Comrie, B. et al, The Atlas of Languages, Facts on File, Inc. N.Y.1996
Languages do change with time but they do not spiral out of control and become strange p.7 Human language is very versatile and it can be transferred to writing or signs p.7 It can produce and infinite # of sentences that have never been said before and still be understood. The 5000 known languages can be grouped into about a dozen clusters. No languageless community has ever been found.p.7 There is a huge gulf between apes and man in languages and communication. Apes have been taught some sign language of a 2 yr old or less. They cannot be taught our speech sounds and don’t have the vocal ability of man; the shape of the mouth, pharynx and larynx is different. Grammar is beyond them. P11 Neanderthals were different also.
Most languages are equally complex and have grammar rules. It is estimated that there are about 6000 p.13. Languages go dead as people merge or are forced to use a common language. Medias like TV and radio also promote common language. Dead is defined as having no native speakers(Latin, Sumerian died in 2000BC). A moribund language has some native speakers but is no longer taught to children. Akkadian of Babylon died in 1000 BC p.14 For linguists the task is to document the grammar and provide a dictionary and some text s and stories p.15.
p.19 table, top present languages with Millions speaking: Chinese 1000, English 350, Spanish 250, Hindi 200, Arabic, Bengali and Russian 150. Basic word order of subject, verb and object (SVO) varies. English and Chinese have SVO. Linguistic histories can be reconstructed by comparison of vocabularies and grammatical structures. The great language families are Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan.(p.16) There may be a single origin of all languages. I-E roots now account for ½ of all population now spoken languages.p.18 The study of roots and diversity is topology. Most languages have similar expressive power. All languages have consonants that distinguish between nouns and verbs. With a dialect there are some common words and understanding.p.22 Perhaps 5-6000 yrs ago the I-E languages split up.p.26 P.25 tree for I-E: 1. Germanic from Gothic to English, Dutch, German; Romance from Lain to French, Italian, Spanish; Slavic from Old Church to Polish, Czech Russian. Sanskrit is an ancient text for India and has some resemblance to Latin and Greek. P.28 Proto-language roots from common words: I-E and Uralic roots well established. American migration to Alaska-N. route – may have occurred 12000 yrs ago to form Eskimos from Sino-Tibetan root or Caucasian-Balkan.p.29,53(common to Siberia and Greenland). Greenberg has proposed a vast Eurasiatic family before I-E p.28,38 chart. Long range linguistic roots noted from genetic similarities and archeology.p.29 Two kinds of language classifications: Geographic and Linguistic roots. P. 38 Nostraic hypothesis to form Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian, Daridian and Eruasiatic; Eruasiatic to I-E, Uralic and Altaic. I-E finding started with Sir Wm. Jones noting similarities of Sanskrit to Latin and Greek p. 40 table. The romance languages came from vulgate Latin of the Roman Empire. P39 St. Jerome knew Hebrew and Greek and translated the bible into Latin(320-420 AD (vulgate). Anglo Saxon was brought to England after departure of the Romans to form English. P.43 Linear B inscriptions from Crete Minoans lead to Greek since 14th Century BC, tied to Balkan region and Albania.
p.74 chart Genetics and languages related in a possible nostratic super family. P.77 Semitic and Cushitic languages by Nile. Writing systems p.162-209 An alphabet is a phonetic writing system that consist of symbols representing individual consonant and vowel sounds. “A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (the smallest meaningful unit of language). This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes (speech sounds) or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories. Logograms are commonly known also as “ideograms” or “hieroglyphs”. Strictly speaking, however, ideograms represent ideas directly rather than words and morphemes, and none of the logographic systems described here are truly ideographic. Since logograms are visual symbols representing words rather than the sounds or phonemes that make up the word, it is relatively easier to remember or guess the sound of alphabetic written words, while it might be relatively easier to remember or guess the meaning of logograms. Another feature of logograms is that a single logogram may be used by a plurality of languages to represent words with similar meanings. While disparate languages may also use the same or similar alphabets, abjads, abugidas, syllabaries and the like, the degree to which they may share identical representations for words with disparate pronunciations is much more limited.” From Wikipedia
p.164-5 Earliest writing is Sumerian writing from clay tablets found in the city of Uruk in 3400 BC. This was non-phonetic and symbolic or logographic. Later the Sumerians added some phonetic characters. Their writing system was developed further by the Assyrians and Babylonians in Akkadian which has some limited phonetics.p.167-170 Egyptian writing probably influenced by Sumerian. Earliest hieroglyphs in Egypt in 3100 BC; symbols plus a little phonetics.p170 The ancient Semitic language of south Arabia was written in a script which evolved from a proto-Canaanite system in 1300 BC. Phoneticians recorded their NW Semitic language with a consonant script in 11th century BC in Mediterranean. It had 22 characters and it may have influenced Hebrew. A canaanite Semitic language, Moabite, is closely related to Hebrew.p177 and is preserved today by the Samaritans. The Semitic language is assigned a date of 1500-1600 BC.p174 By the 9th century BC Aramaic spelling(like the Phoenician with only consonats) had been adopted into Hebrew. The Minoan’s were on Crete and had a pictographic script in 1500-2000 BC. The Greek alphabet was developed in 8th century BC had some similarity to phoneticians. In the 7th century BC Ettuscns in Italy modified Greek and formed Latin.p.188 The Celts used Greek and Latin in the 2nd century BC.p.190 the Futharks had developed a language with 31 letters from Latin in 5th century AD that changed into Anglo Saxon and English.p.191 Wilson’s article also supports the history of the Bible. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-archaeology-support-the-bible