english words are missing in my ice age adventures

In the same vein, while humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas have common genes, the fact that humans share almost 99% of their DNA with chimps suggests that these two primate lineages split apart more recently.īecause words don't have DNA, researchers use cognates found in different languages today to reconstruct the ancestral 'protowords.' Historical linguists have observed that over time, the sounds of words tend to change in regular patterns. For example, although about 50% of French and English words derive from a common ancestor (like 'mere' and 'mother,' for example), with English and German the rate is closer to 70%-indicating that while all three languages are related, English and German have a more recent common ancestor. 'Historical linguists study language evolution using cognates the way biologists use genes,' explains Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Now, a new statistical approach suggests that peoples from Alaska to Europe may share a linguistic forebear dating as far back as the end of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago. The existence of these shared words, or cognates, has led some linguists to suggest that seemingly unrelated language families can be traced back to a common ancestor. But frequently used words can persist for generations, even millennia, and similar sounds and meanings often turn up in very different languages. If you've ever cringed when your parents said 'groovy,' you'll know that spoken language can have a brief shelf life.

English words are missing in my ice age adventures