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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:43AM (#541285)

    [...] we also have explicit words for many things where in other languages they just stick together other words. For instance, in English, the meat from a young cow is called "veal", probably borrowed from some other language like French (not sure, I'm not going to look it up).

    Sure, German: Kalb, English: calf. But the meat is veal (French). German: Kuh, English: cow. But the meat is beef (bœuf, French). German: Schwein, English: swine. But the meat is pork (porc, French) (nowadays, even the animal gets its food-related name, pork). And so on.

    But in German, the word is "kalbfleisch",

    As the Grammar Nazi I am, I have to point out that the word Kalbsfleisch needs some s for the genitive.

    which literally translates to "calf flesh". We have the words "calf" and "flesh" too, but if you ask for some "calf flesh" at the butcher section of your grocery store, you're probably going to get some weird looks.

    If you get used to it, it's easy to construct meanings anyone can understand, so my point is: It is no weakness to have to construct specific words from existing ones.

    And back to your example: for óculos (lenses), we also have "spectacles" (archaic) and "goggles". For vidro (window), we also have "window", but if you specifically mean the glass in the window, that's called a "pane", a word that offhand I can't think of being used anyplace else, though to be fair it's probably usually suffixed with "of glass".

    German speakers have the nice word Fensterscheibe (given context, also just Scheibe) for window pane. (Fenster: window, Scheibe: slice, pane; so Brotscheibe is slice of bread, Käsescheibe is slice of cheese and so on. Combinations are great. [Note that Fensterscheibe and Fenster Scheibe have different meanings which get regularly confused, especially as there is a new trend (since the 80ies or so) to separate combined words, as it looks more hip and Englishy. But Fensterscheibe is the pane of a window, while Fenster Scheibe is the window called pane (think romanes eunt domus).]

    To misinterpret the first quoted words: Germans also have explicit words for many things, Du blödes Arschloch, Scheißkerl und verfickter Wichser! Which are fucking explicit and, to stay on topic, most of them are also compound words ... ass & hole, shit & guy ...

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