

Half of All Languages Come from This One Root Tongue - hyperlingo
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/watch-how-indo-european-languages-conquered-earth-180955578

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memracom
This is nonsense. Nobody really knows how any particular language developed
before it was written down. In particular we do not know the unrecorded
languages that were spoken in the vicinity at the same time.

Most of linguistics is a mental parlor game that says, if all languages always
evolved by differentiating according to abstract transformations like Medieval
German and Latin did, then this is what people spoke 6,000 years ago. If
people want to play that kind of combinatoric game, then fine, but don't claim
that it reflects reality.

It could just as well be that all languages start by being creoles and then
settling into a steady state as economic ties and trade encourage people to
remove unneeded variations. You could build up a whole theory of linguistics
based on that, and come up with different results.

For instance, German would likely be recognized as originating from Ancient
Turkic languages in creole with ancient Iranian. Until somebody takes the time
to try out one or more different linguistic base theories, all we have is this
pseudo-science of creating artificial proto-language and people claiming that
word x could not come from older word y because sound s never changes into
sound r. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary in modern languages in
near historic times.

Quite frankly it is hard to learn enough languages really well to properly
study them. I only know 7 and like most people, most are close to my native
language because that makes it easier to learn. And if you don't study the
prehistory and mythology and archaeology of a region, how can you hope to make
sense of language groupings and divisions. Language is inherently a cultural
thing.

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teh_klev
Real article is at:

[http://qz.com/425577/this-animated-map-shows-how-sanskrit-
ma...](http://qz.com/425577/this-animated-map-shows-how-sanskrit-may-have-
come-to-india/)

