Which came first, spoken English or written English?

Which came first, spoken English or written English?

By: Wang Yujiang

When there were human beings, there were spoken languages, while the history of written languages is only several thousand years. Before written languages were created, human beings communicate by spoken languages only. Spoken languages were created by two persons, or a few people, face-to-face. In ancient times, it is difficult to migrate so people in different places can not communicate with each other. As a result, people in different places spoke differently, and every language was spoken by very few people.

After written languages, especially the alphabets, were created, the situation changed. When people learned an alphabet, their spoken language is depended on the alphabet, which becomes the standard of their spoken language. In different places, people learned the same alphabet, they would speak the same language. As more and more people learned the same alphabet, more and more people spoke the same language.

If a language was spoken by millions of people, the language must have alphabetic script. Because of this, there are two kinds of spoken language in the world. The first one is not related to a written language. Since it does not depend on a written language, so it is impossible to talk about which came first.

The second one is related to alphabets. Since it depends on an alphabet, so the written language came first, then the spoken language followed. They may almost come at the same time, but it is impossible that the spoken language came first. Therefore, I would say that without written English, there is no spoken English.

In linguistics, many linguists thought that written languages are all dependent on spoken languages. It seems that this theory is wrong now. The correct one should be: 1, Written languages are not dependent on spoken languages. 2, Some spoken languages, especially the languages spoken by millions of people, are dependent on written languages.

Historically, It is no doubt that human beings created spoken languages first. However, the spoken languages which related to written languages were created after the written languages.