If a real-life Encino Man (remember that movie?) or one of those hairy GEICO cavemen suddenly appeared today, we could talk to him. Say, for example, some researchers were trying to compile a “Stone Age phrasebook.” As you might expect, the conversation wouldn’t be up to much, being limited to such words as “I,” “who,” “thou,” “two,” “three,” and “five” — indeed, it might be rather like chatting to the average grumpy teenager.
Dr. Mark Pagel is an evolutionary linguist at Reading University in the United Kingdom, and he’s used a powerful computer to trace what he believes to be the oldest words in existence by measuring which ones have changed the least in the last few tens of thousands of years across the Indo-European family of languages. Take the word “water.” In German, it’s wasser, in French eau, and in Italian and Latin aqua. Now, some of these don’t seem very close — wasser and aqua? — but notice that they share a similar “ah” sound. This indicates that they enjoy the same distant linguistic root, perhaps dating as far back as 40,000 years.
Dr. Pagel is something of a futurologist, as well. He is forecasting that within the next thousand years the words that are the most dissimilar, divergent, or unique will be the ones that die out. Such upstanding English words as “throw,” “stick,” “stab,” “wipe,” and “squeeze” are among those whose days (or centuries) are numbered. The word “dirty,” for instance, has changed rapidly over the millennia, and there are currently 46 distinguishable words for “dirty” among the Indo-European languages.
The two rules of thumb dictate which words stay and which words go. First, numerals are the slowest to evolve; pronouns are a close second. Second, nouns resist change more than do verbs while adjectives are the most likely to become extinct.
Interesting stuff, but the finding raises a few questions. Since mankind originally emanated from Africa, surely the oldest words of all could be discovered by using the same technique on that continent’s languages? And also, does the method work using specifically Asian languages as its basis?
In the quest for a Stone Age Esperanto, what would really be fascinating would be if you could correlate the results of the Indo-European, African, and Asian languages to reveal any similar, shared words among all three. Such cross-referencing would excavate the most ancient linguistic artifacts of our species.
I wonder what they would be? My guess for the very oldest would be “mother” (with the “m” or “ma” sounds being the root).
Alexander Rose is the author of American Rifle: A Biography. Visit his website, www.alexrose.com.
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Tracey McCormick said:
As an amateur etymologist, I’m thrilled that folks are writing about our ever-changing language. Years ago when I was studying Old English and the history of our mother tongue, our professor pointed out this beautiful short sentence:
Beowulf is min nama. That’s right. Beowulf was his name.
One of the most fun words lost since the time of the Vikings was ymbsittendra, or “those who sit around the fire.” Maybe the Boy Scouts will bring it back?
March 22nd, 2009 at 2:15 am
cocker said:
I dont think people should be wasteing thier time studying about things that have happened in the past.. Stduy things that will help the wolrd today. studying history in school is wasteing kids education for things they are better off at.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Brent Layman said:
One of the best ways to prepare for the future is to study the past.
Many, many great and foolish people have proceeded us. We will be fools not to try to learn from their success and failures.
March 24th, 2009 at 11:26 am