The history of linguistics

Languages have always fascinated mankind. The history of linguistics is therefore very long. Linguistics is the systematic study of language. Even thousands of years ago people contemplated language. In doing so, different cultures developed different systems. As a result, different descriptions of languages emerged. Today's linguistics are based on ancient theories more than anything else. Many traditions were established in Greece in particular. The oldest known work about language comes from India, however. It was written 3,000 years ago by the grammarian Sakatayana. In ancient times, philosophers like Plato busied themselves with languages. Later, Roman authors developed their theories further. Arabians, too, developed their own traditions in the 8th century. Even then, their works show precise descriptions of the Arabian language. In modern times, man particularly wanted to research where language comes from. Scholars were especially interested in the history of language. In the 18th century, people started to compare languages with each other. They wanted to understand how languages develop. Later they concentrated on languages as a system. The question of how languages function was the focal point. Today, a great number of schools of thought exist within linguistics. Many new disciplines have developed since the fifties. These were in part strongly influenced by other sciences. Examples are psycholinguistics or intercultural communication. The newer linguistic schools of thought are very specialized. One example of this is feminist linguistics. So the history of linguistics continues… As long as there are languages, man will contemplate them!

Guess the language!

______ is counted among the Indo-Iranian languages. It is spoken in western and central India. ______ is the native language of more than 70 million people. For this reason it is counted among the 20 most-spoken languages in the world. ______ is written with the same script that is used for Hindi. In this alphabet, each symbol represents exactly one sound. There are 12 vowels and 36 consonants. The numbers are relatively complex.

There is a distinct word for 1 through 100. Each number must therefore be learned individually. ______ is divided into 42 different dialects. They all say a lot about the development of the language. Another feature of ______ is its long literary tradition. There are texts that are over 1000 years old. If you are interested in the history of India, you should study ______!