People in Columbo, Sri Lanka, shown here making offerings to the Buddha, are part of the Indo-European language group which also includes English and Germanic languages. (Creative Commons Original Nomad)
The study analyzes 200 cognates or words with shared meanings and similar sounds across 103 languages, including 20 that are now extinct.
Atkinson says examining the similarities and differences helped establish family ties.
“For example, in English and other Germanic languages, the word for 'water' sounds something like the English word 'water,' or 'wasser' [in German], 'water' [in Dutch], whereas in the romance languages descended from Latin, the word sounds quite different, something like 'agua' [in Spanish] or 'acqua' [in Italian]."
According to Atkinson, although some words are more closely related than others, they are tied together on branches of the Indo-European family tree.
“We know where the languages are," he says. "They are like the leaves of the tree, and we know how they are connected, and we trace back along those branches back through time and space to work out where the origin is.”
This map shows the distribution of words across Europe for ‘mother.’ By modeling the evolution of hundreds of such words through time, we can infer relationships between all the languages and trace back to the origin of the family. (Q.D. Atkinson)
The ancient Indo-European family today includes several hundred related languages, including those spoken in Europe, the Iranian plateau and South Asia. Atkinson says agricultural expansion is confirmed in the archeological record.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25