'Oldest English words' identified

[Adsos Letter]

Source: BBC

Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage.

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first casualties.

"We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly these words evolve," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.

"We fit a wide range, so there's a lot of computation involved; and that range then brackets what the true answer is and we can estimate the rates at which these things are replaced through time."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7911645.stm

[Posteritatis]

1. I don't really think they qualify as English that far back.. (nt)

[Adsos Letter]

2. True...

I think they are talking about Indo_European origins...English would be a misstatement...

[L. Coyote]

9. Rather dubious, at best.

[Touchdown]

3. Damn! I was hoping it was "Porn".

:evilgrin:

[alfredo]

13. No, the first word was poopie.

[omega minimo]

4. That's odd

Cuz as soon as "I", "we", "two" and "three" got together, "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" were topics of great discussion.

[depakid]

6. DUzy

:D

[omega minimo]

7. .

:spray:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. I'm really, like, hoping, like, that "like" is headed for, like, extinction.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. uh, yeah, and you know, like you betcha

;)

[DBoon]

10. didn't the Indo-Europeans have 2 different terms for "passing gas"

The things that were important then are important now

[omega minimo]

11. yes the disctinction was whether there was flame involved or not

[ZombieNixon]

22. Yup.

perd- I believe was the root that referred to the sound of breaking wind, while pezd- typically referred to the smell.

Ancient people had no higher sense of humor than we do.

[SheilaT]

12. Thank you for posting this.

I caught the last 30 seconds or so of the piece this morning on BBC America, which my local community radio station carries, and I was quite curious about the rest of the piece.

I have always been fascinated by language, and while I've never taken a formal linguistics class, I have a lot of books on the topic. I am especially intrigued by the origins of language itself, which is a topic considered more or less off bounds by modern linguists. But the very existence of all the different language families out there makes me wonder just how all those differences came about. After all, wouldn't the ancestral humans have started with one proto-language? No one really knows.

Language does change, and if you watch movies made in the 1930's you'll notice pronunciations that are no longer used. Slang changes (which is what the "like" construction really is), and it's interesting to read complaints of English teachers from the 1940's complaining about the word "swell".

I also wonder if the existence of various recording media is slowing down the rate of pronunciation change. I recall reading in one of my language books that languages without a written form tend to change much more quickly than languages with a written form. And now we have a recorded form, so I wonder how much difference that makes.

[Adsos Letter]

14. I am currently reading "Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley"...

for a graduate History course on the English Civil wars...one of the journal articles I have bookmarked for associated reading discusses the differences in male/female writing styles, word usage, spelling, etc. during the seventeenth century.

Should be interesting.

:hi:

[SheilaT]

19. I will have to check it out.

I find that reading novels written even as recently as seventy years ago will give away changes in language.

I am now 60. I remember when the word tomorrow was commonly hyphenated: to-morrow. There have been some other changes like that in my lifetime, but at the moment I can't recall them.

Aside from language changes, novels written in the Now of when they were written often reveal interesting social aspects of life that would otherwise be totally lost to us. And that often makes me think of what's been lost in the more distant past because we just don't have good records of what was happening, or common, or the typical social usage.

For example, if you look at movies made in the 30's or 40's, you may miss a lot of what's going on simply because social norms are very different now.

[EFerrari]

26. The women need to be read in the context of other women's work. iirc.

I took a Dickinson seminar and it was so wild -- she looks sort of wacky and free standing and from Mars when you read her with the usual batch of male poets. When you read her with other women poets, she's someone else. Not sure if that generalizes to other women authors but suspect it probably does.

I think maybe Susan Griffin has written about this. In any case, the notes in Women's Norty was very useful, fyi.

[omega minimo]

17. Aside from changes in pronunciation we have EXTREME changes in enunciation that are transmitted by

film and TV like viruses.



