history of languages

The evolution of languages or history of language includes the evolution, divergence and development of languages throughout time, as reconstructed based on glottochronology, comparative linguistics, written records and other historical linguistics techniques. The origin of language is a hotly contested topic, with some languages tentatively traced back to the Paleolithic. However, archaeological and written records extend the history of language into ancient times and the Neolithic.

The distribution of languages has changed substantially over time. Major regional languages like Elamite, Sogdian, Koine Greek, or Nahuatl in ancient, post-classical and early modern times have been overtaken by others due to changing balance of power, conflict and migration. The relative status of languages has also changed, as with the decline in prominence of French and German relative to English in the late 20th century.

Prehistory

Paleolithic (200,000–20,000 BP)

The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the Sahara during the "wet period" of the Neolithic Subpluvial.

Mesolithic (20,000–8,000 BP)

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, researchers attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Afroasiatic language, suggesting it likely arose between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago in the Levant, suggesting that it may have descended from the Natufian culture and migrated into Africa before diverging into different languages.

Neolithic (12,000–6500 BP)

Population genetics research in the 2000s suggests that the very earliest predecessors of the Dravidian languages may have been spoken in south-west Iran between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago before spreading to India much later. The Eastern Sudanic group of Nilo-Saharan languages may have unified around 7000 years ago.

Aryon Rodrigues hypothesizes the emergence of a Proto-Tupian language between the Guaporé and Aripuanã rivers, in the Madeira River basin (corresponding to the modern Brazilian state of Rondônia) around 5000 years ago.

Ancient history (3000 BCE–500 CE)

Africa

Beginning in the Levant around the 11th century BC, Phoenicia became an early trading state and colonizing power, spreading its language to what is now Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as well as southern Spain, the Balearic Islands, coastal areas of Sardinia and Corsica as well as the island of Cyprus. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest abjad (consonantal alphabet)—and the ancestor of the Latin alphabet.

Between 3000 and 4000 years ago, Proto-Bantu, spoken in parts of Central and West Africa in the vicinity of Cameroon split off from other Bantoid languages with the start of the Bantu expansion.
Well documented languages are primarily preserved in—or from—North Africa, where complex states formed and interacted with other parts of the Mediterranean world. Punic, a variant of Phoenician became a dominant language for perhaps two centuries from the 8th century to 6th century in the Carthaginian Empire. The language maintained lengthy contacts with the rest of the Phoenician sprachraum until the defeat of the empire by Rome in 146 BC, but began to adopt more words and names from neighboring Berber languages over time. The Roman invaders showed appreciation for monumental Carthaginian inscriptions, translating them and giving them as gifts for Berber libraries. A form of the language, referred to by modern scholars as Latino-Punic continued for centuries afterward, with the same word structures and phonology but writing conducted in Latin script.

The nature of Proto-Berber and the emergence of the Berber languages is unclear and may have begun around the time of Mesolithic Capsian culture. Roger Blench suggests that Proto-Berber speakers spread into North Africa from the Nile River valley around 4000 to 5000 years ago, after splitting off from early Afroasiatic.Blench, Roger. 2018
Reconciling archaeological and linguistic evidence for Berber prehistory
In this model, early Berbers borrowed many words from contact with Carthaginian Punic and Latin. Only the Zenaga language lacks Punic loanwords.

The Nubian civilization flourished along the southern reach of the Nile River, maintaining substantial trade and contact with first Egypt and then Rome. For 700 years people in the Kingdom of Kush spoke the Meroitic language, from 300 BCE to 400 CE. Inscribed in the Meroitic alphabet or hieroglyphics, the language is poorly understand due to a scarcity of bilingual texts. As a result, modern linguists have continuously debated whether the language was Nilo-Saharan or Afroasiatic.

During the Migration Period that brought on the fragmentation of the Roman Empire, Germanic groups briefly expanded out of Europe into North Africa. Speakers of the poorly attested, but presumably East Germanic Vandalic language took control of much of Spain and Portugal and then crossed into North Africa in the 430s, holding territory until the 6th century when they were placed under Byzantine rule following a military defeat in 536.

Americas

The Alaska Native Language Center indicates that the common ancestral language of the Eskimo languages and of Aleut divided into the Eskimo and Aleut branches at least 4,000 years ago.

In Mesoamerica, the Oto-Manguean languages existed by at least 2000 BC, potentially originated several thousand years earlier in the Tehuacán culture of the Tehuacán valley. The undeciphered Zapotec script represents the oldest piece of Mesoamerican writing.

