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English May Have Retained Words From an Ice Age Language
sciencehabit writes "If you've ever cringed when your parents said 'groovy,' you'll know that spoken language can have a brief shelf life. But frequently used words can persist for generations, even millennia, and similar sounds and meanings often turn up in very different languages. Now, a new statistical approach suggests that peoples from Alaska to Europe may share a linguistic forebear dating as far back as the end of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago. Indeed, some of the words we use today may not be so different than those spoken around campfires and receding glaciers."
Historical linguists basically laughed Renfrew out of town for his 1987 "out of Anatolia" hypothesis about Indo-European origins.
Also, he is an archaeologist, not a linguist. IMO archeologists know exactly diddly about historical linguistics, and reveal it almost every time they say anything on the topic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Lord Renfrew may be a respected archaeologist, but his views on historical linguistics are rejected by most of the field.
In Norwegian, the word for mother is "vinglefitte". It goes to show that not all languages follow this pattern.
So why do online dictionaries say that the Norwegian word for mother is "mor" - e.g. http://www.norwegianword.com/1/mother
I am anarch of all I survey.