Question 6

Question 6

Now listen to part of a lecture in a linguistics class.

Today were going to discuss language diversions how one language can diverge into multiple languages.

It’s generally believed by linguists that all the languages of today originated from a common proto-language thousands of years ago.

Protolanguage is the ancestor of modern languages.

Now, as time passed and people began to split into different tribes. This original protolanguage began to evolve independently in each tribe.

The process of language diversions has begun. When the language begins to diverge like this. It usually goes through two key stages.

First, it separates into multiple dialects and eventually these dialects become two or more separate languages, dialects occur when one language begins to be altered into two or more versions.

This may occur when people of one language adapt existing words to talk about new concepts.

These alterations in language form what are known as dialects. Different variations of the same language.

Now dialects are not yet separate different languages. There are simply different versions of one language.

For example, compare the speech of people in the United Kingdom to the speech of Americans.

they’re speaking the same language English but differently. Although they pronounce words differently and use different terminology.

They are speaking different dialects of English. Eventually as time elapses dialects can become so dissimilar from one another that they become their own individual language, French and Spanish are good illustrations of this each of these languages is different from the other a Spanish person would not generally understand a French person without knowing the others language.

However, if you look attentively at both languages. You’ll find that they do have many similarities. This is evidence that Spanish and French both evolve from one common language of protolanguage.

Therefore, we can say that French and Spanish originated from the same language.

The professor discusses how different languages originated from one proto-language.

Described this process and explain the two stages, a language undergoes to become multiple languages.