5 ms·

I don't get this. I know this is a monstrously crude approach, but I put the sentence given in the article to Google translate "You, hear me! Give this fire t

by jbattle 13y ago

I don't get this. I know this is a monstrously crude approach, but I put the sentence given in the article to Google translate "You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!" After translating it into a few different languages, almost none of the words sound anywhere close to their English counterparts. French and Danish had a fair bit of similarities but that's to be expected. Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something here? For reference I tried estonian, albanian, czech, finnish, and georgian

saraid216 13y ago
Try setting it up, walking away for 5 minutes or so (clearing your mind of the original English), and then comparing the translations that aren't English. The idea is that the fact that we understand English gives it a different quality, and you want to subtract that from your analysis. Don't know if it'll help, but it might.
ewoodrich 13y ago
I believe you are confusing the spoken sound of a particular cognate with the semantic meanings of the word that have remained consistent across different languages. For example, "fire" has a very direct translation in a large number of languages. Historically, it was believed that the evolution of word-use would preclude such semantic stability, but the words these researchers identified are perhaps suggestive of a common proto-Eurasiatic language. The fact that less used words like "flow" and "worm" remained consistent legitimizes this theory.
coldtea 13y ago
>Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something here? Perhaps. For one, Google translate is not very accurate, even for simple stuff. Second, the translations it picks might no be the form that has survived from the old times. Newer words might have put the use of the older form in disfavour, but it can still exist in the language. If something was the same in a language from 15,000 years ago up to 500 years ago, it won't be picked up in Google Translate, which will pick the current vernacular. Third, they probably give an exact table of the equivalencies they found in the actual paper. It would be easier to check that if they have it available for free. Four, they speak about how words sound, not how the look. So you have to take pronunciation of each language into account, which often can be quite different from what is written.
- freehunter 13y ago
  Yes, saying that "thou" is a word that has survived for hundreds of centuries is a bit odd to me. As far as I can tell, the only reason thou even exists as a word in modern English (at least in the US) is because it's so heavily used in the Bible (not exactly a modern book). The only times I hear someone using thou is in context of the Bible or ye olde tyme joking.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Bible wasn't originally written in English of course. The more recent the translation, the less Thou you get. We didn't have much alternative for 2nd person singular pronouns until "You" wiped "Thou" off the map somewhat recently and attempts at turning "Thou" into a formal religious version of "You" seem to have flopped. Then again we did pretty well without a second person plural until y'all invented y'all, plus or minus some "ye" anyway. Theres some idioms that'll never die even if no one understands the history. "Holier than thou". Much like "Your name is Mudd" sometimes kinda horrifies people who don't know the story of Abe Lincoln and Dr Mudd. I've met people who claim to not know the history of "cotton pickin hands" or even acknowledge its racial background, which seems hard to believe, then again cotton hasn't been hand harvested in a couple generations locally so its possible the kids were telling the truth about not knowing what they're saying...
    - muraiki 13y ago
      Well, "thou" also had a use for a period of time as an intimate form of "you." The intention behind the use of "Thou" to address God in the Bible is not to place distance between the speaker and God; on the contrary, it is to indicate closeness and intimacy. The Wikipedia article on thou explains this briefly in the introductory paragraphs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
    - bcoates 13y ago
      Looking up "cotton pickin" in Google ngram viewer, it appears to be mostly a product of the 1960s-1970s ruralsploitation fad: The Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw and Foghorn Leghorn. It's probably just an intentionally quaint pseudo-folk saying invented by someone in Burbank.
chch 13y ago
If you take this tree [1] as canon, English and Czech are fifth cousins, once-removed. If you compared me to my fifth cousin, I probably would look nothing like him, but I might carry similar traits or certainly similar ancestry. Although the article doesn't convey it very well (and I am skeptical of the finding itself anyway), I believe what they are trying to say is that these words all 'have not changed' in that they all have derived from the same eventual ancestor. That is, the word's pronunciation may have morphed, but the words were never abandoned in favor of new ones. An example here would be the English 'four' vs. the Spanish 'cuatro'. If you believe in the reconstruction of the proto-language Proto-Indo-European (and Wiktionary [2]) then these both derive from the word * kʷetwóres[3]. The Spanish one is a bit easier to understand. * kʷetwóres (PIE) -> quattuor (Latin) -> cuatro (Spanish) Nothing too shocking there, I hope. Latin dropped the "es" off of the end and changed the first vowel a bit, then Spanish simplified the "uo" diphthong into "o" (perhaps through Vulgar Latin? [4]), and reversed or->ro, and of course changed spelling because it's a different language. English, however, took a little bit odder of a path. Somewhere before Proto-Germanic, * kʷetwóres->* petwṓr, which was an irregular change (perhaps to mimic five, which was * pénkʷe->* pémpe [5][6]). Then, a very regular rule, called Grimm's Law [7], kicked in in the first millennium BC, which shifted p sounds toward ɸ sounds ("For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as an f-sound made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip."[8]). So * petwṓr->* fedwōr (Note the t got vocalized into a d as well) in Proto-Germanic. West Germanic then lost the hard d in the middle, to make * fewōr, which became Old English fēower, into Middle English fower, into Modern English four. So: * kʷetwóres->* petwṓr->* fedwōr->* fewōr->fēower->fower->four Both of these are sets of incremental changes from a common ancestor. Individually, the small changes make some sense (I hope), but once you get several thousand years away from the root, words like "cuatro" and "four" seem like they are completely unrelated by sound, even though they're very related by ancestry. I'm no historical linguist, but hopefully that helps explain why these things sound nothing alike. :) [1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEurop... [2]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/k%CA%B7etw%C3%B3res http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/k... [3] The * indicates that the word is a reconstruction, not actually something attested to in found writings. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin#Monophthongization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin#Monophthongization [5] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fedw%C5%8Dr http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fedw%C... [6] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fimf http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fimf [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law (Yes, one of the Brothers Grimm!) [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative

by jbattle 13y ago

saraid216 13y ago

Try setting it up, walking away for 5 minutes or so (clearing your mind of the original English), and then comparing the translations that aren't English. The idea is that the fact that we understand English gives it a different quality, and you want to subtract that from your analysis. Don't know if it'll help, but it might.

