Europe. They travelled in different directions at different speeds over a thousand years or more and in the process the language each new group used would develop in different ways - used for describing new experiences, new ideas, while pronunciation would change imperceptibly from generation to generation until it was distinctly different from the original mother language. As all these languages were changing without contact with each other, the changes would seem even greater until the Germanic branch would have been unable to understand the Celtic branch and the Hellenic would not have understood the Indo-Iranian, even if they had been able to meet. Nevertheless their common ancestry is still evident in their vocabulary, even if it is not always obvious.
For an explanation of the process by which the sounds changed methodically over a period of time see the page on [Grimm's Law]

All this suggests (and is apparent in archaeological records) that the Indo-European peoples, starting with and descended from a civilisation known as the Kurgans, lived in central Europe between the Vistula and Elbe rivers, possibly on the Baltic coast of what is now Germany, probably near the river Volga, some 4,000 years BC. They experienced cold winters, hunted northern mammals, used the wood from northern trees, were no longer nomadic but practised farming. They had an ordered life focused around a patriarchal family, with positions of authority, a belief in something beyond themselves and ways of interpreting the world around them. They were illiterate too, which means that the only record of the language is an oral record, whose echoes resound still in the many daughter-languages which still thrive thousands of years later. One word which demonstrates Indo-European origins very clearly is the word salmon.

The date of the emergence of Indo-European is less easy to estimate. Some suggest an early form of the language was spoken in Anatolia before 6,500 years BC and spread with the spread of farming. Other suggest perhaps 3,000 years BC west of the river Volga with movements dispersing the main group after 2,500 years BC.

From other sources we know that the Indo-Europeans were not the only language using group of their time. Groups such as the Eskimo-Aleuts were the ancestors, in linguistic terms, of various North American languages such as Algonquin, while another North American language group is the ancestor of Iroquoian and other American Indian languages. Elsewhere all other continents had language families, perhaps fifteen in all, including Bantu in Africa, ancestor of Swahili and Zulu; Sino-Tibetan, ancestor of Chinese, Thai and Tibetan; Hamito-Semitic, from which came Egyptian, Hebrew and Arabic; and the unique Basque, which seems to have no links with any other existing language yet, it is thought, could be the key to an even earlier generation of language families.

Task
To compile your own list of the origins of words, take a subject with a broad history such as animals, food, sports and games, clothing. First compile an alphabetical list of words associated with the topic (Archery, Billiards, Canoeing, Draughts etc) then find out the origin of the word. The word "Archery" for instance comes from the Latin "arcus" meaning bent or curved and is related to the Old English "earh" which is in turn related to "arrow." "Billiards" is from Early French "Billard" meaning a staff or a cue. "Canoe" comes originally from the Taino language and Antilles Caribbean "canao" and it was brought to Europe by the Spanish.
Make sure you have either a dictionary of etymology (the origin and formation of words) or a large enough dictionary which gives etymologies as well as meaning. The very best dictionary must be the full Oxford English Dictionary, which is available in print or on CD-ROM. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary of English will do just as well for this purpose.

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