There are roughly about 6,500 languages spoken in the world today. A vast majority of these languages have less than 1000 speakers each. For major languages with over a million speakers, there are over 100.
Two persons can bear similar physical characteristics but speak entirely different languages – being unable to communicate effectively with other.
So why so many languages? And what is the explanation of this natural phenomenon? Science might attribute it to the “diversity of life,” but the Bible gives a different explanation.
The Tower of Babel.
The Bible explains the variety of languages in our world today through the story of the tower of Babel. The Babylonian King wanted to create an empire to control the people. He wanted to build a high tower that reached into the heavens so that he would confine the people into one place.
God didn’t want this. God wanted the people to spread out over the earth and inhabit all corners of it. God was so displeased with the Babylonian King’s plan that he caused the people to start speaking different languages. This brought the construction of the tower of Babel to a halt – since the people could no longer understand each other.
The people then dispersed to various parts of the earth by groups according to the languages they spoke.
Imagine what a chaotic scenario this might have resulted in during the construction of such a gigantic tower! Imagine how frustrated everyone might have became at the moment they started speaking different languages!
For example, if someone had said in English “give me the hammer,” those speaking Portuguese wouldn’t have understood!
To put this into perspective, let’s have some fun comparing the expression “give me the hammer” in ten different languages!
Spanish: Dame el martillo
French: Donne moi le marteau
Portuguese: Me dê o martelo
Italian: Dammi il martello
German: Gib mir den Hammer
Dutch: Geef me de hamer
Filipino: Bigyan mo ako ng martilyo
Swedish: Ge mig hammaren
Polish: Daj mi młotek
Turkish: Bana çekiç ver
You can easily see why the construction of the Tower of Babel had to stop! No one would have gotten the hammer…except maybe…the King of Babylon!
Up next, we’ll compare the similarities and differences of the Romance Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian to see how similar and different they actually are. The Romance languages are all derived from the language of ancient Rome: Latin. Although these four languages are similar, they are still different. And the speaker of one of them can only communicate to a limited extend with the speaker of another. Let’s look, for example, at how you say “good morning” in each of the Romance Languages. Coming up next!