Asia

Throughout ancient times, Asia witnessed the rise of several large, long lasting civilizations. Relatively sparse comparative linguistics research means that the origin of the Dravidian languages now spoken in southern India and a small portion of Pakistan is poorly understood. Proto-Dravidian was likely spoken in India as early as the 4th millennium BC before being partly displaced by Indo-Aryan languages. The Indus Valley civilization is generally interpreted as Dravidian speaking. Indo-Aryan speakers began to take over the plains of northern India spurring Sanskritization after 1500 BC.

Benno Landsberger and other Assyriologists suggest that a hypothetical unclassified language termed Proto-Euphratean may have been spoken in southern Iraq during the Ubaid period from 5300 to 4700 BC, possibly by people belonging to the Samarran culture.

The Gutian people, a group of nomadic invaders from the Zagros Mountains formed the Gutian dynasty and ruled Sumer. The Gutian language is mentioned in Sumerian tablets, along with the names of Gutian kings. The linguist W.B. Henning proposed a possible connection to the Tocharian language based on similar case endings in the kings' names. However, this theory has not gained acceptance by most scholars.

Other poorly attested languages include the Semitic Amorite language spoken by Bronze Age tribespeople. Its westernmost dialect Ugaritic left behind the Ugaritic texts, found by French archaeologists in Ugarit, Syria in 1929. Over 50 Ugaritic epic poems, as well as literary works such as the Baal Cycle (housed in the Louvre) form a large corpus of Ugaritic writing.
Sumerian and Akkadian speakers also had contact between the 18th and 4th century BC with speakers of Kassite, living in Mesopotamia and the Zagros Mountains, until they were overthrown by the invading Elamites.

The rise of the Elamite Empire elevated the Elamite language and to prominence between 2600 and 330 BCE. A total of 130 glyphs were adapted from Akkadian cuneiform to serve as Elamite cuneiform. Earlier, between 3100 and 2900 BCE, proto-Elamite writings are the first writings in Iran. Although 20,000 Elamite tablets are known, the language is difficult to interpret and inferred to be a language isolate.

One of the world's primary language families, Hurro-Urartian was spoken in Anatolia and Mesopotomia before going extinct. It is known from the remains of just two languages. Hurrian may have originated in Armenia and spread to the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia by the 2nd millennium BC. The language fell victim to the Bronze Age collapse in the 13th century BC along with Ugaritic and Hittite.

In the Caucasus, spoken versions of Proto-Armenian likely appeared around the 3rd millennium BC, amassing loanwords from Indo-Aryan Mitanni, Anatolian languages such as Luwian and Hittite, Semitic languages such as Akkadian and Aramaic, and the Hurrio-Urartian languages. Modern day Armenia was monolingually Armenian speaking by the 2nd century BC. However, written forms of the language do not appear until a translation of the Bible in the 5th century.

To the north and west of Armenia, Proto-Kartvelian began to diverge, with Old Georgian appearing by the 1st millennium BC in the Kingdom of Iberia. Aramaic remained the region's language of religion and literature until the 4th century conversion to Christianity. Tuite, Kevin, "Early Georgian", pp. 145–6, in: Woodard, Roger D. (2008), ''The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor''. Cambridge University Press,

Asia Minor was a region of substantial linguistic diversity during ancient times. People in Galatia in central Anatolia spoke the Celtic Galatian language from the 3rd century BC until its extinction around the 4th century CE, or perhaps as late as the 6th century. Phrygian, seemingly a close relative of Greek appeared around the 8th century BC and went out of use in the 5th century CE, with Paleo-Phrygian inscriptions written in a Phoenician-derived script and later writings in Greek script.Brixhe, Cl. "Le Phrygien". In Fr. Bader (ed.), ''Langues indo-européennes'', pp. 165–178, Paris: CNRS Editions.
Hattians in Asia Minor spoke the non-Indo-European agglutinative Hattic language between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, before being absorbed by Hittite. Kaskian spoke by Kaskians in the mountains along the Black Sea at a similar time in the Bronze Age, potentially as a proto-version of the later Circassian and Abkhaz language.

The Cimmerians a nomadic Indo-European people likely attacked Urartu a subject state of the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 714 BC, although only a few names survive in Assyrian records.
Linguists and anthropologists debate the origins of Turkic peoples and Turkic languages. According to Robbeets, the proto-Turkic people descend from the proto-Transeurasian language community, which lived the West Liao River Basin (modern Manchuria) around 6000 BCE and may be identified with the Xinglongwa culture. They lived as agriculturalists, and later adopted a nomadic lifestyle and started a migration to the west. Proto-Turkic may have been spoken in northern East Asia 2500 years ago.

