The Mecca Hypothesis

One of the truly amazing things about the human geography of the world is that a single language is spoken over the vast distance from Morocco to Yemen. Most traditional language domains, with the exceptions of the relatively recently settled continents such as North America, South America and Australia, tend to be more or less compact in geographical shape.

This is at least true of the densely populated portions thereof. Chinese and Russian are spoken over wide areas, but the populations of both are heavily concentrated so that much of the language domain is sparse in population. China's population is concentrated in the eastern part of the country, while Russia's is in the western, European section, and away from Siberia.

Here is a map link: http://www.maps.google.com/ .

The Arabic language, however, is spoken over a vast and elongated area with the majority of it sparsely populated. Except for Berbers, in certain areas of north Africa, the population is ethnically Arab. But is traditionally tribal, and is separated by mountains, wide areas of forbidding desert, and the Red Sea.

Just on the other side of the Mediterranean, the language pattern of Europe is completely different. There are basically three major European language groups; the Romance Languages with a historical foundation in Latin, the northern European or Germanic languages, and the Slavic languages of eastern Europe. These three groups have fragmented into the multitude of languages that are spoken today.

It is easy to see the common origin of the northern European languages by the translation of the word "drink".
German -Trinken
Dutch -Drinken
English -Drink
Norwegian -Drikke
Swedish -Dricka

The Dutch language originated as a branch of Low German. English is largely based on the language brought to England long ago by Anglo Saxon settlers from central Europe. Even today, there are a number of common names that are pronounced the same way, but can have either an English or a German spelling such as "Snyder" and "Sneider". Yiddish, the traditional language of central European Jews, also originated as a branch of German.

Germany originated as a multitude of small states across central Europe that spoke roughly the same language, but the German language was well on the way to fragmenting further before it was standardized in the past few decades.

The languages of the Scandinavian countries; Norwegian, Swedish and, Danish, are similar enough that speakers of any of the three can often understand the other two. But this does not include Finnish, which is completely different. Spanish and Italian are also similar enough that some mutual comprehension is possible.

French differs from the other Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and, Romanian) in that it also has a strong Celtic influence. Celtic was a language that also fragmented into several related languages. Breton, spoken in Brittany in far western France, is similar enough to Welsh, spoken in Wales on the other side of the English Channel, that speakers of the two can often understand one another.

The country that is now known as Romania is far to the east, and was once a retirement area in the days of the Roman Empire, when it was called Dacia. Romanian is thus considered as a Romance language, but has a significant Slavic influence on it due to it's location in eastern Europe. In the same way the Slavic languages, such as Russian, Polish and, Czech have the similarity that indicates common origin.

There are, of course, the unique European languages that are unlike any of the others. These are Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, and the Basque language of northwestern Spain. Catalan is the native language of northeastern Spain, around Barcelona, but is a Romance language. Hungarian and Finnish seem to have originated further east before being planted by settlers, the Magyars in the case of Hungarian. I read one theory that the two languages are distantly related.

So now, back on the other side of the Mediterranean, how on earth did we manage to have a single language spoken over an area about the size of Europe, when the original languages of Europe fragmented into the linguistic jigsaw puzzle that we see today? This has really amazed me.

Yet, the answer is very clear. It is the Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca that has kept this vast area speaking a single language over time. It is also a factor that the Qu'ran is supposed to be read in Arabic, but even with this the spoken language could have fragmented so that the written language could have ended up spoken in a number of different ways, as is Chinese today.

In the centuries before air travel, Moslems would undertake the great effort to make the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj. Their interaction with fellow Moslems along the way, as well as at their destination, is what has resulted in Arabic remaining the language of this vast geographical area.

Invasions to spread the religion in the early days of Islam brought the language to many of the areas where it is now spoken, but without the pilgrimage there would never have been a single language spoken over such a wide area. Different groups, such as the Fatimids and Zirids of North Africa, would have developed separate languages and the linguistic landscape would be much like that of Europe today.

Only about one in six Moslems today is Arab. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan are Moslem nations, but these nations had their own languages before Islam was brought to the area, and so do not speak Arabic.

The original language from which Arabic has descended also fragmented. For example, the word for day, "yom", is the same in both Arabic and Hebrew because the two are both Semitic languages, as were many of the languages spoken in the ancient Middle East.

Thus, we can conclude that if Christians had instituted a pilgrimage to St. Peter's Square, similar to the Haj, Europeans today would speak only three major languages; the descendants of Latin, the northern European languages, and Slavic.