
Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age - blacksqr
http://www.dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2017/5/Study-Uncovered-Common-Words-Appear-Have-Survived-Mother-Language-Existed
======
chch
Here's a previous thread from when this was originally posted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669179)

I remember, because I made two of my most researched comments there [1]. :)

I'm no historical linguist, but I'd take this finding with a bunch of grains
of salt. Eurasiatic language families that seek to combine, say, Proto-Indo-
European [2] and Altaic [3] languages are pretty controversial, and in general
this paper reeks a bit of glottochronology [4], which is a pretty
controversial topic in historical linguistics itself.

Wikipedia's Eurasiatic language page actually even has a large section about
this very article, including some refutations[5].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5670947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5670947)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
European_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasiatic_languages#Pagel_et_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasiatic_languages#Pagel_et_al).

~~~
jcranmer
> I'm no historical linguist, but I'd take this finding with a bunch of grains
> of salt. Eurasiatic language families that seek to combine, say, Proto-Indo-
> European [2] and Altaic [3] languages are pretty controversial, and in
> general this paper reeks a bit of glottochronology [4], which is a pretty
> controversial topic in historical linguistics itself.

It's worth pointing out that everybody who actually studies the relevant
Altaic languages now agrees that the Altaic family doesn't exist, not even in
'micro-Altaic' (just Mongolic/Tunguskic/Turkic languages) form. Basically, the
consensus is that the similarity between those three languages arise from deep
contact rather than genetic relationships (think what happened to Old English
after the Norse and Norman invasions on its way to Middle English).

------
mootothemax
For a good etymological mystery, it's hard to beat "dog."

Not only is the word "dog" of unknown origin, its equivalents in Spanish and
various Slavic languages also apparently appeared from nowhere.

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog)

If that's not fun enough, there's an extinct Aboriginal language from
Australia which has a word for dog. That word is _also_ "dog" \- apparently
pronounced the same as in English, and a complete coincidence:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language)

~~~
pale-hands
Opposite of the topic (ultra-nonconserved?), "butterfly" is a word that is
strangely different in even closely related European languages (Romance,
Teutonic, Slavic). Doing a cursory check in Google Translate now, but I've one
found one language pair where the words appear to be related: French:
"papillon", Catalan "papallona". Otherwise: mariposa, бабочка, motyl,
schmetterling, vlinder, sommerfugl, fjäril, farfalla, пеперуда, leptir ...

I'd love to hear a linguistic explanation for this.

EDIT: Latin: "papilionem" (papilio?), so at least French and Catalan have
conserved it, and I can see that Italian "farfalla" could be cognate.

EDIT EDIT: All the Slavic languages known to Google Translate have a word
related to motyl, except for Russian: бабочка (butterfly) (but мотылек
(moth)), so there is less to this phenomenon than meets the eye!

~~~
singularity2001
Why 'strangely' different? Why would you expect such exotic animals to be
ultra-nonconserved?

Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly'
(beater-fly)

also:

motyl~moth sommerfugl~summer-fly

interesting that wiktionary for papillon shows a puppy :) might also be linked
to big pupils and fake eyes

[0]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon)

~~~
ginko
> Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly'
> (beater-fly)

No, it's semantically linked via 'butter'. Schmetterling comes from Schmetten
or Schmand which is a sort of heavy cream. There used to be a folk believe
that butterflies would consume milk or butter if left uncovered. They were
also sometimes called Milkdieb or milk-thief in German.

See: www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=butterfly

~~~
throwanem
> Schmetten or Schmand which is a sort of heavy cream.

Is "smetana" a false friend?

~~~
MagnumOpus
That is disputed. Most scholars say that germanic "schmand" has different
roots and is cognate with English "smooth" \- some scholars however consider
schmand a very old loan word from proto-slavic smetana.

