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This article is conflating language and ancestry. The seed of the confusion is in Reich’s research but the WSJ journalist blows it up to preposterous levels. Ta
by falaki 2y ago
This article is conflating language and ancestry. The seed of the confusion is in Reich’s research but the WSJ journalist blows it up to preposterous levels. Take India as an example. Most of the population is speaking some variant of an Indo-European (Indo-Iranian to be more precise) language but only a minority is genetically traced to Indo-European steppe people [1]
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/where-did-india-s-people-come-massive-genetic-study-reveals-surprises https://www.science.org/content/article/where-did-india-s-pe...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 2y agoYou also see this in places like Egypt. Nearly everyone speaks Arabic, but only a minority of their DNA is from the Arabian peninsula.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoWhich is not a difficult phenomenon to understand. The most common ancestry in the US is German, not English, but English is still the dominant language. Language isn't DNA.
- singularity2001 2y agoLanguage isn't DNA but it's highly correlated. Most people in the US speak Germanic languages, ie english.
- chrisco255 2y agoGiven that English is itself germanic to an extent, yes. But it's also clearly got a lot of latin influence. All of northwestern europe, of course, had quite a bit of DNA mixing over the centuries, so to what extent some DNA is particularly "German" or "English" largely depends on the time period.
- dylan604 2y agoWhat do you mean to an extent? It's definitely not Romantic.
- laurencerowe 2y agoWhile English is a Germanic language a huge number of words come from Old French since that was the language of the ruling elite following the Norman conquest of 1066 and continued to be used in administration for a couple of centuries. Amusingly the Franks after whom French is named were also Germanic but they adopted the Vulgar Latin derived Old French then spoken in Northern France and which the Norse who invaded Northern France adopted before invading England. https://www.reddit.com/r/asklinguistics/comments/324w60/how_did_french_become_a_romance_language_and_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/asklinguistics/comments/324w60/how_...
- ekianjo 2y agoEnglish is a Germanic language...
- Retric 2y agoOld english was a Germanic language. Modern English borrowed a little too much to really qualify.
- progmetaldev 2y agoModern English didn't pop up out of nowhere, or relied on borrowing everything. Old English was a Germanic language, and while modern English borrowed quite a bit from other languages, it didn't start from scratch. It is still based upon Old English, which was Germanic. Even if you mean extremely modern, the base language is Old English, although the language evolves constantly. You would have a harder time comparing what is currently being spoken to Old English, but at the same time, you can't disconnect the two just because comparing the two now sounds entirely different. Language should evolve, since it's meant to communicate, not on it's own merit (as much as those who study language would like it to be). It's not crazy to think that in the future that a language could evolve even further to convey more meaning in a smaller amount of speech.
- Retric 2y agoWe’re well past “quite a bit” at this point. Overall 29% of English words have Latin roots, 29% are French, and only 26% are Germanic in origin. Common vernacular favors French. It’s best described as a creole language.
- progmetaldev 2y agoI upvoted because that make sense, but isn't that Old English still a kind of "glue language", where words are replaced and of different origin, but ultimately just chosen based on contact with other languages and/or slang that matches another language? I'm honestly interested, because translating from Old English or Germanic seems to be easier to do with automated tools, than what you'd consider modern English. Granted, being American, I am pretty good with figuring out slang or new words (especially having a teenager). I can definitely see American-English being a creole language, with a lot of evolution towards Spanish, given a lot of Hispanic culture being blended into American culture. I wish I knew more about language evolution, because it seems exciting and actually useful for tracking meaning between people. I guess I explained so much so that you could tell I wasn't trolling, and looking for a legitimate answer (or your educated opinion). I appreciate whatever you respond with!
- rayiner 2y agoThis shouldn’t be downvoted. Except for colonizer languages, most languages in the world are coextensive with an ethnic group or closely related ethnic groups. Virtually everyone who speaks Bangla, Japanese, Korean, or Thai is ethnically Bengali, Japanese, Korean, or Thai.
- wqaatwt 2y agoThat doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a lot of (often forced) assimilation or worse involved for that to happen. e.g. it’s not like Japan didn’t have a “native population” that spoke a different language(s). The colonization just happened a few thousand years earlier than in the Americas.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago> Except for colonizer languages Which are spoken by billions of people around the world. That's a huge exception.
- mrangle 2y agoThis is both pedantic and probably worth the correction. English is a Germanic language, originated in an exceedingly small continental territory nestled among other Germanics. Virtually no one would be able to discern the Germanic people who originated the English language from other Germanic people. If you are referring to the English people from the UK, then of course they are more mixed. But the English language was brought to the UK by the aforementioned continental tribe(s).
- rayiner 2y agoYet ancestry.com can easily tell British with Anglo-Saxon and Brittonic ancestry apart from French with Frankish ancestry.
