The root language...?

Question

Languages of various regions have similarities, the proof of this is the Mediterranean languages of French, Italian and Spanish. All of these have Latin as there root language, the language that they came from.

Recent discoveries have shown that humans have travelled around the globe from one central point taking their language with them, and over time it evolved with their society into the great many languages that we have today.

So my question is, Is there a root language from which all other languages arise? Does it survive today? And if we heard it would we recognise it or parts of it?

AND

Would this root language, being the oldest one on the planet, hold the key our collective history, have the ability to end racism, etc?

Please explain your answers.

I thank you in advance.

Answer 1

The first language that was 'ancestor' to all languages we have now was Indoeuropean. But it doesn't exist anymore. All the major language groups ( Germanic, Slavic, Romanic ) evolved from this Indoeuropean. It's very hard, and in most cases impossible, to find similarities in words which now belong to different languages, but came from Indoeuropean. It takes some serious knowledge in philology, because they went through so much changing. For example, most people would never say that pisces ( Latin ) is in fact the same word as fisk ( Swedish ) = fish in both languages!

As far as your question about ending racism and conflicts between people... Well, I don't think so. No one really cares what happened thousands and thousands years ago! We're just too different now. Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is absolutely GREAT, but I just don't think people even care about reconciling. There are way too many interests ( economical, military etc )that everybody just want to protect.

You'll have my vote if you ever try to do something like that!

Answer 2

I think languages change and evolve all the time so what you end up getting is more like a split on the branch of a tree and both branches evolve.  So there is no root language that is alive today and as some stated there were probably multiple roots or maybe a better metaphor might be separate trees.  Latin for example split into other languages and is no longer spoken by any except for historical or scientific purposes.

Answer 3

You need to google PROTO-INDOEUROPEAN.

Answer 4

There isn't one root language from which all others arose. There are however several different root languages from which all others arose. Chinese, for example, isn't related to English. There are language families which have been traced back to historically reconstructed root languages for that family. However, if these hypothetical languages could be heard today, they would be nearly unintelligible, and thus have no effect on world peace. Just look how difficult Shakespeare is for English speakers today to understand, and that was only a few centuries ago.

Answer 5

It's really impossible to know. More than likely, language developed in different places at different times.

Indo-European is the root for the Germanic and Latin languages, but derives from Sanskrit. Sino-Tibetan is the root for many of the Asian languages. Both Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan are thousands of years old, and like the first individual pointed out, language can change beyond comprehension within a few centuries. So, while it would be an amazing discovery, we're highly unlikely to find one root language.