------
dancing_shark
The 23 words from the PNAS paper (Table 1):

    
    
      Thou
      I
      Not
      That
      We
      To give
      Who
      This
      What
      Man/male
      Ye
      Old
      Mother
      To hear
      Hand
      Fire
      To Pull
      Black
      To flow
      Bark
      Ashes
      To spit
      Worm
    

[http://www.pnas.org/content/110/21/8471/T1.expansion.html](http://www.pnas.org/content/110/21/8471/T1.expansion.html)

~~~
pcrh
I wonder how many of those would survive multiple hypothesis testing. That is,
there are bound to be a number of phonetically similar words that happen to
have similar meanings in two different languages. They may not however have
common historical roots.

~~~
thedailymail
No idea if this list will stand the test of time, but I tried making some
minimal ultra-conserved sentences using all of the words. Lots of pronouns,
plus some very specific and limited sets of nouns and verbs make it a fun
challenge. [Unlisted words bracketed.]

1) "Hear ye! I, [a] man who[se] hand gives this fire [to] bark. What black
ashes! Not thou old mother, that pulls the worm and spits. We flow."

2) "We, man [and] old mother, hand-pull black bark. Worm that spits fire, not
ashes, flows. This, what I give ye, thou who hear."

3) "Black, old, male mother pulls worm, not spits fire [or] ashes. I give thou
who hear what flows [to] ye."

------
mturmon
My favorite example of this is the word "squirrel," which is originally from
ancient Greek, σκίουρος (lexical translation: skiouros, which means shadow-
tailed). Somehow the notion that Socrates would use approximately the same
(rather unlikely) word for this animal that I do is fascinating.

~~~
rabboRubble
My Japanese native language speaker in college had an obsession with the word
"squirrel". We spent an entire year trying to teach her how to pronounce it.

Ssss-ka-wuh-rrr-llll

~~~
yoodenvranx
I am German and 'squirrel' is the one English word I just can't pronounce. I
am very good at all the other words, but that one stumps me.

~~~
jacobolus
Can you handle “square” and “girl”?

~~~
yoodenvranx
Yes, but squirrel is still impossible.

------
Radim
The link between a word's length and its "usefulness" is fascinating too. The
shorter the word, the more central, fundamental and frequent its use, as a
rule of thumb. [0]

One glaring exception is "conscientiousness" \-- a personality trait that has
been the nr. 1 performance predictor in jobs that require results (execution
as opposed to ideas), across time and industries. Clearly central, but 17
characters! O_o

[0] _Strauss, Grzybek, Altmann: Word Length and Word Frequency_
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-4068-...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-4068-9_13)

~~~
mcbits
Not perfect synonyms, but we do have shorter words in the same semantic
ballpark: virtue, vigor, zeal, concern, care, pains...

~~~
Radim
I'd say the first three are completely off; "concern" & "care" better (I also
heard "grit"), but not quite there.

~~~
throwanem
"Grit" is more like an unwillingness to surrender to adversity.

"Care" I think is the closest monosyllabic equivalent. Diligence and attention
to detail are specifically exhorted by "take care", and caution by "use care".
Conversely, one may disclaim them all with "I don't care".

It's a short word and probably an old one, so it's heavily freighted with
denotations and connotations alike, and finds much use outside this context.
But if you want to say "conscientiousness" in fewer than five syllables -
which is a sensible thing to want - then I think "care" must be the most
accurate word with which to do so.

------
kijin
The article says that words like "fire", "ashes", "bark", and "worm" could be
15K years old, but doesn't provide any idea of how they might have sounded
back then. The original paper linked at the bottom doesn't seem to help in
that regard, either.

Is this something that we simply cannot know with current methods? Ice Age
people obviously didn't leave any sound recordings, but surely some of the
sounds would have to be present in a similar form in order for us to say with
confidence that a it's the same word?

