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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 18 2017, @12:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the Not-Enough-Babel-Fish dept.

People don't speak one universal language, or even a handful. Instead, today our species collectively speaks over 7,000 distinct languages.

And these languages are not spread randomly across the planet. For example, far more languages are found in tropical regions than in the temperate zones. The tropical island of New Guinea is home to over 900 languages. Russia, 20 times larger, has 105 indigenous languages. Even within the tropics, language diversity varies widely. For example, the 250,000 people who live on Vanuatu's 80 islands speak 110 different languages, but in Bangladesh, a population 600 times greater speaks only 41 languages.

Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet? As it turns out, we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.

[...] Language diversity has played a key role in shaping the interactions of human groups and the history of our species, and yet we know surprisingly little about the factors shaping this diversity. We hope other scientists will become as fascinated by the geography of language diversity as our research group is and join us in the search for understanding why humans speak so many languages.

https://theconversation.com/why-do-human-beings-speak-so-many-languages-75434

Would you people care to speculate as to why there are so many languages ?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:13PM (1 child)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:13PM (#541026) Journal

    granted that you can use either -ium or -um with the same meaning, the one with the more classical sound can hardly be the worst choice.

    Neither -um nor -ium has a "more classical sound"; both endings are common. The difference lies in the classical root words that were used to form the element names. E.g., (to use some of your examples) strontium comes from Strontian, a village in Scotland that has an 'i'; magnesium comes from Greek "Magnesia" (with an 'i') which was a Greek district that eventually gave its name to magnetic rocks and other minerals in the Renaissance, calcium comes from Latin calx, calcis ("chalk"), from a third declension i-stem noun in Latin (yes, they are called "i-stems" because they have 'i' appear prominently in suffixes), etc., etc.

    The last few elements to have been isolated at the time aluminum was had just been derived from classical words that had an 'i' in the suffix. "Alum" and "alumina," the two relevant words for the base of the new element, had no 'i'. (Well, the latter has an 'i', which led to an early form "alumium," that never caught on.) So, there's really not etymological reason to stuff an 'i' in aluminIum.

    All the arguments about number of syllables or which "sounds more classical" are nonsense -- these words were simply derived from classical roots. And the previous few elements had an 'i', so people took to shoving an 'i' in aluminium. It's really that simple. It's hardly the first or last time that people took to shoving unnecessary letters into words -- at least this letter is pronounced, unlike, say, "island" which used to be spelled (logically) "iland" in English but stupid Latinate idiots shoved an 's' into the spelling because they thought (incorrectly) that it was derived from Latin "insula" (which means "island") or "debt" which used to be spelled as French "dette" and sometimes English "det" or "dett" until some idiot thought to emphasize the ultimate Latin root debitum and shoved a silent 'b' into the spelling.

    English spelling is a disaster. Trying to assume there's some logic to it is just pointless. But in this case, the American spelling does have a slightly better etymological claim given how the word was coined.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:16PM (#541626)

    Another example of the Latin snobs adding a letter is the first "c" in "arctic". Unlike the other examples, there are now a huge number of people pronouncing that "c", and even having the gall to think they are superior to those of us taught that the first "c" is supposed to be silent.