Linguists disagree about when and where the Tungusic languages in northern Asia arose, proposing Proto-Tungusic spoken in Manchuria between 500 BC and 500 CE, or around the same timeframe in the vicinity of Lake Baikal. ( Menges 1968, Khelimskii 1985) Some sources describe the Donghu people recorded between the 7th century and 2nd century BC in Manchuria as Proto-Tungusic. Northern Tungusic contains numerous Eskimo-Aleut words, borrowed no more than 2000 years ago when both languages were evidently spoken in eastern Siberia.Vovin, Alexander. 2015. Eskimo Loanwords in Northern Tungusic. Iran and the Caucasus 19 (2015), 87–95. Leiden: Brill.

In Central Asia, records in Old Persian indicate that the Sogdian language had emerged by the time of the Achaemid Empire, although no records of Old Sogdian exist.

Reconstructions, textual records and archaeological evidence increasingly shed light on the origins of languages in East Asia. According to archaeological and linguistic evidence published in 2014 by Roger Blench, Taiwan was populated with people arriving from the coastal-fishing Fujian Dapenkeng culture the millet cultivating Longshan culture in Shandong and possibly coastal areas of Guangdong. Taiwan was likely the birthplace of Proto-Austronesian languages that spread across the Pacific, Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.

Proto-Japonic arrived in Japan from nearby Pacific islands or mainland Asia around the 2nd century BC in the Yayoi Period, displacing the languages of the earlier Jōmon inhabitants which was likely a form of Proto-Ainu. The original forms of Proto-Japonic or Old Japanese are unattested and inferred from linguistic reconstruction.
The arrival of Japanese may be related to the emergence of Korean as a language isolate. Proto-Korean may have been spoken in Manchuria before migrating down the Korean Peninsula. One explanation posits that the language displaced Japonic-speakers, triggering the Yayoi migration, while another hypothesis suggests that Proto-Korean speakers slowly assimilated and absorbed Japonic Mumun farmers.

Europe

Beginning between 6500 and 4500 years ago, the ancient common ancestor of the Indo-European languages started to spread across Europe, replacing pre-existing languages and language families. Based on the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (one of the first and most extensively reconstructed proto-languages since the 19th century) likely lived in the Pontic–Caspian steppe in eastern Europe. These early PIE speakers, centered on the Yamna culture were nomadic pastoralists, with domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles.

Early written records began to appear in Europe, recording a variety of early Indo-European and pre-Indo-European languages. For example, the Corsi people in Corsica left behind place names from the Paleo-Corsican language spoken in the Bronze Age and Iron Age, with potential relationships to Ligurian or Iberian. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, Iron Age Cyprus and Crete spoke pre-Indo-European Eteocypriot and Eteocretan respectively. Cretan hieroglyphs preserve a written form of Eteocretan.

The Noric language known only from a few fragments of writing in modern Austria and Slovenia appears to be either a Continental Celtic language or Germanic language. Proto-Germanic appeared in southern Scandinavia out of the pre-Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. Archaeological remains of the Corded Ware culture might place the arrival of PIE speakers around 4500 years ago in the mid-3rd millennium BCE. Archaeologists and linguists have debated whether or not the Funnelbeaker culture and Pitted Ware culture were Indo-European. Additionally, debates have centered on the Germanic substrate hypothesis, which suggests that early Germanic might have been a creole or contact language based on the presence of unusual words. A large number of Celtic loanwords suggest contact between Proto-Germanic and Proto-Celtic in the Pre-Roman Iron Age.

The Italo-Celtic branch of the Indo-European languages split off in Central and Southern Europe, diverging into the Italic languages (which includes Latin and all subsequent Romance languages) and the Celtic languages. The Urnfield Culture that appeared around 1300 BCE is believed to be the first Proto-Celtic culture followed by the Hallstatt culture in Austria in 800 BC. Celtic languages spread throughout Central Europe, to central Anatolia, western Iberia, the British Isles and current day France, diverging into Lepontic, Gaulish, Galatian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.

Two Indo-European languages rose to particular prominence in ancient Europe and the surrounding Mediterranean region: Greek and Latin. The emergence of Greek began with Mycenaean Greek. The language and its associated literature and culture had a far reaching impact around the Mediterranean, including areas like southern Italy and the Nile Delta as well as other coastal areas with the establishment of Magna Graecia colonies.