~~~
yorwba
I think I found an online interface to the database they used:
[http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-
bin/query.cgi?root=config&morph...](http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-
bin/query.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=\\data\\nostr\\nostret)

Searching for "fire" gives a bunch of different results; I have no idea which
one they used. The one closest to English is probably "*ṗVxwV" (where V
stands for any vowel, I believe).

~~~
xaedes
Oh; thank you for the great link! You can even "Select another database"; they
have a lot. Nice resource.

------
DanAndersen
For anyone interested in etymology and the endless source of fascinating
stories that is language, I recommend The History of English Podcast:
[http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/](http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/)

It starts all the way back in Proto-Indo-European and gives a really
fulfilling amount of linguistic detail. Some of the most enjoyable parts, IMO,
are when you realize that two seemingly-unrelated words are actually cognate.

------
rabboRubble
I really like the word "tea" across languages.

Japanese - cha

Chinese - chá

Thailand - chā

Russian - чай (chay)

Turkish - Çay (chai)

Sri Lanka Sinhala - තේ (tē)

Arabic - شاي (shay)

German - tee

English - tea!

You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from
those patterns.

~~~
trynumber9
But that's because the Europeans all adopted the word later.

From etymology online:

The distribution of the different forms of the word in Europe reflects the
spread of use of the beverage. The modern English form, along with French thé,
Spanish te, German Tee, etc., derive via Dutch thee from the Amoy form,
reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through
the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). Meanwhile, Russian chai, Persian
cha, Greek tsai, Arabic shay, and Turkish çay all came overland from the
Mandarin form.

~~~
rabboRubble
Yeah, you are right on with that observation. You prompted me to find out from
where the VOC imported their tea. Apparently the initial source was Macao
which spoke Cantonese. In modern day Canton and Putonghua words for tea are
near indisguishable, so perhaps the Cantonese word for tea circa 1600 was
quite like the current Putonhua word for tea. Had VOC sourced their tea from
Sri Lanka, our word for tea might be dramatically different. In Tamil, tea is
called தேநீர் (tēnīr)

[http://www.mightyleaftea.be/history-of-
tea?___store=uk&___fr...](http://www.mightyleaftea.be/history-of-
tea?___store=uk&___from_store=nl)

edit: _tea_ not _teat_

~~~
lacampbell
From wikipedia

 _Starting in the early seventeen century, the Dutch played a dominant role in
the early European tea trade via the Dutch East India Company.[18] The Dutch
borrowed the word for "tea" (thee) from Min Chinese, either through trade
directly from Fujian or Formosa where they had established a port, or from
Malay traders in Bantam, Java._

Also interesting speculation as to whether the chinese themselves got it the
word from speakers of austro-asiatic languages living in southwest china.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology)

------
wojt_eu
The word "hammer" changed quite a bit, but I still find it interesting that it
origins from Proto-Indo-European word for stone:
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
Eur...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
European/h₂éḱmō)

It still sounds somewhat familiar to modern slavic words for hammer:
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kamień#Polish](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kamień#Polish)

------
languagehacker
The Swadesh List is used by documentary linguists for a similar reason:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list)

There are just some things all human speaker communities need to talk about.
Since these tend to be "ultraconserved" words, using the Swadesh list is a
great way to understand the lineage of a given under-documented language, but
a bad way to understand any rule-based mechanisms associated with that
language such as morphology associated with inflection or declension.

------
dzdt
Here is their list of the 23 most conserved words, from supplementary data
table one of the article:

ashes bark black fire hand I man mother not old that this thou to flow to give
to hear to pull to spit we what who worm we

[1]
[http://pnas.org/content/110/21/8471.full](http://pnas.org/content/110/21/8471.full)

------
cjensen
What do they mean by ultraconserved? From their examples, consider "I", "we",
and "who" which are "Yo", "nostotros", and "quíen" in Spanish. If there is
that much difference between closely related PIE languages, maybe I don't
understand what they mean by "ultraconserved".

------
arjo1
Among all the words listed, the only one which seems to be consistent across
various language families is mother. All roots of mother seem to begin with
"m" including in Chinese (母亲), English, Bengali. I believe South Indian
languages are slightly different (correct me if I'm wrong). So perhaps this is
a more modern word.

------
crocal
The guys at Lucasfilm games almost got it perfectly right when designing
SCUMM. Even the spitting in Monkey Island 2.

