Remembering Babel

The curse of the multiplicity of languages as recounted in Genesis 11 is often mocked by skeptics, or at least treated as legendary and not reliable as history. However, linguists are coming to the same conclusion as Scripture, that human language is something that is thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of years old; that there is a small number of language families from which all modern languages descend; and that not all languages can be traced to a single common ancestor.

All of this fits in with human history as presented in Genesis.

Answers in Genesis has a fascinating look at the lingustic ramifications of the Babel account, especially in light of the lingustic theory of the prototypical languages from which our modern tongues descend.