A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language

NYT ^ | March 16, 2004 | NICHOLAS WADE

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.
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[muawiyah]

The reporter made a very serious error. There are several non-Indo-European languages other than Basque spoken in Europe.

A partial list would include Albanian, 9 different Saami languages, Turkish, Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish. No doubt Arabic is spoken regularly among the recently immigrated Arabs and North Africans. London and Manchester England probably have at least one newspaper published in a Dravidian language.

Within the expected lifetime of a baby born today, though, it is entirely possible that all languages on Earth will collapse into a single dominant language.

[farmfriend]

You mean the NYT got something wrong? I'm shocked, I tell you, just shocked!

Sarcasm aside, thanks for the addition to the thread!

[Charles Henrickson]

Cognates for the word wheel exist in many branches of the Indo-European family tree, and linguists are confident that they can reconstruct the ancestral word in proto-Indo-European. It is, they say, "k'ek'los," the presumed forebear of words like "chakras," meaning wheel or circle in Sanskrit, "kuklos," meaning wheel or circle in Greek, as well as the English word "wheel."

Aramaic for "wheel" is galgal, and Hebrew is galgal/gilgal. I'd have to look into it, but these could also be cognates. The hard "g" sound and the "k" sound are very close linguistically. (Both consonants are what are called "gutturals," and thus are very interchangeable.)

Hebrew and Aramaic are both Semitic languages, and so to find cognates among the languages listed is all the more striking.

[Chu Gary]

I will accept that we all probably trace to a single pair of humanoids, but I don't buy the idea that all languages trace to a common ancestor.

I suspect that as the illiterate population began to separate in search of game or an acceptable habitat, they then began to acquire a method of communication which evolved into a language. However, many languages die, and I suspect new languages begin which don't necessarily have a strong connection to any pre-existing language. Net, I suggest that there are at least several roots otherwise please explain the glaring differences in written languages of the West, the Mid East and Asia. Also, explain some of the languages of Africa which are totally dissimilar to any of the above.

[muawiyah]

There's a thought among anthropoligists and archaologists that the Saami (Laplanders) have lived on the Northwest European coastline (Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia) for as long as 35,000 years having arrived BEFORE the last glacial advance.

They have several genetic adaptations to life in the far North (See Scandinavian porphyria, dwarfism, resistance to cholera, black plague, etc.) that would probably take longer than a mere 5 or 6 thousand years to develop and spread.

Authorities cite anywhere from 7 to 9 different full-blown Saami languages, all vaguely related to Finnish and other Uralic/Altaic languages. No doubt Turkish/Mongol words have infiltrated the Saami languages, as have modern English words, but the grammar is different.

If anyone wanted to make that leap into determining what language was used 20,000 years ago, he would be well advised to study Saami since it may be based on linguistic traditions 35,000 years old.

[breakem]

thanx

[Charles Henrickson]

Finnish is definitely not anything like Swedish (and therefore not like Norwegian or Danish, either). Ethnically and linguistically the Finns are not "Scandinavian" like those other three.

The article mentions Finnish being in the same category as Hungarian, which I knew. I also have heard that these two are related to, of all things, Korean.

[Drammach]

You may find this article interesting..

[DaiHuy]

"Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one,"

Seems that I have read that all the people of Earth spoke one language. Where was it I read that, oh yeah, The Bible.

[CobaltBlue]

Galgal is obviously cognate with keklos. Seems to me, anyway. But it could be a borrowed word. In other words, something that Semitic languages borrowed from Indo-European or vice-versa.

[CobaltBlue]

There is a correction appended to the article. It's the very last paragraph.

[Tex_GOP_Cruz]

Galgal is obviously cognate with keklos. Seems to me, anyway. But it could be a borrowed word. In other words, something that Semitic languages borrowed from Indo-European or vice-versa.

If one accepts the Nostratic superfamily hypothesis (linking Proto-Indo-European to other families such as Semitic), then the galgal connection to keklos makes perfect sense. Of course, once a group had the wheel, I guess contact with neighboring language families would occur much more easily, so even if it's more than coincidence, it would be hard to be certain whether it's a borrowing or cognate. Nevertheless, that both words have similar meaning and both have velar stops, liquids, and apparent reduplication makes me agree with the cognate hypothesis you both made.

This result from a Google search reinforces the hypothesis; the following collection of roots includes "krikos" and "galgal."
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/kr.html

[CobaltBlue]

Continuing with the guesses, I would guess that spinning wheels predate wagon wheels.

[CobaltBlue]

I should say why I think spinning wheels predate wagon wheels. If you spin thread, you need a way to keep it neat. Rolling it around a stick would do it.

[Mamzelle]

Spinning wheels (operated by foot, or by turning a wheel) are very recent developments--roughtly around medieval/Renaissance. Until that time, all thread was spun on a spindle, an item of engineering so simple that you can manage it with a stick stuck into a potato. Even a small item of clothing was very labor-intensive--where we get our term, "heirloom."

(Interested in textiles)

Been reading a little of Basque lately because of the ETA--such a lot of Z's and K's! Has a very Greco affect.

And I'm always interested in Finnish, since that's what Tolkein used as a model for Elvish.

[blam]

"Spinning wheels (operated by foot, or by turning a wheel) are very recent developments--roughtly around medieval/Renaissance."

I think they go back much further than that. Elizabeth Barber (A textile expert), in her book, The Mummies Of Urumchi, discusses the clothing of the mummies found in the Tarim Basin. Some of these Caucasian mummies date to 2,000BC and have clothing that are comparable with the Scottish twills of today.(patterns and weaving techniques)

The materials, styles and Manufacturing techniques are exactly like those of the Celts at Hallstadt, Austria...which is a thousand years apart in time and 4,000 miles in distance. These early people to that region spoke the extinct Indo-European language, Tocharian.

The oldest paper ever found comes from this region and the language written on the paper is Tocharian. For further reading on this subject, go here:

The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy

[muawiyah]

Ethnically most of the Finns and all of the Estonians are from the same stock as all other Scandinavians. The Saami are "different", but they're not Asiatics either.

Finland, Estonia and Hungary were all conquered by Mongolian and Turkish people in the early Middle Ages under conditions which brought about a linguistic change.

The Saami are a remnant (80,000+ people) of what may have been Europe's first population of modern humans. After the Black Plague which killed 90% of the Norse people in Norway, the Coastal Saami were enticed to take up Norse farms (presumably so taxes could be paid). 10% or less of the Saami suffered from the Plague although they live in an area where the dominant lifeform is the rat (and other rodents, e.g. lemmings). Their language is quite ancient ~ maybe more than we realize.

[muawiyah]

The Uralic-Altaic languages are related. Whether the people speaking them are closely related is a good question. Even Japanese has an Uralic-Altaic component, as well as a Polynesian component, and something else which is probably not related to any other current language group. Maybe the Jomon language is the "third part".