Granted, we could personally think of much more amazing ways to put
supercomputers to work, but maybe there is some sort of benefit to humanity by knowing precisely what our ancestors' first
words were. All that aside, the IBM ThamesBlue supercomputer has been tapped by language masters at the University of Reading in order to find that 'I,' 'we,' 'who' and the numbers '1,' '2' and '3' are amongst the most ancient across all Indo-European languages. Comically enough, it was also found that words like 'squeeze,' 'guts,' 'stick,' 'throw' and 'dirty' were also markedly archaic, which sure says a lot about how men in particular, um,
don't evolve. At any rate, these new computational powers have reportedly opened up another 25,000 years or so of language study, so we suspect the folks on this project will be occupied for some time to come.
posted Mar 1st 2009 10:27AM
Wait, did that seriously require a supercomputer?
probably. I mean I didn't take the time to read the article or anything but I assume it used the computer to cross reference millions of words across hundreds of languages to identify which words/sounds were common among them. I'd say that would take a fair bit of processing
Nah the supercomputer is to create a cloud of seriousness to the BS.
I squeeze dirty stick.
Wow.
You win the internet.
No longer are males the dirty ones...... ROFL!!
who throw guts?
Whatever you do in the privacy of your house in none of our business.
throw stick then squeeze dirty guts
commenters @ engadget are too creative and witty
I'm pretty sure I read on the BBC that those "archaic" words listed were not too archaic, and would disappear.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7911645.stm
"Meanwhile, the fastest-changing words are projected to die out and be replaced by other words much sooner.
For example, "dirty" is a rapidly changing word; currently there are 46 different ways of saying it in the Indo-European languages, all words that are unrelated to each other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with "stick" and "guts". "
There you go.
/Sigh
Indeed, looks like somebody didn't read even bother to read the first paragraph of the article he's writing about.
"archaic" words are merely words that aren't in current use. If certain words are likely to disappear soon, then they're marked out to become archaic...
"says a lot about how men in particular, um, don't evolve."
With that, I got the impression that the author believed that the words were in current use and will be for some time. Probably wrong, knowing me :(
Kizorblade is correct. This phrase "markedly archaic" as used by this author is not the same thing as "marked out to be archaic". The original IBM article and the BBC article states that words like 'squeeze,' 'guts,' 'stick,' 'throw' and 'dirty' evolve the fastest. Thus, they are the opposite of archaic. Of course, if they fall into disuse, they will become archaic, but at the present they are definitely not archaic.
who wants to read. if you browse to the page it's just as good as reading and verifying the data before you start typing about it :D. and i'm sure the nerds playing on IBM's machine are right /sigh, (nerds are a mutation that cannot reproduce ( nerds don't) so now nerds, can't grab boobs but need attention because they are human, thus all this pyscho data about the word bad dieing out.
really how many letters are in BAD,
3 three, THREE, now the meaning of bad might change..... but the use of the phonically short word will only evolve.
this short word can and will have more that jut one meaning
e.g. " that shit is bad,!"
thus it's growth. there is a fine line to my theory on nerds giving us incorrect data due to the overwhelmingly want to grab our attention ( it's ok nerds we still love you) but stop trying to impress us with some crap about words dieing because you've never felt a titty. We know your smart, but really...
wait now i change some of my theory due to new found research
I'm going to put my BAD STICK up in them GUTS, you better SQUEEZE boy!
hahaha
morons
@nud
Can you say that again?
Yay Reading gets recognized...
I think 99% of the population of reading dont know how to say most of those words...
"I hope they at least know how to read 'em..."
I'm sorry, that was a bad pun begging to happen
Reading, fuck yeah!
The Uni really sucks though...
haha yeah, my dad went there
did chartered surveying
is now fucked by recession
I'm a surveyor; luckily still got a job for now!
yeah he still has a job, but all hes surveying at the moment is how many tenants have defaulted on their payments..
Reading Uni FTW!
So, for anyone who's learned and forgotten a foreign language what are the last words you remember? 'I, we,who 1, 2 and 3' maybe?
I remember learning a language where past three most people in the village didn't how to count. They could tell you the spanish version of say, 10, but for their native language they rarely really needed to count beyond three, it's one two three, and then many, a bunch, a handful, etc.
Whats a handful times a handful?
a bunch of handfuls
They stick with a few words and squeeze the most out of it.
"handful times a handful"
Not really necessary when hunting and gathering would be my guess. In any case my perspective was a limited one. It was just funny to see many people reverted to spanish for the larger numbers. In their language the words for things like ten get to be a mouthful, you got the feeling there was not much use for them when things were more hunt and gather. But my experience is limited and anecdotal at best.
I don't get the study though. I can't imagine words like stick, or bad ever changing that much there's got to be something wrong with the analysis.
One, two, three, many, lots.
All numbers you need.
@ caleb
Were you in the Philippines?
Also, the word 'twitter' can be traced to an ancient chinese word for smoke signals. They generally used them to warn of oncoming attack but also sometimes if their foot felt funny that morning.
We did evolve. We have longer sticks to throw about.
After 4.5 billion years of evolution and still no cut'n'paste, we can also throw iPhones
+1 LondonConsultant
Good golly, so someone can bash an iPhone in a completely unrelated topic and get highest ranked, while someone praising an iPhone in an unrelated topic gets lowest ranked?
I smell double standard...
+1 LondonConsultant
You know you can hit the plus sign next to someone's comment and not make your own comment.. It works just fine. Matter of fact, I would assume that it works even better because then you don't have people hitting the minus sign just to offset your vote.
Mathematical models like this make me vey nervous... they leave out a lot of possibilities in order to make them feasible, thereby leaving out a lot of viable results... and therefore delivering results which could be essentially meaningless. Say for example, their mathematical model didn't account for a ruhless ruler conquering the continents and squashing certain words or variants or even languages... the possibility that languages are forced to change would affect the length of time a word could be in use. Assuming that all words get equal opporunity for usage seems totally naieve to me. But who knows, I could be totally wrong. :o
I now by declare you a geek, claim your geek certificate at the nearest office.
No Crysis jokes?! o_O what happened here?
It appears that the engadget readership has evolved!
But is it powerful enough to discover the origin of the word crysis?
Does it run Crysis?
there you go.
Does it run Minesweeper though??
Probably not as it runs on a *nix system... :/
I was hoping that DIAF would show up.
I wonder how old the word kill is....
Mémoire
Memory
Antediluvian or not, english is coming for 40 % from french ( and William the Conqueror an old french guy)
According to different sources, between one third and two thirds of all English words have a French origin
a partial list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_French_origin
Pretty much everything in this article is either dubious, or something we historical linguists have known for a long time. On top of that, it's sloppily written. On top of that, as has been noted, the Engadget summary was sloppy.
But at least we can use it in grant proposals as evidence of the popular appeal of our research on historical linguistics.
I think the oldest words are George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Use on Television.
1,2,3 are not words they are numerical digits.
The actual words you were looking for are one, two and three. Didn't you crazy kids at Engadget ever study english ?