Did you know that half the world speaks languages that come from a common language?
Have you ever wondered how many languages and dialects the world speaks? For, according to the staff of the Linguistics Society of America website, by the year 2009, at least a portion of the Bible had been translated into more than 2, 500 languages, and one of the most complete language catalogs ever. news, Ethnologue lists over 7, 100 living languages in the world today. Much more than the English, Spanish, French ...
However, according to Quarta portal Shoaib Daniyal, linguists believe that almost half of the world's population - that is, about 3 billion people from England, including India, Greece, Germany and Brazil - speaks languages that are descended from. from a common language, Proto-European.
On the other hand, since no one left texts written in that language - which means that there are no historical records - and it has been extinguished, what linguists cannot say for certain is when or who exactly created this language, or how it spread throughout the language. world. But there are theories!
Theories
One theory is that the proto-European language appeared about 6, 000 years ago, and was used by tribal cultures that communicated exclusively through that language and occupied Eurasian territories. Linguists speculate that the language may have emerged among the nomadic peoples living in the Pontic steppe region, where Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan currently border.
According to this theory, the nomadic steppe tribes already had domesticated horses, had invented the wheel, and were militarily developed. Thus, the process of language dissemination may have been facilitated through its achievements and the displacement of these peoples across the continent.
Another theory that has been gaining traction was presented by researchers at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2012. These scientists estimate that the Proto-European language is even older than previously thought, and that it probably emerged between 8, 000 and 9. 5, 000 years ago in the Anatolia region of Turkey.
As for its spread, the peoples who occupied this territory practiced agriculture and already domesticated animals and, according to the researchers, as these innovations spread around the world, the Proto-European language was being brought along. Here's an animated map - produced by the folks at the Business Insider portal - that illustrates how the diffusion might have occurred:
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So, dear reader, did you imagine that almost half of the world's population speaks languages that were born from a single common language? And had you ever wondered how this language might have spread around the world? Interesting, isn't it?
