Give this fire to that old man.

[Henry M]

I don't find the article misleading, Sam.  While your assertions are
correct, they don't contravene those that are in the article.  The only
person that I know with a degree in linguistics isn't so dismissive,
either.  Did you read the article, or just the list of words and a couple
of phrases that can be made from those words, but which are not put forth
as intelligible to historic, or even current, speakers of non-romance
languages.

Yours truly,
٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Henry Musikar, CISSP
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20


On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 11:03 AM, Sam Lewin <salexanderlewin at gmail.com>wrote:

> The article is misleading. You have to know the history of sound changes
> to say that two words are cognates, and we'd hardly want to say that two
> cognates are the same word. The continuity is remarkable, but there's no
> way that Asian hunter-gatherers would be able even to say where one word
> ends and another begins in "give this fire to that old man". It's hard
> enough to understand these ultraconserved words in present-day languages
> closely related to our own, or even, say, Old English. You can forget about
> truly ancient languages.
>
> By the way, I'm pretty sure that the word "book" derives from the word
> "birch" and is therefore cognate with the ultraconserved word "bark". Don't
> have a good etymological dictionary handy though.
>
> mit freundlichen Grüßen
> Sam Lewin
>
>
> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’
>>
>> The traditional view is that words can’t survive for more than 8,000
>> to 9,000 years. Evolution, linguistic “weathering” and the adoption of
>> replacements from other languages eventually drive ancient words to
>> extinction, just like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era.
>>
>> A new study, however, suggests that’s not always true.
>>
>> A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen
>> “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes
>> some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and
>> “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.”
>>
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/linguists-identify-15000-year-old-ultraconserved-words/2013/05/06/a02e3a14-b427-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html
>>
>> It would be interesting, and perhaps even informative, to determine
>> the frequency of the use of ultraconserved words by particular
>> authors.
>>
>> Yours truly,
>> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
>> Henry Musikar, CISSP
>> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
>>
>>
>>
>
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