Re: Language

"On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 07:49:44 -0800 (PST), in article
<6eb4dc35-c11c-4133-a08b-6259aa3d1837@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Kermit
stated..."

On Mar 5, 4:30 pm, Terry <kilow...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Shouldn't words like mother, father and food be the same in every
language?

There is s certain core of words which are used a lot. Words like
mother and father, women and children, are old forms and are similar
in closely related languages. Because they are used so frequently,
they are highly conserved, but their pronunciation shifts. Note that
children and women are a plural form that is no longer used elsewhere
in English (well, OK, oxen). A few constructions hint at the dual we
used to have (Classical Greek has singular, dual, and plural),
Neither... nor... for example.

But how far back to you expect resemblance to be maintained? How
similar are you to folks from the Kalahari desert, or the Yukon? Even
a young Earth creationist acknowledges recent blood kinship; but the
real dating goes back at least 60,000 years or so to a small group
(maybe only 2000) of people. Different language groups may be older
than that.

Kermit


Some of these issues are treated in the article "Glottochronology"
in Wikipedia, and also see "Appendix: Swadish list" to Wiktionary.


--
---Tom S.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
attributed to Josh Billings

.

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