Oldest words in English?

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:37 AM -0500 2/26/09, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>...Of course, it IS true that "By comparing these languages, it is possible to
>work out how and when they diverged, and to trace the evolutionary history of
>individual words." But this is scarcely news. Linguists have been doing that
>for 150 years. AMERICAN HERITAGE dictionary used to publish a supplement
>containing ProtoIndoEuropean roots.

Cal Watkins's Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is still included in
the AHD as an appendix, and the entries are accessible as links from
relevant entries is the actual dictionary at
http://www.bartleby.com/61.  I use it all the time in my Words class,
but I have to say it (he) is prone to leaps of faith into which the
OED, for one, is not inclined to follow.

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org