Oral communication involves expressing ideas, feelings, information and other things that employ the voice, like poetry or music, verbally. Oral language involves words, their pronunciations and the various ways of combining them to communicate. Most children begin learning to speak extremely early in life. They begin by babbling, an attempt to mimic the speech they hear from older people. As children get older, they develop more language skills and start forming sentences. People continue building their vocabularies throughout their lives.

Vocabulary is just one of the components of oral language. Other components include: how words are arranged into sentences (syntax); how people use oral language to communicate (pragmatics); how words are structured and formed in different languages (morphology); and the study of the sound of speech (phonology).

The history of oral language as a whole is difficult to trace to its beginning, however, there is a wealth of information on the histories of specific languages. A language family is a set of languages that all evolved out of the same language. The language family with the most speakers in the world is Indo-European. More than 40 percent of the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language. Indo-European languages are thought to stem from a single language, which nomads spoke thousands of years ago. Recent evidence has shown that the origin of oral language goes back even further.

Other major language families include Sino-Tibetan, which encapsulates some languages spoken in East and Southeast Asia, including Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan; and Austronesian, which includes Malagasy, the main language spoken in Madagascar, and languages spoken in Oceania and islands in Southeast Asia.

The discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone in 1989, as well as the FOXP2 gene—thought to be essential for vocalization and motor control—in Neanderthal DNA, is evidence that Neanderthals may have communicated with speech sounds, possibly even language.

Oral Language and the Preservation of Cultures

Oral language is an important feature of many cultures, where it holds a particularly special or sacred meaning, beyond just being a method of communication. Many Native American nations, for instance, use oral storytelling to pass on beliefs, traditions and ancestral knowledge.

Marginalized groups in particular often highly value oral language, not only because it is part of their traditions and culture, but also because it is a way of maintaining their culture and resisting colonial oppressors.

There are several historical examples of colonial oppressors forbidding marginalized groups from communicating in their native languages in attempts to assimilate them into the oppressors’ ways of living. Beginning in the late 1800s, under the U.S. federal Indian boarding school policy, for example, colonial oppressors forced Native American children into schools where they were forbidden from speaking their native languages. Since then, Native American groups have engaged in activism and education to maintain and revitalize Indigenous languages.

In other cases, such as for enslaved Africans, literacy was banned, which increased the importance of oral language. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect that combines West African languages with English, arose during slavery and continues to be used today, illustrating the resiliency of the culture.

Today, the people of the world approximately seven thousand different languages. While this represents remarkable diversity, almost half of these languages are considered endangered, with an estimated nine languages lost per year. This loss is due to factors like globalization and threats to the survival of indigenous communities. Indigenous activists are fighting to protect the languages under threat through careful documentation and by teaching them to children. Many National Geographic Explorers are linguists and storytellers dedicated to preserving and promoting languages in their communities throughout the world.

Through oral language, people learn to understand the meanings of words, to read, and, of course, to express themselves. As we seek to preserve diverse cultures, using, protecting and celebrating their spoken languages will become increasingly important.

Studying Oral Communication of Animals

People have long believed that oral language is unique to humans, but today, some scientists are questioning this assumption and studying whether the complex communication systems of certain animals, like whales, are actually a type of oral language.

National Geographic Explorers David Gruber, Shane Gero and Robert Wood are among those focused on this work through an initiative called Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative). Through Project CETI, a multidisciplinary project that combines AI, linguistics, marine biology and robotics, researchers are listening to and translating the communication of sperm whales.