Why are there different languages?

Answer

There are both religious and scientific explanations as to why there are different languages.

Religious Explanations:

The Old Testament to the Christians, or the Torah as it is to the Jews, states that it is because of the "Tower of Babel", a tower people supposedly built to be able to reach the heavens. So as to stop this, God made the people speak in different tongues so they couldn't understand each other, as seen in the following scripture:.

"Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language; and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." so the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth." This is found in Genesis 11:1-9.

Although a similair story is mentioned in the Qur'an, the tower is not named. However, the tower is set in the Egypt of Moses, and the tower is ordered to be built by a Pharaoh so he may encounter Moses.

Scientific Explanation:

Humans have evolved and split into different areas across Earth. The splitting of people caused some means of communication to be lost and others to be gained over time within the different groups of people. Another explanation is that when people are isolated from one another, dialects change, and over a long period of time they become mutually unrecognizable. Civilizations grew separately because the people didn't have much contact with other civilizations and because of the lack of transportation to get to other countries/places.

Generally, children adopt the language of their parents in the country or region where they were born. However, children often learn the languages of neighboring regions and countries. In Europe many French people speak German, Italian and Spanish.
Over the last 10,000 years the world's major population groups have codified their languages to improve spoken and written communications. In 2007 there are still about 1000 languages in use among the globe's population of 6.5 billion people.
For several hundred years there have been attempts to create universal languages: One is called Esperanto, which enjoys some limited success. But recent scientific developments have produced compact audio converters (like the "universal translator" on The Star Trek TV show) which enable listeners to hear a foreign language speaker in their own languages. It works in the laboratory and may be available for consumers by 2010.

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