Among all the words listed, the only one which seems to be consistent across various language families is mother. All roots of mother seem to begin with "m" including in Chinese (母亲), English, Bengali. I believe South Indian languages are slightly different (correct me if I'm wrong). So perhaps this is a more modern word.
Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
71–80 of 103 posts
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why 'strangely' different? Why would you expect such exotic animals to be ultra-nonconserved? Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly) also: motyl~moth sommerfugl~summer-fly interesting that wiktionary for papillon shows a puppy :) might also be linked to big pupils and fake eyes [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon
> Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly) No, it's semantically linked via 'butter'. Schmetterling comes from Schmetten or Schmand which is a sort of heavy cream. There used to be a folk believe that butterflies would consume milk or butter if left uncovered. They were also sometimes called Milkdieb or milk-thief in German. See: www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=butterfly
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27471/does-the-...
Adds a little too, looks like the idea of butterflies stealing butter may come from their voids looking like butter.
I'd also like to imagine a story being made about them stealing butter to encourage children to cover the butter.
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#73Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#74I really like the word "tea" across languages. Japanese - cha Chinese - chá Thailand - chā Russian - чай (chay) Turkish - Çay (chai) Sri Lanka Sinhala - තේ (tē) Arabic - شاي (shay) German - tee English - tea! You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns.
> You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns. Well, there you go: Lithuanian: arbata, https://translate.google.com/#en/lt/tea Polish: herbata, https://translate.google.com/#en/pl/tea Aymara: pulu, https://ay.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulu
I'd never heard of the native South American language Aymara - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language.
It seems fair to say a language with c. 3M speakers is "going out of one's way" though.
Presumably (all?) other native American languages have words for steeped drinks not derived from "tea" too.
FWIW, especially in North England, en-gb has the word "brew" for a hot, steeped, drink (http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=br...) which predates the bringing of tea to the UK.
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#75Here is their list of the 23 most conserved words, from supplementary data table one of the article:
ashes bark black fire hand I man mother not old that this thou to flow to give to hear to pull to spit we what who worm we
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opposite of the topic (ultra-nonconserved?), "butterfly" is a word that is strangely different in even closely related European languages (Romance, Teutonic, Slavic). Doing a cursory check in Google Translate now, but I've one found one language pair where the words appear to be related: French: "papillon", Catalan "papallona". Otherwise: mariposa, бабочка, motyl, schmetterling, vlinder, sommerfugl, fjäril, farfalla,…
Why 'strangely' different? Why would you expect such exotic animals to be ultra-nonconserved? Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly) also: motyl~moth sommerfugl~summer-fly interesting that wiktionary for papillon shows a puppy :) might also be linked to big pupils and fake eyes [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon
But Butterfly isn't exotic in most of indoeuropean-speaking countries?
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#77For a good etymological mystery, it's hard to beat "dog." Not only is the word "dog" of unknown origin, its equivalents in Spanish and various Slavic languages also apparently appeared from nowhere. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dog If that's not fun enough, there's an extinct Aboriginal language from Australia which has a word for dog. That word is also "dog" - apparently pronounced the same as in English…
Opposite of the topic (ultra-nonconserved?), "butterfly" is a word that is strangely different in even closely related European languages (Romance, Teutonic, Slavic). Doing a cursory check in Google Translate now, but I've one found one language pair where the words appear to be related: French: "papillon", Catalan "papallona". Otherwise: mariposa, бабочка, motyl, schmetterling, vlinder, sommerfugl, fjäril, farfalla,…
In Slavic languages apparently motyl etc comes from motit (motać się) = to move around randomly. Kinda fitting if you've seen a flying motyl.
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#78Here's a previous thread from when this was originally posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669179 I remember, because I made two of my most researched comments there [1]. :) I'm no historical linguist, but I'd take this finding with a bunch of grains of salt. Eurasiatic language families that seek to combine, say, Proto-Indo-European [2] and Altaic [3] languages are pretty controversial, and in general this…
> I'm no historical linguist, but I'd take this finding with a bunch of grains of salt. Eurasiatic language families that seek to combine, say, Proto-Indo-European [2] and Altaic [3] languages are pretty controversial, and in general this paper reeks a bit of glottochronology [4], which is a pretty controversial topic in historical linguistics itself.
It's worth pointing out that everybody who actually studies the relevant Altaic languages now agrees that the Altaic family doesn't exist, not even in 'micro-Altaic' (just Mongolic/Tunguskic/Turkic languages) form. Basically, the consensus is that the similarity between those three languages arise from deep contact rather than genetic relationships (think what happened to Old English after the Norse and Norman invasions on its way to Middle English).
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#79I really like the word "tea" across languages. Japanese - cha Chinese - chá Thailand - chā Russian - чай (chay) Turkish - Çay (chai) Sri Lanka Sinhala - තේ (tē) Arabic - شاي (shay) German - tee English - tea! You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns.
Similar to Pineapple which is basically "ananas" in every language except English (pineapple) and Spanish (piña); though "ananas" is also accepted, but rarely used, in Spanish, so English stands alone. [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/134659/why-is-pi...
It's "abacaxi" in Brazil, although I guess it's "ananás" in Portugal.
Re: Ultraconserved words in use since the last Ice Age
#80The guys at Lucasfilm games almost got it perfectly right when designing SCUMM. Even the spitting in Monkey Island 2.