'Oldest English words' identified

[Knight-Dragon]

Hmm....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7911645.stm

Some of the oldest words in English have been identified, scientists say.

Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage.

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first casualties.

"We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly these words evolve," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.

"We fit a wide range, so there's a lot of computation involved; and that range then brackets what the true answer is and we can estimate the rates at which these things are replaced through time."

Sound and concept

Across the Indo-European languages - which include most of the languages spoken from Europe to the Asian subcontinent - the vocal sound made to express a given concept can be similar.

New words for a concept can arise in a given language, utilising different sounds, in turn giving a clue to a word's relative age in the language.

At the root of the Reading University effort is a lexicon of 200 words that is not specific to culture or technology, and is therefore likely to represent concepts that have not changed across nations or millennia.

"We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word," said Professor Pagel.

"We have descriptions of the ways we think words change and their ability to change into other words, and those descriptions can be turned into a mathematical language," he added.

The researchers used the university's IBM supercomputer to track the known relations between words, in order to develop estimates of how long ago a given ancestral word diverged in two different languages.

They have integrated that into an algorithm that will produce a list of words relevant to a given date.

"You type in a date in the past or in the future and it will give you a list of words that would have changed going back in time or will change going into the future," Professor Pagel told BBC News.

"From that list you can derive a phrasebook of words you could use if you tried to show up and talk to, for example, William the Conqueror."

That is, the model provides a list of words that are unlikely to have changed from their common ancestral root by the time of William the Conqueror.

Words that have not diverged since then would comprise similar sounds to their modern descendants, whose meanings would therefore probably be recognisable on sound alone.

However, the model cannot offer a guess as to what the ancestral words were. It can only estimate the likelihood that the sound from a modern English word might make some sense if called out during the Battle of Hastings.

Dirty business

What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones.

For example, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, along with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only slightly younger.
William the Conqueror (Getty)

The word "four" experienced a linguistic evolutionary leap that makes it significantly younger in English and different from other Indo-European languages.

Meanwhile, the fastest-changing words are projected to die out and be replaced by other words much sooner.

For example, "dirty" is a rapidly changing word; currently there are 46 different ways of saying it in the Indo-European languages, all words that are unrelated to each other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with "stick" and "guts".

Verbs also tend to change quite quickly, so "push", "turn", "wipe" and "stab" appear to be heading for the lexicographer's chopping block.

Again, the model cannot predict what words may change to; those linguistic changes are according to Professor Pagel "anybody's guess".

High fidelity

"We think some of these words are as ancient as 40,000 years old. The sound used to make those words would have been used by all speakers of the Indo-European languages throughout history," Professor Pagel said.

"Here's a sound that has been connected to a meaning - and it's a mostly arbitrary connection - yet that sound has persisted for those tens of thousands of years."

The work casts an interesting light on the connection between concepts and language in the human brain, and provides an insight into the evolution of a dynamic set of words.

"If you've ever played 'Chinese whispers', what comes out the end is usually gibberish, and more or less when we speak to each other we're playing this massive game of Chinese whispers. Yet our language can somehow retain its fidelity."

 

[Masada]

Computer model nough said

 

[cool3a2]

I am always sceptic if it's about word evolution and restoring ancient, extinct languages etc. I don't say that this doesn't work at all, but you need enough reliable information (written records, closely related languages). You could build up rules for such word evolutions with few information, but that's more like a shot in the wide blue sky then a proof. And if they even say they can predict the future, I'd be very careful with what they say. They say that the word bad will probably disappear... I can hardly believe this. Categorizing things in bad and good is so common, I can't believe that a word that describes this will disappear. I mean, this is even connected to the learning process. Just imagine a little child. It tries out a lot of things and then categorizes them. If it was a bad experience, then it won't do it again. Just think of food for example. If anyone eats something (no matter whether the person is a child or an adult) he will decide whether he liked it or not. If not, he probably won't eat that food again. Things like that happen every day. I also made the experience that I can remember bad things better then good (I think that's normal). Thus I'd say "good" would disappear before "bad". So the word bad appears to me like a basic word (there may be synonyms or words that describe things in a finer way, but still I'd say "bad" is too common; I actually use it quite often, I'd say if I describe things in english) and basic words are unlikely to disappear. Not to say that predicting the future is difficult at all.

 

[holy king]

"I", "we", "two" and "three"

i wonder why "one" isnt in there...

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, it says that "one" is slightly younger.

You know, "one' was also pronounced as "own" until rather recently.

 

[Sharwood]

Well, it says that "one" is slightly younger.

You know, "one' was also pronounced as "own" until rather recently.

Was two pronounced "t-whoa?"

This seems a wee bit suspect to moi.

 

[Antilogic]

There was likely a good reason why to, too, and two were all spelled differently. I suspect there were pronunciation differences, but I can't cite an article.

What shocked me the most was the word "bad". Really, they think "bad" is going extinct? That's one of the first descriptive words little kids learn! Are they going to replace it with the Kung-Pao: Enter the Fist substitute of "badong" (bad + wrong)?

And, if the growing number of plastic squeeze containers in the grocery store are any indicator, squeeze might be around for awhile longer.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Actually Antilogic I prefer G'nodab.

And yes I actually do use that word.

 

[Antilogic]

Actually Antilogic I prefer G'nodab.

And yes I actually do use that word.

I have to say, I have no idea how to pronounce that. I'm guessing the 'G' isn't silent because you used the accent...

 

[Arwon]

I think "one" as a concept would have some bleed-through of meaning with articles (a, the) and concepts of wholeness, so it probably changes slightly quicker, on average, than other numbers.

Popular reporting of linguistics is generally terrible, this is no exception.

The Language Log article on this: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1186.

edit: Also this - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1191

 

[Bast]

Amazing! Thanks for posting.

 

[Kal'thzar]

nuts, and here I thought it was gullible

 

[TheLastOne36]

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe
----
Somewhat related

 

[Sharwood]

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe
----
Somewhat related

Yet someone else has something similar in their sig that says only X% of people can read it. Personally, I'd trust Cmabrigde, but I wonder which is true?

 

[North King]

I think when they said "bad" would go "extinct" they meant that it would evolve into another word.

 

[Arwon]

Dammit people, this is an awful, stupid, useless article!

 

[Sharwood]

Dammit people, this is an awful, stupid, useless article!

So you're saying it should be moved to OT?

Incidentally, I agree.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Was two pronounced "t-whoa?"

This seems a wee bit suspect to moi.

There's been a weird dance in English around the nature and function of "E"s at the end of words; whether they are silent, have an effect on other vowels in the sentence or don't. If you've ever tried to read Chaucer, for example, and found that he follows no meter, its because words in his time were pronounced differently than today, though written similarly.

 

[Padma]

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe
----
Somewhat related

Yet someone else has something similar in their sig that says only X% of people can read it. Personally, I'd trust Cmabrigde, but I wonder which is true?

FWIW, Cambridge never did such a study. They *did* do a similar study, after they heard about this "study" attributed to them, and found that it really depends a lot on the words used in the paragraph.

(And, of course, the discussion of this at Cambridge has itself disappeared....)

 

[Antilogic]

FWIW, Cambridge never did such a study. They *did* do a similar study, after they heard about this "study" attributed to them, and found that it really depends a lot on the words used in the paragraph.

(And, of course, the discussion of this at Cambridge has itself disappeared....)

Weird, I hadn't heard that before.

Incidentally, the book unSpun recommends checking attributions with the people whom the articles/studies are attributed. A good piece of advice.