15,000-Year-Old Words We Still Use today

December 23, 2015

How far back in time can we go back in time with our languages? Where do they come from? English night is related to German nicht, Latin nox and Croatian noc’. All of these languages and many more, including Russian, Hindi and Greek, are related – they all go back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) – which disappeared thousands of years ago.  We don’t have any direct evidence of PIE but it must have existed, Many linguists believe you can only go back 9,000 years – beyond that you really don’t know what went on. But a group of linguists now claim to uncovered 23 words that go back 15,000 years and link 7 major language groups with 700 languages across Europe and Asia all derived from Proto-EuroAsiatic. The words include ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘mother’, ‘work’ and ‘spit’.  It’s not surprising if ‘mother’ is still with us. But Anthony Carboni at D News wonders why ‘worm’ and ‘spit’ have lasted so long? Any ideas?

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