3 ms·
There is a saying I’ve seen: ‘genes don’t speak languages’. Languages can easily spread between population groupings, and conversely a single population can mov
by bradrn 3y ago
There is a saying I’ve seen: ‘genes don’t speak languages’. Languages can easily spread between population groupings, and conversely a single population can move from one language to another — and both processes happen with considerable regularity. (Consider what happened to Gaulish as Latin spread, or Hittite as Greek spread, or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread, or…)
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread By that period in history, you'd usually call it Coptic, not (the much older) Ancient Egyptian.
- bradrn 3y agoYeah, I know. I presume more readers here would be familiar with the name ‘Ancient Egyptian’ than with ‘Coptic’. (And really, as it evolved so dramatically over 3000 years, ‘Ancient Egyptian’ can’t easily be called a single language to start with. I tend to think of Coptic as simply the latest stage of Ancient Egyptian.)
- guerrilla 3y agoIndeed, Renfew gives two models for how this is possible. One is called the wave model where trade and integration causes language propagation and the other is conquest where one group dominates over a neighbor who eventually adopts the dominion's language.