Rousseau_CHN

The theory is all nice and warm. We are all the same. We are all Africans.

But just how true is it?

One thing is just bothering me, was there already some sort of language when the first men started their voyage out of Africa? Or was it just some grunts and howls?

If there was already some sort of language and we came from Africa, then there must be at least one word that should be universal. One word that stayed true to its origin because it is too important to be forgotten, and, too important, that it is used wherever man went.

The word "food" should qualify, for obvious reason. And yet, "food" is "shi wu" in Chinese, "pagkain" in Pilipino and so. There is no similarity.

The word "danger" could also qualify. Since it is safe to assume that Men was always threatened with danger regardless of the time he is in. And yet the word "danger" is as varied as can be.

Before, I be labeled as a buffoon, I am not saying that change does not occur; in fact, it happens everytime in language. (It is foolish and absurd to make such a claim.) But if the theory is true, there must be at least one word that is the same--or at least close to it--wherever you go.

HRG

What you forget is that words can change in a few thousand years in a way that only a trained linguist - with information about some intermediate stages - can recognize that they were ever the same.

Example: chakra (Hindi) = wheel (English). Both come from an Indo-European root kwekwlo- which refers to "turn/revolve".

Regards,
HRG.

seanie

I doesn't follow at all that one word must be the same. Since you accept that language changes and develops what reason do you have to think that one particular word must remain unchanged for 100,000 years or more. Try reading some medieval English to see how much language can change over just 1000 years.

There are analyses of language patterns that correlate quite closely with patterns of human migration discerned from archeological and genetic studies. There's claimed to be an Ur language that still persists in most of the European and central Asian languages. However there are anomalies. The Basques speak a language that appears completely unrelated to everyone else. However I don't think anyone's claimed that Basques don't share a common ancestor with the rest of us.

And that's kinda tha basic point. We know we share a common ancestry. Those ancestors lived somewhere. And the overwhelming favourite candidate for that place is Africa.

Baloo

The word "food", you say, is important. The out-of-Africa theory holds that modern man split from the continent more than 50,000 years ago, and you are incredulous that the word for food could have changed so drastically for so many cultures in just 50,000 years.

However, there is a clear etymological path from Latin to the modern Romantic languages of today (eg English, Spanish, German, and French) - the historic evidence is overwhelming that each of these languages was spawned from Latin. Can you think of a single word that is the same in Latin, English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian? This is a timespan of < 5,000 years, in a literate society, within a single continent. Please supply the word that stayed the same.

If you can find one word that made it through those conditions, we'll start talking about why words might change over a 50,000 year timespan, before the advent of writing, in cultures spread across the globe...

RufusAtticus

Even Stranger:

Armenian erkol and English two are the same word.

happyboy

sheesh, people! all your yammer about "linguistic evolution," when it all boils down to God getting nervous about people storming heaven in a middle eastern tower, so he changed all the languages!

(of course, this begs the question why God didn't punish us for landing on the moon, but oh, well.....)

back to your regularly-scheduled argument.

happyboy

beausoleil

There was an excellent article about tracing the earliest language in 'The Sciences.' (easily the best popular science magazine IMHO, now sadly defunct). in the May/June issue back in 1990, pp20-28, 'The Mother Tongue' - V. Shevoroshkin.

The most accurately reconstructed words, he says, include those for I, two, eye, ear, finger, heart, fleas, lice, in-laws, nose and smell.

How current it remains I don't know.

Oolon Colluphid

Rousseau_CHN, I just don’t understand what you’re getting at. To reverse the usual linguistic-biological analogy, horses and rhinos, say, came from common ancestral creatures. That nobody now speaks the equivalent of ‘Hyracotherish’ matters not a damn.

TTFN, DT

seanie

I found some Old English here. ;

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra

ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning!
Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned,
geong in geardum, þone god sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat

þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile. Him þæs liffrea,
wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf;
Beowulf wæs breme (blæd wide sprang),
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.

Which translates as;

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!
To him an heir was afterward born,
a son in his halls, whom heaven sent
to favor the folk, feeling their woe
that erst they had lacked an earl for leader
so long a while; the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world's renown.
Famed was this Beowulf (far flew the boast of him),
son of Scyld, in the Scandian lands.

If a language can change that much in 40 generations how much commonality would you expect to remain after 4000?

Tom Sawyer

IMHO, it stands to reason that humans had a rudimentary form of language before we started migrating across the globe. Since people everywhere, no matter how remote, have a spoken language, it seems obvious that we had advanced to that point before we all wandered off.

How advanced we were is another question that I don't know the answer to. It strikes me as the type of thing that would be hard to test since there was interaction between all the different tribes of humanity and words and phrases could have come into the various languages that way rather than by way of common descent before tribes split off from one another. Also, by sheer coincidence, some words could appear in one language that are identical to words in another language, just because there's only a finite number of combinations of sounds to choose from. I think I heard somewhere that some group in South America had the same word for God as some group in Asia, thorugh pure chance (but theists have argued that means they were both created by God).