Oldest words in English?

[Mark Mandel]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> At 3:01 PM -0500 3/1/09, Baker, John wrote:
> >         AHD suggests that "The origins of the word tin may date to a
> >time before Europe had been settled by speakers of Indo-European
> >languages, such as the Germanic and Celtic languages."  This is, of
> >course, entirely possible.  However, I understood the claim to be
> >that "tin" is not just of non-Indo-European origin, but actually
> >older than Proto-Indo-European,...
>
> ...and then cleverly borrowed to make the first PIE tin.
>

... in your face!

Mark Mandel

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