Tower of Babel vs Linguistics - the quest for the first language

Did one original language shatter into many? The Tower of Babel, the evolution of languages and the quest for Proto-World.

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~ For you readers ~

The Tower of Babel is one of humankind's early attempts to explain the variety of languages spoken across the earth. Thousands of years later, philologists and linguists studied the natural evolution of language. So then, what's the true story of language history?

In this video, we'll look at the traditional interpretation of the Tower of Babel story: the Adamic language once split into 72 languages to confuse people. Then we'll consider how historical linguistics compared cognates, established language families and traced related languages back to a common proto-language.

Right where historical linguistics hits mysteries and dead ends, you'll meet the "long rangers". These linguistic mavericks dared to go further back in time. Finally, briefly see why mainstream linguistics dismisses long-range findings as pseudoscientific.

~ CREDITS ~

Art, narration and animation by Josh from NativLang.
Some of the music, too.

Sources for my claims and credits for imgs, sfx, music:

[nathanielmartins]

Ancient Egyptians tried a jab at finding the original language.
They theorized that the original language is something everyone is born with inside our baby brains, but over time as you listen to grown-ups talking we start to forget the vocabulary of the original language and start to learn theirs.
So they took twins new born baby's and Isolated them from all society and human contact with only two guards to look over them, deliver food and make sure they don't die, all while making sure they never uttered a word in their presence, nothing else.
Eventually one of the babies pointed at a piece of bread and uttered "Paigus" which was an actual word in a language found in the southern parts of Egypt and that word meant bread, "the greatest coincidence in history" anyone with a sound mind would say, but not the Egyptions, to them, this was a breakthrough!

Needless to say, such types of experiments are now classified as "Ethically Prohibited"

[cristerowarrior]

English with a south side Chicago accent is the original language

[TheGloriousLobsterEmperor]

I mean, if we go by absolute technicality, someone did speak the first words. There probably was a "first language", whether a few years or a few minutes before the next.

[padairua]

As a Gael I love that you included that story of the proto-Irishman picking up the best bits of other languages. Gaelic mythology is full of stories of how Irish people were about in the ancient past - there’s a story of how the Irish were on their own exodus when they ran into Moses and the Hebrews in the Sinai

[LizardPendragon]

As a Biologist I think figuring out when hominides evolved something like speech would help figuring out if there is indeed one proto-world language or if languages emerged multiple times independent from one another. Vice versa, proving if a proto-world language is a real thing or not could help with studying hominide evolution. Overall this seems to be quite the unique and interesing topic. Would be nice if you could make a new video about this topic as soon as there is new stuff about it

[reubenfrench]

If you look at the Tower of Babel story, you wouldn't really expect there to be one language that all languages came out of. Instead, you would expect to find several families of languages separated geographically.

[matthias]

Seems unlikely that the proto world for water would be something like "aqua" not only across all of Eurasia, but also the Americas.

[kasane]

4:44
So the Proto-Afro-Asiatic word for "to suck" was MLG...intriguing.

[DanHarkless_Halloween_YTPs_etc]

So, S-O-V order, pre-noun adjectives, and postpositions? Clearly the original human language was... Japanese! 😏

[iceguy]

The most proto language started with:

- I want food
- I want shelter
- I want sex

Which then led to:

- Your cooking sucks
- This house is drafty
- Yes, this is your child

[LunDruid]

Considering how long different communities from that long ago would frequently be isolated from each other (post Agriculture), I kinda feel like a single "first language" probably couldn't be found with any modern methods, since it probably would have been spoken long, long before Agriculture. Even that throws a wrench into it, since (correct me if I'm wrong) several nomadic communities would interact so much that I'd think they'd be sharing linguistic elements left and right.

[hollyhandgrenade]

How about a video about Basque/Euskara? I hear it's a weird language, being a language isolate in Europe. Cheers.

[giuliag]

I'm not sure where else to show my appreciation so I thought I'd share it in the comments:
Your channel has changed my life! I grew up bilingual (English and Brazilian-Portuguese) and I study Spanish at school (applying to study Spanish and ab into Italian at Uni), and grammar has been something I've always dreaded and, to be honest, despised. However I came across your video about the letter ñ and I was pretty intrigued to say the least. I watched so many of your videos and I've also now read your book 'The Grammar of Romance'. I'm so in love with this side to languages thats never really been my forte and I'm even hoping to take a few linguistics modules at university. I know I'm rambling but I don't know how to say thank you enough. I have an interview at Cambridge University next week and because of your videos I feel more prepared than I could've imagined. Once again, thank you!

[jameeztherandomguy]

Here's the reason why Proto-World is a near impossible task:
1. *SUPERFAMILIES*
First, we have to combine language families into bigger families, and then we need to combine those families, and then we need to combine the families of the combined families to get to Proto-World. We don't even know if some words are *mistaken* cognates, which means that they're coincidental and are actually not related. I have found a ton of very similar words with the same meaning who come from different words in Indo-European.
2. *COMPARATIVE METHOD*
Not only do we have to worry about accidental cognates and the overwhelming amount of language families we need to find cognates with: we don't even know if those are exact! Indo-European is just an amazing guess at a language, and it is one of the most researched language families! We need to combine it with other ones and such and such, and it gets to the point where Proto-Human is just a guess based on guesses based on more guesses which are based on facts.
3. *LOCATIONS*
So, we have a terrible comparative method, but that's OK, we can try grouping languages based on geographical location, right? That shouldn't be too faulty... yes, it is.
We barely have an idea of where the people who spoke Eurasiatic were, or Dene-Caucasian were, or any number of other things! Therefore we can't use location to our advantage unless we have researched and have a pretty good idea as to where they originated. Of course, once we have done that, we still need to figure out more stuff!
4. *THE JOB*
So, I've talked about several terrible problems that prevent the job from being done, but I've never actually talked about how HARD the regular job is without obstructions! If none of those problems existed, we would STILL have a hard time just from the sole way the job is done. We have been working on Indo-European for so long it's a shame we haven't gotten farther with the language!

But, if there is a will: there is a way.
~ Jameez TheRandomGuy

[starponys]

Given the groups of seemingly unrelated language families, the Tower of Babel sounds like a plausible story. (Whether one branch of people continued to speak the very first language [which would evolve into its own family] is impossible to answer.)

[eyuin]

Can you do video on Native Australian languages?

[kevinslater]

I think this is misunderstanding the biblical narrative. The original language would have been lost and whatever was spoken afterwards are the 'original' languages of man. No languages following Babel could proceed it. This depends on your belief of the Bible of course.

[Paeremannen]

Thanks for the video. It's pretty striking how Indo-European those proto-words look. *akwa and *kuna for instance. But that's probably a red flag that it's not necessarily a good theory.

My favourite "theory" of which language was spoken in paradise is a satirical 17th century suggestion that Adam spoke Danish, God spoke Swedish, and the serpent obviously spoke French in order to seduce Eve.

[glutinousmaximus]

...One Million BC -
Ugg: (pointing to self) 'Ugg'.
Zogg: 'Zogg'
Ugg: 'Zogg?'
Zogg: 'Zogg!'
Ugg: 'Zogg? - Hmm - A pleasure to meet you old fellow'.

[pentelegomenon]

It's funny how they didn't make the obvious counter-hypothesis: languages only appear to diminish in number as we go back because we're mostly talking about a pre-literate era where languages didn't just die, they vanished without a trace. Languages continue to kill each other to this day, even kin from common language families, so as you go backwards in time you would probably see an insane diversification of languages, not convergence.