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Apr 3, 2024 · A global language acts as a “lingua franca”, a common language that enables people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities to communicate on a more or less equitable basis. Historically, the essential factor for the establishment of a global language is that it is spoken by those who wield power.
Starting in the 19th century and continuing to the present, the grammar-translation approach has been criticised primarily because it focuses on form at the expense of meaning and communicative ability. Many early critics and reformers drew on analogies with how we learn our first language.
- Sumerian. From roughly 4100 BCE to 1750 BCE, the ancient Sumerian civilization thrived across southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). The Sumerians developed the world’s oldest known writing system, cuneiform, which consisted of wedge-shaped characters carved into clay tablets.
- Egyptian. The ancient Egyptian language dates back to roughly 3200 BCE, when the hieroglyphic script was first developed. This symbol-based writing system contained three types of signs: logograms denoting words, phonograms representing sounds, and determinatives to help clarify the meaning of a word.
- Akkadian. Akkadian is a now-extinct language that was spoken by the Babylonians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia (in parts of modern-day Iraq and Syria) from roughly 2800 BCE until 500 CE.
- Tamil. Tamil is a member of the Dravidian language family, which includes several languages spoken throughout India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Tamil is the oldest of the bunch, though its exact date of origin is widely disputed.
Dec 11, 2022 · The indication is that human language was a fairly late acquisition of Homo sapiens. It is argued in this study that language, as we know it today, probably began to emerge about 20,000 years...
Apr 28, 2011 · Jan van der Crabben (CC BY-NC-SA) Writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken language. It is thought that human beings developed language c. 35,000 BCE as evidenced by cave paintings from the period of the Cro-Magnon Man (c. 50,000-30,000 BCE) which appear to express concepts concerning daily life.
- Joshua J. Mark
Sep 17, 2024 · Despite this, worldwide at least 754 million adults still cannot read and write, two thirds of them women, and 250 million children are failing to acquire basic literacy skills. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the worst disruption to education in a century, 617 million children and teenagers had not reached minimum reading levels.
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Language and communication. Language is foremost a means of communication, and communication almost always takes place within some sort of social context. This is why effective communication requires an understanding and recognition of the connections between a language and the people who use it.
