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rcrabb t1_iwj7atk wrote

Reply to comment by StickFigureFan in Irulegui Hand: Researchers claim to have found earliest document written in Basque 2,100 years ago by IslandChillin

I’m going to hypothesize right now that future research using advanced language evolution modeling will predict that some number of words in European languages are derived from some of these hypothetical dead languages.

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Milkhemet_Melekh t1_iwjiou7 wrote

This isn't really sci-fi. Linguistic science already has pretty solid ways of finding these, and has done so for a while.

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Piratebuttseckz t1_iwjulem wrote

I never realized how much languages interact until i learned persian farsi as my third (after english and spanish) i found that although i couldnt speak arabic, i understood a fair few of the (written) words that i saw. The other thing was how many words lined up close enough from spanish to persian, i could absolutely believe modern european language has tones of vestigial language in it, and im just some shmuck, let alome professional hands

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jedipiper t1_iwk1iy8 wrote

Well, wouldn't it make more sense that modern Spanish has words from Arabic in it because of the Moorish Conquests and vice versa? Also, Spanish still has a heavy Latin influence and Arabs would have interacted with Latin speakers way back.

Or is that your point?

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Piratebuttseckz t1_iwl8zbk wrote

It was about 2/3rds of what i was trying to convey, but older words like father or table also are very similar even in the native original language

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jedipiper t1_iwljcls wrote

Yeah, I have had a weird crossover too from Korean and German. Oma in German meaning Grandmother and something exceedingly similar in Korean mean mother. Same with Grandfather. And even Abba in Hebrew having a similar sound to Appa in Korean with the same meaning.

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Beneficial_Sun5302 t1_iwlj67i wrote

The reason very basic words like Father are shared between Iranian and Spanish is because they both ultimately descend from an ancient Indo-European language likely spoken in present day Kazakhstan around 5000 years ago. Steppe pastoralists that spoke this language colonized Europe in the Bronze age. Their language evolved into the various Celtic, Latin, Slavic and Germanic languages of Europe. Greek also comes from this ancient language. Compare Latin, Greek, Avestan and Sanskrit and you will get chills at how similar they are.

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Beneficial_Sun5302 t1_iwlihwl wrote

Persian, English and Spanish are all Indo-European languages, albeit from their own respective sub families. English is Germanic, Spanish is Latin and Farsi is Iranic. The Scythians and Sarmatians of Eastern Europe spoke an Iranic language that probably influenced modern day Slavic languages. Arabic is an Afroasiatic language that has more in common with Hebrew or Assyrian than it does with the Iranian languages.

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