Rate of Change

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/7/01 9:45:18 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

>   We've been through this.  What you call often call "change" is actually
> continuity to me, because you still call what remains "cognate", which means
> there must be something that stayed the same.

-- cognate means "derived from the same source", neither more nor less.

Cognate words in related languages need bear no phonetic resemblance to each
other at all, as such.  Only when the systemic _patterns_ of change over time
are understood does their relationship become obvious, in many cases.

Eg., "pita" (Hindi) and "father" (English) are cognates, as are "pad" and
"foot", despite having no surface similarity at all.

This is not apparent until you know the rules for the relevant sound-changes.
 (PIE *p ==> p in Indo-Aryan, *p ==> f in Germanic, etc.)