Lol it was the tower of Babel...according to the Bible!
It's really more simple than that, although we all have common ancestors as we spread and moved away the polar caps were still melting from the ice age, at that time we did not have the language skills we have now, the seas rose and continents which were joined together became separated by water, there was a time when you could walk across the North sea and fossils of land animals have been found there, cut off the tribes bred amongst themselves and various characteristics as far as build and colouring came to the fore but at the same time we were developing our powers of communication in separate communities cut off from each other so the names we chose for things varied.
That said, our own language is littered with latin, french, spanish, german and dutch and if you have studied any of those languages you will recognise quite a few words which mean the same or similar in our own, partly through the many invasions but also partly through trade!
Canadians and many of the arab nations speak french and many in the west indies speak dutch, while south americans tend to speak Spanish, we were not the only country that colonised other territories by a long way, and latin crept into many other languages because of the Romans.
When? Babylon.
How long? Since then, language changes daily. Most today have a hard time understanding Shakespeare's English.
To improve communication.
http://mobile.biblegateway.com/passage/?...
Hope this helps :))
There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today, but how on earth did those languages started and how long it take to get every word into those languages!
