The Language of Our Ancestors

Have you ever wondered what language your ancestors spoke?

Many linguists have indeed examined this question and are now able to provide relatively precise answers. Explanations. 

The Language of Prehistoric Men

Let's start with a big leap back in time to some 2 million years ago. Men thought in sensations (what we might call intuition) before expressing themselves through gestures, onomatopoeia, rhythms, or even songs. Linguists confirm that the first articulated languages, those most similar to our current language, appeared about 500,000 years ago. Like us, our ancestors at that time assembled sounds to make words and words to make sentences. The French researcher Marcel Locquin also successfully combined linguistics, biology, and computer science to propose a “prehistoric language dictionary”, amazing! 

The Language of Indo-European Peoples

Much more recently, between 4500 and 2500 BC, our Indo-European ancestors spoke a language of the same name. Linguists have been certain of this for over 200 years. The “Proto-Indo-European” or “Common Indo-European” is the common ancestor of Greek or Latin, which are themselves the ancestors of the languages we know today. Common Indo-European could even be the direct ancestor of English, Farsi, and Swedish. 

There is no written record of this language. Only an artificial text written in Common Indo-European by August Schleicher, the Schleicher’s Fable, allows scientists and linguists to deepen their research and transcriptions of this ancient language. Between 1868, when this fable was written (Avis akvāsas ka or The Sheep and the Horses), and 2013, about ten scholars proposed rewrites and linguistic evolutions. The latest, linguist Andrew Byrd (University of Kentucky), attempted to reproduce the sound of this language and was inspired by Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit to propose his spoken version (to listen here) approximate of Common Indo-European. 

And Before Modern French? 

But even more recently, where does the French language come from? Well, it was the Oaths of Strasbourg (or the division of Charlemagne’s empire) in 842 that first brought to light two new languages of the Carolingian empire, French and German. However, long before that, the Gauls spoke Gaulish (a Celtic language) before the Romans of Julius Caesar invaded Gaul with both their weapons and their Italic language, Latin. At the end of the Roman Empire, our ancestors in Gaul spoke a single language, close to Latin (except for some territories where Celtic languages never really disappeared: Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Brittany...). Then came the Franks in Roman Gaul. They spoke Frankish, a Germanic language, and also left their mark on the future of Modern French. Today, we still see traces of the passage of these peoples in our French language. We mainly find Latin words, of course. But we also find words of Gaulish origin (about 150) such as the words “mud” (bawa), “barrel” (tonn) or “cream” (crama), as well as words of Frankish origin such as “blue”, “gray”, “war”, or “fox” for example. The Arabic language has also greatly influenced our language, being even the third source of loans. There are over 400 words of Arabic origin, with about a hundred commonly used in France such as “vest”, “customs”, “store”, “apricot”, “zero”, and many others! Words mainly used during commercial and scientific exchanges in Spain, Italy, and France. 

Now that we have all the explanations about the language of our ancestors, what will be the language of our descendants? 

To go further : 

Académie française - Examples of Foreign Origin Words

Vikidia - Foreign Origin Words Used in French 

City of Geneva - Archives InterroGE