Old Latin is attested from only a few text fragments and inscriptions prior to 75 BCE. As the Roman Empire expanded, Vulgar Latin became a lingua franca for many of its subjects, while Classical Latin was used in upper-class, literary contexts along with Greek. The Golden Age of Latin literature spanned the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE, followed by the two century "Silver Age." The language continued in widespread administrative use through the post-classical period, although Greek superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire.
In some cases, languages are completely unattested and only inferred by modern historical linguists. Some Roman accounts suggest that a distinct Indo-European language known as Ancient Belgian was spoken by the Belgae prior to Roman conquest.

During the period of Roman Britain most indigenous Britons continued to speak Brittonic, although British Vulgar Latin was spoken by some. Vulgar Latin was commonplace in many areas conquered by the Roman Empire. Proto-Romanian may have originated from forms of Latin spoken in the province of Dacia Traiana or may have been spoken further south and migrated into the language's current territory.

The Migration Period reshuffled the extent of Germanic, Slavic and invading steppe peoples in Europe and the Near East. The almost entirely unattested Hunnic language was spoken by the invading Huns and used alongside Gothic in conquered areas according to Priscus.

Speculated, but unknown languages European languages from the time period include Dardani, Phrygian and Pelasgian. Several unattested languages are known from Anatolia. The Trojan language—potentially the same as the Luwian language is entirely unattested. Isaurian language funerary inscriptions from the 5th century CE, Mysian or the Ancient Cappadocian language, which were largely replaced with Koine Greek.

Oceania and the Pacific

In Australia, the earliest Pama-Nyungan languages may have begun to be used and spread across the continent. A 2018 computational phylogenetics study posited an expansion from the Gulf Plains of northeastern Australia.
Settlement of Hawaii by Marquesans around 300 CE began the divergence of Eastern Polynesian into the Hawaiian language.

Post-classical period (500 CE–1500 CE)

Africa

During Roman rule in North Africa, Latin made inroads as a language, surviving in some forms as African Romance until the 14th century, even persisting during the first few centuries of Arab-Muslim rule. Together with Berber languages, it was eventually suppressed in favor of Arabic.Peter C. Scales, ''The Fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba: Berbers and Andalusis in Conflict'' (Brill, 1994), pp. 146–47.

Between the 11th and 19th centuries, people in North Africa, as well as Cyprus and Greece commonly communicated in the Mediterranean Lingua Franca from which the widely applied term "lingua franca" is derived. In literal translation to English, lingua franca means "language of the Franks," a general reference to Europeans rather than to Frankish people. Initially, the pidgin drew extensively on Occitano-Romance languages and Northern Italian languages but acquired Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, French, Greek and Arabic elements over time.

Speakers of the Ngasa language expanded onto the plains north of Mount Kilimanjaro in the 12th century, with mutual intelligibility with Proto-Maasai. But the arrival of Bantu-speaking Chagga over the next five centuries resulted in slow but steady decline of the language.

Although little linguistic evidence exists, Malagasay stories in Madagascar tell of a short-statured zebu-herding people, farming bananas and ginger that were the first inhabitants of the island likely speaking the hypothetical Vazimba language.

Asia

Around the Bay of Bengal, early forms of the Bengali language began to evolve from Sanskrit and Magadhi Prakrit, diverging from Odia and Bihari around 500. Proto-Bengali was spoken by the Sena dynasty and in the Pala Empire.Oberlies, Thomas (2007)
"Chapter Five: Aśokan Prakrit and Pāli"
. In Cardona, George; Jain, Danesh. ''The Indo-Aryan Languages''. Routledge. p. 163. . In the Sultanate of Bengal it became a court language, acquiring loanwords from Persian and Arabic.

Classical Chinese characters were imported to Japan along with Buddhism and may have been read with the kanbun method. Many texts display Chinese influence on Japanese grammar, such as verbs placed after the object. Sometimes in early texts, Chinese characters phonetically represent Japanese particles. The oldest text is the ''Kojiki'' from the 8th century. Old Japanese used the Man'yōgana system of writing, which uses ''kanji'' for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct syllables. The use of Old Japanese ended with the close of Nara Period around 794.
Early Middle Japanese appeared between the 700s and 1100s with adding labialized and palatalized consonants, before transitioning into Late Middle Japanese up to 1600.

