Confusion of tongues

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A dramatic sight on the topic related to the confusion of tongues, as it may have occurred during the attempt to build Babel, by Gustave Doré.

The confusion of tongues (confusio linguarum) is the initial fragmentation of human languages described in the Bible after the collapse of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).

It is implied that prior to the event, humanity spoke a single language, either identical to or derived from the "Adamic language" spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise. In the confusion of tongues, this language was split into seventy or seventy-two dialects, depending on tradition. This is in ostensible contradiction to Genesis 10:5,

Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

suggesting that even before Babel, human languages were separated, at least among the descendants of Japheth.

During the Middle-Ages, the Hebrew language was widely considered the language used by God to address Adam in Paradise, and by Adam as nomothete (the Adamic language), especially by Christian scholastics. Dante in the Divina commedia implies however that the language of Paradise was different from later Hebrew by saying that Adam addressed God as I rather than El.

The argument of Genesis 10:5 played a certain role at the time preceding the discovery of the Indo-European language family, originally considered the "Japhetite" languages by some authors (e.g. Rasmus Rask in 1815; see Indo-European studies) During the Renaissance, Hebrew had lost its status as the original language of Paradise, and was considered just one of the seventy languages derived from the confusion of tongues. Priority was now claimed for the alleged Japhetite languages, which were never corrupted because their speakers had not participated in the construction of the Tower of Babel. Among the candidates for a living descendant of the Adamic language were Gaelic (see Auraicept na n-Éces), Tuscan (Giovanni Battista Gelli, 1542, Piero Francesco Giambullari, 1564), Flemish (Goropius Becanus, 1569, Abraham Mylius, 1612), Swedish (Andreas Kempe, 1688, Olaus Rudbeck, 1675), German (Georg Philipp Haurdörffer, 1641, Schottel, 1641) and Proto-Indo-European (Anne Catherine Emmerich, 1790).