# Two (possibly stupid) linguistics questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 12, 2023, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069 "2023-01-12T02:38:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2023, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/21 "2023-01-13T02:14:23Z")
You might be interested in the Nostratic theory: [Nostratic languages - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2023, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/22 "2023-01-13T06:17:40Z")
_Shesh_ is six in both Hebrew and Persian. Coincidence. _Sette_ is seven in both Italian and Sakha (a Turkic language in Siberia). Coincidence. The words for bull, lion, and seven were shared by Proto-Semitic and Proto-Indo-European; there was definitely some loaning going on between them. Arabic _thawr_ and Hebrew _shor_ are both the expected derivations from Proto-Semitic, since th in Arabic corresponds to sh in Hebrew and t in Aramaic. I like Nostratic. ---
**Author:** ![Quondam\_Mechanic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quondam_mechanic/32/3404_2.png) [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2023, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/23 "2023-01-13T08:26:12Z")
Ignorance fought! Thank you, Johanna. My next assignment will be to learn more about Nostratic. BTW, I wasn’t actually worried about the word for seven in Sakha…🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2023, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/24 "2023-01-13T11:42:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It’s hard to see how that could possibly result in completely independently-developed languages, unless you have something like a small group of pre-lingual children who are cut off from all adults but somehow survive, and then become the ancestors of an isolated population. Which I suppose might have happened occasionally (it’s hypothesized that something similar, though not as extreme, might account for the Pirahã language), but it seems farfetched to suppose that every language family has such an origin. Any group of Deaf children isolated from other Deaf people will develop their own Sign language. The most recent instance of this was in [Nicaragua in the 1980’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language). So it’s possible that language arose more than once, humans do seem to have a drive towards communication. On the other hand, these Deaf children were immersed in a culture that did have language, even if they had trouble accessing it, which would be a different situation than the very first human language(s). ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/25 "2023-01-14T13:07:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > You missed one other category of related words: Most human languages, even otherwise unrelated ones, have a word cognate to “mama”, meaning mother. So there is coincidence, and shared roots as possible explanations for word similarities; this though I think illustrates another one - maybe think of it as convergence? Babies naturally vocalize and the “m” sound is very early, often made when hungry or otherwise needy. The parent with the food appears; association made. Same process for a next set of more playful babbling sounds, “d”, “b”, “p”, and “t”. Male parent can do that and those sounds are used by kids for that parent in most languages. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/26 "2023-01-14T14:31:46Z")
Quondam\_Mechanic , why are we comparing modern hebrew to modern English words, when we could compare Hebrew , of some ancient date, to an ancient IE language, such as Sanskrit… or Hittite, proto-IE … The examples you gave were all modern languages which is not going to be as similar in early IE. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/27 "2023-01-14T15:10:57Z")
Similarly to “mama”, but not quite the same, different languages will often have similarity in onomatopoeias. Though you’ll also get a lot more variety there than you’d expect, especially for things like animal noises (“Meow”, “Woof”, “Moo”, etc.). ---
**Author:** ![Quondam\_Mechanic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quondam_mechanic/32/3404_2.png) [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2023, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/28 "2023-01-15T05:16:29Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > Quondam\_Mechanic , why are we comparing modern hebrew to modern English words, when we could compare Hebrew , of some ancient date, to an ancient IE language, such as Sanskrit… or Hittite, proto-IE … The examples you gave were all modern languages which is not going to be as similar in early IE. The similarities I cited are clear enough IMO even using the modern descendent languages. Of course, if I had Johanna’s familiarity with, say, Proto-Semitic and happened to have noticed such similarities with it rather than with Hebrew, I would have cited them instead – except, of course, that with that level of expertise, I wouldn’t have had to ask my questions in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/29 "2023-01-15T21:44:32Z")
> [@Quondam\_Mechanic](#): > > I wouldn’t even begin to wonder about it if these weren’t core vocabulary. The origin of Indo-European counting numbers is something I’m very interested in, but not knowledgeable about. Some tantalising glimpses like the word “three” being similar to roots meaning “across” or “beyond”, “five” looking like the word for “fist” and the word “nine” being similar to “new” (perhaps implying that “nine” is a “new” number in a hypothetical change from a base-8 to a base-10 system, just as in Finnish 8 and 9 seem to be counting down subtractively to 10), and yes the apparent similarity between IE and Semitic words for 7. Core vocabulary is sometimes borrowed from unrelated languages. Some examples I can think of are the word for “and” (and possibly the word for “not”) in Finnish, borrowed from Germanic; and counting numbers borrowed into Japanese from China (alongside a native set of counting numbers). So even if the similarity between Semitic and IE 7 is not coincidental, it doesn’t necessarily prove a genetic relationship between the language families. [Another example I am unsure of - in Bali I came across a set of counting numbers which are clearly of IE origin (probably Sanskrit), but I don’t know whether it was in Malay/Indonesian or Balinese, or in what contexts they are used.] ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2023, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/30 "2023-01-15T21:58:35Z")
> [@Quondam\_Mechanic](#): > > How any sort of syntax could possibly have arisen is a great mystery to me If you are genuinely interested in this topic, I highly (highly!) recommend a book called The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher. For what it’s worth (which is almost nothing as I am no expert, and it is ultimately unknowable), I agree with Chronos that spoken language probably evolved once (alongside and at the same time as the ability for language) and that all modern languages are descended from that one origin. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/31 "2023-01-17T10:00:17Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > _Shesh_ is six in both Hebrew and Persian. Coincidence. _Sette_ is seven in both Italian and Sakha In Sanskrit, Six is षट् (_shut)_ and is Cheh in Hindi and Chay in Bengali Also Seven is सप्त _(sapta)_ in Sanskrit and Saat in Hindi and Saata in Bengali They sound the same as Hebrew and Persian. ---
