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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Age of languages
Question:
Steven Roger Fischer in A History of Language states that ''No language on Earth is older than any other: every currently spoken natural - that is neither revived nor invented - tongue shares exactly the same age''. Can anyone elucidate or expand on this statement?

Reply:
I imagine (I haven't seen Fischer's book myself) that this is intended as a corrective to the common layman's idea that some languages are identifiably older than others, so that it might make sense to ask "which is Europe's oldest language?" or "which is the world's oldest language?" The fact is that all forms of natural language (excluding Esperanto, Java, etc.) descend from earlier forms of language, and back and back to long before recorded history. Whether you call Shakespearean English a "different language" from 21st-century English, or an "earlier form of the same language", is not a real question but just a matter of arbitrary definition. So it wouldn't make sense to assert that that English is "older", or "less old", than French, say.

Many present-day languages derive from a common origin in the past, for instance most languages of Europe descend from a single language called by scientists "Proto-Indo-European". It is possible that _all_ languages of the world ultimately descend from a single first language, in which case one could argue that in a sense all languages are exactly as old as one another. But no-one really knows or, I am sure, ever will know whether that is true or whether, on the other hand, language grew up independently among different human groups at different times in remote prehistory. So in that sense I feel Fischer could be accused of somewhat overstating his point. But this is probably a minor quibble, though as I say I don't know the context of the quotation you gave us.

Hope this helps,

Geoffrey Sampson

Reply From: Geoffrey Richard Sampson    click here to access email
Date: Aug-01-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Age of languages Joseph F Foster    (Aug-02-2009)
  2. Re: Age of languages James L Fidelholtz    (Jul-31-2009)
  3. Re: Age of languages Herbert Frederic Stahlke    (Aug-01-2009)
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