لماذا تختلف لغاتنا و لهجاتنا ؟

Out of all the traits that differentiate humans from other creatures, language is probably the strangest.

As far as modern science is concerned, there is no other creature that communicates like humans!

Lots of animals can communicate with each other using body movement and noises.

Buut there is no other animal that can tell his species about something that happened in the past

Or evoke wisdoms and stories to them.

No other animal can say "Rest in peace father, O you were a wise man and you taught us respect and morals"

No no no! This is something only humans do

Some people tried to teach primates and birds some signs and some words

But in the end, their level in communication was only comparable to that of a small child's.

which is quite embarrassing because children are errrrr, little angels!

Forming sentences, sharing news, choosing words. and gossiping

...are all actions exclusive to humans as it appears.

But why do our languages differ?

This is something we've all asked ourselves once.

I mean, we're all the same species, our brains work the same, our organs all work the same...

...so why did our tongues decided to utter different letters in each part of the world?

Why don't all humans speak the same language?

CHAPTER ONE: What Is a Language?

To be able to understand what language is, we have to define language first.

The definition of language is easy, right?

Language is the way people speak!

Nouns, verbs, sentences, writing and letters.

(4 Arabic letters)

EFG!

THIS is language.

Right?

Ehhhh, not quite.

All these things describe a language, but they are not the language itself.

For example,

not all languages have a writing system like Arabic or English

We as educated and literate people,

when we think of language we think of something like this, or this or this.

Egh

But in reality, writing comes in a very late stage of a language's life.

There currently around 5000 languages in the world, and only around 200 of them have reading and writing systems.

So writing and reading and all these beautiful things only represent language

But they are not the language itself.

And you can't just say that a language is ONLY words.

You can grab an English dictionary and memorize all it contains.

But you can't come up with a single correct sentence if you know nothing but the words.

No, no!

A language is words and grammar.

This is the simplest definition of language you will ever see.

"Ahmed went to school"

The words are: Ahmed, went, to and school.

The grammar is: (Hussein procceeds to explain complicated Arabic grammar.)

THIS. Is language.

The words give us meanings, and the grammar alters those words to form sentences.

Each language has its' own words and rule sets

This isn't something that's unique to the Arabic language.

Anyone who studied another language knows how much pain learning a whole new ruleset is.

But to be honest, not only languages themselves, but even dialect have their own words and rulesets.

Your own dialect, the one you speak at home, might have it's own rules that are a wee bit different from formal Arabic

Pay attention to how your family speaks at home and you'll find that they constructs their sentences is a very specific way.

(Hussein compares the words "How are you?" in different arabic dialects)

Same question, same words, but the slight difference in grammar changes the words' relation with each other

Humans are designed this way.

We don't throw around random words and hope to god that the other person understands.

No.

Your tongue forces you to arrange words according to a certain ruleset.

Even though you might not exactly know the exact grammar of your language, your brain an insane ability to detect when they are broken.

If you hear someone say "This is awesome car"

Instantly,

unconsciously

You notice the error.

Your mind knows that there needs to be 'an' in front of 'Awesome'

The sentence is supposed to be: "This is AN awesome car."

Maybe you don't know exactly why the words are arranged like this and how the grammar works.

But your brain just knows the rhythm of language.

So always remember; language is words and grammar.

SECOND CHAPTER: Linguistic Families.

Lots of languages around the world are very similar when it comes to words and grammar.

For example; Arabic and Hebrew.