The history of language, though complex, is well-documented. You could spend your entire life on the subject, and many have.

There are lots of great resources on the web for learning about language groups and how they're related. Here are just a few:

Omniglot
Historical Linquisitcs, from Wikipedia
The Metaverse
Language Families, also from Wikipedia

I'm not that interested in linguistics myself, I just happen to know a few people who are diehard polyglots.

The evolution of language is also a really fun litmus test as to the sanity of Christian fundamentalists, many of whom will insist on a literal truth to the Bible, and hence Babel. Saying that the origins of linguistic diversity are mysterious is about as sensical as saying the world is flat; much flailing in their attempt to defend the idea results.

Belgium and The Netherlands are the most famous Dutch speaking countries. But they also speak some Dutch in partial Africa (Congo Brazzaville, Southern Africa due to the slavery in the 50ies/60ies, Africans were forced to work in the mines mining for diamonds, zinc, cobalt and such, and Belgium was a great part of that escpecially in the Congo regions); in the Caribbean Sea there are also a couple of islands where they speak Dutch (Dutch Antillas, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao). And finally in Southern America (Suriname). And it also has come to my attention that there's a minority in Canada who speaks Dutch also

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JIMS!

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Originally posted by havokddg After reading the post about osama bin laden's niece I have come up with a quiestion which dwindles before me. What is your belief in why all or most countries speak a different language? Or in other words where do you think languages originated ? Just post any comments that are of relavence.

You could spend years studying the history of languages.

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"I hated going to weddings. All the grandmas would poke me saying "You're next". They stopped that when I started doing it to them at funerals."

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Het doel van een heel deel hier is niet over muziek te praten maar door zijn deelname aan discussies een zo groot mogelijk intellect proberen aan de dag te leggen en daarmee een rare vorm van zelfbevrediging in werking stellen. 'It's a strange world'

I wouldn't get too hung up on languages... I'd explain why but I can't put it into words.

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your pearl casting hero

The reason all languages are different is because we all started out as nomads and hunter-gatherers, and we had to adapt our languages to fit the situations optimized for survival.

I'll give you some fun facts I've picked over the years to get across this idea, since it will be easier that way. And PS: Your language creates your entire reality.

1. Eskimos have 700 different words for "snow". To put that in perspective, English has several as well, such as snow, blizzard, etc. But the eskimos, since they live in snow and it changes every aspect of their lives, have words for different snowflakes, fast blizzards, slow blizzards, long blizzards, blizzards during different times of year, snow that is on the ground, snow that is falling, snow that has melted, snow that is in a bank near a pond, etc etc. Does this mean English doesn't have the same snow as the eskimos? No. But it means whereas they can say one single word to get across an entire idea, we would need to say "snow in a fast blizzard in mid-december that has accumulated on the bank of a stream".

2. Different languages of certain people on earth actually use completely different ideas to represent numbers and colors. There is one small tribe in the amazon that doesn't have any words for numbers, and as a result, they can't count.. even after being trained to do so. Similarly, some cultures that live in certain climates/etc split their world into "dark" and "bright" instead of "red", "green", "blue". For them, this is the most efficient way to get across their ideas in order to hunt/build/live in their location.

3. Civilizations have always created more words in their specific vocabularies for tasks that are more common. For example, a community that strives on hunting will have many words for hunting and different types of hunts and situations, whileas in 2006 modern-day industrial-world computer-progressive English it's just a "hunt".

4. Time. Cultures define time differently, believe it or not, and as a result we all view the world in a completely different way. Some American Indian tribes would view time not as something that passed in "past", "present", and "future" tenses, but rather as a singular entity. To them something is either "happening right now", or simply "IS".

5. English is the second most widely used language on earth, and will continue to be; spanish will NEVER reach the international status of English, and it will probably become #1. The reason is because the English language is derived from many, many languages. As a matter of fact, almost all of them. Whenever there is a word for something that doesn't exist yet to the English language and the English thinkers mind, it is borrowed from other langauges. English uses words from all other languages, japanese, greek, german, etc, which in itself makes the English language the most dynamic language around.

K, that's all for now. hehehe

The issue that is more important is the issue of whether or not the conscious mind has any processing capabilities at all, as it is entirely reasonable to assume that the entirety of its content is the product of a sub-routine of the sub-conscious mind...

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your pearl casting hero

Personally I would like to be fluent in Italian, German, Dutch, English, and French right now. Do you think that if we had been taught all of the languages in school at an early age we could remember them all more easily than now? Since we would be using them on a daily basis.