@cjab__
It's notable that darwinian evolution also doesn't have an end goal. It's not even linear.
@Calvin_Barnes
The thing about language changing to be 'easier' is that making things easier for the speaker usually makes things a bit more ambiguous and difficult for the listener. And making things less ambiguous and easier for the listener to understand tends to make it more complex for the speaker. So instead of languages becoming easier, they're really just moving toward a balance between ease of sending the message and ease of decoding the message. And because language is formed within the context of a culture, that balance will constantly shift and change due to culture shifting and changing.
@lurji
as a paleo fan and ling fan, no organism is evolving or has ever evolved specifically towards a set goal as you implied in the intro. everything that got a certain taxon to where it is in terms of anatomy and body plan was entirely random. apes were not predestined to become bipedal and talk, all of it was just by chance as various traits became advantageous or disadvantageous for the present environment the organism found itself in. tldr: there is no evolving "towards", just evolving
@Dunkle0steus
"Evolving towards" is a completely unscientific phrase.
@Hibari_fan
"Some annoying sound cluster" shows most common sound cluster in polish
@eubalenaglacialis
as an evolutionary biologist i really enjoy your content!
@KaityKat117
And in some cases, a language will borrow a word from another language then shorten it and it no longer makes sense. Japanese for instance shortened smartphone from スマートフォン (sumātofon) to just スマホ (or スマフォ) (Sumaho/Sumafo).
@Claudecaufield
One of my linguistics teachers once explained a theory to us stating that humans could’ve become better at language through natural selection because being articulate made it easier to find a mate. Therefore those who were good at it would reproduce more easily, passing down the gene from generation to generation. Idk if it’s true but it sure is interesting.
@Myriad-Truths
Id say evolving towards simplified, yet articulate communication is usually one of the first things
@FireDragonArmy2
I forgot who said this but I once read a quote by someone who said that a language that is absolutely perfect would be able to describe a color to a blind person. I always thought that was what all languages would one day perhaps coalesce into in some faraway future… I watched a lot of Star Trek as a kid so i remain eternally hopeful for humanity.
@Astrobotl84
I think things adapt more than evolve. They change for ease of use, however, when they made words such as laska/laka, laska probably felt effective for them at the time.
@Ellestra
Funnily enough both laska and laka are words in Polish (first means cane the other means lacquerware). But no one in Poland would consider sk a hard to say consonant cluster.
@MrRedstoneready
The evolution of language is more like the evolution of a river. Always following a very short term path of least resistance. Doesn't get stronger, or smarter, or better able to be a river as time goes.
@Qwert-4960
best example of language being hard is English it self ,we talk about why "they" made it goofy but we forget we made it ;there's no one specific person who decided things
@lv.1crook
Languages evolves into crabs, everything evolves into crabs
@FRANKYFNKY
There are 3 main factor 1. How efficient to communicate 2 cultural pressure 3 political language like now everyone speak English as a kind of universal language. Like we use to do with French Latin and greck
@overpoweredjoe
Languages evolve based on locations and they divide and become dialects then languages of their own, just like every language, Afro-Asiatic and PIE, especially latin
@martinjansson1970
Languages usually "evolve"/change the most, when they are mostly used by non-native speaker. And they don't evolve as much as becoming more dumbed down, less elegant, precise and expressive, and requiring a lot of unnecessary more words and a more convoluted grammar (that is based on fewer and simpler concepts than the old grammar) to say something. The first thing that go, is most of the methods that the old language used to create new words for new concepts from old words, instead the language start to borrow a lot of words from other languages, languages that are not yet as stupid, or use existing words as methaphores, metaphors that outside a small group nobody understands, or they just make up fantasy words, that has to be explained the first time somebody hear/read them. The reason there is so many words in an English dictionary, is not because English actually use more words, but that every word need to be explained, contrary to some other languages that just use a few base words, maybe a few prefixes and suffixed, and maybe rules for sound and tonal alternations, and then glue the base words together with those rules, and then everybody immediately understands the new word without any explanation.
@JerryCrow
Think history, think war. When war is evident, you can see this in ukraine, you create a distinct code. The finnish language, or a common dialect, was formed when the swedes attacked the townfolk; Where before lexigons might have differed, but having the 16 cases actually makes it really easy to speak using only a few words, for example "vittu vituttaa vitusti vitut vittuili vitustani vitukseen". "i am very displeased for the rude ones made fun of my vagina a whole lot". To a germanic person that'd just seem like its homophones at max, but yea the cases are what matter quite a bit, and other particles.
@Leldy