Do we all speak African?

Not all of us have been to Africa. It's possible, however, that every language has already been there! Many scientists believe this, anyway. In their opinion, the origin of all languages lies in Africa. From there they have spread to the rest of the world. Altogether there are over 6,000 different languages. However, they all are said to have common African roots. Researchers have compared the phonemes of different languages. Phonemes are the smallest differentiating units of a word. If a phoneme is changed, the whole meaning of a word changes. An example from the English language can illustrate this. In English, dip and tip describe two different things. So in English, /d/ and /t/ are two different phonemes. This phonetic variety is greatest in African languages. This decreases dramatically, however, the farther away you get from Africa. And this is exactly where the researchers see the proof for their theory. Populations that expand become more uniform. At their outer edges, the genetic variety decreases. This is due to the fact that the number of ‘settlers’ also decreases. The fewer amount of genes that migrate, the more uniform a population becomes. The possible combinations of the genes decrease. As a result, members of a migrated population become similar to each other. Scientists call this the founder effect. As people left Africa, they took their language with them. But fewer settlers also brought fewer phonemes with them. This is how individual languages became more uniform over time. It appears to be proven that Homo sapiens originated from Africa. We are waiting to see, if it's also true for their language…

Guess the language!

The Arabic language is counted among the most important languages worldwide. More than 300 million people in over 20 countries speak Arabic. This Afro-Asian language originated several thousands of years ago. Originally only spoken on the Arabic peninsula, it later became widespread. There are many different Arabic dialects. Many of the dialects are very different from standard Arabic. Speakers from different regions often do not understand each other at all. Ancient Arabic is hardly spoken today.

It exists most notably in the written form. Interest in Arabic has increased in recent years. Many people find the Arabic writing system especially fascinating. It is written from right to left. If you want to learn Arabic, you must do so in a particular order. First the pronunciation, then the grammar, then the writing system. If you stick to that order, you will most definitely have fun while learning.