Can you create a language?

We know that humans earlier communicated via sign language, that is, through the medium of facial expressions, gestures, physical movements, actions, etc. There were no syllables or words, either spoken or written. With the evolution of the human race, languages came into being. Humans set some sounds, syllables, etc. to denote anything. This progressed into coining of the words; gradually, phrases formed from joining those words, and then finally, complete sentences came to be used as a highly developed and sophisticated form of communication to convey a message clearly.

There must be no language in the world that remained unchanged since it came into being. Mankind underwent enormous changes, and so did languages. Each generation gave up the use of certain features of a language and added a few new features of its own. Words, their pronunciations, symbols representing them, everything also went through innumerable changes with time. As various social systems came closer with the growing population of the world, exchange of cultures, linguistic features, etc. started playing a role in generating new systems. Some of the new systems liked to be identified or associated with the older systems, while others preferred to be identified as altogether separate entities.

Languages spoken by different social set-ups began mingling with each other to give rise to newer forms of speech. Thus, new languages were born out of the union of languages that were original, crude, and completely different from each other and had no similarity of any kind.

With the advent of branches of sciences such as anthropology, philology, archaeology, etc. that study humans and their evolution including the social and linguistic systems, comparisons came to be made between various cultures and world languages. Philologists and language experts started drawing similarities and differences between complex language systems that existed in diverse parts of the world. At an advanced stage, international organizations, too, took up the study of human races. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) started extensive research of world languages, and over the period, shed light upon many languages, some of them hidden from the world, only used in the circles of indigenous people.

Today, The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization states that more than 40 percent of the world’s estimated 6,000 languages are endangered. If they are not cherished and nurtured and conserved to be passed on to the new generations they will vanish completely from the face of the earth.

What makes a language rarely used by people, or used to a lesser extent by a new generation than the older generation?

There could be various factors behind a language taking a back seat in the changing times:

• It’s a complex set-up
• Its redundancy in the social context
• Its diminishing usage in daily communication
• Influence of neighboring languages
• Migration and settlement of people from other regions
• The dominance of other languages
• Economic and political players
• Cultural exchange taking place
• Young generations find it difficult to conserve it and pass it on to the next generations, etc.  

Let us see a few languages which came a lot later than their old neighbors.

• Jedek in Malaysia:

Jedek spoken in the Malaysian Peninsula bears some resemblance to Jahai which is spoken for a long period in Malaysia. It, however, has distinct grammatical structures and “r” sounds that Jahai does not possess.

• Koro Aka in northern India:

Koro Aka is a language spoken in a remote region of northern India where dozens of other indigenous languages are also spoken.

• Light Warlpiri in Northern Australia:

The Warlpiri are an indigenous people living near the Tanami Desert in Australia’s northern territory. The Warlpiri language was their indigenous language, spoken since ancient times. When English colonies came upon the Australian Continent, the influence of English grew on the language. The young generations began learning English along with Warlpiri, and gave birth to a new language which was a mixture of Warlpiri and English, and came to be known as Light Warlpiri.

• Esperanto:

Esperanto is the most spoken in Europe, East Asia, and South America. The Nazis, the Soviets, and the powerbrokers in Francoist Spain persecuted speakers of the Esperanto language during the 20th century. It is not an official language in any country, but its popularity grew a lot since the mid-20th century.

• Afrikaans:

Afrikaans is a mixture of Dutch, German, English, Portuguese, French, Bantu, Khoisan, and Malay. It is an official language in South Africa, and is also spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.

• Lingala:

Lingala is widely spoken in Central Africa, and the most notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Angola, and the Central African Republic. It came into being in the 1900s. 

• Gooniyandi:

Gooniyandi is also a language spoken by Australian Aboriginals.