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By Paul
You've probably heard about language families before. There are Romance languages, Germanic languages, maybe somebody has spoken to you about 'East Asian' languages in a way that sounds similar. But what exactly does that mean?
We all have an intuitive sense that some languages are similar to others in unique ways, sometimes so much so that they feel like different versions of the same thing. And if you've listened to the talk about 'language families,' you probably understand that some languages are 'related' to each other in a similar way to how people are related to each other - or maybe how animal species are related to each other.
But if you stop and think about it, there are a lot of questions to ask about this concept:
Do languages reproduce?
English has lots of Romance loanwords – so much that they sometimes form the majority of our vocabulary – but does that make English Romance?
Can languages change their family?
And most of all, how do we know what language families are real, and which ones are not?
The key is understanding how language changes
All languages and dialects change gradually over time. You probably don’t use the same slang terminology as your parents, and probably use some words from foreign languages that older people don’t recognize. Not only do vocabularies change over time, but people’s pronunciation will also naturally change in various ways. Over time, when two different locations undergo changes in pronunciation, dialects or accents form. This process of change can build to the point that a single language is spread out among numerous communities and turns into a group of new languages. This is how a new family tree is formed, united by a “unique common ancestor.” When an ancestor language turns into daughter languages or sometimes never splits into multiple languages and just keeps changing, the ancestor language itself no longer exists. Sometimes you will hear people make erroneous claims that “English comes from German” or something similar, but that is not right – imagine if there were two cousins and then you claimed that the one who looked more like the grandfather was the same person as the grandfather! – rather, English and German share a common ancestor which itself is no longer spoken. Latin turning into the Romance languages is a rare exception where the mother language left a lot of historical evidence of itself.
Sorting and classifying language families
So how do we figure out this process in reverse? Most of the time we don’t actually see a mother language change into a daughter language with our own eyes so we need to figure out a process to sort languages into families, then those families into bigger families and so on. We also need to have a way to distinguish contact from inheritance. English has a lot of loanwords from French, but that doesn’t make it a Romance language – the contact does not retroactively change the fact of where English came from in the first place. We also need a standard for when we stop – that is, when we can compare two language families and decide that there is no evidence that they share a common ancestor (maybe they do, but so long ago that there’s no evidence for it). This process is the comparative method. The comparative method is quite simple but very powerful. The way it works is that you compare things in two languages (or more) which look similar and look for patterns.
The fundamental rule is to look for systematic correspondences in three areas:
Sounds
Grammar
Vocabulary - especially basic vocabulary.
If the correspondences are not systematic, but turn out to be random, then you conclude that the similarities between two languages are either just accidents, or perhaps exist because of contact in the past.
Learning more about languages through historical linguistics
If you’re interested in learning more, you are in luck! Historical linguistics is a popular and exciting field. If you want to read a textbook, try picking up a copy of Historical Linguistics: An Introduction by Lyle Campbell.
About Paul
Paul is currently a grad student in Computational Linguistics. His main interests are in Semitic languages and philosophy, and loves a good cup of coffee to go with them.