Accent Reduction:  Half of All Languages Come From One Root Language

There is so much which connects human beings to human beings.  Remarkable.  Don’t you think that it is remarkable that half of all languages come from one root language?

To get to the facts —  What do English, Spanish and Hindi all have in common?  They all originated from the same mother tongue: Anatolian, or more commonly known as Proto-Indo-European.

Furthermore, there is about a 50 percent chance that any person in the world speaks a language from the Indo-European family.  This Indo-European language family includes about half the languages spoken today.

To make a little diversion here.  If you were taught more than one language, chances are that language may have been French, Spanish, English, German or another language which evolved out of  ancient Proto-Indo-European.  Also, chances are you noticed that words in that other language had similar spellings as your mother language.  Smile. Smile. That is your living experience of ancient Proto-Indo-European language.  That one root language probably made it a little easier for you to learn the new language for you.

Linguists know that Proto-Indo-European was a language unique to a tribal culture in ancient Eurasia.  Those ancient humans only spoke their language and never wrote it down, so it is extinct today.   Linguists reconstruct that language from languages that followed the originators.

So when and where did this language truly begin and how did it come to generate so many of our modern languages?

The current theory was put forth in 2012 by a team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.  They estimated that Proto-Indo-European originated 8,000 to 9,500 years ago.  For geographic origins, this team points to Anatolia, or modern day Turkey.    How did the language spread?  These scientists theorize that the first speakers practiced animal domestication and agriculture.  As these practices spread, so did their language.

Wow — humans are so interconnected in so many ways – including the sources of our language.  That is awe inspiring.

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