Oldest words in English?

[Herb Stahlke]

Add to that the fact that the article doesn't tell us whether they
compared cognates based on reconstruction or on the more common
Swadesh "look-alikes."  The latter would say that English /ai/ and
Swedish /ja/ are probably not cognate while English "much" and Spanish
"mucho" are.  Both wrong.

Herb

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:37 AM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Oldest words in English?
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>
> Either the TIMES reporter was totally inept, or Dr. Pagel knows very little=20
> about language. The article is filled with nonsense. For example, the articl=
> e=20
> says in effect that the English numerals and the pronoun "I" would have been=
> =20
> intelligible to persons alive 10,000 or more years ago. This is obvious=20
> nonsense. The English numerals and pronouns were not even pronounced 1000 ye=
> ars ago as=20
> they are today. Moreover, the article seems to suggest that, just because=20
> modern languages use pronouns, any language that uses pronouns must be=20
> historically related. This is ridiculous, whether you are a Chomskyite ("pro=
> nouns are=20
> wired into the human brain") or a Skinnerite ("pronouns are so useful that=20
> people would be likely to invent them if their language didn't have them").
>
> Of course, it IS true that "By comparing these languages, it is possible to=20
> work out how and when they diverged, and to trace the evolutionary history o=
> f=20
> individual words." But this is scarcely news. Linguists have been doing that=
> =20
> for 150 years. AMERICAN HERITAGE dictionary used to publish a supplement=20
> containing ProtoIndoEuropean roots. But no one has ever claimed that the fir=
> st humans=20
> spoke PIE.
>
>
> In a message dated 2/26/09 4:07:32 AM, wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG writes=
> :
>
>
>> The BBC ran an item this morning on research into the oldest words in the
>> language, picking up a story in The Times:
>>=20
>> =A0 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7911645.stm
>> =A0 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5805522.ece
>>=20
>> "Dr Pagel has recently been able to track the evolutionary history of Indo=
> -
>> European back almost 30,000 years, using a new IBM supercomputer. He said
>> that some of the oldest words were well over 10,000 years old."
>>=20
>> Is much known to anyone on the list about the methodology involved?
>>=20
>>=20
>> --
>> Michael Quinion
>> Editor, World Wide Words
>> E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
>> Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>>=20
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>=20
>>=20
>
>
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