ewoodrich 13y ago

I believe you are confusing the spoken sound of a particular cognate with the semantic meanings of the word that have remained consistent across different languages. For example, "fire" has a very direct translation in a large number of languages. Historically, it was believed that the evolution of word-use would preclude such semantic stability, but the words these researchers identified are perhaps suggestive of a common proto-Eurasiatic language. The fact that less used words like "flow" and "worm" remained consistent legitimizes this theory.

coldtea 13y ago

>Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something here? Perhaps. For one, Google translate is not very accurate, even for simple stuff. Second, the translations it picks might no be the form that has survived from the old times. Newer words might have put the use of the older form in disfavour, but it can still exist in the language. If something was the same in a language from 15,000 years ago up to 500 years ago, it won't be picked up in Google Translate, which will pick the current vernacular. Third, they probably give an exact table of the equivalencies they found in the actual paper. It would be easier to check that if they have it available for free. Four, they speak about how words sound, not how the look. So you have to take pronunciation of each language into account, which often can be quite different from what is written.

freehunter 13y ago
Yes, saying that "thou" is a word that has survived for hundreds of centuries is a bit odd to me. As far as I can tell, the only reason thou even exists as a word in modern English (at least in the US) is because it's so heavily used in the Bible (not exactly a modern book). The only times I hear someone using thou is in context of the Bible or ye olde tyme joking.
- VLM 13y ago
  Bible wasn't originally written in English of course. The more recent the translation, the less Thou you get. We didn't have much alternative for 2nd person singular pronouns until "You" wiped "Thou" off the map somewhat recently and attempts at turning "Thou" into a formal religious version of "You" seem to have flopped. Then again we did pretty well without a second person plural until y'all invented y'all, plus or minus some "ye" anyway. Theres some idioms that'll never die even if no one understands the history. "Holier than thou". Much like "Your name is Mudd" sometimes kinda horrifies people who don't know the story of Abe Lincoln and Dr Mudd. I've met people who claim to not know the history of "cotton pickin hands" or even acknowledge its racial background, which seems hard to believe, then again cotton hasn't been hand harvested in a couple generations locally so its possible the kids were telling the truth about not knowing what they're saying...
  - muraiki 13y ago
    Well, "thou" also had a use for a period of time as an intimate form of "you." The intention behind the use of "Thou" to address God in the Bible is not to place distance between the speaker and God; on the contrary, it is to indicate closeness and intimacy. The Wikipedia article on thou explains this briefly in the introductory paragraphs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
  - bcoates 13y ago
    Looking up "cotton pickin" in Google ngram viewer, it appears to be mostly a product of the 1960s-1970s ruralsploitation fad: The Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw and Foghorn Leghorn. It's probably just an intentionally quaint pseudo-folk saying invented by someone in Burbank.

chch 13y ago

If you take this tree [1] as canon, English and Czech are fifth cousins, once-removed. If you compared me to my fifth cousin, I probably would look nothing like him, but I might carry similar traits or certainly similar ancestry. Although the article doesn't convey it very well (and I am skeptical of the finding itself anyway), I believe what they are trying to say is that these words all 'have not changed' in that they all have derived from the same eventual ancestor. That is, the word's pronunciation may have morphed, but the words were never abandoned in favor of new ones. An example here would be the English 'four' vs. the Spanish 'cuatro'. If you believe in the reconstruction of the proto-language Proto-Indo-European (and Wiktionary [2]) then these both derive from the word * kʷetwóres[3]. The Spanish one is a bit easier to understand. * kʷetwóres (PIE) -> quattuor (Latin) -> cuatro (Spanish) Nothing too shocking there, I hope. Latin dropped the "es" off of the end and changed the first vowel a bit, then Spanish simplified the "uo" diphthong into "o" (perhaps through Vulgar Latin? [4]), and reversed or->ro, and of course changed spelling because it's a different language. English, however, took a little bit odder of a path. Somewhere before Proto-Germanic, * kʷetwóres->* petwṓr, which was an irregular change (perhaps to mimic five, which was * pénkʷe->* pémpe [5][6]). Then, a very regular rule, called Grimm's Law [7], kicked in in the first millennium BC, which shifted p sounds toward ɸ sounds ("For English-speakers, it is easiest to think of the sound as an f-sound made only with the lips, instead of the upper teeth and lower lip."[8]). So * petwṓr->* fedwōr (Note the t got vocalized into a d as well) in Proto-Germanic. West Germanic then lost the hard d in the middle, to make * fewōr, which became Old English fēower, into Middle English fower, into Modern English four. So: * kʷetwóres->* petwṓr->* fedwōr->* fewōr->fēower->fower->four Both of these are sets of incremental changes from a common ancestor. Individually, the small changes make some sense (I hope), but once you get several thousand years away from the root, words like "cuatro" and "four" seem like they are completely unrelated by sound, even though they're very related by ancestry. I'm no historical linguist, but hopefully that helps explain why these things sound nothing alike. :) [1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEurop... [2]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/k%CA%B7etw%C3%B3res http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/k... [3] The * indicates that the word is a reconstruction, not actually something attested to in found writings. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin#Monophthongization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin#Monophthongization [5] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fedw%C5%8Dr http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fedw%C... [6] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fimf http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/fimf [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law (Yes, one of the Brothers Grimm!) [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative