I think that knowing the history of a language may not be necessary in order to learn a language, but it certainly helps. Let's walk through the history of Urdu and Hindi, two languages that were formed from one common language, Hindustani. Prior to independence from colonial rule, Hindustani was the subcontinent's lingua franca. After partition, Pakistan adopted Urdu which gets its written script from the Nastaliq (Persian) script, and Hindi adopted the Devnagri script.
Several phrases in Urdu are derived from Arabic as well, such as 'salaam alaikum', which is a greeting that translates to 'peace be upon you'. Urdu derives heavily from Persian due to the rule of the Mughals in India.
Hindi, on the other hand, borrows a lot of its words from Sanskrit. I find that while speaking with my friends who are Pakistani, we come across words that the other person can't understand. It tends to either be a word that is borrowed from Sanskrit which Urdu doesn't contain, or a word in Arabic that Hindi speakers have not encountered. Understanding the origin of a word also shapes how one would pronounce them. Arabic and Persian have certain sounds that Hindi does not, as a result, some words in Urdu are pronounced differently than they are in Hindi.
These are a few reasons why understanding the history of a language helps in shaping my learning of the language as well.
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