- shermantanktop 2y agoCan they? They clearly want you to think so, but my own personal results are pretty mixed on how accurate that is.
- mrangle 2y agoAnd yet the genetic differences are so insignificant so as to make them pointless to mention in the context of (paraphrasing) "it's super strange that German immigrants speak the Germanic English language that originates from the cultural region of Northern Germany".
- Bayart 2y agoNobody can. There's far too much overlap regionally between Britain and North-Western France. And nobody in Britain has just Brittonic ancestry, or Frankish ancestry in France. For the most part the populations in Europe have been stable since a time that predates the expansions of the Celtic and Germanic linguistic groups.
- laurencerowe 2y agoStudies have found genetic evidence for population movements. You could make an argument for the Welsh having overwhelmingly Brittonic ancestry. https://peopleofthebritishisles.web.ox.ac.uk/population-genetics https://peopleofthebritishisles.web.ox.ac.uk/population-gene...
- master_crab 2y agoThis is incorrect. The most common ancestry in the US is in fact English. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Americans
- Retric 2y agoThat’s an artifact of the 2020 census. 2012: 50.7 million Americans identified as German. 2022: 41 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans
- oskarkk 2y agoI think that numbers relying on self-identification from census can also be far from the actual genetic makeup of the American population. But after some searching I couldn't find any comprehensive study that tried to trace today's Americans to different European ethnicities. And I'm not sure if this is possible anyways, given that Europeans were mixed in many ways.
- chrisco255 2y agoGerman? Germany didn't even exist until 1871.
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- nairboon 2y agoThe German Empire of 1871 is just one of many. Germans have lived in those lands for quite some time. Already Julius Caesar was conducting campaigns in Magna Germania.
- jxramos 2y agothat term "gemanic tribes" comes to mind for sure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples
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- Brian_K_White 2y agoThe place existed, and people existed in the place, and the communication about that place is taking place today, and the way for one person to communicate a reference to that place to another person today, is to use the label Germany.
- hollerith 2y agoBefore 1871, everyone knew what you meant when you said, "Germany." It just wasn't under a single government.
- timeon 2y agoIs East Francia (post-Verdun) better term?
- rayiner 2y agoGermans are a distinct ethnolinguistic group that existed prior to the unified German nation state. Many (most?) countries exist because pre-existing ethnolinguistic groups got their own country. For example, Bengalis have existed for long enough that you can easily identify them as a tightly clustered, distinct group in genetic profiles,[1] but never had their own country until 1971. [1] https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/07/09/the-main-interesting-thing-about-bangladeshi-genetics-is-how-east-asian-bangladeshis-are/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/07/09/the-main-interesti...
- dyauspitr 2y agoThat article says nothing about the percentage genetic component of the Indo European step people in the Indian population. It does mention a high genetic similarity to Iranians.
- falaki 2y agoAnd interestingly Iranians are mostly not the descendants of the so-called Indo-Iranian steppe nomads (genetically). But they speak various Iranian languages.
- raincom 2y agoArchive version of the above science.org article "Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises Analysis confirms Iranian influx, but also finds genes from Neanderthals and a mysterious human ancestor": https://archive.is/Wd4tP https://archive.is/Wd4tP
- rufus_foreman 2y ago>> This article is conflating language and ancestry From the article: "DNA detectives, including at Reich’s lab, analyzed DNA samples from the remains of around 450 prehistoric individuals taken from 100 sites in Europe, as well as data from 1,000 previously known ancient samples" Ancestry, not language. "Reich’s award-winning lab at Harvard has one of the largest ancient DNA databases in the world and uses proprietary gene-analysis software co-developed by Nicholas Patterson, a British mathematician who once worked as a codebreaker for U.K. intelligence services." Ancestry, not language. "DNA evidence shows that the proto-Yamnaya population migrated from the Volga region to Anatolia" Ancestry, not language. "In many places, indigenous male DNA disappears upon the arrival of the Yamnaya, while indigenous female DNA is traceable in the following generations" Ancestry, not language. "Within years of their arrival, some 99% of the indigenous people disappeared, according to Reich’s analysis of DNA samples from the time" Ancestry, not language. I rate your claim that "This article is conflating language and ancestry" as false, and I award you no points.
- falaki 2y agoThis article's confusion is where it states "half the human beings alive today are descended from the Yamnaya." He thinks because half of the world population speaks an Indo-European language, and because the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European languages were the Yamnaya culture (as Reich's research suggests), then half of the world population are descendants of the Yamnaya culture. Is the logical error clear now?
- g8oz 2y agoThis research specifically incorporated DNA analysis. As is made clear if you actually read the article. I fail to see where the conflation happens.