In Vietnam, many interpretations place the Vietnamese language as originating in the Red River valley. However, an alternative interpretation published in 1998 argues that Vietnamese originated further south in central Vietnam and only extended into the Red River region between the 7th and 9th centuries, displacing Tai language speakers.

Distinctive tonal variations emerged during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon.

Vietnam gained independence from China in the 10th century, but the ruling classes continued to use Classical Chinese for government, literature and scholarship. As a result, one-third of spoken vocabulary and 60 percent of written words come from Chinese. French sinologist Henri Maspero divided Vietnamese into six phases, with Archaic Vietnamese ending around the 15th century, represented by Chữ Nôm. By this point, the language would have displayed a tone split, with six tones but a lack of contrastive voicing between consonants.

On the Korean Peninsula and in Manchuria, the Goguryeo language was spoken in the Goguryeo, the largest and northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, which existed between 37 BC and 668 CE. The Goguryeo language was one of several Koreanic or Japonic languages spoken in the peninsula in the early modern period. Others include the Gaya language in the Gaya confederacy, the sparsely attested Buyeo in the Buyeo kingdom or the Baekje language, in the Baekje kingdom of southwestern Korea. This last language was closely related to Sillan, which appeared in the kingdom of Silla and gave rise to modern Korean and Jeju.

During the Jin dynasty from 1115 to 1234, the Jurchen language became the first written Tungusic language. Stelae in Manchuria and Korea record writings in the Jurchen script. This script was displaced by the Manchu alphabet with its last recorded occurrence in 1526. Jurchen subsequently evolved into the Manchu language under Nurhaci in the early 1600s with the formation of the Qing dynasty.

The exact origins of the Austroasiatic Khmer language are unclear and attested around 600 CE in Sanskrit texts. Old Khmer (also known as Angkorian Khmer) was spoken as the primary language of the Hindu-Buddhist and jointly Sanskrit-speaking Khmer Empire between the 9th and 13th centuries. Around the 14th century, it lost its official government status and Middle Khmer became substantially influenced by Vietnamese and Thai loan words into the 19th century.Sak-Humphry, Channy
''The Syntax of Nouns and Noun Phrases in Dated Pre-Angkorian Inscriptions''
Mon Khmer Studies 22: 1–26.

The early origins of the Tai-Kadai language family predate the post-classical period, but written records only began to appear with the publication of the Chinese ''"Song of the Yue Boatman"'' which phonetically incorporates words from non-Sinitic languages identified as "Yue." Comparisons in the 1980s and early 1990s drew parallels with the transliterated words to the Zhuang language and the Thai language. Old Thai was spoken for several centuries with a three-way tone distinction for live syllables but transitioned to modern Thai with a loss of voicing distinction and a tone split between the 1300s and 1600s.
Offshore, Classical Malay expanded from its initial extent in Northeastern Sumatra to become the lingua franca of the Srivijayan thalassocracy. Some of the earliest writings in the language in Indonesia include the Kedukan Bukit Inscription or the Sojomerto inscription. High Court Malay was spoken by the leadership of the Johor Sultanate and ultimately adopted by the Dutch in the early modern period, but was strongly influenced by Melayu pasar ("market Malay").

Literary forms of languages in the Caucasus continued to grow throughout the post-classical period. For instance, Middle Georgian was in use in the Kingdom of Georgia for national epics such as the 12th century Shota Rustaveli ''The Knight in the Panther's Skin''.

In Central Asia, the Sogdian language emerged as a lingua franca of the Silk Road, acquiring numerous loanwords from Middle Chinese. Manuscripts written in the language were discovered in the early 20th century, indicating use for business as well as Manichaean, Christian and Buddhist texts. It derived its alphabet from the Aramaic alphabet and is the direct ancestor of the Old Uyghur alphabet.

Manuscripts preserve the Tocharian language, a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in the Tarim Basin of western China between the 5th century and the 8th century and likely extinct by the 9th century. The documents record three closely related languages, called Tocharian A (also ''East Tocharian'', ''Agnean,'' or ''Turfanian''), Tocharian B (''West Tocharian'' or ''Kuchean''), and Tocharian C (''Kroränian, Krorainic,'' or ''Lolanisch''). The subject matter of the texts suggests that Tocharian A was more archaic and used as a Buddhist liturgical language, while Tocharian B was more actively spoken in the entire area from Turfan in the east to Tumshuq in the west. Tocharian C is only attested in a few Kharoṣṭhī script texts from Krorän

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