Language Birth, Language Evolution, and Language Death


The section that I like the most that we have covered was "The Development and Evolution of Language." I think this is just an interesting subject, because the natural evolution of our language occurs every day. I never had looked at the birth of language really, but the evolution and death I had covered in history classes before. The evolution and death of languages are noted by many assimilation processes, that brought a language under their control. My favorite example is the Romans, who assimilated languages from all around the known world and later created the romance languages in certain areas. These languages went through many changes, with words taken from their former language and adding Latin words. Then their death as this assemblage of languages. This is when the new language emerged as a romance language, which still showed resemblance to both original languages, but became its own language. So, the death of those two original languages died out, but were the starts of the new language we know today. These languages are still evolving through contact of other languages and new generations, which can be seen as the death of the previous generations language. This is the natural occurrence of languages and especially in places with many interaction and effects of other languages having influence on them. I just really enjoy this subject, because of its relevance in our daily lives and how the individual can change it into what a new generation will speak. I also enjoy the history of how language changed and how we can see it still occurring in our lives or how it affected our lives.

Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2017). Language, Culture, and Society An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Westview Pr.

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 31, 2018 at 7:54 PM

    I think that the way languages die out but then lead to new languages is interesting as well. I like your example of the Romans and the way they assimilated languages, being that Ancient Rome is one of my favorite topics on history. It is also amazing how these transformations of language affect many things today.

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