What was the first language and who used it?

Answer 1

Answer

If you believe in creation, as I do, then the first language would have come in the very beginning with the creation of Adam. If God spoke with Adam, and he in turn, spoke with Eve, then reasonably, they needed a verbal language. If you don't believe in creation, then I have read where historians have traced the spoken language to the Middle East, probably in the region between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Interestingly, in this regard, the creation and secular sources do not disagree with each other concerning the location of the first spoken language.

Some languages on the Asian and European continents developed from an Indo-European originator, but as with any evolutionary process it was a slow one. Early language probably developed sounds (eventually forming words) to indicate nouns, such as animals or food, with verbs, adjectives and the whole rang of language coming as a later development. We can't know much about the origins of language as there are no written sources, but all things point to it being a gradual thing.

Answer

The first answer is in error on one point: there is no possible way for linguists, etymologists, and/or philologists to trace the origins of spoken language. Spoken language is certainly prehistoric, which means that there can be no written records of it.

Since the most likely area for the initial evolution of homo sapiens, and its precursors, is sub-Saharan Africa, it is likely that language was first used there. But it is not certain.

Answer

The origin of language can be viewed in two ways, depending on whether you believe in a successful run of "The Forbidden Experiment".

If the test is positive, then this points toward language developing innately, perhaps primitively, at the first point where evolution pushed intelligence over some "critical mass". This does not mean black and white: there is evidence that Humpback whales exhibit Chomsky-esque hierarchies.

If the test is negative, then this means that speech evolved slowly with us, and that the first languages must have been immensely primitive. There is good reason to believe that the test is positive, based on the way that children learn languages.

Answer 2

No one really knows that, however, almost everything in the English language including the English alphabet has some letters that are in the Greek alphabet. It also might be Arabic because people started using it since time began! Some Jewish clerics claim the Hebrew is the oldest language.

Second answer

No one knows what the first language was, but it probably consisted of grunts, hisses, whistles, and any of the forty odd sounds the human mouth can make in addition to body and rudimentary sign language. for support of this we can look at the other animals that use verbal and physical communication.

Coyotes for example have forty different barks and howls they use to communicate. We know that Chimps and higher primates use sound and movement to communicate. The most complex language on Earth isn't even made by a human tongue; it is the song of the humpback whale. Two of the most complex human languages are Navajo and Hopi (it's been said that you could describe nuclear physics in Hopi and it would be easier to understand and the explanation would be more complete than is possible in English), and both have roots that go back anywhere from 1000 to 30,000 years (depending on the particular anthropologist you ask). Hebrew and Aramaic can be traced back perhaps 5000-8000 years. Sumerian is older than that.

Proto-Canaanite is one of the earliest known written languages, and that goes back only 3500 years. The pictographs of PC give solid indication there may have been earlier written forms, but we have not discovered examples yet.

The vast majority of linguists for the past 100 years concur that Proto-Indo-European is the parent language of the majority of languages today. While there is no conclusive proof that PIE existed, the vast amount of circumstantial evidence is accepted as proof, and researchers have been able to reconstruct much of it.

Third answer

The very first human language was most likely gestural in nature. This is because chimps, our closest genetic cousins, communicate more through visual and tactile cues like facial expressions, hand and body gestures, and bodily contact than they do with vocalizations. The area of the brain that controls hand gestures also controls the tongue. Young autistic children who cannot speak have gained the ability after learning American Sign Language. People born with a mutated version of FOXP2, the gene in the brain associated with speech, have problems talking because they do not have proper control of their tongues and mouth muscles. This gene is believed to have come about 50,000 years ago, which would have allowed humans to finally talk. For a more detailed description, see the related question below. See also the book Next of Kin (1997) by Roger Fouts.

The very first spoken human language was most likely a click language akin to that spoken by the !Kung San of Africa (! = click). This is because the language is so unlike anything else spoke in the world, which points to its antiquity. Also, the !Kung people have the oldest genetic strain of human DNA in the world. There is no need for me to talk about Proto-Indo-European as it has been covered above. For more, see the book Before the Dawn (2006) by Nicholas Wade.