Language Mixture—Language Areas

When unrelated or distantly related languages are spoken in the same area for long periods, they tend to become more grammatically similar, because of widespread bilingualism. The classic case is Indo-European languages of the Balkans, which share various traits that they did not have originally. But linguists are discovering the same phenomenon across the world: languages of Southeast Asia stem from four different families but share a similar “template.” Linguists are finding that the usual situation is that few new languages emerge, but the ones that exist stew together in this way; only invasions and migrations interrupt this process and create brand-new languages.