The first page of the NYT article makes the above pronouncement which rather stunned me. I always thought languages mixed readily. Isn’t the birth of Old English from a Old Germanic mom and an Old French dad a classic example? And aren’t the facets of a language all mixable, for example Japanese is an atonal language with classifiers, while Korean is a tonal language with classifiers, while English is atonal without classifiers, can’t a hybrid language inherit a property from one ancestor and another property from another ancestor??

I wonder this myself. But what really gets me, is how language will evolve differently now that there is global communication. In 10,000 years, will someone write a book about how the appearance of electronic technology coincides with a change in language?

Hey, at least this guy is trying to put up an interesting site.  I happen to like the stories and he wants to sell stuff on the side, no prob.  Servers and bandwidth aren’t free, so quit bitchin’.

I think a cool tie-in with the site would be taking examples of Sci-Fi (like a Star Trek tri-corder) and tying them to stories of things actually being discovered or invented.

We’re glad your here and hope you stick around and join our small but growing group of science enthusiasts. Actually, Sweetwind is an old-timer whose support of this site is unquestioned – her listing the Amazon links was a serious stab at support, not sarcasm. I like your idea – find an example, write it up, post anytime!

Pop quiz: what is THE single most important tool humanity has ever invented? So crucial that every tribe has invented it; in fact without it there would never have been any tribes? Okay, in this context the answer – language (or communication) – is pretty obvious and some of you may feel that I am exagerrating, in which case feel free to prove me wrong without talking, writing, signing, humming, whistling, tapping on a drainpipe or communicating in any other way. Or try programming a computer without using it’s operating language. Right, now I’ve got my rant out of the way, let’s get down to business. The theory that you can link the spread of a language to agricultural development is probably correct. You can probably also link the spread of a language to other developments such as sailboats, bronze swords, the wheel, or anything else that has led a people to spread out of their normal stomping grounds and interact with other nations/cultures. I don’t mean to demean Dr’s Bellwood and Diamond by any means, I just think that they could widen the picture a little. The English language (as spoken in the United Kingdoms of Greater Britain) is a prime example of a language that has been around the block and picked up some habits it didn’t start out with. The scientific words betray their French origins(microscope), reflecting the social status of the educated Normans compared to the every day words used by the anglo-Saxons. Some other terms came from India (pukka); the old germano/latin word for a fortress or walled town is reflected in the word borough. Those words best loved by the British, beer and ale originate in, respectively, germano-scandinavian and saxon words for the same thing. The history of a languge is a good indicator of what the culture speaking it were up to at that period: If you kept a diary all your life you would probably find that the vocabulary you used in it varied according to who you were associating with that year, as well as what TV programmes you watched. We’re a social race and the languages we speak reflect that. I know I haven’t shed a revelatory light on anything with this diatribe, but take the above as evidence of how strongly I believe studying the history of a language to be a key to the study of the history of the people who speak it.

I’ve been an English lit teacher for… let’s just say, more years than you may have been alive. (I know– What’s an “around the block a few times” literature teacher doing on this site :-)….?) A significant part of our study of literature is the evolution of the English language due to major invasions of the British Isles. I wish I’d taken the trouble to offer your pop quiz and the well-written answer. A+,
Mr. VF.

Thanks for the compliment, I only wish my own English teachers had been so generous (although in fairness I was a somewhat unpleasant pupil). I have found the etymological origins of words fascinating for years. When I was a boy I made up a hugely complicated explanation for the insult ‘blackguard’, involving black-dressed cavalry turning traitor on a battlefield; I was most put out to discover it referred to the boy who blacked the stove in Victorian households. My interest was rekindled though when I began studying Old Norse; who could fail to appreciate a language that named the sea ‘the whale-road’, or described a sword as a ‘blood-worm’. There may be no truth to the verse “Men die; cattle die: only the glorious deeds of heroes live forever” but the words impart a sense of how our ancestors viewed their world and their places in it. The men and cattle may be dead, and the heroes in the main ingloriously forgotten, but their words tell us things still.

You presented such an excellent case for the essential nature of language as THE communication tool, also– although certainly not the ONLY communication tool (Didn’t you begin this detour with a comment on sign language?– Not to mention all the techno-gadgets which rely on signals and/or whatever, rather than words)

A favorite activity while pursuing Beowulf pursuing Grendel was to give my h.s. seniors a list of nouns (car, cell phone, McDonald’s) and have them come up with a suitable kenning for each. Some were quite amusing (McDonald’s= grease-palace). Your early etymological effort with “blackguard” smacks of romance, adventure, and intrigue. How disappointing to discover the truth of the matter sometimes. Ah, but I’ll take the truth, even if it’s staid and stodgy, over educated or imaginative guesses. That’s why I’m given more these days to nonfiction rather than fiction– and even science web sites.