**Author:** ![Quondam\_Mechanic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quondam_mechanic/32/3404_2.png) [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/32 "2023-01-17T14:56:52Z")
I wonder if there was some influence here from Babylonian mathematics, which used base-60 numbers, where six is a very special number. Babylonian (Akkadian) was a Semitic language. Most of what we know about ancient Babylon comes from Bronze Age tablets, but it seems plausible to me that e.g. the Akkadian word for six might have been a familiar one in the area around Mesopotamia even earlier and been borrowed into nearby Indo-European languages. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/33 "2023-01-17T16:25:53Z")
Was six a special number? Ignorance here but I had thought 12 was and 60 … [https://www.earthdate.org/episodes/how-10-fingers-became-12-hours](https://www.earthdate.org/episodes/how-10-fingers-became-12-hours) ---
**Author:** ![Quondam\_Mechanic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quondam_mechanic/32/3404_2.png) [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/34 "2023-01-17T17:43:47Z")
We’re talking about words literally at the dawn of history; I will be surprised if there’s a definitive answer. But here’s a cite from Wikipedia’s article on the history of ancient numeral systems, with reference to the Babylonian numerical system that suggests the significance of the number 6: > Sexagesimal numerals were a [mixed radix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_radix) system that retained the alternating bases of 10 and 6 that characterized tokens, numerical impressions, and proto-cuneiform numerical signs. Sexagesimal numerals were used in commerce, as well as for astronomical and other calculations. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/35 "2023-01-17T17:50:41Z")
> [@Quondam\_Mechanic](#): > > I will be surprised if there’s a definitive answer. We will never have definitive answers about pre-literate language. Just a series of progressively weaker conjectures as we go further back in time. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardFound](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@EdwardFound](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardFound)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/36 "2023-01-17T19:21:43Z")
All known languages are almost certainly descended from a single proto-language: Protish. However, Protish would not have been the original human language; there would have been many languages being spoken at the same time as Protish. A number of those other languages continued, and diverged into other languages - maybe for thousands of years - but ultimately all died out except for the descendants of Protish. The true origin of language was likely much earlier than Protish. If Protish was spoken, say, 60,000 years ago, the first true language may have been, say, 80,000 years ago. And there may indeed have been multiple “original” languages: many tribes were speaking in ways that were _almost_ but not quite true language, until some member happened to add that tiny innovation that pushed their speech into true-language status. (Only one of those true languages eventually gave rise to Protish.) If we were to send 1000 linguists back in time to study this transition, no two of them, of course, would agree on what defines the true-language threshold and which tribe actually did it first. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/37 "2023-01-17T19:30:06Z")
> [@Quondam\_Mechanic](#): > > Sexagesimal numerals were a [mixed radix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_radix) system that retained the alternating bases of 10 and 6 that characterized tokens, numerical impressions, and proto-cuneiform numerical signs. Sexagesimal numerals were used in commerce, as well as for astronomical and other calculations. At the risk of hijack, specific to the [Babylonian](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_cuneiform_numerals) system > [@](#): > > Their system clearly used internal [decimal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal) to represent digits, but it was not really a [mixed-radix](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_radix) system of bases 10 and 6, since the ten sub-base was used merely to facilitate the representation of the large set of digits needed, while the place-values in a digit string were consistently 60-based and the [arithmetic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic) needed to work with these digit strings was correspondingly sexagesimal. [This](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal) however is also of note: > [@](#): > > Using the thumb, and pointing to each of the three finger bones on each finger in turn, it is possible for people to [count on their fingers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_counting) to 12 on a single hand. A traditional counting system still in use in many regions of Asia works in this way, and could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60 besides those based on 10, 20 and 5. In this system, a person’s other hand would count the number of times that 12 was reached on their first hand. The five fingers would count five sets of 12, or sixty.[[2]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#cite_note-Ifrah-2)[[3]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#cite_note-Macey-3) However, the Babylonian sexagesimal system was based on six groups of ten, not five groups of 12. So my counting by dozens does not apply to the Babylonian case. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardFound](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@EdwardFound](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardFound)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/38 "2023-01-17T20:07:22Z")
For “earth”, see [https://benjamins.com/catalog/nss.32.c4](https://benjamins.com/catalog/nss.32.c4). This is from a hypothesis that proto-Germans borrowed Punic (Semitic) words from Carthaginian traders. Other examples listed are “shilling” and “boar”. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2023, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/39 "2023-01-18T04:13:02Z")
So shilling comes from shekel, is that the idea? Another example of how Proto-Semitic \*θ- became š- in Hebrew and t- in Aramaic, while remaining θ- in Arabic. Compare Arabic thiqāl ‘weight’, Hebrew shekel, Aramaic tekel (one of the words written on Belshazzar’s wall) ---
**Author:** ![EdwardFound](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@EdwardFound](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardFound)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2023, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069/40 "2023-01-18T18:26:06Z")
The Punic origin of Germanic words seems to be not generally accepted. Etymonline mentions different possible origins of shilling. Anyway, I found this quote: > Take the words “shilling” and “penny”: both words are found in Proto-Germanic. The early Germanic people did not have their own coins, but it is likely they knew coins if they had words for them. > > In antiquity, coins were used in the Mediterranean. One major coin minted in Carthage was the shekel, the current name for currency of Israel. We think this is the historical origin of the word “shilling” because of the specific way the Carthaginians pronounced “shekel,” which is different from how it is pronounced in Hebrew. From: [Shillings, gods and runes: Clues in language suggest a Semitic superpower in ancient northern Europe](https://phys.org/news/2020-07-shillings-gods-runes-clues-language.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-possibly-stupid-linguistics-questions/978069.md?page=3)