Language is a vital part of human life, and there are hundreds of different languages in use in the world today. Yet, there is much that is not known about the origin of language, the way languages have developed, and the relationships among certain languages, and even the manner of our acquisition of language. Linguists have developed the idea of different families of language to show how certain existing languages developed from an earlier root, though whether all languages can at some point be traced back to a single Ur-language remains a controversial subject. An examination of the problems in defining language and of the patterns discerned in language distribution in the world will help define the issues faced in the study of languages.
Mario Pei notes that the languages of the world have only been imperfectly studied and classified and that too little is known about the structure and affiliations of certain languages, notably the American Indians, African Negroes, the natives of Australia and New Guinea, and many of the languages spoken in Asia. The languages of Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the Near East have been assigned properly to groups and families because they have also been the most studied and the languages with the longest unbroken records. Linguists have long dreamed of being able to trace all languages back to a common source, but this has been an elusive goal.
The language spoken by any person is an accident of geography, but human beings do seem to have a predilection for language:
Human beings are unique in two ways. Man is a tool-bearing animal and a talkative animal. In the pursuit of their tool-bearing activities, men and women have learned to co-operate on a planetary scale; but such co-operation is perpetually thwarted by local limitations of their speech habits.
Language is a means of communication, but it is not the only means. It has even been claimed that some animal specie...