Why Are There So Many Languages in The World?

Tell your kid Thousands of years ago, people in different communities all over the globe invented their own words to describe their lives, and that's why today people from the same area tend to speak the same language and other people may not. Languages also evolve over time: Our own has changed so much that if you heard someone speaking English as it was spoken 500 years ago, you'd have trouble understanding what he was saying.

What you should know Hearing someone speaking a foreign language can strike young children as odd -- even unsettling. "But the earlier we help kids understand what they can learn from other cultures, the more likely they'll seek out new kinds of people," notes Jillian Cavanaugh, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology and archaeology at Brooklyn College, in New York. Remind your kid that people from other cultures might think the way we talk is unusual, too, and point out that some words she uses often come from other languages, like ballet (French) or pasta (Italian).

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