Question: Why do we speak different languages?

Nadine Lavan answered on 9 Jan 2018:

Historically, many languages derived from the same original language (a proto-language). E.g. there are Romance languages (e.g. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) that all derive from Latin and Latin itself is thought to derive from an even older language (proto-indo-european), from which most European languages spoken to day are thought to derive.

So, how did we get from a proto-language to speaking many different languages? It’s hard to tell for sure, because very early on there are no written records of these languages. Scientists think, however, that proto-indo-european was spoken in a relatively small section of the Eurasian landmass (located in what is now Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia). It then gradually spread throughout Europe through migration.

There are many potential reasons for why one language then became many languages and we don’t know exactly how it happened in the case of proto-indoeuropean. One reason could be that different groups who had migrated to different areas lost touch with each other, their way of communicating just became more and more different over time. Languages evolve all the time to suit the needs of their users: languages spoken in wet climates may have 10 words for different types of rain, while in extremely dry climates any precipitation may just be referred to with a single word. Another reason could be social factors: one group might want to show that they are different to another group through their use of language. Through processes like these, eventually, over the course of thousands of years, the languages that we speak today evolved!