Languages, a wandering species of living beings ...

Ever considered your mother tongue as a living being? A throbbing, pulsing organism that lives in the evanescent spoken words of its people, sleeping in all the inscribed letters if it has a script, swaying about in the phrases, idioms, sayings, songs and stories, leaving its footprints with the written novels, books and poems; ever growing and expanding.

A language thus viewed more than qualifies to be considered as a species of living being. A species that senses the world around it and processes the inputs through its people, the manifesting extensions, expressing its reactions through them as those spoken words, inscribed letters, songs and stories and such.

How about the evolution of languages? could it be similar to the evolution of other flora and fauna? Maybe; The first type of language that came came into existence might be the sign language, the lean, low-fat, no frills form probably equivalent to single cell organisms which are the forebearers of all living beings today. Then they must have evolved depending upon their environment.

Consider languages in geographically and or otherwise separated regions; germinating, incubating and taking birth in unconnected worlds. They evolve in different environments, adding different organs; extenders, antennae, long necks and jumping legs, suited for that environment. They develop a vocabulary, grammar and other arsenal to express complex concepts. Separately they grow into completely different unconnected organisms, but living in the very same universe.

What happens when two unconnected and different species of languages come into contact? How would they interact? Can we compare that with with way two previously unknown biological species interact?

Could they be staring at each other intently at the beginning? They may growl at each other, uttering different sounds mostly meaning the same thing. They may just turn around and go on each others way. But what could they do if the circumstances demand them to interact? Would they then circle around? watching and observing, forming an impression of the other? trying to learn what the other is doing?

They might have to try and find a common ground, any common ground, a basis to start reconciling with each other. They may have to resort to sign language itself, the most basic common ground, to make one meaningful to the other.

Then it may progress, words for the different signs, pointing to the same things and uttering words for them in each others tongue, connecting them and understanding sentences, comparing alphabets, vowels, consonants and more and more ...

:-)