:hi:

[SheilaT]

20. So true.

I find that viewing movies made in the 30's or 40's to be extremely interesting, because they show the social norms of the times. Sometimes, those of us who were born afterwards, can completely miss a lot of stuff. My (ex)husband who is five years younger than I am has a lot more difficulty figuring out what's going on in movies made before 1960. To him they are far too subtle, because he's of a different generation and simply does not get the social norms and mores being represented. This works in both directions, of course. Sometimes when I'm watching a movie or an ad on TV or almost anything at all, I wonder if someone from an earlier period, even as recently as 20 years ago, would understand what's going on. All of us here have grown up with the media, or come of age with it, and we can forget what enormous changes there have been in the underlying structure. It's not just simple context (imagine President Obama even three years ago) but the many cultural references, the quick cuts that are so common in ads or movies. Look at advertising or movies from twenty years ago. We all have no trouble understanding them, but think about the changes that have occurred since, and try to imagine a time traveler from an earlier era.

Language changes can also pile up quite rapidly.

[omega minimo]

27. Well the quick cuts make no sense on first viewing, intentionally

They also now edit commercials depending on audience response. Like that (most recent) stupid Carl's Junior commercial where the (most recent) clueless guy wonders why his date dressed up for a "steak dinner." His passive aggressive arrogance in the original edit was replaced by a fake laugh weak smile.

I respect you and your ex's POV on this, but if people are being conditioned to not be able to "figure out" subtlety, that's :scared:.

A "time traveler from an earlier era" from an earlier era might remember something called "subliminal advertising" which is now In Yer Face 24/7/365. And consider current TV imagery to be neurotic or insane.

Previous post I said "enunciations"" but I meant "vocalizations" such as that disgusting Paris Hilton gargling noise so many women have adopted.

Great thread. :hi:

[SheilaT]

28. Hmmm. I don't know if it's so much being conditioned

to not be able to "figure out" subtlety (although you are probably on to something there), as much as we are all deeply immersed in our own times. It's why slang from an earlier era sounds so odd, sometimes incomprehensible. Or the slang of the younger generation. I often have to ask my 21 year old son to explain something, and he clearly thinks I'm an idiot for not having heard whatever phrase he's just used.

Here's one small example of change: Movies in the 40's frequently used the term "making love" NOT to mean having sex, but just referring to a man and a woman talking to each other in a romantic way.

WHAT disgusting Paris Hilton gargling noise are you talking about? I don't have a TV right now, and when I did I never bothered to watch anything about her, so I may be fortunate in having missed this.

[omega minimo]

30. an affectation of (mostly) young women that quacks/gurgles like they have throat cancer

A flat nasal honking monotone that has somehow become fashionable and its transmitted via TV starlets, pretentious heiresses and reportedly some ivy league colleges.

[kickysnana]

15. I think they missed "nookie" n/t

[originalpckelly]

16. I, we, two, three...

fits together very nicely. I might write a song with them in there. :P

There's a reason they've been around for so long.

[GoesTo11]

18. It's amazing to think neolithic people could have understood Dr. Seuss

One fish two fish red fish blue fish

See bee three - now we see three

etc.

[EFerrari]

21. That's how anthropologists distinguish them from freepers.

[ZombieNixon]

23. You should probably cross-post this here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=309

[bottomtheweaver]

24. Hard to imagine a three-letter gem like "bad" going away.

What would replace it?

[alphafemale]

25. So...from the time men could speak, they were trying to get a threesome.

:hide:

[ThomWV]

29. Any baboon could figure out that the first word had to be "I" and the second "we"

[omega minimo]

34. Ah, but could it write a Stimulus Bill?

:think:

[lunatica]

31. I know it's so because my computer tell me so.

So there! neener-neener!

:bounce:

[pipi_k]

32. Judging from the number of two year olds I've known...

I'm really surprised that one of the first English words wasn't "no"


:)

[omega minimo]

33. That's what "stick" was for

:hi:

[acmavm]

35. Hmmmm. I would have thought they would have been hungry and horny.

I mean, the quickest way to a man's heart and all.

P.S. for the humorously deficient, this is a joke.