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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Theories on the origin of language diversity

There are two theories:

1. Monogenesis: belief in one original language, also known as the Mother Tongue theory. This belief may be grounded in scientific theory—it is often intertwined with the “Out of Africa” theory—though it is also favored by those with a belief in the divine origin of humanity and human language.

2. Polygenesis: belief in multiple original languages. It is also called the Candelabra theory, in which the world’s distinct language families are thought to have emerged from separate mother tongues.

There has been much rambling speculation on monogenesis, though claims which name individual languages are normally offshoots of cultural biases. Such assertions range from Greek, Sanskrit, German (a legacy of WWII-era Nazi propaganda, perhaps), and Hebrew. In a more amusing twist, the 17th-century Swedish philologist Andreas Kemke once satirically remarked that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French.*

Perhaps a slightly more convincing claim (and I mean only very slightly more convincing) is that Basque was the world’s first language. Since it is a language isolate, it would be harder to discredit this assertion, though the chances are still very slim. Even though the claim cannot be scientifically negated, the initial assertion is itself unscientifically founded.

In the case of either scientific monogenesis or polygenesis, it would be impossible to identify the world's first language.

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*This statement, of course, had political motives.

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