Language: Our Shared Identity and Its Diversity

Creating language was one of humankind's most important achievements. Without it, many other discoveries and advances would not have been possible. Even though everyone uses language, we often don't know exactly who invented it or when we started using it.

The Origin of Language

Some old stories, like the Tower of Babel myth, say that people originally spoke one common language. This shared language gave them the power to connect and understand each other. But the gods didn't like this power. So, they confused the languages to divide people.

Science sees the origin of language differently. It's thought that language developed at the same time as the first Homo sapiens. Language is temporary; it disappears as soon as it's spoken, unless it's written down. Since early humans didn't have writing, we can only guess about the origin of language.

Language likely started where people needed to plan and explain complex things together. Humans depend so much on language that they naturally create new languages when there's a language barrier. This still happens today: when people don't share a language, they often develop new ways to communicate. The story of human language doesn't start with Adam and Eve, but with the first Homo sapiens.

How Language Develops

A communication system starts with a shared set of words as a starting point. When we try to communicate with gestures or mime and can agree on something, that serves as a base. The next day, we already have this foundation. Instead of acting out long scenes, we can just repeat the gesture that worked before. The system becomes more efficient and simpler over time as we use it more.

You could even say that humans didn't create language; language created humans. According to one theory of human self-domestication, humans went through a process similar to domesticated animals. They became more social and less aggressive. This could be called "survival of the friendliest." Language can move aggression into words, so conflicts are settled with talk instead of fighting. From constant chatter, a feedback loop began that continues today.

Once there's a need to be more social, people require more communication and cooperation. This boosts social contact, allowing people to talk to more individuals or discuss more complex ideas. With every sound, every word, and every utterance, our language became more complex and varied.

The Diversity of Languages

A language is closely tied to the society where it developed. It's unlikely that different groups would have created the same language if they were miles apart with no contact. Therefore, there isn't one single original language, and it likely never existed.

Today, there are between 6,500 and 7,000 different languages worldwide. Although most people today live in a world with incredible language diversity, many only speak a few major languages like English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, or French. Reasons for this include imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism.

In France, the connection between a nation and its language is particularly clear. For a long time, French was a foreign language for many people there. During the French Revolution, there was a wide variety of dialects and minority languages. These led to strange misunderstandings. For example, farmers rebelled against the new government because they misunderstood the word "decree" as "arrest warrant," as this was its common meaning before the revolution. They were afraid of being arrested and therefore revolted.

Abbé Grégoire, a revolutionary, noted that only 11% of French citizens spoke fluent French. He believed that a united republic could only exist if everyone spoke French. His idea was that all dialects had to disappear. But it wasn't until 90 years later that the systems were put in place to enforce this idea, mainly through a unified school system. Speaking dialects in schools was punished. Dialects were seen as impure and inferior.

The French national language became a symbol of French identity. This also led to demands for a separate nation in regions like Brittany or the Basque Country, with the argument that their people did not speak French. Defining one's identity through a common national language was a trend in many European countries in the 19th century. In Germany, the Brothers Grimm worked on a dictionary to highlight the age and greatness of the German language. In Turkey, the founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk replaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latin one and unified the many languages and dialects under Istanbul Turkish.

World Languages and Their Challenges

At the same time, the world was becoming more connected. With postal systems, telegraphs, railways, and a unified time zone, communication became easier. However, nationalism was strong, and people didn't always understand each other. Because of this, idealists in the 19th century wished for a language that belonged to no one, one that would connect rather than divide. They developed constructed languages, intended to bring world peace. One of these was Esperanto.

Another constructed language that existed before Esperanto was Volapük. It was seen as one of the great ideas in the 19th century and was spoken worldwide for a short time, from Amsterdam to Beijing. The inventor of Volapük was Johann Martin Schleyer, a well-traveled man who lived in Litzelstetten on Lake Constance. He saw that many sons from his community were emigrating to America, but contact was lost because letters didn't arrive due to language confusion. Back then, you had to know English for the address to be correct, but the farmers wrote addresses as they heard them. So, Schleyer wanted to create a language that sounded the way it was written, so anyone could learn it in a few months.

He took words from major European languages like German, English, French, and Russian, changed them, and created a grammar with almost no exceptions. This is how Volapük was created, which means "world language." Soon, German merchants discussed how they could use the new world language to challenge the British trade dominance. There was supposedly even a Volapük airship, a Volapük steamship, and a joke book. At its peak, an estimated 800,000 to 1 million people worldwide learned Schleyer's invention.

However, problems with Volapük began as it spread. The language was not as easy to learn as thought, especially for people who couldn't pronounce umlauts. Also, Schleyer's vocabulary, which was supposedly English, was so distorted that it was barely recognizable. Schleyer had a very European outlook. But the worst part was his arrogance. He was a stubborn man with fixed opinions, completely unwilling to accept criticism. When the Volapük community pointed out the mistakes and wanted to fix them, he refused and forbade any changes to his creation. He even created the office of language guardian to preserve the language after his death. But with his stubbornness, he drove away his followers, who moved to the new popular language, Esperanto, where change was possible.

There is a universal truth: when languages are used, they change too. Creating a language for worldwide communication was perhaps doomed to fail, because languages grow over long periods, are enriched with history, and are part of our identity. If you take away our language, what makes us who we are is also threatened.

The Fight for Language Preservation

Ron Corn Jr. is a member of the Menominee Nation in Wisconsin and is fighting for the survival of his endangered language. The Menominee language is at risk of extinction because the United States government tried to erase it. In the 19th century, boarding schools were established, some military, some religious, to separate indigenous children from their families and forbid them from speaking their own language. Generations of Menominee had to go through these schools and were forced to adapt. They stopped passing on their language, culture, and history - out of love for their children. They knew the consequences a child could face at school if they knew too much about their culture.

North America was once a place of great language diversity. North of modern-day Mexico, there are about 300 known languages belonging to dozens of different language families. Many of these languages are shaped by the nature and geography where they are spoken. With indigenous languages, specific knowledge about ecosystems, medicinal plants, and one's own culture often disappears too. Learning the language connects you to a community that remembers these things. Therefore, the Menominee have decided to bring their language back into daily life. First, ten people were hired and trained in a 14-month program to teach in an immersion class for children aged 0 to 2. Each year, another room is added and more teachers are trained.

The key word here is immersion. This means using only the Menominee language. There is no vocabulary learning and no translation. The language is learned solely from context. In the past, Ron Corn Jr. knew nothing about the history of the boarding schools. He asked one of the oldest women how it happened and how they lost their language. She replied, "Son, you wouldn't understand. I'm glad you got to grow up in a time when you can be proud of who you are." Ron Corn Jr.'s organization is still far from its goal of having 10% of the community fluent in the language. But the first signs of success are audible and tangible. There are families who have decided to raise their children with Menominee as their first language. The language can no longer be lost with a single person, as many carry this torch.

The Babel myth tells of one language at the beginning, and its loss is often seen as human failure. However, reality shows that diversity is our normal state. Behind the success of major languages are often stories of violence and oppression. The trend is towards fewer, more uniform languages. We can understand each other like never before, yet we risk losing the subtle differences that shape our view of the world. The real question is how we can come closer to each other without becoming the same, and at the same time, how we can remain different without being strangers to each other.