Understanding why languages change is essential to comprehending how human beings communicate, evolve culturally, and adapt to new social and technological realities. Comparative linguistics is a discipline that not only explains and illustrates our past or the contacts between different civilisations, but it also helps us understand how our brain processes, creates, and modifies language. Knowing why languages change allows us to appreciate the richness and cultural diversity of human societies and sheds light on the inner workings of our cognition and our capacity to innovate.
Languages evolve because they are dynamic systems. Unlike other artificial systems, languages are alive in the sense that they are used by real people in ever-changing contexts. Furthermore, they follow a cycle like that of living beings: they are born, grow, reproduce, and die. Humans change language to adapt it to our needs and the social situations we face. This innate flexibility makes languages malleable and constantly evolving.
Cultural and technological changes
To answer this question, it’s crucial to understand the relationship between language evolution and cultural changes. As societies develop, vocabulary and linguistic structures change to reflect new knowledge and technologies. This process is evident in the number of words we incorporate from other languages or create to designate new concepts. Languages evolve because they must adapt to the advancement of human civilization. Apart from the Catholic Church, which isn’t exactly well adapted to the present times, who would use Latin to communicate today? Yes, I know there are a few oddballs out there, but they are not many.
An example: languages that have been «resurrected,» like Hebrew, underwent a deep elaboration of their vocabulary to be able to designate realities that didn’t exist when it stopped being spoken. From what I understand, the death of Hebrew took place during the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the 6th century BCE, when a large portion of the population that spoke this language was exiled to Babylon and was forced to adopt Aramaic. After the return from exile, it became the main language of many Jewish populations, while Greek started to emerge as a dominant language of communication and knowledge. Hebrew continued to be used in some contexts, especially religious, until it was replaced by Aramaic around the 3rd century. It’s estimated that it stopped being spoken altogether about a hundred years later.
At the end of the 19th century, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda led its revival as a spoken language, in parallel with the rise of Zionism in Palestine. The Hebrew lexicon had to be modernized, incorporating neologisms and borrowings from European languages. In 1948, it was recognized as the official language of the State of Israel, where it is now the most spoken language. It has changed a lot since the Hebrew of the 3rd century, for obvious reasons, and although it is based on it, modern Hebrew speakers cannot understand biblical Hebrew. It’s the same thing that happens to us when we read Latin.
Psychology, biology, and evolution
But besides these historical and cultural reasons, we must not forget the «biological» aspect of linguistic evolution. Pinker, for example, says that humans have an innate instinct for language, but this instinct is not entirely rigid; it changes and adapts to the environment, like other animal species. According to him, the ability to learn and modify a language is deeply rooted in our brains. The fact that children naturally learn languages and can innovate within them demonstrates the adaptable nature of our cognitive system. This ability to modify and shape language translates into its constant evolution.
A less obvious but equally important aspect is the role of chance, like the mutations observed in biological beings. Languages don’t always change in an orderly or predictable way. Sometimes it’s random factors, such as the simplification of words or phrases, a misunderstanding, or the incorrect use of certain terms, or even differences in pronunciation, that contribute to its evolution. Over time, these accumulated variations persist because they are useful or simplify pronunciations and end up profoundly transforming the linguistic system.
Furthermore, the diversity of languages in the world and their evolution is nothing more than the result of the adaptation of human groups to different environments and social circumstances. Just as animal species diversify over time, languages also do so to better fit the needs of the communities that speak them. For example, when two or more languages come into contact, they exchange words and grammatical structures that add nuances or complement the resources present in the language that borrows these elements. Speakers adopt terms that are useful from other languages, and that eventually enriches and transforms our communication over time.
The evolution of languages is a natural phenomenon that responds to cultural, psychological, biological factors, and even changes generated by chance. Language is not a fixed code but a living organism that reflects the human capacity for adaptation and change. Understanding how and why languages evolve helps us better understand human nature and its relationship with communication. The language we speak today is not the same as 20 years ago. There are words, expressions, and grammatical phenomena that are unstoppable, whether we like it or not. It is completely useless to resist change because it will happen, whether we want it or not.
What is important, however, is to remember that language must be cared for to continue being what it is: a tool for communication and interaction between human beings that is essential for our cognitive and social development. Everything else is pointless.