News, British scientists uncover oldest words in English. (ancient, Britain, European)

[JD59]

LONDON (AFP) – The oldest words in the English language include "I" and "who", while words like "dirty" could die out relatively quickly, British researchers said Thursday.

Scientists at Reading University in southern England have used a supercomputer called ThamesBlue to model the evolution of words in English and the wider family of Indo-European languages over the last 30,000 years.

British scientists uncover oldest words in English (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090226/wl_uk_afp/britainlanguagesciencecomputeroffbeat_200902262117 23;_ylt=AhoI5Yqo8k1ETdPJ4mEqNCGgOrgF - broken link)

[Six Foot Three]

Not surprised at this as we see english is constantly evolving since the mid 400's starting with those first Saxons and Angles in england.

[Fred314X]

Well, if a verb like "squeeze" is going to disappear over the next eight centuries, as these scientists/linguists contend, then I think we ought to use it as often as possible, while it's still here!

Also, I found it fascinating that the words "two," "three" and "five" are considered some of the oldest in the language, but not "one" or "four." Isn't that kind of peculiar? Makes you wonder how they counted, all those years ago.

[Thyra]

Here is another site that expands on this article:
Scientists discover oldest words in the English language, predict which ones are likely to disappear
Language is so intereting... Sanskrit is where many languages including English come from...The word "Mother" is "Mata (mah tah) in Sanskrit...

[Six Foot Three]

Originally Posted by Fred314X

Also, I found it fascinating that the words "two," "three" and "five" are considered some of the oldest in the language, but not "one" or "four." Isn't that kind of peculiar? Makes you wonder how they counted, all those years ago.

They did use ''one'' and ''four'' it's just that some numbers in old english evolved into middle english faster than others.

[Fred314X]

I figured that; I wasn't trying to imply that people couldn't count from one to five.

[John Walmsley]

In the first use of Arabic numerals, the cipher or zero has an interesting history. You can access this interesting story from Scientific American by doing a search on the following:

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero?

In the context of language in history, I've wondered how military leaders like Hannibal, one of the most brilliant strategists of all time, managed to communicate with a polyglot army of diverse ethnicity and language. It's said that he spoke several languages, but, even so, one miscalculation in communication and timing could have spelled disaster. Imagine taking a miles-long train of 30 or 40 thousand men and animals, including 37 elephants, over the Alps in winter and trying to keep some semblance of order!

[Fred314X]

Originally Posted by John Walmsley

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero?

But zero is not nothingness. The numeral zero is a place-holder.

[John Walmsley]

Originally Posted by Fred314X

But zero is not nothingness. The numeral zero is a place-holder.

I agree with you that zero is not nothingness, but as someone who has trouble balancing a checkbook, I won't take on trying to explain the difference. However, I would reference the following answer by a mathematician:

mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52387.html

By the way, the ancients must have considered the concept of nothingness, as recorded in the Book of Job 26: 7: "He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."

[John Walmsley]

Sorry, but apparently that link I provided didn't work. You can find the same article by doing a search on the following:

Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math: Difference Between Zero and Nothing